Haiku
Jedi Master
Dreams can be a window into another reality. Typically, they no more than a moment or an hour in this reality. Sometimes they fill the entire night with streams of another world, another life. I have had many dreams, definitely more than the common soul. I have lived whole lifetimes of another reality in a single night. Emplacement shift is a term that I use to justify these dreams. Most if not all dreams that I have had completed in a single night.
It is not that I have not had repeating dreams, I have. Some even were repeating and giving me a longer look at the reality, a little more every time I had them. But none were ever like the one that I am going to present to you today.
This story is based on a series of dreams that I was having over a time period, of roughly six months. The fact that it was the same dream would not have bothered me as much. But with this series, I continued on from a previous point. It was a whole other lifeline of which I have nothing to compare. And it progressed, as in the next time I dreamt it, it took over from a point after the point in which I left it. It was like time in this reality/dream progressed in time the same as it is in this reality. If a day passes here on our planet, it also passes the same in the dream. If I did not have the dream in consecutive nights, the next time I entered the dream the same amount of time had passed.
It was a parallel timeline/reality that I was experiencing, here in this reality while I was awake and in the other reality while I slept, I was there. Real Time! It was not compressed into a single dream.
I regress …
Since this dream fascinated me so, I kept tabs on it. I wrote as fast as my nimble fingers allowed me to. I tried very hard to document each and every item as I found them, so I could use this information later. But that was not all. I did research in between each dream session. Sometimes it was minor, but as you will find out as you read, I find out many fascinating facets of what I am dreaming.
I will not go into any detail at this time, but this is for you to know, in between each chapter of the story has my research/blurb that I preformed, here in this reality, using the internet.
I fell asleep one night, and this is what I dreamed …
Have you ever had one of those moments where you are somewhere, but you have no idea how you got there? And I am not talking about that short-term memory loss like when you have been driving too long and can’t remember the last few miles. No this is more serious in the manor that you can’t quite remember the last thing that you do remember. This is one of those moments.
My eyes open, awaking for the day. I am lying on the firm and hard floor, on my side, as if I was sleeping. I have had to do this on a camping trip or two when I forgot my air mattress. Always waking up sore and aching even after a few minutes or an hour. I was young, and my stature would regain quickly. I was not this way here, and it led me to believe that I was not laying like this for long.
I sat up and immediately felt dizzy, kind of fuzzy, not being able to focus on anything yet. Clarity came to me and I find myself in an odd shaped room, of a sort. No, wait, it is not a room but looks more like a chamber of a ship.
Now, I never go into a situation where I do not have some level of control. And it is not like me to not understand where I am.
The chamber was not like a room with square corners and flat walls. The chamber flowed together from floor to wall and then onto the roof, curves transitioned each face of the chamber. Some even look like they were possibly hand formed to make the curvature that I was seeing.
The chamber was twice in length than in width. It had some kind of doorways in each end of it. not a common door either, they looked more like something that I saw on military ships. The closer doorway seemed to have a visible sealing edge around the door, possibly capable of withstanding different pressures on both sides of the door, I suspect. It could have been a watertight doorway to contain different chambers inside the ship. Something like these could be closed and secured if they started to take on water, I was pretty confident of that.
The fuzzy feeling is calming down now, and I can see clearer now. This place…this place, it is not right for me. I mean this place is not like anything that I would call normal, I think. I should not be here, wherever here is.
I gave myself a quick scan to make sure that I am not injured in some way. No, arms are moving… hands can flex… I do not see any problems down my torso… hips and legs look fine… feet, yep I can wiggle my toes…no issues here. So, I stood up.
Where am I again? I do not like this not knowing!
I turn toward the opposing door and it is unlike the first doorway. It was more robust, and there was a small round window, a portal I suspect. The framework around the door was built up more than the opposing door, this must be an exterior door, to the outside out of the ship.
Down each side of the chamber were several alcoves, possibly some sort of staging area. I can see what looks to be full body suits and helmets hanging in each alcove. The helmet was very robust looking, I would say that they are some kind of deep-water diving suits, but nothing like I have ever seen before.
Wait a minute how did I get to be here… I must have come through the door behind me… I do not remember that.
