Daydreamer: Part 1

DAYDREAMER
Part 1

Out of Body Experience or OBE for short. It’s when your consciousness leaves your body and explores the world like a ghost only you’re alive. It’s what they usually call experiences like mine. But if you start living the lives of people you don’t know, possessing them in one way; or when you travel in a place which cannot possibly exist, is it still OBE; is it just a product of an over-active imagination; or is it insanity?

I’ve been “dreaming” about an island floating in the clouds for weeks now. Sometimes I’d be sitting on the side of a mountain overlooking the towns and farms and other floating islands high above, sometimes I’d be “possessing” someone and living another life through hers and every time I wake up I always feel like I’ve fallen from a great height.

What’s stranger still is that my dreams about this place are always surreally real and consistent. I was absorbing too much facts and information for this “dream” to be just a dream but then it’s not possible for an island to be floating so high up in the clouds, much more for people to actually exist there. Their heads would explode!

Most of the people in this island were gifted with strange abilities. I saw one who playfully froze the water on the fountain in the middle of the town square when he and his friends ran out of ice. There was one girl who had green skin and in a whim changed all the daisies outside her building into tulips. I thought I once saw someone with angel wings flying above.

It was a fun place to be especially during those times when I get to possess someone, you know, live their lives for a small period of time and learn about the island through their thoughts and experiences. It was through these instances where that I started wondering whether or not there was a place like this outside of my dreams.

During my several ‘possessions’ I learned that the people with special ‘abilities’ or gifts were divided into two general categories, the common Reds, who can use their abilities over a long period of time in small but useful amounts and their gifts, not very rare; and the Golds, beautiful and powerful, gifted with different kinds of abilities; they are the owners and rulers of the Island.

The Golds made the island single handedly and had ruled it from the beginning. Beginning of what, I have yet to know. There are more or less 20 Golds in the island and each and every one of them has their own duties and division to lead. Most of them would be seen talking with people normally everyday but there are some Golds whose appearance are very rare as they tend to stay amongst themselves and keep themselves private.

Some see the Golds merely as bosses, some see them as landlords, and some see them as celebrities. They’re a very popular group of people.

My last trip into this Island involved a couple of Golds; my first and hopefully not my last experience with a Gold. It was also the experience which prompted me to research into the existence of this island more.

It was the time I spent the day being an office lady. She was a nice girl, her name was Michelle and she encoded and sometimes delivered documents in a building where the personal files of the people of the island were kept. I couldn’t influence Michelle’s actions but I could feel all her emotions, and I could hear her thoughts even though she couldn’t hear mine.

I spoke with her friends, I ate lunch with her officemates, I went home to her family, I saw places I wouldn’t be able to explore otherwise and I heard bits and pieces of new rumors about the “Golds.”

Anyway, so that day an order from another division came asking for some documents and Michelle was told to deliver them. The task excited Michelle immensely that she almost jumped from the window to save time. It was addressed to the Head of Raiders, Island Protection Division. Apparently, it was a chance to catch the sight of a very rare Gold.

She headed outside the building using a vehicle which looked a lot like a large turtle shell with wheels and onto a large brick firehouse; or at least it looked like a firehouse.

The firehouse, though made of brick from the outside and gave the impression of being a roughhouse, looked immensely light and smart from the inside. The walls were smooth and white and the rooms were divided by glass tinted walls, as with all the walls made in almost every office building in the island.

The receptionist area was large. The receptionist desk was at the middle, glass walls behind it; officers’ desks at the right where people lodge complaints, though there weren’t many complaints in the island; to the left were seats, couches for visitors or workers on break. At the moment it was full of black clothed Raiders, the people in charge of re-supplying the island of its needs and law enforcers of the island, getting ready to leave.

Michelle gave the documents to the receptionist who then asked her to wait for a while. We took a seat in one of the couches near the receptionist and prayed with all our might that the receptionist would take her time.

