Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
He’s used to people looking at him and saying with some surprise, “Your eyes are so blue today.” Sometimes green or brown is substituted for blue.
He nods and replies, “That’s the Tyndall effect, which is when particles in a colloid scatter the beams of light and reflect different wavelengths. All eyes are really just brown.”
That always causes people to give him another look. He’s kinda getting used to that. Maybe someday…
I had two memorable dreams last night.
The first came to me in red and black. It was all seen in silhouettes. As short and simple as its color palette, I was going for a run. Going less than twenty to thirty yards, I encountered a force field which wouldn’t let me go further. Annoyed, I turned and ran back the other way, past my house, only to be stopped by another force field. Three times this happened. At that point dream thinking burbled up, I’m not supposed to go further. I guess ‘they’ want me to stay home to get better. Wait, am I sick?
After awakening and pondering that one for a few dark minutes, I rolled back into sleep and to another dream. In this one, I wore a blue and white checked shirt with blue jeans. A teenager, I was visiting a girl, blonde, bubbly, friendly. I was attracted to her, so this was essentially the early days of courting to see if she had any interest in me.
She became friendly and flirtatious. We didn’t kiss or anything, but I went home pleased and then returned the next day. At the end of this visit, it was suggested that I stay the night there as a precaution against something going on that wasn’t clear. I wasn’t real comfortable with that but the girl and her Mom convinced me. Stripping down to my undies, I slept on their game room sofa. The game room was essential a finished basement. After spending the night, I dressed, thinking that I’d go back home now. But no, the girl had plans for the day. We stayed at her house but I only saw her off and on.
Now I was becoming concerned about her father. He’d been gone but was now back. I didn’t relish encountering him in the early morning, especially in clothes which I’d been wearing for several days while trying to get romantic with his daughter. Instead of leaving the game room, I stayed down there in hiding. By now I’d convinced myself that I needed to get home and was plotting how to sneak away.
Guests arrived. I eavesdropped, learning that they were neighboring women who were friends with the mother. It was mentioned in passing that I was staying there. I guessed that something had happened at my house and this was a ruse to keep me here. They all agreed that I was a ‘very nice boy, very smart and kind’, and that this was better for me. Wanting to know what was going on, I slipped out and headed home through a sunsplashed fall day where all the trees had already lost their leaves. The change of season was a surprise; I thought it was summer.
Dream end.
A sublime rollout of sunshine woke the valley at 7:21 this morning. True, large swaths of the valley’s population were already awake or now retiring to sleep. Depends on your species and intentions, doesn’t it?
October 13, 2022, has arrived, a Thursday in the common era. A mountainous presence lowered the air’s temperature to a pleasant mid-fifties Fahrenheit overnight. Our meteorologic oracles say temperatures will climb to the high eighties. They said the same yesterday but our sector never saw anything above 81 degrees F. Not that I’m complaining. It was coolish but sunny, comfortable weather for short sleeves and short pants. The lower temperature seems to be a collateral impact from the Cedar Creek smoke veiling the sun. Not too smoky, it’s a moderate haze that manages to pull our air quality to less than ideal level, 63. The solar system’s movement will bring us sunset at 6:32 PM.
Now it’s up to the daylighters to decide what to do in this time and environment. I have a variety of chores and actions needed to catch up with modern demands, which is often known as ‘paperwork’ even when it comes in electronic form. We had a celebratory beer for our departed member, Chris, and planned our annual celebration of being which will be in November this year. Paella is the featured dish.
Of course, I’m sitting here as sunshine completes its morning takeover thinking, okay, it’s time to do this and that. Time to get cleaned up and dressed. Time to make some phone calls, check some emails, read some blogs, write some fiction. Time to watch the Jan 6 hearings, time to —
Well, the point has been driven in, hasn’t it? It was ‘the time’. The Neurons leaped onto the words. “Oh, oh, oh,” they shouted. “Here’s a song about that.”
They began playing “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons from 2012. That delivered me to now, where the song continues rolling through the morning mental music stream. And here I am.