I turned toward one of the alcoves. The step felt weird, almost as if I was in a different gravity that was normal to me. Made my knee feel like it was soft, a different barometric pressure maybe, I was not too sure. With each step feeling strange, I was kind of bouncing with each stride.
In the alcove was the helmet, a suit and a hard backpack, of a sort. The backpack had a solid exterior, looked kind of like an inside out abalone shell, shimmering as I changed my viewing angle to it. I reached out to it to touch it and got a static shock off of it. Then it started humming, almost like a soft purring of a cat. My hand pulled back instinctively.
“I must be under water,” I murmured softly.
The shock brought my senses to full alert. I would never put myself in a place like this… then who did? And for what purpose?
I turned my attention to the suit hanging in front of me, roughly measuring myself up against its size. Laughing to myself, “It doesn’t look like I will be able to put this one on” I said softly to myself. The suit looked like it would fit a three to four-foot tall individual, a child sized suit. Unfortunately, my physique was heavy set and six foot, two inches tall.
So, some petite midget has kidnapped me and left me here. Somehow that does not seem very likely.
I stepped back a little and examined the other suits in the rest of the alcoves. They were all the same size.
“Well no more desserts for me anymore” I exclaimed to myself.
I am not fitting in this suit. It seems my captor did not want me to leave this… place… where ever that is.
I counted the alcoves around the room, there were ten, twelve, sixteen, no twenty stations in this room, ten on each long wall. All of the stations had their equipment, none of them were being used.
It dawned on me that I was in some kind of changing chamber where you could put on one of these suits and go outside of the ship. I have seen something similar on submarines. Although this was a grand sized one to have a setup for twenty people at once.
So, I could be dealing with twenty or more captors… child-sized captors. What if they are not my captor but having saved me instead? I am starting to confuse me… Do not get too far ahead of yourself.
I stood back, righting my mind. I was in a chamber, possibly inside of a ship. A door that leads outside the ship at one end and the opposing door that looks to leads deeper into the ship. The door that I suspected lead outside of the ship had the only interface that I could see. A small control panel on the side of the heavy doorframe.
“But outside to where” I exclaimed aloud. My gaze was fixed on the doorway with the small portal at far end of the chamber.
So here are the facts. I have been put in a chamber that it does not look like I can get out of. The inner door is a serious door but is lighter in construction than the other door. It looks like someone is constraining me to this place…and if this room is of any indication, there are many of them…
I drew my attention back to the alcove and focusing on the helmet. The exterior seemed to be similar to that of the tank hanging behind it. It was very smooth and contoured. The faceplate had a definite look of being able to withstand very high pressures. The odd item with it was that you could not see thru the faceplate to the interior. Not mirrored but blocked by some means. From the general size of it, it also looked as if it was made for a child. Although it does look like it is solid enough. I mean, from the appearance of this I would have to say that it was very much able to contain an atmosphere in it. In fact, it looks damn good if you ask me.
I steadied myself, reached to touch this item, kind of expecting it to … ah I do not know what I am expecting it to do. Again, I felt another shock, softer than the one I got from the tank. But instead of making a purring noise it lit up. I could see a HUD lighting up on the faceplate and other interior lights. Then lights on the front of the helmet started to illuminate through the odd surface. I had seen no definition of them being there before.
The lights startled me, I put my right hand on my chest. I could feel my heart rate racing. Righting myself and checking if I … ah, you know wet myself. I had pulled my right hand down and grabbed my crotch area, no not this time.
I always joked with myself about being incontinent in a situation like this, I am approaching fifty now, and things like this happen to men as they age.
The lights on the helmet called my attention back to the situation. Their brightness was astonishing, but I am having a little difficulty telling how it is done. The surface seems to be emitting the light.
This has got to be something for extremely deep water to have lights as bright as these, real dark…
I could see something on the faceplate, various lighted shapes were being shown on it. This was definitely some operating data, showing various symbols in various corners of the faceplate. It was odd that I could not see thru the faceplate, just the symbols flashing around the faceplate.
This is a structured display like nothing that I have ever seen…why can’t you see inside the helmet?
So, I reached out with both hands and picked up the helmet. The familiar blue electrical arc reached out and made contact with the middle finger on my right hand. The little zap was expected this time, it was not so bad. It still made my finger jump more than I was expecting.
