Musing on the Future 1.2

After that, things went white, and stayed white and silent for what seemed a long time. White white white. No feeling.

Then, I was me again, I don't know how, but I knew I was. But more that this, I seemed to be flying over a fantastic landscape...menacing crags and peaks of numberless mountains and gorges that had no roads, mag lifts, skytracks nor even weather stations, rugged untouched terrain sprinkled with snows and tall trees. Clouds were racing and over the horizon a thunderstorm lumbered, cracking now and again with lightening. I raced towards the broiling storm, and then I saw ahead of me on a crag the impossible spire of a fortress, with one lone burning light in the highest tower.

The scene changed and I felt extremely claustrophobic and uncomfortable. The air was close, stuffy, smelling of dust and smothering decay. I saw a pallid young man who wore elegant clothes from the 19th century, but these were now ragged and soiled. He wore his hair long and had just rinsed his hands and forearms of something in a wide basin, drying them on a towel. Unknowing of me, he turned towards a low burning lamp, working intently, and I could see books, big ones and small ones, of all descriptions--books books! Some where opened, some closed, books carelessly spilling all around him on all surfaces. Amongst the books were curious jars, knives, saws, pincers and specimens. And while I watched, he worked on the project on the bench, and though I could not see what he was about, I felt a crawling loathsomeness in my gut -- the hair raised on my arms. Tension and claustrophobia surged when he stood away from the surface, and I screamed at the impossible sad perverted thing that he had begun just then constructed. He was looking up at me, we looked squarely in each others eyes. I heard rattling chains and a giant grinding noise and the sound BOOM!

I woke up and found myself in bed with a bubble of nano on the side I was stabbed. It was all just an incredible dream -- a melodramatic nightmare straight out of Shelly's book. When she saw I was awake, Alice reflexively grabbed my hand scaring the bejesus out of me. I had to laugh. We both did. And it hurt.