Just then, a boy, probably only a little over twenty came out from the inner office. He was wearing black just like the other Raiders; his hair and skin was dark and he was slightly muscular. His weapon was strapped behind him like a guitar and he spoke orders to his men with forceful yet gentle words. It was Ali Gold.

I could feel Michelle’s heartbeat going faster as Ali went closer and closer to her position; I could hear her wishing the receptionist would take longer to process the documents she delivered. Then I saw why they were called Golds. Ali’s skin and hair was dark but his eyes were bright liquid gold, and having this Gold near me, I could understand why Michelle was feeling nervous and excited. I could sense the power he held within himself and with his men, and the respect his men held for him. If all the Golds were like this then it was no surprise that such a huge island with a population like this would allow themselves be ruled by them.

It was then that another Gold went out from inside the office. She wasn’t dressed in black like the other Raiders but she received the same treatment and respect as Ali Gold. A smile spread quickly on Michelle’s face, the girl was Essie Gold, another rare one to see.

Essie conversed with Ali for a moment and then caught sight of Michelle to whom she quickly smiled. But instead of moving along, Essie stopped and approached Michelle. She was looking at her in a strange way which gave me the feeling that she was looking at me instead of Michelle. Could she see me?

“Michelle,” she said straight, “How are you?”

Ah, this Gold was the one who brought Michelle to the Island. Huh? Brought to the Island? “I'm fine. Are you going down again?”

“Yes, but only for a while. We're scouting some places so…” Essie looked down on the floor. “Michelle, have you noticed you have two shadows?”

“Eh? Uh,” she looked down, “Um, no.”

Essie smiled at me.. us.. her, “I'll fix it.” She reached for Michelle's hand and in a flash. I woke up on my bed sweating and feeling like someone had pushed me down from the top of a four storey building.




It was the last dream I've had for a while. Somehow, I couldn't get back the image of the island inside my head again, no matter what I try to do. But I couldn’t get it out of my head either. I keep thinking about it, over and over again. Was the island only a very lucid creation of my imagination? Or was it real?

My first reaction to satisfy my need for more information was the internet. I tried searching for islands surrounded by fog or anything which resembled clouds. Maybe the existence of cloud-like fog would be able to explain the illusion of the other floating island surrounding main town. But my search yielded no result, and neither did my search for ‘gifted' people.

Obviously, it was impossible. Everything I’ve been dreaming of was impossible. But following Michelle's memory in which she was brought to that island, I also searched for missing persons or the likes. In my search I found that certain parts of the world, island countries to be exact, had been quarantined; deemed unfit for humans to live in. A small population of the countries was evacuated to nearby countries where they are currently living at until their countries are open again, most of the people were missing or declared dead. Most of these island countries were close to mine, my country being an island too.

There were strange statements of the survivors of these countries saying that they've seen their relatives, the ones who have been left in their countries during the evacuation, after their countries have been shut out from the world but these statements have been dismissed as the results of stress and trauma and the likes.

Nobody had said why these countries had been quarantined. It was like people just didn't care that these countries are suddenly inaccessible and the people in it were thrown into evacuation camps in the nearby countries.

There were a lot of conspiracy theories relating to these facts. Some say it was war and these islands have been bombed to smithereens and the survivors brainwashed to forget what had happened, some say it was invaded by aliens so the humans had to leave. These are impossible to the point of being ridiculous.

My friend, Yukino, had a theory for herself. She said that these countries were invaded by a virus which had caused the people to go crazy and kill each other. Only a few people survived and were evacuated even before the height of the virus had come so even they did not know what had happened to their families who were left. “I saw it on the internet. Like the night of the living dead.”

I saw that website too. It was the same one which contained the odd messages coming from the missing relatives with the ones who had been evacuated. It said that the countries were crawling with cannibals who were very, very contagious and that the virus was spreading to other countries slowly but surely.

Creepy? Yes, but it has no basis at all.

So… I’ve got nothing; only a bunch of self-serving words in the ever unreliable internet. Books are worthless.

Sigh. I really want to find that island.