A little from column A, a little from column B

I was slicing bits off the keel of a sailboat and recording the cut I had made in column A against the angle it sat in the water in column B.

The fortune cookie phrase floating in my head just before waking: "You have to relinquish control to achieve your dreams."

Episode 2

Fell back to sleep, woke two hours later from a dream that I was building a graph with two data points - the one from my last dream. And a new one about how clean I could get something with a whole container of Comet.

How many decimal points would you like with that?

Last night I took part of an MCAT practise test just for fun.  In real life.  Yes I'm that weird.  Some of my friends are testing for medical school this year and I got curious. 

Last scene before waking from sleep this morning: I was working a calculation and had finally figured it out.  I turned to the person I was working it for and asked, "How many decimal points would you like with that?"

Conclusion: I am just as much of a geek in my dreams as in real life.

Also, I want that bumper sticker/t-shirt.

Hell's waiting room and the face of Death

I was a young man named Alex.  A girl I was dating died and I had to carry her body to the lobby of heaven. 

I stepped through a doorway, the girl heavy in my arms, and found myself on a granite grey slab.  The walls were stop sign red, and there was a second door ahead of me, frosted glass etched with an arboreal pattern, like the network of blood vessels in the body.  It smelled like rotten vegetables, like the inside of a dumpster.  I realized I had taken a wrong turn. 

Keeping my grip on the girl tight, I backed out of Hell's lobby into the corridor.  It was side by side with a door that issued a pale blue light and wispy clouds.  I took a breath, walked through the adjacent doorway

and ended up right back in Hell's lobby.  There was muzak playing now, I noticed.  The air seemed sharper, expectant.  A shadow crossed behind the frosted glass door. 

Again I retreated, my heart hammering in my chest, arms cramping from carrying my girl.  I rested against the wall between the doorways, trying to catch my breath.

Across the hall was a discarded toaster oven, and in its burnished surface, I saw myself, the body of the girl in my trembling arms.  The archways on each side of me - one to heaven, one to hell - were reflected too. 

Something moved in the doorway to hell's lobby.  Don't, I told myself.  Don't look at it.  But I couldn't help myself.  A shadowy figure approached the doorway, and resolved.  I caught a glimpse of a corpse white skeleton face, with a thick oily tongue constantly licking its rotting lips.

It was all I could do not to scream, drop the girl and run.  I held my breath, trying not to get its attention.  It can't leave and come out to get me.  It's fine if I don't move.  Don't look in its eyes.

I began to calm down but then, with a sick lurch I realized, if I could see Death then... lifting my eyes again to focus on the toaster, I saw it watching me, saw it grimace in recognition and hunger.

I woke.

Making babies, then running away

"How about Emma and Anna if they are twins?"

My best friend and I were standing in a cavernous lab, unloading bags of fresh produce from a stainless steel cart into a tiny refrigerator.  I rambled off another handful of names for her future offspring.

She bent down to put away a canteloupe and pulled out a bottle of strawberry milk.  She held it up to the light, examining it this way and that, then nodded, satisfied.  "Now all we need is the sperm," she said.

We walked down the long hallway connecting other labs, stopping in at the ones I knew in order to ask for the missing ingredient, but everyone we met was female.  "This is really inconvenient." Her voice was tense, and I could tell she blamed me for having such a gender imbalance in my workplace.

Finally we reached the end of the hall, which opened into the Biochemistry storeroom; the three male employees stood at a huge table sorting mail and exchanging inappropriate banter.  

I wanted to ask the nearest person for assistance and leave quickly.  My friend insisted on interviewing everyone.  "To make the best CHOICE," she said.

All the employees wore black jeans and black button down dress shirts rolled up at the sleeves.  I sat on the table, dangling my legs while she flirted with the man closest to us.  He introduced himself as Frank.

