The question of course, was where and when. There was a patrol station near where Nelson now was, and that was the natural target. He had a few furnace beam guns—three, to be exact—and since the patrol could detect the residue from a furnace beamer a mile away even at low force, the only safe thing to use one on was the patrol. And to be frank, he rather enjoyed his brushes with the patrol. Like him, they were wakers—people who had never known the electronic dreams which were fed to all but a few of Earth's peoples. People who had never lain asleep in nutrient baths from their seventeenth birthday living an unreal world built to their own standards. Of the billions on earth, only a few hundred were wakers. Most of those were patrol, of course, but a few were rebels.
That was he, and also the girl he had seen yesterday. And it had been Edna and Sammy and Jeanne and Gardner; and maybe a dozen other people he had known since he had escaped from the Commune, when he had been just a kid—but when he had seen the danger.
For the past two and a half centuries or so, almost everyone raised on Earth had been raised in a commune, never knowing his or her parents. They had been raised, they had been indoctrinated and they had mated in the communes—and then gone into Sleep. More than likely, Nelson's parents were there still, dreaming in their trance, having long ago forgotten each other and their son, for those were things of a harsher world over which one could have no control. In Sleep one dreamed of a world that suited the dreamer. It was artificial. Oh, yes, it was a highly personalized utopia—one that ironed out the conflicts by simply not allowing them. But it was artificial. And Nelson knew that as long as the universe itself was not artificial nothing artificial could long stand against it. That was why he had escaped the commune without letting them get him into the nutrient bath in which the dreamers lived out their useless lives. His existence gave the lie to the pseudo-utopia he was dedicated to overthrowing. The called it individualism, but Nelson called it spineless.
Above him was sky stretching light blue to the horizons—and beyond the blueness of stars. He felt a pang of longing as he looked up trying to see stars in the day sky. That was where he should be, out there with the pioneers, the men who were carving out the universe to make room for a dynamic mankind that had long ago forgotten the Sleepers of the home world. But no, he decided. Out there he would not be giving so much to mankind as he was here and now. However decadent these people were, he knew that they were men. Nelson knew that somehow he had to overthrow the Sleepers.
Before something happened while they lay helpless in their coffins, dreaming dreams that would go on and on until reality became harsh enough to put them down.
What if the spacefarers should return? What if some alien life form should grow up around some other solar type star, develop space travel, go searching for inhabitable worlds—solar type worlds—and discover Earth with it's sleeping, unaware populace? could dreams defend against that?
Nelson shuddered with the knowledge that he had his work cut out for him, and awoke to his own hunger. He fished out a can and started to open it before he remembered, and fished out another can as well. He pressed the release on both and the tops flew off, releasing the odor of cooking food.
He leaned over and set one can on a flat rock that was just inside his reach, then scooted back about a foot and using his fingers, scooped up a mouthful of his own breakfast. Half turning his head, he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, about fifteen feet away, tense and expectant but ready to spring away if she thought it was necessary. He turned back and concentrated on eating his own breakfast.
"This sure is good after all night," he said, after a few minutes, making a show of gulping down a chunk of stew beef, and sucking the gravy from his fingers. He did not look back.