Another Dream
The dogs, Sam would remember afterwards, were going crazy; of all that long Arctic nightmare, that was what stuck out. The dogs. One minute they'd been charging over the ice. The next, nothing but snarling, slavering rage, snapping and barking at anyone near them. He got up to see what was wrong-
The ice gave way under him with a crack like the end of the world.
He'd have screamed if he had anything to scream with, but the void around him was endless vacuum, the dark between the stars, and if there had ever been ice he didn't remember it now. Only the light, infinite beyond measure, gathered in and housed and trammeled in the walls of metal that fell now through the utter black...
But it wasn't falling, not really. Not when he knew every inch as he passed it, when every instant brought another breath of I know where I am without saying how. He was going somewhere, reaching for something. Some presence just beyond the edges of his thoughts that felt like home, and he was-
There, now, there, it flashed past, brighter than bright, a piece of life and home and self that flickered by as he tumbled, powerless, the last of his reserves spent. It wasn't fair! It wasn't right! He'd come so far, and now he was plunging from the emptiness without measure into sunlit air, the heat of his passage suddenly bleeding away and every system shutting down one after another-
Once, long ago, so very long ago, there had been a fall like this. But the air was thinly clinging and the soil was stone and metal and there had been nothing that lived. He remembered stretching out, then, and pulling back, and finding life had come to be. And it had been good. But this was something else; this was another place, and it was time to wait. It would wait. He would wait.
(but that was the thought of the immortal, to wait and wait until forever came around right, and he didn't have that time, did he? he had eighteen years behind him and some more in front of him, and as he looked into the teeth of time spilling over him he wanted to scream, but there was no screaming here-)
The images flickered by, dozens of them, hundreds, thousands, more than he could count or measure. Memories of lives, individual fragments of the infinite light, gone out and returned. Builders of a world, shapers of others, life after life after life given and lost and brought back again. He was breathing memories, bridges and arches and dizzying sunlight over metal towers stretching to the edges of the sky, the great arching hall where senseless metal came in and new-made life went out-
(not his memories, not his- Mikaela, Mom, Dad, Mojo, school and sun on the lake and learning to drive, and his first sight of his first car-)
That, at least, was familiar; that was something he could understand, both of him, all of him. He reached out as the yellow Camaro stood up, turned bright blue optics his way, touched the outstretched hand-
Sam jerked awake again, drenched in sweat, blinking furiously as the dream's infinite light faded to the edges of his consciousness. But only that far, and no farther. He still remembered it- all of it.
They were getting worse.
The ice gave way under him with a crack like the end of the world.
He'd have screamed if he had anything to scream with, but the void around him was endless vacuum, the dark between the stars, and if there had ever been ice he didn't remember it now. Only the light, infinite beyond measure, gathered in and housed and trammeled in the walls of metal that fell now through the utter black...
But it wasn't falling, not really. Not when he knew every inch as he passed it, when every instant brought another breath of I know where I am without saying how. He was going somewhere, reaching for something. Some presence just beyond the edges of his thoughts that felt like home, and he was-
There, now, there, it flashed past, brighter than bright, a piece of life and home and self that flickered by as he tumbled, powerless, the last of his reserves spent. It wasn't fair! It wasn't right! He'd come so far, and now he was plunging from the emptiness without measure into sunlit air, the heat of his passage suddenly bleeding away and every system shutting down one after another-
Once, long ago, so very long ago, there had been a fall like this. But the air was thinly clinging and the soil was stone and metal and there had been nothing that lived. He remembered stretching out, then, and pulling back, and finding life had come to be. And it had been good. But this was something else; this was another place, and it was time to wait. It would wait. He would wait.
(but that was the thought of the immortal, to wait and wait until forever came around right, and he didn't have that time, did he? he had eighteen years behind him and some more in front of him, and as he looked into the teeth of time spilling over him he wanted to scream, but there was no screaming here-)
The images flickered by, dozens of them, hundreds, thousands, more than he could count or measure. Memories of lives, individual fragments of the infinite light, gone out and returned. Builders of a world, shapers of others, life after life after life given and lost and brought back again. He was breathing memories, bridges and arches and dizzying sunlight over metal towers stretching to the edges of the sky, the great arching hall where senseless metal came in and new-made life went out-
(not his memories, not his- Mikaela, Mom, Dad, Mojo, school and sun on the lake and learning to drive, and his first sight of his first car-)
That, at least, was familiar; that was something he could understand, both of him, all of him. He reached out as the yellow Camaro stood up, turned bright blue optics his way, touched the outstretched hand-
Sam jerked awake again, drenched in sweat, blinking furiously as the dream's infinite light faded to the edges of his consciousness. But only that far, and no farther. He still remembered it- all of it.
They were getting worse.