A Butterfly Dreamed

In the good old days we had numbers. The numbers begat made up units of measurement to assure us that things were, in some respect, solid and consistent. Certain things, arguably the majority, were considered self-evident by the general consensus of the masses. Anyone could argue philosophy, the existence of the soul, whether or not ghosts were real; but for the most part, up was up, down was down, and gravity still worked just fine. Thinking back on it now, even the most fundamental of truths seemed a bit far-fetched. We arrogantly assumed everything before us was specifically at the face value of our collective perception. Who could have blamed us though? A tree was a tree, right? You sat under it, it provided shade, the occasional fruit or nut to eat, even wood for building. There used to be a saying that a tree by any other name would still be a tree… or was that saying about the rose? This concept would not be so frustrating if I could honestly remember any difference.

Yes sir, for the most part, science had everything explained, measured, logged, calculated, and broken down to the smallest recognizable denomination. It was comforting for most people to know there were boundaries by which we could all define reality. Science even provided the reassurance that if something had not been explained, it was merely a matter of time or new technology before it finally would be explained. Unfortunately, as it turns out, what we eventually discovered was quite the opposite. Measurements and boundaries only work up to a point. I’m no mathematician, but even I know that numbers and complex calculations break down into nonsense given the right theorem. So, as it turns out, given enough time and the right technology, we didn't create new explanations or discover new boundaries. We didn’t coin new terms or units of measurement, nor did we devise some new principle by which other principles could be weighed. Quite the opposite really.

I had a faint memory of when it happened. I’m certainly no expert on quantum physics (as a matter of fact, I flunked basic physics in high school) so really I’m the wrong person to explain it, but I do have a faint understanding of what happened that day. It was a new space program designed to project an object across the universe so that we could travel to those distant stars and, for the first time, uncover the mysteries of life beyond our little blue planet. The object, or ship, was called Q.U.E.S.T. (which I’m sure stood for something at some point). Essentially, it was designed to be capable of existing in two points of space at the same time, then independently choosing between the two which one it wanted to occupy. According to the young woman who designed Q.U.E.S.T.'s drive, it was limited only by our instrument’s perception of distance. This really meant it could only travel as far as we could see.

On the day of its launch, it was dragged into space to what was then called (and this thought still makes me chuckle) “a safe distance.” Now, what they meant was safe if it exploded or malfunctioned. However, they could’ve towed it to the other end of the galaxy or shot it into the black of space a million light years away and it still wouldn’t have been safe. We made it. It had us written all over it. Almost like a fingerprint of thought and imagination. Any idea, any hope or dream, that ever went into its creation lingered with it as, well, a sort of a soul.

It did indeed perform its correct function. It shifted out of the quantum phase that we inhabited and moved itself independently to the targeted space. For the first time, our instrumentation clearly depicted a slightly smaller, slightly greener planet orbiting a brilliant and far brighter sun. It was then that Q.U.E.S.T. picked between the two areas of space it wanted to occupy. Now, at the time, it seemed as though Q.U.E.S.T. hadn’t left. After a magnificent flash of light, Q.U.E.S.T. was seen returning to Earth’s orbit in the very instant that it was expected to leave. It followed protocol, targeted its landing sight and began its approach. All of its ground crew was left scrambling to prepare its landing zone (considering it wasn’t supposed to be back for another three days). I vaguely remember joking about how they forgot to program Q.U.E.S.T. to pick the other area of space. I joked, "Leave it up to rocket scientists to blow a trillion dollars on an absent minded artificial intelligence." I ate those words that day. Q.U.E.S.T. did exactly as it was programmed: travel to new space, identify new life, collect and return with a sample if possible. It’s just that, apparently, three days only took a fraction of a second when manipulating that level of quantum physics. The life it identified would forever be referred to as the coming nightmare.

Well, about a month or so after Q.U.E.S.T. returned, people recalled having bad dreams and trouble sleeping. In the days that followed, there were reports of mass hallucination and hysteria, then, finally, the majority of the public seemed to go completely insane. Many lives were simply consumed in the ensuing madness, many more died in the months to come. I guess on our best report, before everything went completely nuts, this new life form was essentially feeding on our dream centers, or rather, feeding on the chemical caused by our brain’s dreaming state. Long after that, the human perception became incapable of discerning anything consistent and reality as we knew it changed forever. Reality was the dream we just kept trying to wake up from. Every damn time the dream got too out of hand, we’d wake up, in our beds, only into another dream. To be honest, I myself didn’t much mind. I was one of those fortunate few called a lucid dreamer. My mind seemed better equipped to identify and interpret the dream laid out before me whenever I awoke. Nowadays, it’s quite the rarity I even wake up. I’ve been steadily hanging onto this present dream for, well, I guess as long as I can remember.

So what was I to do, left here to be one of the few dreamers to hang onto a dream as long as I have? I decided I'd make a point to seek other dreamers, study their dreams and see if I couldn’t somehow get us to wake up once and for all. At the very least I wanted to master my lucid dreaming.

The subject I’ve very recently picked is Jerry. He’s presently reliving the death of his wife. Quite tragic really, she carved out her own liver. She just couldn’t handle humanity's new environment. Nicely enough, Jerry recently adopted Abigail (named after his dead wife). Abigail is the sweetest Golden Retriever you’d ever meet. She’s never once had a nightmare and spends most of her time playing with a perceived reflection. Animals, I should mention, are a bit of a rarity. Dogs specifically wake up so many times during a normal human's dream, they have the tendency to pop from place to place in all sorts of bizarre manners. When Jerry has a nightmare, Abigail most often gets caught up in her own little dream, playing with her reflection and waiting for Jerry to get done. This nightmare usually ends around the time when Jerry’s wife writes “I love you” on his chest in her own blood.

Finally, Jerry’s consciousness can’t take it anymore, the entire scene folds in on itself, and everything morphs back into a bedroom. Jerry wakes up almost instantaneously, covered in a pool of his own sweat, his large maroon down comforter swimming all over him as he struggles to throw it off.

“No!” Jerry screams with a gasp only to find himself in his bedroom piled with clothing, his digital alarm still blinking 12:00 in that brilliant red as it has since he, or I for that matter, can remember. “Son of a…”

Abigail quits playing with her reflection, runs up, and begins giving Jerry all the world’s sloppy wet kisses. As she does so, piles of bacon fill the bed, repetitively spelling the word “love” as any dog could express it. Jerry tussles her curly golden fur and Abigail immediately begins to slobber up the bacon.

“Yeah, I love you too girl.” He says, now fighting a sleepy haze to stand out of bed.

Abby immediately pops under the bed, barking frantically. Suddenly, a cat scampers out. She happily evicts it from the room in a chase. Jerry, a bit taken aback by the sudden action, tries with all his effort not to panic and cause a nightmare. The piles of clothing on the floor of his room begin to churn but in a moment everything settles and Jerry perceives his living room so he can wander through it to the kitchen for breakfast.

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