a dream

i am a genetic scientist standing in a lunchroom with maybe ten of my colleagues. somewhere off in another area of the laboratory complex we occupy, a former colleague is screaming blood curdling screams that reverberate throughout the labyrinthine corridors. it seems that she has become infected by one of her experiments and the effects of that accident sound excruciating as her body is ravaged and rapidly changes into who knows what. the topic of our hurried discussion is how to find the way out: as we are part of a government program seeking to discover and violate all natural laws, our facility is impenetrable from without and within. we have no clue as to the way out and the truth of my existence becomes clear to me as we argue about the most efficient way to first: find the way out and second: get back to the lunchroom to meet and guide the others out before the beast that our tragic colleague is becoming hunts us and kills us. my fellow scientists and i have always been in this place and have never been outside, in fact the halls are a maze designed to keep us disoriented beyond the main core of labs. what we do in that place is abhorrent and the results of our experiments would have devastating consequences if ever let out into the world beyond.

we decide to split up and head in several different directions to seek the exit. we will keep in contact with some type of communication system that my dream self takes for granted, but seems like clairaudience. my awareness shifts during the search between my first-person perspective and a third-person view of a ten-year-old asian girl. my search takes me through innumerable corridors and also ventilation ducting (which is when my awareness shifts to the asian girl who can fit in the smallish metal shafts.) every time i decide to go into vents, i remove the louvered grate and see a propaganda poster pasted on the sheet metal wall opposite as i follow the newly-appeared asian girl who is also me. as i venture, i can hear my pathetic colleague's screams turning to cries of rage: hellish and beastly; and the sounds of breaking glass and shattered steel herald massive destruction as her mutated form finds its strength and begins its hunt for food to fuel its raging metabolism.

after a time, i find a huge wide door made of steel so thick that when i strike it, it makes a sound like my bare feet on the concrete floor. beside the door is a mechanism that, when triggered, sets off internal works that correspondingly open the impossibly huge door slowly into the ceiling.

my first glimpse of the outside world: the landscape is flat to the horizon and sits superimposed upon a backdrop of monochromatic sky full of rolling silver clouds that roar loudly as they move from one side of the firmament to the other. this is a huge display of nature's power and is quite remarkable to witness for the first time.

i step out onto an immense stone slab that is the first of many steps of enormous depth and width, but of disproportionately shallow rise. after many paces out from the threshold of the facility, i turn and view the building i have lived and worked in for my entire life. it is a pyramid and its pinnacle touches the low roiling sky. at the top of the pyramid is a flat rectangle much like a cinema screen, but nothing shows on it.

i feel a presence as i gaze at the foreign shape of my home and i turn to see a nine-foot-tall hirsute primitive human. on his forehead are tattooed four digits in ascending value. i seem to glean that this is an ancestor of us humans and his numbers are a genetic code corresponding to his place on the evolutionary ladder. i walk out past this creature and see that the steps leading away from the pyramid continue far into the distance. i turn to go back to find the remaining scientists when a truth occurs to me that there will be no way to outrun that beast in the facility once i do make it back out. i size up my primitive companion and take a mirror from my pocket. i hold it out with the intention of reflecting his face back at him so that he can see the number tattooed on his forehead. it is at this time that his name becomes known to me- it is 'oneman'. i then hold the mirror facing the screen on the pyramid and see projected up there the same four digits rearranged so that the largest numeral is first in the series. oneman sees this and i indicate non-verbally that this means that i am a genetically advanced version of him and he should submit to me. he then picks me up and i ride on his shoulders as he runs down the steps, taking huge strides - surely i will escape the beast in the pyramid.

after maybe six steps, about a quarter-mile, we stop and gaze at some objects flitting around in the sky. they are pairs of mathematical symbols arranged to look like a graphic representation of a wing. i hear singing as one would hear from a choir and quickly intuit that the symbols themselves are the source of the vocals. one of the symbols communicates to me that i must learn the song and at the appropriate moment, sing; this alone will save me.
i return to the pyramid and once again perform the ritual of the numbers with oneman, he understands that he must wait for me at the door. with this, i am transported without incident or burden of time to the lunch room and my colleagues. winces pass between faces with each shriek of the creature as we take roll and prepare to leave.
what follows is like a flashback montage of events that i experienced on my first journey to the outside which brings us all to the great door to the outside. it's an emotional event for so many who have never thought to leave or even concieve of an 'outside' existing. some are stricken at the thought of leaving and others desperate to escape the beast coming ever nearer. it is then that a man raises his voice above the fervor. he explains that the door can only be closed from the inside and that someone will have to close it to seal the creature in and that means one of us will meet a grisly fate.  the same man volunteers to be the one to seal the door.  all of us are dumbstruck and resistant to this choice.  our circumstances, however, have put us in a state of shock and susceptible to the influences in the very air.    

