SCI: Echo Chamber
"In Your Dreams"
It's the same as always, but it's a little different this time. You're taken by the hand and marched down a long hallway, the kind of hallway that might be in a French palace, or in a hospital at four in the morning. Something with grandeur and gravity both. You've been here before; perhaps the wallpaper whispers your name. Your guide vanishes to parts unknown, but you don't need him anymore. You know what you're there to do. To try to do. Again. As ever. (As if it might turn out this time.) Soundlessly, the versions of yourself which you might become appear through doorways, at windows. They line the hall on silent feet, echoes of yourself, possibilities. It feels good to see them all gathered up there, doesn't it? Like looking through books on a library discard shelf, envisioning how each might look on your mantel, feeling the weight of them, one by one, in your hands. Careful consideration. Some of them have different haircuts, better shoes, smeared lipstick. (You decide not to go for that last one.) They don't seem to notice you, or each other. Their expressions are not quite blank but patient, waiting. But in a room of a hundred possibilities, you can choose only one. And so you walk up to one who seems the most like you, but with something more, somehow. The curve of the neck, the soft clasp of the inner wrist. Perhaps this is what you have been waiting for. You can only hope, and try, and try again. You head down the hallway as they become you, or you become them, and the lights flicker off, and you wake up, made new, ever hopeful.