I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
"You have taken the first step," she said. "You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer...."
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
"The woman, Lara, attracts you," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
"Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way."
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.