Lucid Dreaming

There is a threshold between being consciously awake and dreaming in sleep which actually has more substance than being just a paper-thin barrier. The point where you are aware that you are dreaming just before waking up.

I was able to for the first time, force myself to stay in the dream and take control of how I moved and manipulate the things in the environment. Not very well, however.

In my typical dreams, I am merely presented with objects or people that are composites of memories, based on whatever chemical process happens to be occurring in my brain.

This time, however, I suddenly became consciously aware that I was in a store that specialized in holiday decorations, in particular, Halloween. I think the original process intended to evoke fear, but I picked up what turned out to be a very poorly made rubber Frankenstein mask.

The store turned out to be closed at the time and I was confronted by employees, but then I became aware they were actually lip-synced to a podcast to which I was earlier listening when  I fell asleep. They were out of context with the situation my brain was processing, which emboldened me further to take control.

I raised my arms toward an open skylight in the store and floated up to the roof. I was out of their reach. I raised my arms again, toward the sky over the rooftops, and there I was, flying at will, over short buildings, and around taller ones. People below me were saying "Look at that asshole!" "What a dick!" Like they were jealous. It made me smile.

Then I suddenly became aware of my breathing. I tried to resist going toward what looked like a big wall, or super-sized television screen that was flickering and snowy. Then it disappeared and all that remained was the darkness of the inside of my eyelids. I was awake.

For a second afterward, I tried to slip back under the barrier and almost did. After a moment I had no choice but to open my eyes.

I hope I can do that again. I was drinking small doses of coffee and listening to podcasts before falling asleep. Somewhere in there is the safety harness of conscious awareness I can cling to as I descend into dreamland.

The Withering

We first started receiving the signals a few years ago. We were going to finally witness the return to our planet of the Ancient Astronauts everyone was talking about.

I used to laugh every time I saw the show about Ancient Aliens on the History Channel of all places. I thought it was a huge hoax or conspiracy theory, but now we can get live video from the approaching armada of space ships, populated by human-like people.

There were all kinds of reports in the media about the human volunteers who left long ago, and are now returning after countless generations of progeny born in the vast darkness of space.

The first ship was coming down on a plateau outside of Lima, Peru. I won the lottery to stand in the front row when they opened the door and the first of them walked out to touch their home soil again for the first time in eons.

A large vessel slowly lowered through the clouds above, barely displacing them. No sound of rockets or any engines, the massive thing touched down. Barely audible was the sound of it's weight settling into the sand. Something deep under the soil made a loud cracking sound in a deep tone like an iceberg calving away from a glacier.

At first everyone panicked. Standing up from their folding chairs, and listening for another sign of danger, but none came.

Through my binoculars I could see where the doors are. Luckily I brought a tripod with me so my hands wouldn't get tired. I suddenly had the urge to snack. Staring through my tripod-mounted binoculars, I was able to tear open and eat a bag of Funyuns.

The doors slid open and the cameras began flashing and clicking uncontrollably. Through my temporary blindness from the camera flashes, I could see some figures emerge from the ship. They were human. They were definitely bipedal.

As they approached I started hearing groans and screams from the journalists. I started to feel dizzy myself and my nose started bleeding. We were being exposed to something that these aliens who were once human didn't realize would be harmful to planet dwellers protected under the Van Allen Belt.

They had evolved in the harshness of space. The generations that survived were immune to cosmic rays at every wavelength. But we were not. I came to this realization as I lay on the ground, staring at the sky, while my brain cooked from being exposed to these people.

The Negative Gravity Problem

We were standing in the workshop when the fellas from research and development showed up with a five gallon container, surrounded by Lead weights and welded to the cart. They were pushing it too fast and the thing hit the swinging double doors, busting the left door from it's bottom hinge.

It was still floating an inch off the floor so the cart pitched and yawed, bending the caster wheels of the cart as each corner of the cart individually bounced off the floor.

"Yoh! What the Hell, man!? Whose gonna fix that shit!" Harold said in a tone you could tell he could barely control, as he looked up from his newspaper. His first coffee cup of the morning still four-fifths full. He shot a look over his bifocals that would cast a pall over the rest of the day. His feet didn't move from his desk. "Chain that shit over in the corner. God dammit!"

The rest of us stood there, hearts sinking simultaneously. We all would have called in sick today if we saw today's invoice. Today we must install gravity thrusters. If the material escapes the container uncontrolled, it will expose the entire workshop that's not behind lead shielding.

The last time it happened, all the exposed materials, including people were forced away from the gravitational pull of the planet, the other gravitational forces in the solar system, the galaxy, and so-on. And so-on.