Sleeper Agent: Chapter One

The second novella in the Sleeper Agent series is going to be released very soon and I'm excited to share it with y'all. It's an intense action thriller that takes place in Kazakhstan and I assure you it'll get your heart beating fast. So in order to get you guys excited for the upcoming super rad book, I'm gonna share the first couple of chapters of my debut and the first in the Sleeper Agent series with you. If you enjoy it, check it out on Amazon and buy it for $0.99 or you can get free on Smashwords until April 20th.

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My name is Stephen Matthews.

Stephen spelled with a “ph” not a “v.”

I’ve always thought that the ph made it sound more dignified. Not that you can hear the difference, but when you see it spelled with the “ph” you feel a certain gravitas that just isn’t there with the “v.”

Anyway, I had just started my graduate degree in electrical engineering. I had bounced around on majors for my first two years like every other university student before I settled into the program. I found that I liked the straightforwardness of electrical engineering. Everything is cause and effect. Too much power and you screw things up, too little and nothing happens.

I’ve long suspected that most engineers are the same. They may cloak things in fancy words and descriptions, but every single one of them tries to make the complicated simple.

That’s why I think that the complexity of my dream life was a strong force in driving me to the major.

Ever since I had been a kid—maybe around ten or eleven years old—I’ve had strangely lucid dreams, ones packed full of the strangest details. It was as if my body was asleep but my mind stayed awake.

Another odd thing was that I was almost never the main character in my dreams. It was as if I were watching a documentary of someone else’s life. Normally they were boring films; I would dream that I was a housewife saying goodbye to her husband, sitting down with a nice cup of tea, and reading a chick-lit book while my baby still slept; or sometimes I would be an accountant in some high-end firm, working on indescribably boring financial spreadsheets. Every so often the dreams would reoccur, but that was pretty rare. One night I was a mechanic, the next the president of the United States.

It never really crossed my mind how different it was until I, for some stupid reason—actually, a girl who was way out of my league whom, I later found out, was already dating someone—added a creative writing class. I thought it would be a piece of cake, and I could write the next great American novel and win the girl of my dreams.

Needless to say, I did neither. I’d thought that it’d be an easy couple of credits but it actually turned out to be one of the hardest classes I’d taken.

I found that creativity came to me as easily as a passing kidney stone. My first couple of papers didn’t do any favors for my GPA, so, to keep from floundering, I decided to write from my dreams.

The paper on a spy that’d been working to infiltrate a militant Islamic terror cell earned me my first A in the class, and my story on the day-to-day life of the president was submitted to a writing contest by my professor.

He said that he’d loved the time I’d put into working on the minute details and complimented me on great world- building. I was glad that he loved it because it had been one of the most tedious dreams I’d had in a long time. But I’d heard that literature professors reveled in the most tedious and pretentious of works, so, like Dickens, I left no description unturned.

I didn’t win the writing contest, but I did land a job.

                                                              *****

I remember when they first approached me. It’d been about a month after my paper had placed sixth in the writing contest. I had just finished the judo course that I was taking as an elective and was sitting outside the campus cafeteria reading a textbook when an attractive lady who seemed to be five or six years older than me approached.

She was dressed professionally in a grey skirt and blazer and had angular cheekbones that were framed by a blond bob cut. She walked as if she owned the ground under her feet. She was the type of person who made an impression everywhere she went.

I was surprised when she passed the small group of professors—who were probably discussing ways to mess with the students and make an A average next to impossible —and headed straight toward me.

“You’re Stephen Matthews, correct?” she asked in a no-nonsense tone. I nodded.

“I read your story about the president, and I was impressed by your level of detail. Some of it was quite dry, and your similes are forgettable at best, but it was quite enthralling reading about the daily life and inner workings of the presidential office. It seems like you were there,” she paused, and her eyes bore into me. “You said in your interview for the piece that you’d based everything off of a dream you had?”

“Yeah, I based it off of a dream."

“Would you be interested in being paid to sleep?” she asked out of nowhere.

“What?”

“Would you like to be paid to sleep?”

“Well it does sound quite tempting, but I don’t even know

your name or who you work for,” I replied.

“My name is Helena Watters, and I’m with Fredrickson Research Center, or as we like to call it, “the Institute.” We’re currently researching lucid dreams and think that you’d be a prime candidate,” she said.

“So, Helena, what does this job that you’re offering entail?” I asked. I noticed the slightest grimace of annoyance at my informal tone.

“It’s exactly as I said. We’d be paying you to sleep. The days and hours would vary, but we’d work with your schedule so you can still make all of your classes, and you’d make two hundred and fifty dollars for every session. You’d work at least three sessions a week, so you could expect to be making seven hundred and fifty a week, minimum. I’m sure that’s better than whatever you’re doing now.”

“That sounds awesome, but what would my other responsibilities be?” I asked, intrigued at the offer of gainful yet lazy work.

“Your first responsibility would be to sleep, of course, and then we’d quiz you on what you dreamed about. You’d be asked to describe everything you saw in your dream in detail. We’d also test your limits by trying to guide you into dreaming from different perspectives,” Helena’s hands were animated with excitement. “Our goal is to understand the sleeping mind, and one day, hopefully, it’ll open up a world of possibilities. Can you imagine the possibilities that come from learning to direct one’s dreams? We could teach you one hour of language, but you could literally have all night to practice while you are sleeping. We’d be able to always be learning or improving our work by continuing it in our dreams. Just think of the possibilities!”

“Huh,” I said, feeling dumb as I tried to grasp what she was saying. “Can I get back to you in a day or two? I want to make sure I can twist my class schedule around before I make any sort of real commitment,” I tried not to sound too excited at the opportunity.

“That sounds good. I’ll give you a call in three days to see if you’ll join us in our adventure.”

I gotta give it to her; she’s one heck of a sales lady. It almost seems like her major was in marketing, not whatever branch of science she’s obviously got a PhD in. But then again, from everything I’ve seen, half of science is finding grants, so they’re practically salesmen anyway, I thought before I realized what she’d said.

“What’d you mean ‘You’ll call me’?” I asked, a little disconcerted that she already had my number.

“Surely you realize how easy it is to get contact info online? Especially with all of the social media out there. The world is connected, and it’s easy for almost anyone to find whomever they wish. It’s not like people are covering their tracks either. Everybody puts their location in their status updates.”

“OK, OK, sorry for asking. And of course I know that it’s easy to track what people are doing online. Even an idiot knows that,” I raised my hand in my defense. “I just thought that you needed a warrant or something to get all that info.”

“You do realize that posting in a public forum means that all of the information you put out there will be available to the public right?” Helena grinned at my ignorance.

Well, I hope that her grin was because she finds my naïveté endearing, I thought, embarrassed and frustrated how my face was reddening.

“Well, anyway, I will let you know in a couple of days if I’m up for your offer.”

“OK, be expecting a call soon, and good luck with your studies. It seems like you’ll need it,” Helena teased.

I thought I saw a satisfied grin as she abruptly turned and walked away.

Well, thank God, it looks like I got myself a job.