With it firmly held between both of my hands, I rolled it forward, so I could look through the bottom opening.
“WOW!”, I said.
What I was seeing on the outside could not even hold a candle to what I am seeing now. There was an intense glow coming from the faceplate and I can see several icon, symbolic looking items. I do not think that I can read them, they’re kind of small.
How are they doing this?
The intense glow was the view looking out from the inside of the helmet. I could not believe what I was seeing. Some kind of variable light imaging technology, it did not look like night vision, I have seen that before. I could see the interior door through it, it glows green around the perimeter.
If only I could get my head in there… this was some pretty high tech equipment here… bright lights and a dark windowed shield, it does not make sense…
So far, I have been looking inside of the helmet, trying to see something of importance and it never came to me to really look at the helmet. Moreover, the bottom surface of the helmet, until now.
It is alive…
There seems to be a mussel like wiggling creature living along the edge of the helmet. What I can see, closely resembles the edge of an abalone around its shell. And it is moving in gentle waves around the opening. The outer surface looks as if it is its shell. Must be the reason for the beautiful but odd texture and coloration in the surface. There, I can see its mussel like… whatever you are… it looks like it has griped onto the inner shell of the helmet.
I bring my finger up to touch it and the mussel seems to react. It reached for me, anticipating me touching it. I pull back reflexively.
How grouse. Wow, they put a living helmet on their heads… I am not touching that thing again…
Interesting, holding it in my hands I can feel a slight vibration coming from somewhere inside.
Must be some kind of fan in there … somewhere…
I twisted the helmet around to get a better view on the display.
I got the best view that I could. I could not read the information on the display, it was definitely showing a language, but not one that I understood. In fact, I have seen many written languages, I think it is kind of elegant the waving and special characters that are used in them. Take most oriental languages, they are almost works of art than a written language, I think that they are absolutely beautiful. But this was nothing like I have ever seen before. Some of it had oriental characteristics with an artful flair, but it was not Japanese, Chinese, Cambodian, or any other language that I have seen written. Others were very symbolic in nature. And one of those characters caught my attention. It was an upside-down triangle that had a solid circle in it. But it was more than that. The triangle was made of three smaller solid triangles, each creating a point in the bigger triangle. There was such detail in it. The center circle was pulsing in a red color.
Red of all colors. I would only use red if there were an issue or something that needed attention. This had to be some kind of warning to some kind of a problem, but what was the problem?
I looked down at where I lifted the helmet off of, there was a wiggling pink ring where the helmet sat. It might be some kind of a seat for it, I thought. I went to place the helmet back on this seat that I took it off a few seconds before. Call me crazy, but as I neared the seat it jumped out of my hands and reseated itself. I stood and stared down at the helmet as it adjusted itself rotating side to side on the seat until it came firmly in contact with it and stopped. Then the lights and display slowly dimmed to darkness, obviously shutting down.
I startled myself again and jumped as the backpack drew my attention as it purred down. Wetness check again, no I’m still OK. It is not that I know what I am going to do if, well when I wet myself. I am just aware of the thought that it might happen.
As I collected myself, the flashing red symbol kept running through my head. I looked around the room, past the row of suiting stations another time trying to see if they have a … ah! there it is. I had caught sight of an interface panel near the airlock looking doorway. I moved closer to it to see it closer. I did not see any controls or knobs or buttons anywhere on it. It just looked like a smooth surface. I turned my attention to the portal in the doorway. I casually looked through it and there was another smaller room on the other side of it, as I suspected, it was the airlock. I could see the outside door now, it was made of a single window that looked to bulge inward. And through the door leading outside the ship.
… outside the ship …
… Ah …
Outside the ship I see stars …
I stood there in astonishment with my gaze focused out the inner door porthole, I am sure that it was long enough that drool started to run down my chin. Yes, my mouth is open, better close it, and I snapped closed my jaw.
