We began to feel it around half a day before our arrival. I can’t say how many miles out it might have been, and it may very well have started before we took notice, but once noticed, I couldn’t shake it off as a trick of my imagination. It was subtle and weak for now, it would take at least a day to truly set in, but something within us was clearly changing as we approached ground zero. I felt persistent soreness in my arms and a groggy exhaustion, both could be attributed to the hectic wagon ride we have taken over the past days, but the flavor was different. It was the sort only tasted under the throes of a fever. Randomly, I felt throbbing and stinging around my body, in ways that made me expect that wounds might break out from where they erupted.

  The aching painted the atmosphere amongst us, but one of us alone retained that floaty slight smile I’ve never seen leave her face since I met her. With our surroundings changed and the oppressive weight that accompanied our purpose hanging in the air, I was no longer the only one to take notice of this idiosyncrasy. Surely, she noticed the uncertain furtive glances it was garnering her, but she only had an even wider smile to give any of us in return. All of us except for Mrs. Rijtferd who was doting on her after the kindness she had been shown, poorly timed smile or not.

  We had learned more about Rachel as she opened up to Karen. It was in fact Mrs. and not Ms. Though her husband has passed away. He had been a scrubber as well and part of her irritability came from imagining that what he protected in life would go to waste if there was an outbreak. Lieutenant Togl and the soldiers were more understanding with her after learning this, but she hadn’t actually taken back what she said, and a tense air of distrust remained between them.

  But now we were all too beleaguered by the precursor of the disease settling upon us. I held my head, which was suffering from waves of migraines, in my hand as I heard Mr. Grillmin break into a coughing fit.

  “Won’t be long now. The faster we can get you lot to sleep the faster we can be done with this misery. Damned must be the soldiers who’ve stayed behind if it already feels this awful for us.”

  I glanced out the window when Terry spoke up and saw tents perched up on a hill with a slow fog rolling over them. Hanging half hidden by the mist was our nations flag bearing the same image as Lieutenant Togl’s insignia, the elderly man laying a large tome to bed in the ground. It flew at half mast warning of the danger the camp was currently under. Not that anyone close enough to see would be unaware, though, according to what we were told, the direction the flags hinges pointed would indicate whether they were actually under attack. We all turned to Terry questioningly.

  “Looks like it’s safe for now. That much was expected, but if we’re not swift I’m sure they’ll eventually send runners through.”

  The reason the camp hadn’t been evacuated yet was the possibility that the dream wardens would send a small party of raiders through if they left it abandoned. Not to mention we were being specifically targeted so the camp had to stay well defended while we were asleep cleaning. They could have sent an entire new regiment with us, but it would have delayed our arrival as well as weakening the nations defenses at wherever they were dispatched from which, at least in theory even if no one really believed it, could have been the purpose of the attack on the scrubbers to begin with. As such, at least a small fraction of their troops had to stay behind and power through the onset of the disease.

  The carriage slowed to a crawl and Terry put his hand to his swords hilt while exiting, quickly being joined by Ben. We exited, flanked by the two and approached the wooden gate where two haggard soldiers were already speaking with Davis.

  “Has there been any attacks since the others evacuated.”

  “No, all’s been quiet, but we did spot a single scout towards the west horizon earlier this morning.”

  His voice dragged and his effort to keep it professional and assertive was apparent. His face was sickly and gaunt, and bruises and cuts marred his skin. A small amount of swelling could be seen around his right collar bone, and he kept correcting himself from leaning in that direction. His eyes were bloodshot and showed signs of stimulant use, probably necessary to keep him standing at this point. I could see beyond him that not all their troops had managed to stay on their feet. He turned to us as we approached.

  “Alright let’s get you inside quickly.”

  He seemed like he was going to say more, but his voice failed him, and he took to herding us within the camp instead. His partner didn’t say a word, but his gaze lingered on us. Similarly, a few soldiers we passed who had fallen to the ground, catatonic if it wasn’t for the movement of their eyes, turned to us with imploring gazes. I’m not sure about the exact timetables, but they must have been here for almost a week. It would take longer for them to be fully crippled, which is why there has never been an outbreak in centuries, but they were more than halfway there. In fact, if there were already immobile victims then the disease was progressing faster than the theory I had been taught.

  As we directly approached a tent, its flap opened and a young man with a white uniform and round glasses limped out holding it open.

  “That’s…Dr. Aerk, he’ll give you the tonic. Go on.”

  Dr. Aerk, who looked no better off than the soldier, just nodded at us and motioned inside. Without a word we lay down on the cots. He only spoke in a whimpering voice when he delivered my dose of tonic.

  “I lay you to sleep with wisdom.”

