Learning more about humans is very complicated.
The alien currently known as Chamomile has encountered some hiccups in their observation protocols. Big hiccups. More like implosions.
They’ve combed this part of the dream web, looking for entry points, minds they can still access — this one looks more promising than the others.
Floating forward in the opalescent void, they reach forward into the egglike bubble of a sleeping mind, and they pull.
The experience of being pulled from deep sleep into this particular liminal mindspace is an odd combination of waking up and being pulled bodily through a block of jello.
There’s not exactly gravity here, but there’s none of the unpleasant lurching of zero-g. One just floats, easily, in place, the infinitely distant walls of the space shimmering like a soap bubble.
People say that when you're awake you can tell you're awake, but when you're dreaming you can't tell you're dreaming.
This has the ineffable wakefulness nature. But when Camillo bites his tongue, it doesn't hurt, like he's in a dream. He's not sure where that leaves him.
He kicks his legs, like a toddler in a too-tall chair, finding no purchase.
The kicking propels him gently upwards, like very ineffectual swimming —
"Ack I don't know!"
He's experiencing a potent cocktail of alarm, and indignation at being asked precisely the question he doesn't know the answer to.
“…oh! Self-awareness!”
They float back a little in the void. The three eyes and the nudity are a little more marked outside the interminable stream of alien babes.
The interminable stream of alien babes has not cured him of awkwardly averting his eyes.
"Not this again. That was the longest dream I've ever had."
“…oh. Oh!!”
They float forward and seize Camillo’s hands again with two of theirs.
“You’ve seen me before — you were there!”
"Yeah I remember you from my sexy cheesecake nightmare space opera dream."
He's charmed by the twitchy little antennae despite himself.
"...is this like an alien dream census thing. Or what."
He can imagine the scantron so vividly. On a scale from one to five, where five is strongly agree, do you like: rust? prosocial behaviors?
"Uh. Okay. Sure."
He really really wants to pat them on the head. So he does, because it's a dream and he can do what he wants.
“—okay follow me!”
With a little flutter of their legs, they jet up towards the roof(???) of the bubble.
Camillo kicks his legs optimistically and hopes that this is the kind of dream where he can fly, not the kind where he can unreliably hover about six inches off the ground.
He can, in fact, fly — and, in fact, now that he’s trying, he moves through the space exactly as he wants to.
As soon as they start moving together, a small web of lights comes into view in the distance — after a few seconds, they come right up alongside it, and the alien drifts to a halt.
“When you were in that dream before — it wasn’t your dream! It was this one’s dream!”
They hold up their hand, and a dimmer node in the web glows a little. The mess of color and motion that appears is abstract, but somehow gives the distinct impression of someone Camillo knows significantly better than he did a few nights ago.
Malcolm Reynolds. Graduated high school three years ahead of him. They were regular chess-and-lunch buddies and promised to keep in touch while Mal was at A&M, but neither of them really kept to it. Exactly the sort of person who crops up insistently in one's dreams.
"You are not the first dream character to assert to me that I'm in someone else's dream."
“It’s true this time!”
They float a little closer to the lights and wave their hand at another one, and something stretched between them illuminates gently, a weird sort of gelatinous thread that casts some doubt on what’s behind the glow.
“This one’s you — you weren’t supposed to be fully instantiated in somebody else’s dream at all! But it seems like you’re an unusual sleeper!”
The light itself looks a little…weird. It flickers and pulses at an unusual rhythm, which occasionally reveals a sort of wet, luminous skin behind the radius of the glow.
“This one’s you — and all of these connected to it, here, here, here…”
The little strands light up, slowly, one by one, at least ten altogether.
“You’re in their dreams, but you aren’t supposed to experience them — but if you can, then you might be able to help them.”
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
