Microstory 2273: Skipping Out of the Building

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Against all odds, the organ donor network was able to find two matches for Nick. One person gave him a lobe of their liver, and another one of their kidneys. I couldn’t tell you anything about them, even if I knew myself. They’re not necessarily anonymous, but the information hasn’t been released yet. Some of their respective families may not even know what they did. There was apparently a really short, but really intensive, vetting processing. Normally, a person would have weeks, or even months, to prove that they understand what they’re doing, and what they’re giving up. But in this case, it was an emergency. I wasn’t part of any of that, so I don’t know how it went down, but I’m grateful to them just the same. All three surgeries are now finished, and they’re in recovery. Nick still hasn’t woken up yet. Well, he has, but he hasn’t been at all lucid. During what little time he was somewhat awake, he didn’t seem to really know where he was, or what was going on. It will just take time, but I’m choosing to be optimistic. We’re still not out of the woods, so I’m not going to break out the celebratory balloons just yet, but he has a chance now. We will know more when he wakes up, and he can tell us how he feels. That’s a very important metric that doctors can only guess. They’ll continue to keep him here for quite a while. They still couldn’t do anything about his spleen or gallbladder, so I imagine his hospital time will be on the upper end of the typical estimate. Once he is healthy enough to be discharged, he won’t be skipping out of the building, though. For the next few months, he’ll be in a state of recovery, gradually getting better and stronger. Dutch and I will be with him the whole time. Even though the surgery is over, he’s still opening doors, hoping to speed up the process, but a part of me is worried about that working. If he becomes immortal again, the donors’ sacrifice might seem to mean a little less. I dunno. I guess in that scenario, they still bought him time, and it was still a profound thing to do. I shouldn’t be thinking about any of this. I just need to go back to making sure he wakes up feeling safe and comfortable.

Microstory 851: Preacher Man

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Flying is difficult. It’s not like in the movies where someone will just jump up and go. It takes a lot of energy and concentration, and you’re always at risk of falling. In many of my dreams, I’m either capable of flight, or just jumping to incredible distances. Sometimes it’s a hybrid of these two abilities, allowing me to jump up really high, and then jump again while I’m still in the air. Most of the time, being able to do these things doesn’t seem strange at all. I’m living in a world where they’re possible, and my avatar doesn’t realize life could be any other way. But other times I’m lucid, and aware that I’m just dreaming. One thing I’ve learned about dreams is that they are also real. Dreaming literally transports you to other words, inhabiting new bodies, most of which are synthesized specifically for you, while others belong to preexisting characters. The majority of these dreams take place in unstable universes, which means they can only exist while you believe they do, and they collapse soon after you leave them. Other can exist permanently, or semi-permanently, and we tend to call them fictional stories. LOST, for instance, is about a group of very real people who exist in a parallel universe, and whose adventures are merely being reenacted by actors in our universe. Their world is self-sustaining, but limited to the scope necessary to tell the story. Other galaxies in the lostverse don’t exist, because they don’t need to. Not even the stars are real, because there is no plotline within the context of the story being told where travel to them, or even study of them, is mentioned. Now, as I said, the characters who live here don’t think any of this is strange, and are totally unaware that things are different in other universes, and that most of us think they’re not real. When a dream becomes lucid, you are reestablishing your consciousness in your own universe, while still maintaining a presence in the dreamverse. This acts to stabilize the dream world even more, allowing it to have a fighting chance of surviving past your morning alarm, though that is no guarantee. While in this state, you are to varying degrees capable of manipulating events to your liking. You are, at the very least, able to analyze your surroundings, and solve problems with the benefit of two personalities; those of your true self, and your dream counterpart.

I not infrequently become lucid during my dreams, and in one such instance, I was also able to fly, which gave me a sense of joy I could not usually feel in the real world. I encountered a preacher in this world, who told me that he was a real person in my world, and that if I found him when I was awake, he could teach me how to fly for real. He gave me his address and everything, so this was not a difficult task. I scheduled some last-minute vacation time for next week, which my boss wasn’t super happy about, but also not too upset. I got in my car and drove across the state to find this preacher, knowing full well that this was more than likely all in my head. I found myself to be wrong, though, when the preacher opened the door with a smile. He looked exactly like his avatar did, and claimed to have been waiting for me. We made use of my holiday, and immediately started my training. This involved meditation, sedatives, and a lot of time just standing on the roof of the church, “getting to know the wind.” After a week of this, much to my surprise, I started making some real progress. I could actually hover a couple meters over the ground, proving that this was all very real. The preacher man said my studies were over, and that I now had the tools to practice on my own. I went back home, suffered through work the next day, but went back to my exercises in the evening. And I continued to do this this every day, working extra hard on weekends, to get better and better. After months, I was able to fly anywhere in the area at will, still having to concentrate on what I was doing, but no longer afraid of falling to my death. I was midflight when I woke up in my bed, and realized all those lessons were simply another level to my dreams. Only a few hours had passed in the real world, and I hadn’t actually taken any vacation time. I was so disappointed, but out of desperation, instead of driving to work, I jumped off my backyard deck. And that’s how I became the real world’s first ever human capable of self-propelled flight. That’s right, folks, I can actually fly, and for twenty dollars a class....I can teach you too.

Microstory 52: Dream School

Centuries ago, there arose a group of people with extraordinary abilities. They were the remnants of developments and human experiments from millennia before. The technology that ultimately made them possible already existed, but what these people and their abilities brought the world was a new perspective. Just because a particular technology is possible, doesn’t mean there is anyone around creative enough to come up with the full range of its uses. One of these anomalies was a man named Mandy Alto. He could enter other people’s dreams, and share experiences across a network of sleepers. While some considered the possibility of using this for espionage and mind control, a contemporary of his named Valary had a different idea. She realized that Mandy could create 100% lucid dreams, meaning that the dreamers were able to recall what had happened to them upon waking, sometimes even to a higher degree than with real life events. As a visionary, Valary founded a new league of education. During their five hours of sleep, students would study in a world of endless possibilities and resources. This left time to do whatever they wanted during their waking hours. The practice continues today. In fact, learning while awake is becoming exceedingly rare.