Brand New Colony
I dreamt last night that I was part of a colony. Like ants we would build towers and with a series of pulleys and rigs would lift food high into the tallest rooms. We had no rights and we had no time to think for working so hard. But we had a sense that we were safe here and anywhere outside the colony was dangerous and terrible. Rumors began to spread of a few escapees. And then of an explosion in their hideout. A choice few including myself were assigned to a rescue team to recover the bodies. It would be our first time outside the colony. I remember feeling absolute panic. But orders were orders. As we left the colony everything suddenly became clear and as if it had never been there before a city (like San Francisco) emerged. There was a corner store blown to hell with a bunch of sorry looking folks running around it. Search and rescue would now commence because here were the wounded and slain of our escaped colony members. As I picked through the rubble I saw a boy about 19 who looked to be Ross's (from school) little brother (he doesn't really have one). He was hurt and I helped him up. He held unto me for dear life. As he hugged me tight it was as if all my memories came came back to me in a flood. I hadn't always lived in the colony. I had had another life with a family and school and this city. My gratitude towards this boy overcame me entirely. I had been enslaved and brainwashed and now I could recover my real, whole life. I took his hand and we walked deeper into the seemingly destroyed corner store. Inside it stretched back for miles. (As some little shops in Chicago seemed to do) It was a costume shop. I caught a glimpse of someone who looked like my dad in the back. Suddenly another explosion sent the place rocking and full of smoke. We ran to the entrance and I saw people from my colony picking the wounded and dead up to be sent back. I was scared and felt so unsafe. Who was bombing this place? Was this what the real world was like now? For an instant a desire to return to the colony hit me hard. At least there I would be safe. But my friend grabbed my hand and I felt warm relief. He insisted we go back inside the shop. Deeper this time and into the back we saw there was a workshop. Tons of people I had known over the course of my life were busy making various nondescript items but not in the brainless manner of the colony but with a motivation and prowess that could only come from free thought. Another bomb came down and shook the place. Instead of running this time my friend and I stayed and a new realization so obvious struck me like lightning. The colony was bombing this place. They were sending us back with fear. They were controlling us with fear. I was enraged. I never expected it would come to this. But as I saw the scared confused faces running towards the entrance to return to the colony that had once enslaved them I knew it was true. My friend and I held each other again as each new bomb hit the place. And with our new understanding of what was really going on the bombs suddenly didn't mean anything. The smoke and the crumbling walls and the screams faded away to nothingness and there was just you and I and something that tasted faintly of freedom.