November 2014 – stills and ramblings

‘In our dreams’

I woke up in a panic, I fumbled for my phone in a continued state of panic, trying in vain to hit snooze.

“Shit,”

I brushed my teeth staring into a mirror. The face that stared back at me was unimpressive. Bed hair looked kind of cool if it stayed that way, which it wouldn’t, and a scruffy goatee that somehow grew to the left. The rest of my face was fairly forgettable, at least I had nice eyes, I think. They looked a nice shade of brown when the bathroom light hit them at just the right angle. Now if I could only get the sun to do the same. Though I seem to remember that brown was the most common of eye colors.

“Shit,”

I showered. Shampoo burned my commonly brown eyes, tripped on the bathroom mat and to top it all off I had forgotten my towel back in my room down the hall.

“Shit,”

Surprisingly this disastrous morning was not unusual for me, nor was it the cause of my repeated expletives. I sat on the edge of the bed and reached for my phone. Sighing, I saw the little red seven under notifications. With apprehension I hit the iDreamt app icon.

You have 7 new dreams

“Shit,”

I hit play on the dream 1, pretty standard stuff, and a horror theme. I remembered bits of this one, the important twist was that I wasn’t the killer and in the end it was a toaster that killed me. Dreams, man.

Dreams 2-4 were nature dreams. Weather storms, tsunamis and the like. In the last five years since the app went live not a single night had passed without a tidal wave dream. So strange since we don’t live anywhere near an ocean and never have. We didn’t even have a pool. Maybe it’s my fear of the unknown and the overwhelming waves are symbolic of the known pressures of the world. Or sometimes I think if I learned to swim they would stop.

Maybe, just maybe I was safe. Only three dreams left. Maybe it didn’t happen.

Dream five was a falling dream. The dream was about as unique as every other persons falling dreams. In five years it had been agreed upon that there are only two variables. Whether you face up or face down while falling. A small percentage of the population, stop the presses, see themselves falling in third person. Fan-fucking-tastic, some people always have to be special. The second variable is the environment. Some dreamers fall through gigantic forests, some fall through water, and some buildings. Now here I’ll admit I’ve seen people fall through trippy environments. Me, I fall between a bunch of skyscrapers, not alien skyscrapers, not sideward skyscrapers, just your run of the mill average man-made constructions. And I hit the ground same as everyone else.

Just two more. As I hit play on dream six I start to remember it. Please, please just let this be my weird dream for last night, just not the other one.

The dream started in our apartment, my parents calling me into the dining room for a talk. I remember feeling like it was important who spoke first, so I didn’t. We sat there staring at each other, just staring. I looked at the video length on the app, two whole hours. I skipped ahead, an hour in the scene changed my mother reached over and unscrewed my dad’s head. Then I woke up but it was one of those dreams within a dream type deals.

I remember looking for my older sister, she wasn’t anywhere in the house. I wanted to tell her about the crazy dream and show it to her on my phone. Eventually I went back to her room opened it and found myself in a café in Paris. I knew it was Paris because of dream logic and the other not so subtle hint. The Eiffel Tower was across the street. Everyone was pointing at it, yelling in English (in France, because dreams) that it was falling over. I couldn’t recall what happened next so I skipped ahead, apparently the Eiffel Tower took over 30 minutes to fall over and in those 30 minutes it never once occurred to my dream self to move out the way.

That was fine, that actually wasn’t bad. It was a two hour dream so most people would either skip it completely or speed through it. It was a little edgy and somewhat artsy. I did end up in Paris after all. It was also dark because I didn’t have an older sister. So it had elements of yearning, I think. I was fine with this.

Dream 7, play?

I saw the giraffe.
“Shit.”

I saw Headmistress Tenson, 50-year-old Headmistress Tenson.
“Shit.”

I saw the video camera and the toothpaste.
“Shit.”