  I had almost forgotten. I haven’t heard the words since training since Rayngo never used them. He, before retiring to our humble town of Duskhovel to work as our attendant, had been a scholar, and had apparently written an entire thesis on how he thought the origins of this phrase were, although not incorrect in their meaning, an unnecessary step. It was adopted at the same time as our nation’s flag as a mild form of propaganda to ease the populace towards the scrubbers and existence of filth build up in the ether ways. It was a phrase that implored the scrubbers to look beyond the shadows cast by the filth and see it as the detritus, the worst parts abandoned in dreams, of the human soul, not the essence of the human soul itself. It was a lesson we were constantly indoctrinated with during our training, for the sake of our mental health if nothing else, and a lesson I was never able to internalize.

  In his paper, Rayngo Hob claimed it was an unnecessary step the nation had taken during the early days, since the general citizenry wholly welcomed the convenience of the ether ways, and didn’t need to directly face the discomfort of the filth the slogan challenged, due to the introduction of the scrubber system, in the first place. While he accepted that the words themselves are wise and that they could to some degree alleviate theoretical tension that could come from paranoia that scrubbers would fall to antisocial behavior when faced with the filth on a daily basis, he also criticized the slogan for having done little to appease the strong religious sentiments against the change that existed in the minority that eventual evolved to be the church of the dreamless. His biggest criticism, and the focus of his thesis, was that the practice of reciting the slogan didn’t alleviate the anxiety of the scrubbers at all, but instead potentially made it worse. His basis for this belief was that it was impossible to teach human beings only positive beliefs since they could use logic to reach the negative antithesis of what they’re taught, and that instead, the scrubbers, being constantly told to focus on the issue of the filths relation to humanity, would naturally come to question the truth of the slogans meaning, and would feel all the more guilty and anxious for having put the idea in their own heads. This would be exacerbated all the more by the arbitrary guilt and anxiety they were already having forced upon them by looking into the filth during their work.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  It wasn’t his only thesis or the sole focus of his previous studies, but it must be a sore point to have someone like me under his care after his retirement. I was a practical case study for his theory since he refrained from uttering the slogan to us, but I’m the spitting image of the outcome he would blame on the slogan, someone who distrust humanity on account of his work. I knew it was more complicated than that, that he abstained because of principal and never theorized doing so would actually completely remedy the tenuous mental health of the scrubbers, but it didn’t change that I alone created a strong case for his theory being off base.

  It was hard to imagine the man whose words I read in his papers was the same hobbling and whimsical caregiver I met at work every morning. As the dream took me, I wondered how he and the last remaining scrubber of Duskhovel were fairing in our absence.

  I appeared as usual within the dark tubular tunnel, but this time immediately searched my companions upon arrival. The situation was not one for a slow introspective crawl. We couldn’t have been prepared for what greeted us.

  The entirety of the cave’s surface was unobservable. Rather than painted in the filth, it was coated in it in layers so thick that the overall area of the tunnel had shrunk drastically. What was even more horrifying was that it was all moving in a way I had never seen before like nauseous waves upon a vessel of seasickness. The squirming colorful lines crawled from the pool of splotches and entwined my lower legs. It did not harm me or even entrap me, but where they touched, my body was overcome with the same sort of chill that would normally overtake my entire body when staring into a particularly horrendous stain. But no, perhaps they did do harm, just not any that was immediately apparent. Where they passed, I could see the beginnings of light bruising that would surely eventual form the sores of the disease.

  As we all summoned our mops Rachel weakly knelt into hers and blanched.

  “No…”

  Nervously Bennie turned to her, but he managed to keep a semblance of his cool within his tone.

  “Wha…what did you see.”

  We were all already in a state of shock due to our surroundings but based on the timing Rachel’s reaction was clearly on account of something further. We wouldn’t have to wait for her response which wasn’t forthcoming to find out however, as our gazes were, much as usual, naturally pulled into the depths of the filth. Thomas uneasily voiced our discovery for us.

  “It’s not all just mashed together physically…the images they conjure…the feelings imbued in them…it’s all become a chaotic mishmash.”

  It was miserable. Far more miserable than anything we had ever witnessed. If the crime I had seen vestiges of back in town had deeply sickened me then every bit of what was before me now ripped humanity violently from my heart. It was the worst of what could be imagined, but then combined in unnatural ways even the most debauched would refrain from because now it was no longer a human mind directing the imagery and even the small slither that remain in an evil subconscious to keep the possibilities in check was not present. And in this hellish nightmare we walked with horrified faces, one of us retained the easy enigmatic smile she always wore. She walked out in front of us and twisted on her heel, the motion seemingly blowing her silken thread-like hair in the wind, as she held her hands behind her back to address us.

  “Well gentlemen, lets lose no time gawking and get to work.”

