LUCIDA

This story began just over a century ago, with an epidemic of a mysterious lethargic encephalitis. The Sleep Sickness virus crept from Europe into Moscow. People fell asleep—never to awaken. For days, weeks, years. Their bodies stiffened into statues, their gazes hollowed, their faces frozen in masks of terror.
By 1922, Professor Nikolai Rumyantsev had performed dozens of surgeries in his quest for a cure. His experiments yielded an unforeseen discovery.

Lucida—a cerulean speck in the brain. It glimmers in the living, fades in the dead.

Rumyantsev not only preserved its faint glow beyond death but concocted an arcane elixir. A potion that allows one to trespass into the dreams of others.

The professor realized: He who controls dreams, controls the world.

From that moment, history splintered. Great minds made calamitous choices after their dreams were usurped.
I have tasted Lucida. I will expose its secrets. I will recount the century of twisted events that reshaped destiny.

Lucida is a book that will plunder your dreams.

Moscow. September morning. Just over a century ago. 1922.

The men turned away sourly, brushing red dust from their coats. The bell, struck thrice, crashed onto shards of brick. Its bass rumble died mid-air. A crack slithered like a viper’s venom, poisoning the metal and stealing its voice. It would return—but in the thunder of cannons.
Bells were no longer needed. They melted in white-hot furnaces. The regime craved scrap metal for weapons.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, ma petite,” a voice rasped behind her.

Marina turned. Professor Nikolai Rumyantsev squinted in the sunlight, raising his spectacles to his lips. He exhaled sharply, polishing the fogged lenses with gauze. The girl fixated on that absurd detail—the alcohol-soaked rag. As if sterility could shield them from the rot outside.

In the courtyard of the Church of the Joy of All Who Sorrow, a mangy black mutt prowled alongside two strangers.

Rumyantsev jerked his spectacles toward the men, lips unmoving:
“Come. We need no trouble. Let the civilians tend to their affairs…”

She missed the rest. Her gaze snagged on a gaunt young man by the fallen bell, staring straight into her eyes.
The professor scuffed his heel against gravel, stepped forward, and shifted his cane to his right hand. Marina followed, eyes downcast, silent. Whether to vanish or seek shelter, she tread only in the scientist’s footprints.

The Old Ekaterininskaya Hospital had once stood proud, but now, steeped in gloom, resembled a sepulcher. When the door clanged shut behind them, Marina loosened her scarf. For the first time since the bell fell, she breathed deeply.

The stench of mothballs and antiseptic no longer troubled her—it clung to her clothes, her hair, inseparable. Only Babka Asya remarked on it, clicking her consonants: “Ooh, I smell it! Death’s come knocking. Reeks of the grave!”

A voice snapped her from thought.
“I’ll await you in the ward. Change, ma petite.”
Rumyantsev whistled a jaunty tune, twirling his cane as he descended the stairs.
The basement ward lay silent. A faint chorus of snores rose from shadowed corners—the sole distinction between living and dead. All eyes gaped vacant. New lethargic encephalitis patients arrived daily. The Sleep Sickness, born in Europe, had slithered into Moscow. Those trapped in dream-prisons hardened into statues: bodies rigid, faces locked in terror. Every fourth patient died. No cure existed.

After conferring with colleagues, Rumyantsev ordered a fresh corpse to the operating theater—a man who’d “slept” forever the prior night. The body’s residual warmth was critical. Marina stood behind the professor, watching his blade glide through skin, delving deeper. His pre-revolution scalpel, dulled by endless sharpenings, moved with agonizing precision. Others extracted brains in twenty minutes; he took an hour.

“Damn!” He flung the blade into a basin. “Dark again!”

Wiping his hands, he barked:
“Prepare a list. Three subjects. I care not if they’re salvageable.”

Hours later.
The young man moaned as they wheeled him in. Pupils fixed, unblinking, even under surgical lamps. Trepanation proceeded sans anesthesia.
Marina pressed a chemical pencil to her tongue, ready to record any flicker of feeling. But the slack face betrayed nothing. His stare plunged into an abyss devouring reality.
“Kill the lights,” Rumyantsev hissed.

They stood frozen in darkness, breath held. Seconds crawled. As their eyes adjusted, a faint blue flicker pulsed deep in the brain—a firefly’s ghost.

“A soul…” Marina breathed, willing the glow brighter.
The professor jabbed a wrinkled finger at the cerulean speck.
“Mmm…” escaped the youth’s sealed lips.
Marina lit a candle.
“Professor! His eyes—they’re alive!”

Her touch grazed his icy cheek. Tears welled.
Rumyantsev sketched hurried notes, lit a cigarette from the flame, and froze—as if the Sleep Sickness flowed in his veins. Time congealed.
“Damn!”
He flung the butt aside, pinching his earlobe.
“Burned myself.”
“You’re now my personal assistant, ma petite. And shhh—” He pressed a finger to his lips.
Seizing an ether jar, he plucked the bloody scalpel from the sink. Without hesitation, he excised the blue speck and dropped it in like a grape.

“He’s dead!” Marina cried. The youth’s gaze dimmed. Her tears fell.
“Not necessarily,” the professor trilled, studying the jar. Ether swirled with azure light. “Not ne-cess-arily, ma petite.”
Marina stared, transfixed. The glow rippled, hypnotic.
“It’s alive…” she exhaled.
Warmth flooded her.

“Restore the lights,” said Rumyantsev, setting the jar down.
Trembling, she pinched the candle out and flipped the switch. Under electric glare, the glow faded.

They logged the corpse as deceased yesterday, autopsied today.

Later, Marina knocked on the professor’s door. He sat smoking, a gramophone warbling cheerily. The melody draped calm over her like a shawl. Moments earlier she’d wanted to scream; now she sat meekly.

“Your salary increases. Two days’ rest. We resume next week. Ask me anything, ma petite—but only me.”

Silence stretched.

“What is it?” She turned to the window.

“We’re still learning. The cerulean locus hides between cerebellum and thalamus. Glows in the living, fades in corpses. We need those still breathing.”

He retrieved a pristine journal, inscribing the cover in Latin:
Lucida.

Lucida is a cerulean locus nestled between the cerebellum and thalamus. It glows in the living, dims in the dead.
In his desperate quest to cure lethargic encephalitis, Professor Rumyantsev unearthed a chilling truth. An elixir distilled from Lucida could resurrect even the gravely ill—but at a harrowing cost. It drove them mad. Lucida pilfered their dreams, perhaps their very souls.
This tale began a century ago, yet it endures. A shadow that twists history through corrupted dreams. Great minds, their slumbers hijacked, commit fateful missteps daily. The world unravels, one stolen nightmare at a time.