"Dreams are Reality, huh?" Cat was talking on another beautiful cartoon day on the Farm. We were walking on a path across an evergreen hill. Dog was following.
"That's what I'm told." My cartoon bib overalls rode easily and smelled like they'd just come out of the laundry. The air was clean, fresh, and warm enough to be t-shirt weather, but not hot enough to sweat. I could never recall sweating here.
"Well, why don't you stay in this dream? You keep coming and going."
"It doesn't seem to be that simple."
"Why? Life is simple."
"Here. Life is simple here. Other places, it gets far more involved."
"That's just another silly choice you get to make. We've been trying to tell you that for years."
"I thought those were just jokes."
Dog bounded up, after the butterfly he was inspecting flew away. "Jokes? Did you hear the one about..."
"Not now, Dog." Cat snapped at him, surprising us both. "Boy here has something to decide." Turning back to me, she continued, "Look, you've got all sorts of people trying to help you. Listen to them, take their advice. Be yourself, not all the complications you created. Have fun. Enjoy life, all that stuff."
She stopped and looked at me with those deep green eyes. She was just sitting, somber, but not serious.
Dog was stopped, too and was just looking at me. His tail and ears were still, attentive. Looking for my next move.
I sat into the cartoon grass, which was soft like a cushion and never stained anything. Something to decide about. At my hand was the ever-ready wheat straw, which I broke off and put into my mouth to chew.
Laying back to look at the puffy, white, outlined clouds against the uniformly blue sky, I just laid there on this otherwise perfect day. Dog laid down nearby with his head on his paws, looking my way from time to time, getting ready to doze. Cat curled up within reach, her tail just flicking it's very tip until the point she decided to cat-nap.
And the clouds moved slowly across the sky, no two alike. The sun continued to smile down at us, even he seemed to take a siesta, the smile frozen on his face as he dreamed sunny dreams...
- - - -
"That's it, that's the last line of the checklist." Sue slowly closed the binder which held the checklist and left it in her lap.
Roger stared down at the checklist, knowing they were no further along than before. "For the record," he said to the constant recording taking place of the small control room, "this checklist has been followed line by line to its completion."
They both sat in silence for a bit. Roger finally replaced his binder in its slot, the pencil back into it's tray.
"OK, we did it. And things are back to normal. Whatever normal is. He's dreaming along, as usual, all within acceptable norms. So it was a glitch. We have to wait for the IT report."
"Do you really think they are going to find anything? That technician was here and left, saying that all the cables were fine."
"Yeah, and they're running diagnostics from there. So we'll just have to wait on them. But as long as the subject stays in his normal dream patterns, there's nothing much to do."
"And if he just stays in those patterns, the study is over, since his Anomaly was the entire basis to work from."
"So, we watch and wait. I've got a few algorithms to finish up and test. Maybe you can create some more characters - just in case."
They both returned to their keyboards. Busy, but distracted.
- - - -
As they finally reached the road, the day light was fading. Her Land Rover was up just ahead, patiently waiting.
"Oh, I never asked your name - I'm Joe."
"Doreen. Glad to meet you." Her laughter was like a warbling songbird, matching the rest of the forest sounds from the various birds, insects, and animals. "Where's your transport - you didn't just magically appear here, did you?"
"No, I drove in as far as I could - it's over there somewhere, but I couldn't tell you exactly where. I'll have to backtrack to get to it from the main roads. Got kinda lost between here and there. Long story."
She got in on the driver's side, while I squeezed into the passenger seat. Photo cases filled the back seat, strapped in place against the bumpy ride. "Want some jerky?" She had pulled up a container from behind the seat and offered it to me.
"Thanks." I took a piece, suddenly ravenous.
She picked out a small piece and put it into her mouth, leaving her hands free to drive but her mouth full.
Managing to back up to a spot where she could turn around safely, we headed back.
I chewed on my own piece and thought quietly, not wanting to interrupt her as she shifted gears and negotiated through the pitted road. What a day it had been. The lights of the vehicle just shown on ahead, bouncing up and down on the road as we continued.
- - - -
My hospital bed was soft and warm. The air, clean. Everything was usual. I had closed the door to keep the hallway sounds out. Sitting up in a semi-lotus position with legs crossed and arms relaxed, I'd placed the pillow in the small of my back against the headboard and leaned back. With my robe on, it wasn't particularly cool in the room.
Now I could finish thinking things through.
I didn't know that I really wanted to.
If I considered that this hospital dream was a generated fiction, then that just lead to a series of shells - an endless conspiracy theorem with no limit to who was doing what to whom.
Taking any of my other dreams seriously was the next choice. Which one was the "real" one? Or were any actually real?
This was the point of choice. The "most real" one was the one I was in at the time.
If people could affect other people with influenced dreams, it still didn't eliminate free choice - or did it. Am I just a slave in this dream world and I can't do anything about it?
