Dreamer Easy

Dreamer

8.          Dreamer

         The cold steel recliner seemed to lull Jack into a deep, revitalizing sleep somehow. And Ian let Jack Dresden dream, for he knew that Jack had had a long day. And Jack slept the best he had in a very, very long time.

         Jack eventually awoke, but it wasn’t where he had fallen asleep. It was somewhere else entirely. He found himself in a silver-metallic capsule, about the size of a walk-in closet. The lights were dimmed, but as Jack lifted himself up from the soft couch-like padding he had been sleeping on, the room brightened. It had some shelves with books and reading materials, and a very small desk with a very small computer. It was like a miniature bedroom. The metal walls weren’t square but circular, and everything, even the desk conformed to spherical configuration. Jack was in a large, metal bubble.

         He smiled. The room was small and compact and private. Jack liked this very much. It had a bookshelf with many books and movies and it had a computer and paper and pens and pencils. Everything Jack needed to entertain himself for eternity.

         The mat he had been laying on was in the center of the bubble on the floor. It was the length of the diameter of the sphere, which was perfect, geometrically. Its walls were silvery metal with bolts holding separate panels together. They were cold. His desk swiveled circularly around the wall, taking up about half of the circle’s circumference. It was made out of darker metal, charcoal-colored. Jack had always liked that color.

         The bookshelf was attached to the desk, also circular in nature. It was made out of metal but had been painted blue. It was prettier with books on it. Jack began to look at the selection of books that he had apparently chosen for himself in his capsule. He had some of his favorite, and others he had never read but always considered. They were in order of genre.

         He had the Bible, for one. Jack was never a fan of the big book, but he figured that he might have the need for it one day so he could see why he had chosen it. Darwin’s Origin of Species sat right next to it, which Jack thought was ironic. The shelf also had some horror and thriller novels that Jack didn’t care for much, but thought that they could make good entertainment. He had some classics, too, which Jack was glad to see. It had The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and Crime and Punishment, Brave New World and The Catcher in the Rye, Heart of Darkness and Winesburg, Ohio, all of which he had never read, except for some of the works of Shakespeare. What he had read which was on the classics section of the shelf was Lord of the Flies, As I Lay Dying, The Scarlet Letter, Animal Farm, and Slaughterhouse-Five.

         He noticed another book overturned and laying on its back. It was quite large. This was The Brothers Karamazov. He had read somewhere that everything you need to know about life was in that book. Jack shrugged and placed it next to its brother Dostoevsky.

         He also noticed some other books that didn’t really fit in the other categories. There were some poetry books and short story books and science fiction books and philosophy books. There was Thus Spoke Zarathustra sitting in the middle of the poetry section. Jack picked it up and flipped through it. He had remembered reading part of it one time. He didn’t know where to put it, so he stuck it between The Bible and Origin of Species. He thought it made a nice little balance.

         Jack looked around the rest of the room now. Across from the table as a little black screen that barely stuck out of the wall. It was off now. Jack stepped over with it and started fiddling with some of the buttons which ran down its left side. After pressing a green button, the screen blinked on. In big, bold letters was the date and time. It was 10:45 am on April 12th, XC52. Jack didn’t know what the letters stood for, but he recognized the numbers. It was the 52nd year of whatever century. He figured that didn’t matter much, anyway, since this was only a dream.

         A blue button sat directly under the green one. He pressed that one, too. The screen blinked to another screen, a very strange one. It looked like a moving diagram. There was a little red blinking dot and clusters of bright dots and big, colorful dots. There was a dashed white line following the red blinking dot. It moved pass the red dot, too, and traced a little parabola towards one of the big, colorful dots.

         Jack hit the black button under the blue one. The screen blinked again and Jack saw something amazing.

         It lacked depth and dimension. It was a huge black void with bright stars. It was a view of space. A portion of a spacecraft could be seen right under where the camera was situated. Jack Dresden was in space.