i am profoundly affected by this act of self-sacrifice and feel tears as i helplessly accept the idea of someone dying so that i might live.  i hardly have time to collect myself before the door opens and i'm thrust into a new current of awe as my colleagues feel the first breezes of the outside.  again, we seem to have no time to assimilate any stimulus as our dire situation looms over us: she is near, and she is furious.

we are timid creatures as we step out into the open, feeling the most vulnerable we will ever feel.  once out completely, the door shuts behind us and for one pregnant moment, we hold vigil in silence, without breath, listening.  we are startled as if from sleep at the first sound of the beast within, wreaking carnage, and the shrieks of terror and agony from our savior as he is eviscerated alive.  he is repeatedly pounded and crushed against the heavy door with such force that we can hear it all.  then, impossibly, the door begins to buckle under the onslaught of fierce rage inside.  she will escape, she will kill us in the most horrible ways, we must flee.  i turn to find oneman as planned and he is there, hardly noticed by the throng of panicking scientists.  i perform the ritual of the numbers and he obeys me and carries me on his back, expediting me away to unknown safety.  we pass the others at breakneck speed, taking each step in several strides rather than the many it takes for them. 

i turn then at the piercing sound of tearing metal and see for the first time the creature of my waking nightmare.  she can no longer visibly display gender of any kind, nor perhaps any vestige of her former humanity.  perhaps her then shambling, now loping gait bear bipedal tendencies, but the havoc of uncontrolled cellular growth has rendered her unrecognizable within the depths of my most primitive brain.  here was a razored orifice removing arms and heads with no resistance, there were cartilagenous talons severing spines and tearing ribs and the soft organs they once housed.

i am leaving my friends to their fate.  with nothing but visceral survival coursing through me, i feel no empathy or compassion, i cannot.  oneman carries me beyond the threshold of the stairs and onto the bleak landscape stretching out toward mountains of some sort.  we increase the distance between us and the beast as our strides are long and her gluttonous rampage detains her from the pursuit.  soon she will catch wind of me,though, and i feel the imminence of my fate, of brutish violence and razors.  

as we near the mountains, i see their composition more clearly: they are pyramidal constructs, but appear more two-dimensional.  they also seem to be made up of a void, with mere outlines of light to define their shape and separate them from the sky.  nearer still, i see that there are three looming figures at the base of theses mountains, enormous statues.  they are ancient egyptian and strike me with deep feelings of apprehension.  when i study their countenances, i ken that they are alive.  i feel a further sense of dread when i intuit that the statues are vampiric in nature and will kill me when i get close. 

my dilemma is now complete.  ahead of me, doom on a scale i cannot imagine and bearing down on me quickly from behind, total physical annihilation.  as oneman approaches dangerously close to the statues, i imagine that we can jump over our obstacle.  i tell oneman to jump and he leaps high above the statues.  this moment is one of those in dreams wherein much goes through my mind in a blink.  i imagine returning to ground at the end of our leap and facing the threats that await there.  i also imagine that my trials have been for nothing, for inevitably i will descend into the obliteration that i fear.  at the very apogee of oneman's leap, i begin to sing.  it is an entirely unfamiliar song, but i have faith that i can sing it well.  my descent never comes.  instead, i continue to rise, falling up into the stars.  all the mathematical angels surround me and sing with me as i tumble weightless and joyous into the firmament.  

i saw him

when i was two years of age, my mother's brother died.  he was young and apparently overdosed on something, causing fluid in his lungs and other organ failure.  he left of his own accord and for his own reasons as far as i'm concerned.  he was cremated and i was with the group who took him to scatter his ashes at a waterfall in the cascade mountains.  my mother was standing next to me when the urn was opened and its contents released.  i did not understand the significance of death for the adults around me and i remember asking my mother where my uncle was, because everyone was talking about him and consequently saying his name.  she pointed in the direction of the ashes and said, "down there."  i climbed up the guardrail, peered down through the mist and i saw him sitting wrapped in a navajo blanket, looking up at me.  "Oh, I see him," i replied, "how did he get down there?"  there is where we left him.