170

Bjorn woke up right before the alarm on his mobile was about to go off. He had slept like a log and felt superbly well rested despite having had one of his uncomfortable dreams. The medicine must have taken the sting out of the dream. He had been more active in his dream than usual, defending himself as it were, holding the goblins at a distance and refusing to succumb to despair.

There had been the usual episode with him and his ex. But this time he had a ready answer for her. He was where he was because he felt like it, and with that simple answer she was gone. However, she returned later in his dream, this time with a sheet of paper in her hand. It was the official inheritance document which he had sent to the local tax office for them to calculate the inheritance tax. It was the document that had put him hopelessly in debt to the tax office, and when she asked him why he had signed it Bjorn was again lost for words.

But he did not react in despair. He simply observed that his ex had a point, and that he should not have signed it, at least not before checking that the stipulated value of the inheritance was in fact correct. It was a stupid mistake, a ruinous mistake, but nevertheless an understandable one. He had acted in good faith. He had nothing to be ashamed of. If anyone should be ashamed, it was his ex for abandoning him as soon as it was clear that he was bankrupt and in eternal debt to the state.

The thought of his hopeless economic situation did not bother him even as he rose out of bed. The situation was as it was, and he had to deal with it as such. Lamenting the situation was not going to set anything right. And this insight was strangely liberating. There had to be a solution to the problem, he felt, and he could almost hear his children beg him to do it, whatever they meant by that. "Do it for us," they had pleaded in his dream, begging him to take some action, and Bjorn had replied, "yes of course," as if he had understood exactly what they meant and knew exactly what to do.

However, these were but episodes in a larger dream dominated by the citizens of Lundby, but also featuring people like Odd the painter, and Ingunn with her wild and surreal interpretation of the world. Odd had painted a ship for her on a large canvas, and she stepped into it as if it was a real ship. "Let us join Jesus and Mother Earth in holy matrimony," she exclaimed from the stem of the ship. And with those words it sailed out of the canvas on a cloud of frothy water. Then, to everyone's consternation, she vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving a large blank spot on the canvas.

The vanishing act took place in Pedro's apartment. Bjorn was there together with a large group of people. They had come to see the painting, and now it was ruined. Odd was there too, and immediately picked up his pencils to repair the damage, excusing himself for having painted the ship a little too life like.

"This is what happens when you invite people like Ingunn to your house," Frederico commented dryly to Pedro in the back of the room.
Pedro chuckled and shook his head. He did not seem the least bit concerned about what had just happened. "It is a good thing we have Odd here, isn't it?" he commented. Then he pointed to Bjorn, calling out his name and telling him to behave on Tuesday, making it clear that it would be a grave mistake to disappoint him.

Bjorn did not know what to say, but Katinka was suddenly there, right next to him. "It's quite simple, really," she explained. "The whole thing is a network. If you push the red button and then make a quick calculation before pushing the green button, you'll be fine. But whatever you do, do not push the green button before the red."
"Is that so?" Bjorn asked, puzzled.
"Nah, just beat him about the head with a plank," Einar suggested. "That's the quickest and easiest solution."
"You're mad," Bjorn protested.
Then he heard a cold feminine voice asking "who you calling mad?" When Bjorn turned to look, he stared into the ice cold gaze of Jan's two daughters. Behind them stood Ane and Ola, both dressed like villains from an old Western. "You should be a little careful about who you call mad down here in good old Lundby," Ane added, putting her hand on the handle of the large pistol strapped to her thigh.
"Oh my. Here we go again!" said another voice. It was Olga, and she was clearly unimpressed by the other ladies. "It's all show and no substance. Take no notice of them."
Tyrone was there too, chuckling to himself. "If you think Lundby is crazy, you should try Liberia," he said, smiling from ear to ear. "That's crazy, if you know what I mean."

And then there was suddenly music. Elisabeth and Aung started singing, and everybody were praising the Lord and swinging from side to side. "Hallelujah, hallelujah. Praise the Lord. We are the citizens, and we will inherit the Earth."

There was much more to the dream, but Bjorn was getting ready for breakfast, and his memory of the dream was fading rapidly. However, the overall feel of the dream stuck with him. The fact that he had not woken up with a start was a victory to him. He had observed and even enjoyed the challenges in his dream. The medicine had definitely helped calm his nerves, and he felt ready to face the world. Not with apprehension, but with anticipation. He was genuinely looking forward to what the day might bring.

