Dream: Good Landing, Bad Landing
Saturday morning:
Alyssa and I enjoyed attending a wedding ceremony in which we had no significant role. Her mother gave someone advice as officiants moved flowers around the room. The orange blossoms were particularly stunning with the dried greenery, as brown as the wooden vase that held them.
Ed joined Uriah and several of his recent acquaintances in a hazy bar. Amber lights gave the room an intimate atmosphere, and the group lolled around the counters like they owned the place. Maybe they did. Everyone laughed and joked over a few pints. Someone walked past a sculpted symbol on the wall, square steel bars welded into a zagging arrow across a large circle. I didn't recognize the figure, but the tall man nodded meaningfully and kept it to himself.
Ed took a walk outside the bar a short while later. Pink twilight and the pre-dawn mists gave a fey quality to Weyerhauser and Old Main, loosening the bonds of sensible red brick that chained them to the campus. Low trees and the leafless lilacs waved playfully in the fog. As Ed strolled back to the bar, the path became a log catwalk suspended in an Ewok village. Dawn was orange that high up, and he was surprised to see a dozen huge seed pods swaying in the bare trees just beyond the railing. No, those are sleeping bats.
The tall manGandalf, to the Earthlingshad left the bar quietly. He sped towards the planet's surface in a steep dive, face down towards the target landmass, arms outstretched to either side to maintain the "magic" that kept him in the center of the plain, white sphere. Orange nebulae washed past him. and I overheard an announcer's voice saying something like, "If you were riveted by the last hundred episodes, you won't want to miss what happens tonight, when Gandalf...." The pale sphere slipped unnoticed through Great Britain's primitive surface defense screen, a five-meter hole around which radar waves and reentry friction politely minded their own business. Wet clouds covered the English countryside in a brisk gray light. Gandalf slowed past the moor and let his feet drop below him, the sphere disintegrating into a glowing lattice of triangles, then fading altogether as he dropped onto the seaside meadow.
He was still getting his bearings when a huge gray shape fell into view over the treeline, trailing flames and thick curls of black smoke. Someone had jerry-rigged a reentry capsule from an armored cargo quilt. Wound into a potato-shaped bag, the armored mass could have swallowed a small house. Over-inflated pockets bulged across its surface; they'd burst the moment it touched down, absorbing enough of the impact to protect whatever was inside. At least, they might have if the SAM towers hadn't blown smoking holes in the foreign object that ignored all attempts at radio contact on its dive-bomb trajectory for the coast.
Gandalf cursed under his breath. The foolish kids from the bar had followed him down. He always slipped in quietly, but they would draw a crowd from miles around. The Earthlings hadn't even made it to the moon yet. The only alien creatures they believed in were distant and hostile. What would happen when they discovered humans had fallen from space?
Locals arrived in trucks and by foot, mostly middle-aged men in brown suits or drab green hunting sweaters. The quilt snagged in the treetops. An oversized shipping container balanced on end, then five voices swept into roller-coaster screams as it tumbled out onto the ground. Far from a standard container, this one had clearly been welded together from the chassis of a half-dozen VW station wagons. The crew relaxed for a moment in their car seats, then dark blue waters climbed over the windscreen as their pod slipped into the sea.
Ed sprang up and slipped out through a side window as it slid deeper, kicking for the surface. A barnacle-white shark appeared to investigate. The bright red coloration on its unusually wide nose made it look like a Piper-Cub. Another bar fellow swam out, followed by a slim, attractive brunette, and then a stout kid with a buzz of short brown hair. The tall, skinny guy was the only one left, but his air pocket was the wrong shape. The red-nosed shark had figured out where he was, so he didn't think he could make it out without being eaten. Someone shouted a distraction--he had to get out before the explosion--and he swam slowly upwards. The shark closed in as he passed the wheel well, then the torpedo slid into the fray. I only remember that it ended badly.
A synthesized melody of corporate power chords filled the background while a television-commercial chorus sang "wherever there were dragons, there be pirates now."