Considering what I'd been through since "waking up" here, there could be worse alternatives. Pretty nurses, a huge library, arboretum, gym - and my night visitor was a plus, for sure.
Maybe I should just nap and consider this while sleeping...
- - - -
The library hadn't changed. The table still full of my teachers, most carrying on quiet conversation with each other so as not to disturb me. They occasionally glanced in my direction as they talked, just keeping tabs on what I was doing, but not wanting to interrupt. Even Joseph Campbell was reviewing notes for his next book as he waited for my decision.
I could ask anyone for anything. The books in this library were full of data - probably all known information about the human condition. The titles were all the classic studies such as Darwin, Locke, the Federalist Papers, Marx (both Karl and Groucho) and every key book which had ever influenced a broad section of culture seemed to be there.
My traveling eyes stopped on the blackboard again. Campbell's mythic hero works had been seminal to other works, and had even resulted in several top-selling fiction works, let alone the Star Wars saga with its own spinoffs. Now he was sitting here, ready to answer any question I had.
The point was that I had created this room in my own mind. And brought all these writers, sages, prophets, and Masters here just to answer my questions.
As usual, it was the question which was important. And this is what I needed to consider.
- - - -
"And so you come here with no question?" My shaman-kapua was sitting, propped up against a palm tree.
"That's the problem I'm sorting out. What's the next question I need to ask?"
"Oh, you work to hard at this sometimes. What is the question that the seagull asks as it rides the wind? What is the question of the tree I lean against? Does each particle of sand have a question? Why so serious - why so many why's..."
I smiled at this. He was right.
The sand was cool, the air warm, and this day on the beach was another perfect one.
The shaman picked up a stick and began drawing in the sand. "But you teach me more than I teach you. Because the way of the shaman is mystic - which means both adept and initiate. This tells me you already know the answer which you want me to give you. And since there are no limits, you only have a fiction between you and that answer. Maybe I should ask you if you want to get rid of that fiction?"
"You mean to just let it go?"
"That's one way. Or maybe we should do a ceremony to invoke the old gods and have a luau where we can all have some great food and drink the local wine..."
"It's just how much fun you want to have, isn't it?"
"Fun, Joy, Peace, Freedom - all these words. Look to the meaning behind the words. Find the language of self, soul, spirit."
With that, the kahuna-kapua stood and dusted his jean-shorts off, slipping into his sandals again. "Lesson over. See ya."
I watched him amble down the beach again. Carefree as usual, looking everything over as he went, seeming not to care, but really involved with everything around him. Living for the moment, but living each moment. I was envious of his natural peace that he found so easily. But he had lived his life to get to this point. Which is why I had brought him into mine.
Or was it the other way around?
- - - -
We woke in bed in each others' arms in the middle of the night. It turned out that the one hotel in the town had our rooms in it, and they were adjoining. So we both could take our hot showers and relax after our adventures. She brought her bandages and tonics to my room to treat all those scratches I had, as well as hers. But soon we were both asleep, exhausted from what we'd been through that day.
My dreams had been of that statue and its curious effects. How it possibly could have happened, how it got there, how it was carved. I dreamed of huge fires in that valley and people bringing wood so the artists could work through the night to carefully chip and polish the stone into the likeness needed. There was a master artisan who directed the work, and the chief who commanded the foreman to keep the wood coming. Half the village was busy with the effort to carve that statue, the others busy providing food for the workers. Temporary huts dotted the floor of the canyon, with tall ladders which reached to the top, along with ropes to let down food and supplies.
Finally, the work was done, the village celebrated and feasted as the foot of the figure. The local medicine man/priest gave invocation to the gods and offerings surrounded the base of the figure, just outside the circle. All rubble had been cleared away, valuable for healing as well as destroying enemies with its power. The medicine man had a necklace of the rocks, alternating white and black, around his neck as he gyrated and jumped in his dance of celebration and prayer.
The storm clouds gathered above the statues and the mothers sent their children scurrying up the ladders. Other youth used the ropes to climb up the walls, walking up them as if they were on flat ground, hand over hand up the woven fiber as they went. The chief waited as long as he could, and then nervously gave an order to a waiting assistant as he turned and headed to the ladders.
That assistant grabbed one of the ropes and managed to get next to the medicine man to tie it on to his waist - then scurried himself to a nearby rope to pull himself up and along.
Just before the tidal flood hit, the old man was pulled away from the statue and up the wall, suspended by the rope and pulled just ahead of the rising water. He didn't seem to notice, as he continued to chant and shake his fisted rattles as he went.
Beneath the water, the statue seemed to glow, even move...
But that was when I woke up.
My sudden jerk awaked Doreen, who had her head on my chest. She looked up sleepily into my eyes and smiled. "What was that? Bad dreams?"
"Something like that, I replied."
"You want to share?"
"No, it's not all that important."
"Must have been something to wake you up like that."
"Yea, but I can tell you what's more important..."
She nuzzled by cheek. "You might get back to sleep better if you told."
"I know what will make us both sleep better..."
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