97

Stepping into the brightly lit hallway of the barracks was almost like stepping into another world, entirely separate from Lundby. The white soulless light was depressing in its intensity, and the stuffy air, scented by the freshly cut spruce panels that covered most of the interior walls, only added to the clinical ambiance of the place.

The empty silence that seemed to have penetrated right into the woodwork was bordering on spooky, and once again he had a start seeing his reflexion in the window as he entered his room. He turned on the TV, only to have images of bombed out houses in a far away land tossed at him, and he turned it off again immediately, drawing the curtains instead and getting ready for bed. And coming back from a short visit to the bathroom, he felt a great relief as he crept into bed.

Bjorn turned off the light and closed his eyes determined not to have his sudden spell of anxiety ruin the evening which had been so full of pleasant and interesting little events. And to his relief, the anxiety soon left him. He was once again among people in Lundby, with Aung advising him on Nora's menu, Ante smiling from ear to ear, and Frank showing off.

Every little detail of his night out came flashing back to him as he slept lightly but contently well into the morning, and had it not been for an uncomfortable dream during his final slumber, his rest would have had him wake up full of energy and hope for the day. But his final dream spoiled it for him, making him once again wake up with an ugly feeling that he was in fact lost, and hopelessly so.

This time it was his two children who appeared out of nowhere in his room, asking him why he wasn't at home.

"Why are you here?" they asked.
"Well, I'm on an important mission," Bjorn explained to them.
"To do what?"
"To find out about this place," Bjorn explained, feeling pleased with himself that he had such a ready answer to the question that had left him speechless so many times before.
"But we are missing you," his daughter said, at the verge of crying.
"I miss you too," Bjorn said, and he felt an intense sense of longing as he said this.
"So why don't you do it?" his little boy asked.
"Do what?"
"It... Do it for us!" his daughter said with a tear rolling down her cheek.

And Bjorn was again lost for words. He was missing something essential. And he had no idea what it was. He asked them again what it was that he should do, but they were fading away as he spoke, and he woke up with a start feeling both hung over and anxious, and desperate to get out of bed.

66

"Why are you here?" The question hung once again over him, this time as a dirty residue from a fading dream. Bjorn tried to ignore both the question and the dream, and let them evaporate during his morning routine. But the question and the images were too vivid to go away on their own, so he went through it systematically instead in the hope that a quick analysis would expose the silliness of it all and thereby render the uncomfortable question powerless. And Bjorn quickly realized that the dream was in fact little else than a strange and mixed up collage of impressions from the day before.

In the dream, Bjorn had been enjoying a wonderful meal when Maria from Independent Law had suddenly appeared in front of him, claiming to represent his ex, and it was Maria who had asked the uncomfortable question on his ex's behalf. Bjorn, being unable to answer Maria's question was then asked if he had insurance. And when Bjorn admitted to being uninsured, Maria simply vanished into thin air along with a half finished sentence. "Well, if that is the case..." she said, disappearing as suddenly as she had appeared. Then, looking around in the empty room, Bjorn realized with a shock that he was sitting in a prison, with no doors, and only a tiny window from which he could see the village.

"Such silliness," Bjorn thought to himself, but the images and the question stuck with him until he came down to the kitchen where Ante quickly brought him out of his meditations with a bit of real news from the real world.

"Have you heard the latest on the asylum seekers?" Ante asked with a touch of excitement.
"No? What happened?"
"They burned down the asylum seeker centre in Lier!"
"They burned it down?"
"They did! And when the firemen arrived, they pelted them with rocks and kept them away, so now there's nothing more than a smoldering heap of ruins where the buildings used to be."

"And these are the people we're going to get up here shortly?" Bjorn asked rhetorically as he sat down for his breakfast.
"It is indeed."
"Lier doesn't happen to be the same place they held that demonstration the other day?" Bjorn asked, wondering if the media attention of the last few days might have set the riots in motion.
"You know... I was wondering the same thing. But they didn't say anything about that. They did say that the asylum seekers at Lier were scheduled for deportation next week, though."

