<USS Avalon> Log: Dreams of the Dreamers
- From: Dodge Thomas <dodgethomas2000@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: avalon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 09:05:50 -0700 (PDT)
Dreams of the Dreamer
-Dodge Thomas
The moment of death is not truly painful. The process of dying, perhaps, is
painful, but the exact moment of death really doesn?t feel like much. It tastes
pleasant, but doesn?t feel like much.
This is the answer to the question that had passed through the mind of a single
human named Dodge Thomas. Of course, it has passed through the minds of many,
but that?s not of any real importance. The question itself has no real
importance, since painful or not, all of us die.
At least, most of us do, under normal circumstances. Most of us tend to die
even under less than normal circumstances as well. If one were, for example,
exposed to the vacuum of space as well as sub-zero temperatures and then, oh,
vaporized by the thermonuclear heat generated by the closing of a massive
temporal rift, one would quite possibly most probably unquestionably
indubitably invariably be dead in the general sense of the word.
None of this passed through the mind of Dodge Thomas as he watched the bulkhead
vanish from beneath his feet, nor did any of it occur to him as the oxygen was
sucked from his lungs or when his blood began to boil due the sudden
depressurization that often occurs when large sections of ship are
spontaneously removed without warning.
However, dead as he should have been (and he knew it), Dodge was not dead. Nor
was he on the Avalon, or in engineering. The Avalon and engineering did not
exist except as abstractions and memories. Neither the Avalon nor engineering
were on his mind at the moment. A pleasantly vague, almost haunting aftertaste
in his mouth was beginning to fade away, as if he had just awoken but rather
than morning breath he had?well?it was indescribable, but pleasant. The more he
tried to place the taste, the more it drifted away until eventually he couldn?t
taste anything save the normal mouthy taste of his mouth. Then even that was
gone.
He opened his eyes and found himself suspended in white, floating as it were in
color. All color, at once, hence white. He didn?t do the physics (he didn?t
even like physics that much, but had he run the numbers in his head, he would
have had the same outcome), but came to the conclusion that he was indeed
suspended in white.
There was no sound, but the absence of sound created a sound of it?s own. The
noise became almost deafening, although he was not actually hearing anything.
He tried to listen to his heartbeat, but soon found he could not, not only
because the sound of soundlessness was drowning everything else out, but
because he didn?t have a heartbeat. He didn?t have a heart. In fact, he didn?t
have a body, let alone ribcage to house the now non-existent heart.
Well damn, he thought, then cringed, as the sound of his thoughts were as loud
as if he had spoken them.
For a while, he floated silently, not thinking anything for fear of someone
else hearing his now audible thoughts.
This brings new meaning to the phrase ?thoughtful silence? He thought,
simultaneously breaking and initiating a thoughtful silence. I must be dead.
His face itched, but without hands he couldn?t scratch it. Then it occurred to
him that for his face to itch he must have a face?or at least, the mental image
of a face. So he thought about scratching and the itch was satisfied. He looked
down and thought about having a hand. A wispy aperture coalesced into being,
and after a bit of work, he managed to make it look like his hand. Now the next
one.
Several hours or several days (it could have been weeks or months or years of
decades or centuries, but since time does not posses the same value in the
abstract as it would in the physical world, hours or days will suffice as
markers. At any rate?) later, Dodge had managed a fairly convincing ethereal
body that he could maintain with minimal conscious intervention. He had always
taken things like breathing and heartbeat and general physical existence in
space and time for granted, so now that he was forced to hold himself together
by thought of his own, he appreciated the delicate matter that was life all the
more.
For the umpteenth time, he wondered if he were dead, and if he were in heaven,
but he felt sure he was not subject to either at the time.
"Welcome, Dodge." A voice announced.
"What?" He spoke for the first time since arriving?or leaving?he wasn?t quite
sure.
"Welcome, Dodge." The voice repeated.
"Where am I?"
"You have come to the place of which you currently exist." The voice stated.
"Am I dreaming?"
"The true question is are you awake? Or, am I dreaming?"
"Who are you?"
"I am who I appear to have become, equally evident in yourself."
"Wha?"
"You are who you appear to have become as well, also equally evident in myself."
"I?m still not sure I understand."
"Of that I have no doubt, although as you are, I can?t help but wonder at your
state of mind."
"Answer me clearly. Who are you?" Dodge was growing tired of the games the
voice was playing.
"I am who I appear to have become, equally evident in yourself. This may be
more difficult that I imagined. You see, you?ve managed something that not many
dreamers ever accomplish. You have reached the world between worlds. It?s quite
an achievement, for a physical being to actually transcend the barriers set up
by nature as subconscious reality, and then for that being to be able to create
a body in the world between worlds."
Dodge screwed up his face as best he could. "That wasn?t exactly a clear
answer."
"Needless to say, you are correct, but then, this isn?t exactly a simple
question. Nevertheless, I shall strive to answer your questions. I am?" The
voice paused, "the one who best represents you as you reach the period of sleep
known as REM. I also represent you as you daydream or in any other way leave
the world in which you are, or were, tied to."
"So what you?re saying is that I?ve left the physical world and entered the
world of dreams?"
"No, as I said before, you?ve reached the world between worlds. You are aware
of one dimension, that is the one you exist in and not physical dimensions such
as left and right, up and down, back and forward. Subconsciously, you are also
aware of the world of dreams. We dwellers of the dream world are aware most of
our world. Our world is as real to us as yours is to you. We know of your
world, but only as an abstraction, since we only visit it as we dream, much
like you only visit ours as you dream."
Dodge floated for a moment, digesting the information silently. Then "So what
you?re saying is that you are my dream world counterpart?"
