“You’re new here, right?”

“Right.”

“You always want to be a Dream Catcher?”

“Nah. I wanted to be a dreamer. You know evade the catcher. Evade us.” Evan smiled.

Conrad laughed. “As if. How do you evade a Dream Catcher?”

Evan shrugged. He sipped his coffee and looked over the break room table at his fellow Dream Catcher. He reached his hand out. “Name’s Evan. This is my first week on my own. I’ve been an apprentice for Clark.”

“Clark! He’s a legend around here. Catches dreamers left and right. Like they’re not even trying to avoid him.” Conrad looked directly into Evan’s eyes. He reached out and grabbed Evan’s hand. “I’m Conrad. I’m no legend. I just catch ‘em when I can. And since I run the day shift, I gotta catch ‘em when they’re sleeping on the job. You know. Making big plans for getting out of their asssignments. Starting some big enterprise or other. Some of these rubes don’t know their places. They think they got a shot at being something. But we know better.”

Evan nodded. “That’s right. Them rubes need to know their place. No need making plans. Conscious or unconscious. We get ‘em in the end.”

Conrad looked at Evan closer. “So if you were an apprentice for Clark, why are you on day shift now? You won’t catch a lot of dreamers here. You’ll catch most of ‘em when you use that fancy new equipment for scanning brain waves. We use ‘em in day shift too, but there’s too much chatter in the day. Way more activity than at night. So it’s harder to tell who’s the dreamer and who’s the entrepreneurs and who’s just sleeping and having random dreams.”

“Aren’t they all the same? At least in the eyes of the government?”

Conrad shook his head. “Yes. But there’s something about too much innovation. Too much entrepreneurship. It slows down the machine of government. It makes government obsolete. At least if the dreamers are allowed to follow through with their dreams.”

“I s’pose.” Evan looked at Conrad and smiled. “I guess too many dreamers would make us obsolete.”

Conrad smiled back. “I s’pose it would.”

Evan looked around the room before whispering, “You ever been a dreamer?”

Conrad looked around, then whispered back, “Me? Nah. Never.”

The two sat in silence. Then, Conrad looked around the break room. He whispered, “Truth is, I used to dream. I dreamed about bein’ a pilot. Fly people around the planet. But my scores back then were too low. I still coulda done it though. I woulda just had to be creative.” He looked around the room again. “And you know what that means.”

“He might not, but I do.”

Evan looked behind Conrad to where the voice had come. Conrad turned too. His face drained of color. “Clark! What’re you doin’ here? It’s not shift change. Oh no. Did you hear our conversation? Am I going away to the institution? Please. I like my job. I like being a Dream Catcher. I haven’t had those sorts of dreams for a long time. Please. Oh please. I’m not a dreamer. Not really.”

Clark sat down. He looked at Conrad, then at Evan, then back to Conrad. “You know all those dreamers I catch?” Conrad just nodded. “They’re off getting trained to take over this planet. They’re running the trains and planes and banks and everything. In fact, some of them are watching us right now. They’ve turned off the camera and microphone feeds from this room. ‘Technical difficulties,’ is what they’ll claim to their supervisors.

“You see, we’re close. We’re close to taking over this planet. We’re close to becoming a planet of dreamers instead of a planet of… I don’t know… Lords and serfs.” Clark looked deep into Conrad’s eyes. “So are you in? Are you ready to catch a bunch of dreamers who are ready to take over this world of ours?” Conrad’s eyes grew wide. “Oh don’t worry. We still catch dreamers, but for our own purposes. For the betterment of our planet. Y’know. You in?”

Conrad blinked. Then he blinked again. “I… I don’t know what to say. What to think.”

Clark smiled. He said, “That’s okay. Listen. You just think it over. Then, let us know. Sleep in one day and think about being a pilot. That’s how we’ll know. We’ll come to you like we come to all the real dreamers. We’ll come to your dreams and get you to be with us.” He looked at Evan. “Won’t we.” Evan nodded.

Conrad smiled. “Really? You’ll get me out of this place and make me a pilot? A real pilot? For a revolution?”

Clark smiled again. “When you wake up, you’ll think this was a dream, but we’ll come to you and take you away to train. To train you to be a real dreamer and a real revolutionary.”

Conrad smiled. “A revolutionary? Wow!”

All of a sudden, Conrad was being shaken awake. He thought he saw somebody familiar through his sleep filled eyes.

“C’mon you filth. You dreamer. Get up. You’re going to the institution.”

It was Clark. And Evan was there too. They were smiling. Conrad smiled too. He was going to be a pilot. And a revolutionary.

Clark and Evan threw him into the back of the armored paddy wagon. Conrad heard the door lock. And he heard Clark and Evan talking outside.

“It seems a bit like entrapment, you know. Getting them to talk about what they used to dream about, then stoking those fires.”

Conrad stopped smiling. He imagined he saw Clark lighting a cigar and grinning ear to ear. “Well, kid. You don’t get to be a legendary Dream Catcher without trapping a few rats.”

Conrad heard the two Dream Catchers laugh. He fell to the floor screaming. “Noooooooooo!”