         This moving picture of space was one of the most amazing things Jack had ever seen, and he stared at it for a good three minutes. After this time he switched the screen back to display the time and figured he could come back and stare at it some more whenever he wanted. Jack noticed one last button under the black one. It was different from the others. It was bigger and more rectangular. It had the words ‘open’ printed on it. Jack’s curiosity got the best of him and he pushed the button.

         A door slid open from the uncovered portion of the wall. It startled Jack at first because he hadn’t noticed the door there before. Jack slowly peaked his head out the opening. He looked to the left and then to the right.

         There was a long, lighted hallway.

         Jack stepped out into the hall and the door slid back closed behind him. He noticed a button next to the door which he figured would let him back in, but he was now more interested in exploring.

         The hall was very white and the top ceiling was tubular. There were blue streaks running across the wall that were situated between where the wall ended and the tube-like ceiling began. There were little bright bulbs that popped out of the wall on both sides every five or six feet. These were enough to easily illuminate the whole hallway.

         Curiously, Jack Dresden walked down the hall. He passed many signs that hung from the ceiling that said things like “Deck”, “Engineering”, “Infirmary”, “Cafeteria”, and “Quarters”. He passed many doors on the left and right, too. He smiled as he walked. This was all very interesting.

         Jack finally saw the hall’s end far in the distance. He walked slowly and curiously down the remainder of the hall.

         He got to the last hanging sign eventually. Jack stopped to read it. It said “Observatory” and had a white arrow under the word pointing to the left. This sounded interesting to Jack and he decided to take a look inside.

         He turned left and faced the door. It looked like the wall, but had a black outline. It looked exactly like the door to his room. A single button rested on the immediate right of the door. The button was red and beveled to accommodate a finger. Black letters at the top of the door spelled “Observatory”.

         Jack pressed the red button and the door quickly slid open to reveal a huge, spherical room with an enormous translucent window through which one could see the most magnificent view of space.

         It was amazing. Jack walked through the door slowly with his mouth completely open in awe. The window was the size of a movie screen at a theatre, or even bigger. It took up the majority of the room, and moved spherically around the wall.

         Jack thought it looked like a theatre or an opera house. The whole room was a giant sphere, and at one end the audience could sit and watch the most amazing play on the most amazing stage in history. Jack could hear a fat lady sing. She sang beautifully.

         Space did not move, but the ship did. It slowly crawled through the most incredible picture Jack had ever seen. The earth, although not present in the frame, seemed so miniscule. It seemed to be trivial in comparison to the astounding showcase before him.

         And at that moment Jack realized that he was just a speck of dust in an enormous universe. And he realized that he didn’t ever need to worry because he just existed out there somewhere. And he realized that that was all that mattered.

         And for the first moment in Jack Dresden’s life, he was completely at peace.

***

         “Jack?” a soft, comforting voice said from the distance. Jack broke from his trance and looked towards the direction of the voice. On the far left edge of the enormous window sat a beautiful, innocent brown-haired girl. She wore small, rimless glasses and had her hair in a pony-tail. Her name was Zoe, and Jack was in love with her.

         Ever since Jack could remember he had been having dreams about this same, beautiful, brown-haired girl. He was very glad to see her now, because it made this dream so much more marvelous.

         Zoe was smiling at Jack radiantly. Jack smiled back and began walking towards her. She was sitting on the end of the giant window sill and, as Jack approached, she moved over a little to allow Jack to sit beside her.

         “How are you feeling today?” she said in a soft, comforting voice. She was wearing a brown tank-top and a plaid skirt.

         “I’m…I’m very good,” Jack said slowly as he sat down. Zoe faced him and smiled.

         “That’s good,” she said. Jack smiled back at her curiously.

         “What are you doing here, Zoe?” he asked.

         “Hmmm…well,” she uncertainly began. “I decided to take a walk because I was cooped up in my room so much. And well, you know how this is my favorite place on the whole ship, so…”

         “No, no. Not that,” Jack interrupted. “Why are you here…in my dream?”