I watched intently, to insure that what I was seeing was really what I was seeing. I focused on a light. It was blinking just like a star would. I expand my sight and I see a star constellation right out there beyond the door, it kind of looks like Orion’s belt. Yes, there are the three stars in a kind of crooked line. I was having trouble as I could not see enough from my vantage point, but as I concentrated on the surrounding stars … I believe that this is Orion’s belt. I could see more stars. These ones I do not know of and did not look familiar. I never did very much star recognition, just browsing through encyclopedias and seeing some fold out from the middle of the book. I never really spent a lot of time memorizing information like this, boy do I feel foolish and needy now for this. If I only had known then that I would need this information now, well so much for hind sight.
I am in space … these suits are not underwater gear they’re space suits. Looking back at one of the suits, “for very small people” I said aloud.
WOW! I returned my gaze outside of the ship. Realizing that I am on a space ship I just stood there and gazed.
I do not know for how long I just stood there looking at the great beyond. How did I get here?
I started to rethink my last steps and pulled back from the portal. A whish of a sound happened right beside me. A panel unfolded from the wall. It was in two sections. The one above looked to be some sort of display and the lower one, more horizontal, could be in the input area, a keyboard possibly. Both were solid black in color, you could not see through them.
Feeling a chill up my back I spun around quickly to see if there was someone that was about to scare me by touching my shoulder.
… But there was no one there …
… Fear …
Fear had started to crawl through me. My senses were now running on overload as I spun around, not knowing what I will see or find. Fear was taking more of a grip on me and I think that I felt a breeze across my right ear, so I spun around again.
But this time I brushed my hand across the console. Another activation spark brought me back to my senses, which made the console illuminate.
I looked down at the console, wondering how WSIWYG this device would be. Most of the console was dimmed except for one icon at the upper left corner of the panel. I touched it. The panel came to life, symbols appeared on it and moved across and around it until they lined up and stopped moving. “Well so far so good” I said.
The screen immediately started displaying a larger symbol of the red one that I saw in the helmet. Same three triangles and the flashing center circle. This is bad. I believe that something is trying to tell me that there is a problem here.
Still shaken from the discovery I thought that I felt the wisp of air blow by my ear again. I was startled again and spun around not knowing what to expect, there was nothing there. Just my nerves falling all about the place. I need to get a grip …
I regained my composure and turned back to the console. I searched the console for something intuitive, but I found very little, it all looked like gibberish to me.
The display was displaying several lines of symbols, most were darker in color. They started from the right side of the display the extended to the left. The lit up one was the suspected warning symbol. No wait, there were three others that were illuminated more to its left, but they were not flashing red. I gathered my nerve and gently touched the first one to the left of the warning symbol.
“I really hope that this is not the emergency door open button” I whispered under my tongue.
Fear started to come up within me again. then the display changed to some kind of view of a ship and I calmed down. I looked back at the airlock door, it was still closed. The display was showing a side view of a ship of some configuration, and it was big. It looked like a very fat cigar. There was a flashing blue light that was showing some location in this ship. Just as I was focusing on the blue light the ship on the display began to rotate on the screen. It rolled up, so I was looking at the top view of the ship. The image blinked, and a curved section disappeared from the side of it. As the view rolled around I was able to see the damage much better. It was a as if something took a giant bite out of the ship removing maybe a third in the center section of the ship. It was probably lucky that it was even holding together as it was. There were many flashing lights around the edge of the missing area of the ship.
And then there is this blue light, still flashing away. I put my finger up to the screen and it focused closer on the area of the ship. As it continued to rotate it kept focused on this area. I think that this is me and where I am in this … ah … ship.
Man, it’s was a big ship.
I saw a symbol that looked like a sun showing on the upper corner of the screen. Hoping that I do not do something wrong or that I would regret in my after life, I closed my eyes and touched the sun character. The view returned to the full ship still rotating on the display. Then it rotated to an isometric view of the ship and leaders with a symbol that looked like the letter “R” but backwards, sat the end of them showed up pointing at the damaged areas. There were more than you could count.
Before I touched another item, I stopped and thought about what I was doing. Reality check: I stated the facts.
• I have no idea where I am. And I mean this in multiple contexts.
• I have no memory of how I got here.
• I am in outer space. WOW!!! This is something that everyone must think about at some time in their life, and I am actually there. A smile comes to my face just thinking about this idea.
• I am in a changing area connected to an airlock that can let you go outside of the ship.