I only had two months left of high school, only two and I was out. I had almost done the impossible since iDreamt blew up, finish senior year without a dream like this. Sure there had been a slip or two, a sex dream starring Jenny from algebra even one particularly risqué sequence with that girl from band. However, that had led to a kiss and some fooling around in real life. But nothing like this, this was the end.

Damn you, iDreamt, damn you Pepper Hume and what you did to humanity, but mostly me and I guess teenagers everywhere.
Hume’s company had started off as a free app that dealt in dream diaries and interpretations. Then he claimed that they were able to record people’s dreams, not just emotions and bodily reaction but actual imagery, like movies. At first no one believed him so he made it free, building of off the platform app iDreamt already in place. When those users saw videos of their dreams the next morning they posted it online and the world went mad. Bans, restrictions and security were called for. Most just wanted the whole thing shut down.

But then a lot of people got curious. They wanted it for private use. If only each person had access to their own dreams or if they could control how and what was shared. Hume tried to explain how it worked. That it involved radio towers in combination with cellphones as receivers and storage devices.. Hume’s explanations fell on deaf ears, he was drowned out by thousands of voices. Some yelling for his death, some his praise and most were demanding an update with new features. Finally he said that if people really didn’t want their dreams captured they just needed to get rid of their phones, deleting the app was not enough. So of course no one could do that. It didn’t matter anyway because of how the system worked one phone would capture a city blocks worth of dreams.

So every morning the world woke up and logged on to iDreamt to watch their dreams, the dreams of strangers, and the strange dreams of people they knew. Industries were born overnight, lucid streaming dreamers, and an entire market for dream based entertainment.
Of course the effect on individuals was volatile and immediate. Married couples and significant others faced a series of painful conversations about dream content. One dream that even hinted at sexual orientation would bring the scrutiny of the whole family down upon you. The police started to monitor dreams for terrorist agendas. And the porn, the general populace had to sneak in porn in the morning or watch porn at work, well more porn at work. It was too much of a risk right before bed, that shit would be front and foremost on your mind. Hell, some people stopped sleeping all together.

Damn you Pepper Hume.

My phone alarm went off a third time, I would miss the bus. I grabbed my stuff and headed for the door mentally preparing myself for the wreckage that would be my social life.

“Son, hold on. Your mother says I should take you to school today.”

I hadn’t thought about it, my parents would have seen the dream too.

“No, it’s fine. The bus will be here soon.”

My father approached me, blatantly avoiding eye contact.

“Son,”

He placed his hand gingerly on my shoulder then leaned in extremely close. Oh god, now he was looking directly into my eyes. Too much eye contact.

“Son, it’s only natural to have certain feelings …”

“Shit.”

To did list of an every day time traveler

Dear reader the following list of my day should clear up all the sensationalized nonsense I see so often about time travel.

Wednesday

6:15 – First trip of the day, traveled back twenty minutes to get a little more sleep.

8:05 – Traveled forward fifty minutes because it was freezing and wet at the bus stop.

11:50 – Possibly failed my English midterm, thought about traveling back to study but it felt like cheating. (This one doesn’t count but I included it for the sake of full disclosure)

1:18 – Traveled to the front of the line at the coffee place on campus.

1:23 – Traveled back and changed my order, anything pumpkin flavored is a mistake.

3:19 – Traveled back to stop an old man being hit by a car. I’m not a hero but I’m not a monster either.

5:45 – Met the other time travelers for our weekly poker night. Of course everyone was on time.

9:30 – Serena showed up to poker night furious. Her birthday had slipped my mind.

9:32 – Traveled back three months to make reservations at her favorite restaurant and order a custom-made dress for the night.

9:33 – Traveled back, again, because I had her sizes wrong.

10:38 – Traveled to the end of dinner because I was craving dessert and well, her.

11:27 – Serena.

12:03 – Forgot I was meant to write any of this down so traveled back to the start of today and took notes this time.

stills and ramblings

An ongoing process of practice and reiteration. Kisten S. Chetty

Month: November 2014

Six

Thankful

Six

A sickness

Six

In our dreams

Arkham House (Part one)

To did list of an every day time traveler