         “Hmm…well,” she began again. “I am in most of them, aren’t I?”

         “Umm…All the good ones, yes,” he explained.

         “Well, then why not this one? This is a good one, isn’t it?” she asked. Jack agreed. It was a very nice dream.

         Jack was still confused. He was in a curious, questioning mood that day, most likely because it was the strangest, most un-answerable day of his life. That mood for the day seemed to carry over to his dreams, as well.

         “But why my dreams? I don’t understand why you’re always here…” he asked.

         “Hmmm…well,” Zoe began. In every one of Jack’s dreams Zoe would begin every sentence the same way but end every one differently. This was the quality that Jack Dresden admired most.

         “This is my dream too, you know,” she explained, although Jack didn’t quite understand what that meant at the time.

         “But this…is my dream,” he said. “At least…I thought it was.” Jack was fumbling with his words.

         “Yes, yes, Jack. That’s all very true,” Zoe explained. “But couldn’t this very well be one of my dreams as well? I mean, I’m having a pleasant time right now talking to you, silly, explaining this whole dream thing to you and your confused little brain.”

         “Hmmm…well,” Jack wondered. “Wouldn’t that make me part of your dreams?”

         “Exactly!” she said and tapped him on the shoulder. “You see, Jack…we’re all dreamers here. All the same like that.”

         Jack shook his head. “But I know the difference between reality and fiction. You don’t exist, but I do…out there in the real world.”

         “No, no, Jack. You’re seeing things all wrong.”

         “I’m sorry…I don’t understand…I’ve had a rough day.”

         “Well at least you’re here now, recuperating.” Zoe said.

         “Yeah, I guess so,” Jack said, sighing. “I’m happy when I’m with you.”

         Zoe patted him on the back and smiled. Then, as if on cue, music began to play. It was waltzing music. It filled the entire room with beautiful sounds. Zoe applauded and cheered as if it had been planned.

         “Dance with me?” she asked Jack. He embarrassingly replied no and put his head down.

         “You’re silly,” she said to him. “This is a dream. You’re supposed to do what you want. Look out there.” She pointed to the giant window behind them. Jack turned to see.

         “It’s space. It’s huge. It’s wild. It’s beautiful. If you can sit in a spaceship looking out into a magnificent view of the cosmos then you can dance with a silly little girl like me.”

         Jack looked up into Zoe’s green eyes and nodded slowly. Zoe smiled radiantly back at him. Then she shot up from her seat and ran over to the entrance of the room. She sang to the music along the way, although there weren’t any words. She leaped towards the wall like a ballerina, punched a switch in mid-air, and then began floating above the ground. There was a loud buzz, and then Jack felt something strange; his body rose slowly and he found himself swimming in air. Gravity was off: this was a dream, after all.

         Zoe pushed off the wall and did the breast stroke over to Jack, who rose slowly and uneasily. When she reached him, she took both of his hands and then stabilized his feet. They eventually floated straight up in the room. Jack was confused at first, but Zoe quickly showed him the ropes. Within no time, they were dancing on air.

         Dancing in dreams, on air, is a very interesting concept. First of all, in a dream, one either executes the dance perfectly without flaw or terribly with embarrassment. Secondly, in a dance without gravity, one cannot really trip up simply because there isn’t anything to trip on. These two factors actually constitute most dreams, although not quite so literally. In dreams, the dreamer doesn’t really make any mistakes unless those mistakes are part of the dream. So the dreamer can’t feel bad about something that was going to happen anyway, right?

         Right?

         So Jack and Zoe floated on air, dancing spectacularly. It happened to be a flawless, syncopated, subtle, flowing, smooth, rapid, spiraling, flourishing, tingling, numbing, simple, absurd dance. And it was in front of the grandest moving picture anyone had ever seen. And it was beautiful.