Yes, the coffee is brewed and ready to drink. It’s time to get on with the day and get things done. Stay positive, test negative, and carry on with what you need to do. It’s time, don’t you know.
Cheers
She says that she vividly dreams all the time and tells him about two. Both were recurring. In one, she was with her ex-son-in-law. He’s in many of her dreams but in this recurring dream, she and he are in a huge house. Others are there but she doesn’t remember who the others are. The SIL says, “We’re going to bring a lot of children here, so we need to start making beds.” She thinks in response that they’re not ready and that’s going to upset her daughter.
The other recurring dream, experienced three nights in a row, was about being in a huge mansion. She said it cost over a billion dollars to build. It’s sealed off from the outside world. But she thinks, there’s no oxygen. There’s no air. She can’t breathe.
She dreamed that one while she was in the hospital on oxygen, fighting COVID pneumonia.
Watching leaves falling from trees on a windy autumn day, he wondered if it would be appropriate to say leaves are leaving in droves.
It was 03:55 in my dream. I needed to use the bathroom. So I navigated my way to it. As I did, I glanced at my watched and confirmed it was 03:55. I puzzled over the time, thinking, I think I wake up every morning at 03:55 and use the bathroom.
Opening the bathroom door, I saw myself getting out of bed and going to the bathroom. As I did, I looked at my watched and shifted to being that person and saw it was 03:55.
And again.
Awakening, I sat up in bed. What I saw was identical to the dream in every way. Getting out of bed, I looked at my watch and saw that it was 03:55. I slowed as the dream’s gravity hung on me, that I’d dreamed what I was doing, then opened the bathroom door, and chuckled.
Watched the “Serenity” movie again. Apologies to anyone who thought I was going somewhere spiritual with this. I thought, it’d be a fun sequel to have Zoe hunt down the old crew, including River Tam, so that they can go and rescue Mal. If you don’t understand, you’re probably not a gorram brownshirt.
He recalled the mother of his youth. She was always reading. Michner, Robbins, Jong, paperbacks purchased at drugstores. Movies fascinated her. She always recommended actors, directors, movies.
Now, she doesn’t have time to read. Hasn’t in years. She’d moved from fiction to true crime to nothing. She doesn’t like movies, she says. She wants drama and none of them provide it. Time is spent watching MSNBC, or shows like Doctor Pimple Popper, My Feet Are Killing Me, and Dateline.
It’s not surprising. Everyone changes. He thinks about the episodes, powers, and energies that shaped and reshaped her, rising to a comparison with the planet, and how unseen events work together to reshape the world.
I binged vivid dreams again last night. The most striking one found me as an alien. I didn’t look like one; I looked human as I do now, though younger.
Living among humans, I’d been hired by a secret government agency to infiltrate a group of five women and get close to them. My employers thought the women were the aliens. The five were gorgeous women, I guess in their thirties, intelligent and educated. The five didn’t know that I knew all of them. Each thought that I was having a relationship with them. I quickly became intimate with three of them. The other two held me off a bit, moving more cautiously. I was comfortable with that because I knew those two didn’t need to be intimate to spill their secrets. They just needed to trust me, and they did.
The whole time, I knew they were humans, and not aliens, but I yielded to the agency’s desires to find intelligence on them because this allowed me insight into the government’s analysis and planning.
Then, recovering one of my alien powers, I duplicated myself so that I could be with all five women simultaneously. To further my endeavor, I also created a dup of me that met with my bosses. I had one mind shared among the six so I could gather greater understanding. I treated the whole thing as a lark.
Then, dream pivot, I was called out from those locations. I was being given a prize, a high honor to recognize my great contributions. I didn’t know what they were talking about but being the devious mutt that I was, I was eager to accept these accolades. Five of my six beings had to be re-integrated into one, as easily done as walking through a door.
The worst part of it was that reintegrating into one made me appear about five years younger than before. As people saw me and remarked in astounded tones about my youthful appearance, I laughed it off and told them it came from easy living.
Dream end.
Michael Seidel, writer 