"In a way, yes, but it?s far more complicated than that. There are many
different worlds, each as real to it?s inhabitants as ours are to us, but none
of those worlds merge with either of ours directly. At least, they don?t merge
on the level of humans. In terms of say, cetaceans, your world and some other
world must merge."
Dodge was beginning to understand. The abstract image of himself (or was it he
who was the abstract image?) was referring to different dimensions as worlds.
As an engineer, he was vaguely familiar with sub-space and super-space as
dimensions, but he never imagined who or what may inhabit those regions. "Why
must two worlds merge?"
"To maintain the vital abstract symbiosis that keeps all life from violent
destruction."
"What?"
"Dodge, don?t you see how important all of this is? Without you, we die, but
without us, you die."
"How can two separate beings that only exist as imaginarily stored images from
the subconscious mind prevent each other from dying?"
"Abstract symbiosis."
"What?s that?"
The voice was silent for a moment, then spoke, it?s tone soft but serious.
"We?re your dream, Dodge, and you?re ours. Without each other, we will perish."
"So why are you here?"
"Because you are here. I was pulled from my world just as you were pulled from
yours, involuntarily and instantly."
"Am I dead?that is, are we dead?"
"No, if we were, we?d have met on a totally different plane of existence."
"You mean the afterlife?"
"In a way, yes, but again, it?s far more complicated than that. At any rate,
we?ve arrived at the world between worlds."
"Why is it so?so blank?"
"Because we haven?t chosen a form for it."
"How about?oh?I don?t know. Somewhere full of life and vitality. All this talk
of death has me feeling a little depressed."
"My thoughts exactly."
Instantly, the white around them became a garden. Tall trees screened out the
sky above, letting in ambient light, but shielding their eyes from the suddenly
harsh white of the world between worlds. The two of them stood in a small
courtyard. Brick paving stones surrounded a raised pond in which a fountain was
happily bubbling away. A path paved in the same brick stones lead to a gate
which was set in a sturdy looking brick wall. The gate was closed.
Dodge walked over to the gate and pressed it open. Outside the garden, the
whiteness of the intradimensional world shone clean and bright. He closed the
gate and turned to the form of himself who had appeared with the garden.
"Now that our minds are working together, you can see me." It informed him.
His doubles features were fuzzy, as if he were a dream. Dodge immediately
contributed the actuality that his double was indeed a dream, and decided to
leave well enough alone. "What now?" He asked.
I assume you?re going to want to go back, but before you do, you must know a
few things."
"Oh? Like?"
"Leila. She is dead."
"No! It isn?t?it cant? be?but I--I loved her!
"I did too! But you must realize that we have no control over these things. The
world between worlds has many capabilities, but changing the past is not one of
them, nor is bringing back the dead. You can go anywhere you want at any time
you want, but you cannot travel into the dedicated past."
"Why not?"
"Because there would be no point. You could not exist physically, only as an
observer, and what use does it serve to relive the past over and over again?
The past can be dangerous, enslaving people as they try to figure out why or
who or what, never looking ahead and always looking back."
Dodge thought for a moment, Leila?s final embrace coming to mind, then that of
his deceased wife and child even further back. He sighed. "Can I go into the
future?"
"Yes, and given your circumstances, I would suggest you did."
"Why?"
"Because, if you were to return to the same time and place you left, you would
materialize in space and die."
"And we don?t want that."
"No. If you die, I die."
"That?s another thing." Dodge mussed his hair up and then tried to fix it. "Why
don?t I?you die when I dream? I always come close, but you?I never die."
"Have you ever had a near death experience, a time when you felt certain you
would die, but you didn?t? You survived? It?s the same basic phenomenon. I
don?t know why. There are times when I knew I was about to die, but somehow I
came through just fine. It wasn?t our time."
"When can I go back to the ship?"
"The best time would be when the rift and the ship are in proximity."
"Well that would be right when I left."
"The ship entered the rifts and they are gone. The only other time when you
could conceivably re-enter your world and stay for any period of time would be
as soon as the ship returns."
"Returns to the same time it left, correct?"
"Roughly. The time they are spending right now is progressing at the same pace
as the time is in the world that they just left.
"What world are they in now?"
"In a version of their future. Time tends to complicate the worlds and
dimensions, but nonetheless, when they return, the rifts will be gone."
"What are the rifts then?"
"They are the manifestation of the world between worlds in your physical
dimension. When your ship entered them, it passed directly through this world
and into another, but you did not continue to the other world. When it goes
back, it will retrace its steps and reappear in it?s world however many hours
or days later, depending on how long it spends in the alternate dimension."
"You said that I would have to go back as they did to stay for any period of
time, what did that mean?"
"If you go, say, ten years into their future, you wouldn?t be able to stay for
very long because that reality is not yours. As I mentioned, the future tends
to branch off and make complex and completely different worlds of it?s own in
your single dimension, so the further away from your point of exit you get, the
less able you are to re-enter permanently. You would exist only as a ghost-like
apparition, barely physical for only a brief period of time before you
defaulted back to the world between worlds."
"How do I re-enter?"
"Pass through the pool and you?re back."
"Can I see where I?m going?"
The dream version of Dodge sighed heavily. "You see the pool? That?s where
you?re going."
"But I?ve so many questions to ask, so much that is left unanswered in my life."
"Yea, about that?I really don?t care." And he shoved Dodge roughly. Dodge
reeled back and splashed into the pool?
_____________________________________________________________________________________
?and appeared in engineering upside down.
He crashed to the ground and lay there for a moment. Nobody had noticed his
return. His combadge beeped.
"Engineering, status of the core."
Out of habit, Dodge responded. "Engineering here Captain, the core is stable."
"Mister Thomas, is that you?" A startled voice asked.
"Yes Sir...You were expecting Ghengis Kahn?"
And then he threw up. Trans-dimensional travel via sub-reality portals is so
nauseating.
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