David's mother is a medium who produced and shaped a smokey substance called "ectoplasm" while she dreamed. Using the ectoplasm, she could form the faces of lost loved ones during her dreams in order to fake seances. David inherits this ability to form ectoplasms, though his eventually become more solid. David and his friend Hugo start stealing from a local junk merchant named Merlin, following in his thieving mother's footsteps. Eventually David and his mother are caught, and he learns to fear the guilt and consequences of theft, which manifests itself later in his dreams of heists. Later, when these bundles of seemingly living organic matter called ectoplasms became popular among the affluent for their beauty, and among the general public for their health benefits, David became an artist with an ectoplasm museum, and began selling his works. Conventional artwork is deemed base and pointless in comparison with this new trend, and priceless paintings wither away on the streets, and hordes of people buy small "dreams" to cure insomnia and illness.
