The Dreamer Wakes

The problem with nightmares is that they are processed the same way, by the same equipment, as the real world. To the brain, there is no difference between the sensory input from the waking world and the imagination of dreams.

“This has to be a dream, right?” Clint asked of no one. “This can’t be real…but if I know it’s a dream….” He tried to rise in flight, but nothing happened. He tried a running take-off, only to fall face-first to the very real feeling ground.

Clint stood, brushing himself off, the dark ash of the soil staining his jeans. His clothes were familiar, at least. After all, it’s what he was wearing when he lay down in the soft grass and warm sun. Let everyone else crowd the parks, he was happy with the cemetery near his house; better maintained and quiet.

“I’m asleep on the grass under the big oak,” he said to the entirety of the world around him. “None of this is real, and I’m going to wake up…as soon as I figure out how.”

He turned in a full circle, looking for any kind of landmark. No trees, no buildings, no signs of life marred the rolling hills of ash-covered ground. A faint peak, far off, caught his eye.

With the peak as his target, he began to walk. Faint puffs of fine ash rose from his every footfall. The only sound was his own breath and the soft sound of his steps. He checked behind himself often, ensuring that his footprints were still there.

The silence dragged on him, distorting his sense of time. He began to whistle a tune; whether to fight the silence or prop his falling mood he couldn’t say.

What started as a random tune began to coalesce into a song with structure. Verse, chorus, and bridge made themselves known. Too bad I won’t remember this when I wake up, he thought.

As he walked and whistled, his brain filled in the harmonies. The song went from a jaunty walking tune to a military march, to something slightly dark in a minor key, to a dirge, and then back again.

Clint wasn’t tired, but he was sure he should have been. He stopped to look behind himself again. His steps disappeared into the distance. Far beyond that, a cloud of ash was building on the horizon. He turned to face the peak again and went back to walking.

The song still rattled in his head, even though he’d stopped whistling. He was certain that he should be thirsty by now, but he felt no discomfort of any sort. As nightmares go, he thought, this one isn’t too awful.

Hours on, and still the peak seemed no closer; neither did the roiling cloud of ashen dust behind him. Clint slapped his face as hard as he could. “Wake up!”

All he had accomplished was the pain of the slap, a dance of spots before his eyes, and the dread that he would never wake from this. Now it’s a nightmare, he thought. He pinched his arm, digging his nails in. It was pain, but at least he was feeling something.

Clint wasn’t sure how long he spent like that but at some point, he’d broken the skin. A trickle of blood slowly trailed from his arm down his thumb and gathered at the knuckle. The pinching forgotten for the moment, he watched as the blood slowly formed a drop and then fell to the ground.

He watched it fall, as if in slow motion, making a splash of fine ash dust when it hit, then disappearing into the ash as though it was never there. Another followed and then a third before he moved to find something to put over the shallow cut.

“You have laid your claim and it has been accepted,” a soft voice said behind him.

He spun around and saw no one there. “Who said that?”

“Your domain.”

“What do you mean?” Clint moved to press the hem of his t-shirt to his arm, but it had already stopped bleeding. He turned in slow circles trying to find who might be speaking.

“Where we are,” the voice said. “I am the voice of your domain.”

“Where are we?”

“We are here. Is that not apparent?”

“I mean…what is this place called?” he asked.

“It has no name…yet. That is for you to decide.”

Clint took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m asleep on the lawn of the Oak Rest cemetery. None of this is real.”

“I am real, you are real. What is not real,” the voice said, “is the thought that there is somewhere else you are. You were dreaming but have finally awakened.”

“Why can’t I see you?”

“Look around you,” the voice said, “I am everything that you see. If you would prefer an avatar, perhaps I can oblige.”

The sound of soft footsteps behind him brought him about. He faced a nude woman, his own height, thin, collarbones and ribs visible, ash-grey skin and hair, pale eyes set wide above broad cheekbones.

“That’s better, I guess. What’s your name?”

“I’ve already told you; you haven’t named me yet. This form is just an avatar to make it easier for you to communicate to your domain.”

“Does everyone have a domain?” he asked.

“They do, but most don’t wake to it, despite thousands of dreams.”

“You’re saying my life…my entire life, has been a dream, and this is my reality?”

“I am saying all your lives have been dreams. This reality,” she gestured with a sweeping arm, “is waiting for you to shape it.”

“But I don’t have any control,” he said. “I couldn’t even fly.”

“Should you be able to fly? Nothing is fixed here, yet. Once you make your desires known, physics will be defined for your realm. But you can do no such thing until you’ve decided what I…your domain…should be…and give me a name.”

“But why is it covered in ash? Why does it look like a wasteland?”

“It’s not ash as you know it,” the avatar said, “it’s raw materials.” She picked up handful and let it flow through her fingers.

Clint sat cross-legged in the ashes…raw materials, he corrected himself, and thought. If this world is messed up, it’s my fault this time. What are all the things I wished I could’ve changed about Earth?

Time didn’t seem to move, but Clint felt that he’d been thinking for hours…days even…with the avatar of his domain silently watching. He didn’t know much about physics or biology or any of that, but he thought that overall, Earth was as good a place to start as he could imagine; parts of it, at least.

He thought of forests and mountains, wide plains and rich grasslands. Pictures of vibrant wetlands and oceans full of life flashed through his mind. All the things that made Earth beautiful and livable, minus the factories, mini-malls, urban sprawl, and suburban blight.

He had a clear picture in his mind; a rich, lively planet with seasons and diverse climates and habitats. But what to call it?

“I think I have a name,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Utopia. It will be my utopia, so I think it fits.”

The sound of crashing waves and the smell of moisture, slowly gaining a salt tang, brought him out of his reverie. He found himself on the shore of a vast ocean, the sun rising above it. The sky turned blue as a green sheen bloomed over the water. In places where the waves lapped high, leaving behind some of the green, it spread across the land.

He turned to Utopia’s avatar. Her flesh filled out, hips growing wide, breasts filling. Her skin began to change, turning a rich green beginning with her feet, moving up. By the time her eyes shone emerald, the hills beyond were full of trees.

Clint knew without looking that the seas teemed with life that changed and advanced faster than he could process. Soon, the land began to fill with animals. There were pressures that forced change on the plants and animals; volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, but they were minor, over in a flash, and necessary to make Utopia work.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, as much to the world as to her avatar that stood before him.

Utopia turned her gaze to him. “I can be nothing but,” she said, “as I am how you have made me.”

“What happens now?” he asked.

“If you wish to let the sleepers dream in your world, you can. You don’t need to, but it is allowed.”

“Will they be humans?”

“They will be as my environments shape them, but I, or even you, cannot force their form.”

“I worry about war and the destruction of the environment,” he said.

“Look around you,” Utopia said with a sweep of her arm. “I have already weathered ice ages, the splitting and rejoining of continents, and millennia of change. I am still here and still healthy.”

Clint thought for a moment, or was it a millennium? “Let the dreamers in.”