Frank looked to be 50, was balding and short but had tanned muscular arms and an engaging, contagious smile.  Even I felt the corners of my mouth lift, my irritation subside as I watched them from the corner of my eye.  He glanced at the bottle of milk, and his eyes widened but his smile never wavered.  My friend laughed.  I could see her decision was made, no need to interview anyone else.  

Just as my friend began asking for a donation, a tall man in a black cape swept into the room.  He spoke briefly into the ear of the man at the far end of the table, and immediately the man stood ramrod straight, all but saluting.  The second employee, directly to our right apparently received a similar message, as he also snapped to attention and stood unmoving at his post.

As Frank, oblivious to what I assumed was his supervisor, smiled wider and said, "Yes," to my friend, the tall man in the cape was suddenly at my elbow.  He stood so close he was nearly touching me, but ignored me utterly.  He leaned across my body, as if to whisper something confidential to Frank.  His face, averted until this moment, came into profile - a luminous milky moonshine white, a hooked nose, small ice blue eyes - and I inhaled sharply from terror and recognition.

I watched helplessly as the man in the cape slid a remote over Frank's ear.  Frank's face went slack, the smile gone from his lips and eyes.

I grabbed my friend's hand.  She resisted me but I pulled her bodily out of the room, dragged her by the hand back down the hall.  We ran all the way to my house, a three storey townhouse tucked into the side of a green belt.  I had two neighbours, and all three houses sat at the far end of a long driveway.

My friend bent over on the front steps of the house, gasping, angry, still clutching her milk.  "What in the hell is going on?"

I gave her the Coles' notes - I wasn't really from earth, the man in the cape was a Specter sent here to kill me - the last of my kind - and would probably also kill anyone who tried to help me.  Blah, blah, blah, the usual boring interstellar plotline, could we please pack a small bag and LEAVE NOW???

In the foggy dusk shone distant headlights, slowly brightening.  "They're coming.  We have to GO."  There wasn't time to pack.  We ran into the house and up the stairs, finally emerging through a hidden staircase onto the roof.

When I peeked over the eave, I could see a small blood red convertible with the top down parked right outside my door.  It was empty.  Footsteps in the house.  My heart felt like a jack hammer in my chest.   My friend had disappeared.  I took a running leap and landed on the roof of the house next door, then shimmied down a drain pipe to the ground.

It was quiet, the grass wet with evening mist.  The house I'd landed on was abandoned, recently sold and the new owners had not moved in.  My other neighbours were on vacation.  Should I keep running?  The Specter was fast, but not overly intelligent.  It tracked like a bloodhound and would doggedly follow scents even if that meant going in circles over the same ground.

 I began walking out complex patterns through all three houses.  Canadian winters had made me an expert at that childhood snow game of Fox and Goose.

Welcome the unknown

In my dream I was juggling a lot of responsibilities and getting life advice from my best friend.

The last dream image before waking was of someone opening a door onto a huge, empty gymnasium.

The view was from the floor inside the gym.  As the door opened, bright sun spilled inside, glinting off the glossy waxed floor.  The room was clean even of dust and I felt a moment of dull panic.  

Last clear dream thought: "Welcome the unknown."

I stayed in bed a minute or two letting the empty room be there, full of possibilities, rather than fear.

Fall of empire

I'm working this job.  I'm at the top of my field inasmuch as you can be without achieving the holy grail of facultyship.  I'm paid about as much as you can be as a non-tenured scientist in academia.  I've got as much responsibility, autonomy and training as you can get in any job.  I come into lab at 10am ish or whenever the hell I please, I can see the sky, the water, and the freeway overpass from a fifth floor window that Actually Opens, and I don't hate that I often work till 1 in the morning.

I can see the stress in the faces of faculty dealing with yet another budget crunch.  I count colleagues departing from academia, only to wait months for a real job, one that bores them senseless.

I am paying enough attention to know the entire US economy is balanced on a tricky little ledge.

Though it's spring the air smells this certain way, like rotting leaves or imminent snow.

We are about to fall and I am going to miss all this.