Alyssa and I enjoyed attending a wedding ceremony in which we had no significant role. Her mother gave someone advice as officiants moved flowers around the room. The orange blossoms were particularly stunning with the dried greenery, as brown as the wooden vase that held them.
Ed joined Uriah and several of his recent acquaintances in a hazy bar. Amber lights gave the room an intimate atmosphere, and the group lolled around the counters like they owned the place. Maybe they did. Everyone laughed and joked over a few pints. Someone walked past a sculpted symbol on the wall, square steel bars welded into a zagging arrow across a large circle. I didn't recognize the figure, but the tall man nodded meaningfully and kept it to himself.
Ed took a walk outside the bar a short while later. Pink twilight and the pre-dawn mists gave a fey quality to Weyerhauser and Old Main, loosening the bonds of sensible red brick that chained them to the campus. Low trees and the leafless lilacs waved playfully in the fog. As Ed strolled back to the bar, the path became a log catwalk suspended in an Ewok village. Dawn was orange that high up, and he was surprised to see a dozen huge seed pods swaying in the bare trees just beyond the railing. No, those are sleeping bats.
The tall manGandalf, to the Earthlingshad left the bar quietly. He sped towards the planet's surface in a steep dive, face down towards the target landmass, arms outstretched to either side to maintain the "magic" that kept him in the center of the plain, white sphere. Orange nebulae washed past him. and I overheard an announcer's voice saying something like, "If you were riveted by the last hundred episodes, you won't want to miss what happens tonight, when Gandalf...." The pale sphere slipped unnoticed through Great Britain's primitive surface defense screen, a five-meter hole around which radar waves and reentry friction politely minded their own business. Wet clouds covered the English countryside in a brisk gray light. Gandalf slowed past the moor and let his feet drop below him, the sphere disintegrating into a glowing lattice of triangles, then fading altogether as he dropped onto the seaside meadow.
He was still getting his bearings when a huge gray shape fell into view over the treeline, trailing flames and thick curls of black smoke. Someone had jerry-rigged a reentry capsule from an armored cargo quilt. Wound into a potato-shaped bag, the armored mass could have swallowed a small house. Over-inflated pockets bulged across its surface; they'd burst the moment it touched down, absorbing enough of the impact to protect whatever was inside. At least, they might have if the SAM towers hadn't blown smoking holes in the foreign object that ignored all attempts at radio contact on its dive-bomb trajectory for the coast.
Gandalf cursed under his breath. The foolish kids from the bar had followed him down. He always slipped in quietly, but they would draw a crowd from miles around. The Earthlings hadn't even made it to the moon yet. The only alien creatures they believed in were distant and hostile. What would happen when they discovered humans had fallen from space?
Locals arrived in trucks and by foot, mostly middle-aged men in brown suits or drab green hunting sweaters. The quilt snagged in the treetops. An oversized shipping container balanced on end, then five voices swept into roller-coaster screams as it tumbled out onto the ground. Far from a standard container, this one had clearly been welded together from the chassis of a half-dozen VW station wagons. The crew relaxed for a moment in their car seats, then dark blue waters climbed over the windscreen as their pod slipped into the sea.
Ed sprang up and slipped out through a side window as it slid deeper, kicking for the surface. A barnacle-white shark appeared to investigate. The bright red coloration on its unusually wide nose made it look like a Piper-Cub. Another bar fellow swam out, followed by a slim, attractive brunette, and then a stout kid with a buzz of short brown hair. The tall, skinny guy was the only one left, but his air pocket was the wrong shape. The red-nosed shark had figured out where he was, so he didn't think he could make it out without being eaten. Someone shouted a distraction--he had to get out before the explosion--and he swam slowly upwards. The shark closed in as he passed the wheel well, then the torpedo slid into the fray. I only remember that it ended badly.
A synthesized melody of corporate power chords filled the background while a television-commercial chorus sang "wherever there were dragons, there be pirates now."