Bjorn dug into his bacon and eggs while contemplating the implications of the riots.

"It's going to be a mess, isn't it?" Bjorn thought out loud.
"Bringing all those people together to this one location, you mean?"
"Yeah..." Bjorn confirmed with a nod. "Imagine hundreds, or even thousands of thugs like that, all brought together to this one place."

13

Bjorn knew all too well what the haunting recurring dreams were all about. The symbolism was rather obvious, and the lack of motion in this latest one did not change the message all that much. He was lost, and he knew it all too well. And pushing this awareness back and down while awake did not stop his subconscious from presenting him with the plain facts at night.

However, the dreams had become less regular after his decision to join the newly established Lundby border guards, and he had hoped that the dreams would go away completely now that he had reached his destination. Taking part in this great social project, engineered by the smartest minds in the country to protect ordinary Norwegians from the many criminals who abuse the asylum seeker system, was at least purposeful if not exactly a great career move.

Bjorn had arrived at his destination, but he was still lost. This was not what he had imagined his life to become way back when he, full of optimism, had married his beautiful girlfriend after having found himself a well paid job as an engineer. All his dreams had come to nothing. His painting, as it were, had fallen apart. The dream was simply his subconscious presenting him with the plain facts.

But there was no point in dwelling on the past. If his dreams were telling him anything, it was to move on and get over it. Being away from Oslo, with its constant reminders of his failures, was at least a step in the right direction. However, he had no idea what the next step might be. He had not thought this whole thing properly through, and now that he had finally arrived at the check point, he felt lost again.

Not wanting to be confronted with his much younger colleagues in the communal bathroom, and feeling eager to do something, anything, to shake off the feeling of having hit some sort of dead end, Bjorn got up and headed for the showers. Going there at an odd hour, he suspected correctly that he would have the place to himself so that he did not have to socialize as he got himself ready for the day.

Feeling a good deal better after a warm shower, he brushed his teeth in front of the large mirror covering the wall, next to the door, above four wash basins lined up next to each other. Bjorn scrutinized himself critically as he stood there, thinking that he was not the worst looking forty something guy on the planet. A little over weight, maybe, but big and strong, and certainly not anyone a tiny little Asian refugee would want to mess with. And with a well trimmed beard covering his somewhat puffy face, he could even be confused for a bit of a bad ass macho, given a more forgiving lighting.

12

Bjorn woke with a start from an intense falling sensation, and he knew that he would not be able to go back to sleep. If he tried, he would simply be filled with a noxious claustrophobia that would make him both sweaty and cold at the same time, so he turned on the light, sat up in bed and turned on the TV.

He checked his mobile for the time, and it said 5:32, which meant that he had had a good six hours of sleep. Not bad, considering how his panic attacks had been at their worst, but he had hoped the nightmares would pass now that he finally was settled into a job with a steady income and high job security, and he felt a sting of anger as he reflected over this latest dream.

It had taken him by surprise, since it followed a slightly different pattern than he was used to. Mostly, he knew even at the start of the dream that things would end badly, and that there would be a great fall. He would know that whatever he was trying to reach would remain distant no matter how fast he was moving, and he would know that the road would suddenly disappear, and yet he would not be able to escape it.

However, the predictability of these dreams, in their endless variations, did not make them any less effective in depriving him of a proper night sleep. The discomfort he was ridding himself of, by turning on the light and the TV, was very familiar to him. But this latest dream had been different. He had not been moving along anywhere. He had simply observed a beautiful image of a quaint village set in a rich, green countryside. It was a great painting full of details, giving him a sense of harmony and prosperity, and he suddenly realized with a great deal of pride that he had made it himself.

And then he heard himself say with a great deal of joy "I finally did it! I made this!" But as soon as he said this, his masterpiece started to crumble, and he heard a familiar voice directly behind him asking "but why are you here?" Turning around he saw that he was completely surrounded by darkness, and he could see nothing. Then everything changed and he was suddenly standing in the living room of his ex, facing her with their baby boy in her arms, and their daughter pulling anxiously at her skirt. Pointing at him with a menacing finger and talking in a shrill voice, she formed the two words "get out" and that was when everything turned pitch dark, and the only sensation left was the stomach wrenching feeling of free fall.