  She seemed to almost dance as she swept her mop more like a brush and painted emptiness into the thick swelling canvas of filth. The disturbance her actions caused was apparent. It was no longer just me; it was clear among the rest that there was something deeply wrong with this woman. But could we really definitively call her wrong? It was how the filth was contextualized within us that made her attitude come off as inhuman. She had, as of now, only showed kindness and whimsy. It was the paranoia we held, built from our years with the filth, the very paranoia and anxiety that she should have within herself as well. But the paranoia was not completely unfounded. Because if she could look upon this horror and feel amusement, what else could she be apart from a monster?

  Rachel was the first to nod and follow after her. She seemed much less perturbed than the rest of us. Bennie patted me on the shoulder.

  “We’ll talk about it later. For now, just focus on the task at hand.”

  I realized I had been entranced. Her movements within the vibrant filth could have been said to be beautiful, at least if you were able to ignore the essence of what that filth was.

  I shook my head and followed behind the rest.

  The work was both slow and surreal. Normally there would essentially be a stain that would vanish as a mop was dragged over it, the same as it would be with a stain in the real world, but now the mop slowly ate away chunks of a pile of sludge, something that wouldn’t be true for its real world counterpart. The dissonance made it more difficult to properly utilize our illusory cleaning materials. It would have been better to envision a tool more suited to the work, but we neither had the time nor the presence of mind to experiment with what we have relied on routinely for our whole careers. We could only remove the amount filth we expected the mop to remove so the amount wasn’t even between us, but it was uniformly so small it took ten minutes to clean just a small section of the tunnel between us. The only good news was that since we entered the tunnel at the most infected location, the thickness of the filth decreased as we moved along. The bad news was that it extended much farther than it normally would.

  We would ultimately need to work far past our sleep cycles, but our bodies would wake regardless of our wills after enough time has passed. Mr. Grillmin was the first to vanish from the ether ways. He came back not five minutes later having been given tonic laced with sedatives. His exhaustion seemed to double from before he vanished. Then Karen. Then Rachel. Then me.

  “Mr. Trael, what happened to the medic.”

  He motioned to a bed farther into the tent. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t moving. Just like the soldiers we saw on the ground on the way here. There were more in the other beds as well, but they were wounded beyond the expected sores and their eyes weren’t opened.

  “What happened.”

  “We were attacked. Only five on horses, but it took everything we had to intercept them. Only the horses that brought our carriage were healthy enough to ride. They couldn’t have taken us in a direct assault even with how sickly the troops are, but they may have made it past anyways if the three of us hadn’t joined them, but we’ll be in the same state before long.”

  I nodded and looked down at my body. It was paler than before and pus leaked from a new cut on my leg, but I still looked in much better shape than the incapacitated troops farther in.

  “Were making steady progress, but we won’t be done before the dates changed.”

  “That should be good enough. I don’t think they’ll send anymore yet. I’m more worried about the other camps at this point.”

  A good point. This was both the most important encampment and the strongest concentration of the disease with the majority of troops moved here, but smaller camps may be over run before we can reach them. This and the camp the other carriage left for were the only two soldiers actually remained in, but at the same time we left, a small handful of troops were sent to defend each camp from runners while we made our way around each location. They would be in better health than even the three that accompanied us, but that would fade in time, and they could be subdued by even the small force that challenged this camp. It was fully expected that some raiders would make it through in the end, but as long as we managed to clean the ether ways, we would have to accept our losses. We scrubbers were more in danger from a camp’s loss of defense opening the way for whatever had assassinated the others than from the raiders themselves.

  I drank my tonic and returned to the others. I was right, returning by sedative really did double my exhaustion. It became harder and harder for us to advert our eyes from the horrors the filth radiated, further slowing the process. The images were in my eyes, but if my eyes could only see clinical objects maybe I could carry on. I willed everything to lose meaning and recognition. It didn’t work, but the process at least occupied my mind.

  12 buckets in a circle

  13 buckets stand on top

  I tip the top and the bottom falls

  12 buckets spill blood 13 carry the spilt blood

  I kick the bottom and the top tips

  13 buckets blood eats

  It eats

  The blood eats the vein

  The blood doesn’t belong

  My blood violates me with its teeth

  My blood…violates

  My forehead is sweating. I had attempted to lose myself in a strange song, but I lost the rhythm, and my visions infected the song. I shook my head. What I saw today will haunt me for the rest of my life, but it won’t end until the work’s done. I need to push through and make it nothing but a memory. A memory at least I’ll be able to deal with.

  We pushed and we pushed.

  Two more times we awoke and were sedated.

  Our minds at this point were hardly functioning and only muscle memory continued to push the mops forward.

  In this delirium the filth reached normal levels though it retained its abysmal property of mixing nightmares until the end. I may as well have been in a real dream lucid as I was. No, could we really call this state lucid anymore?

  And what for this sight I then saw of all things?

  Still, she smiles.

  Still, she whistles.

  Still, she dances.

  In the blurry emerald light.

  The light that matches her eyes.

  Emerald?

  The filth.

  Is gone.

  Darkness.