• There are many spacesuits with air tanks, nothing in my size.
• I have found a console that I can communicate with the ship.
• The ship looks to be having a titanic sized event. Not good!
• I do not know the language that is used on the console, the language of these people.
• I am messing around with items on the console, wait … what!
It is not that I have not had repeating dreams, I have. Some even were repeating and giving me a longer look at the reality, a little more every time I had them. But none were ever like the one that I am going to present to you today.
This story is based on a series of dreams that I was having over a time period, of roughly six months. The fact that it was the same dream would not have bothered me as much. But with this series, I continued on from a previous point. It was a whole other lifeline of which I have nothing to compare. And it progressed, as in the next time I dreamt it, it took over from a point after the point in which I left it. It was like time in this reality/dream progressed in time the same as it is in this reality. If a day passes here on our planet, it also passes the same in the dream. If I did not have the dream in consecutive nights, the next time I entered the dream the same amount of time had passed.
It was a parallel timeline/reality that I was experiencing, here in this reality while I was awake and in the other reality while I slept, I was there. Real Time! It was not compressed into a single dream.
I regress …
Since this dream fascinated me so, I kept tabs on it. I wrote as fast as my nimble fingers allowed me to. I tried very hard to document each and every item as I found them, so I could use this information later. But that was not all. I did research in between each dream session. Sometimes it was minor, but as you will find out as you read, I find out many fascinating facets of what I am dreaming.
I will not go into any detail at this time, but this is for you to know, in between each chapter of the story has my research/blurb that I preformed, here in this reality, using the internet.
I fell asleep one night, and this is what I dreamed …
Chapter 1
Here I am! Hey, where is everybody!
Here I am! Hey, where is everybody!
Have you ever had one of those moments where you are somewhere, but you have no idea how you got there? And I am not talking about that short-term memory loss like when you have been driving too long and can’t remember the last few miles. No this is more serious in the manor that you can’t quite remember the last thing that you do remember. This is one of those moments.
My eyes open, awaking for the day. I am lying on the firm and hard floor, on my side, as if I was sleeping. I have had to do this on a camping trip or two when I forgot my air mattress. Always waking up sore and aching even after a few minutes or an hour. I was young, and my stature would regain quickly. I was not this way here, and it led me to believe that I was not laying like this for long.
I sat up and immediately felt dizzy, kind of fuzzy, not being able to focus on anything yet. Clarity came to me and I find myself in an odd shaped room, of a sort. No, wait, it is not a room but looks more like a chamber of a ship.
Now, I never go into a situation where I do not have some level of control. And it is not like me to not understand where I am.
The chamber was not like a room with square corners and flat walls. The chamber flowed together from floor to wall and then onto the roof, curves transitioned each face of the chamber. Some even look like they were possibly hand formed to make the curvature that I was seeing.
The chamber was twice in length than in width. It had some kind of doorways in each end of it. not a common door either, they looked more like something that I saw on military ships. The closer doorway seemed to have a visible sealing edge around the door, possibly capable of withstanding different pressures on both sides of the door, I suspect. It could have been a watertight doorway to contain different chambers inside the ship. Something like these could be closed and secured if they started to take on water, I was pretty confident of that.
The fuzzy feeling is calming down now, and I can see clearer now. This place…this place, it is not right for me. I mean this place is not like anything that I would call normal, I think. I should not be here, wherever here is.
I gave myself a quick scan to make sure that I am not injured in some way. No, arms are moving… hands can flex… I do not see any problems down my torso… hips and legs look fine… feet, yep I can wiggle my toes…no issues here. So, I stood up.
Where am I again? I do not like this not knowing!
I turn toward the opposing door and it is unlike the first doorway. It was more robust, and there was a small round window, a portal I suspect. The framework around the door was built up more than the opposing door, this must be an exterior door, to the outside out of the ship.
Down each side of the chamber were several alcoves, possibly some sort of staging area. I can see what looks to be full body suits and helmets hanging in each alcove. The helmet was very robust looking, I would say that they are some kind of deep-water diving suits, but nothing like I have ever seen before.
Wait a minute how did I get to be here… I must have come through the door behind me… I do not remember that.
I turned toward one of the alcoves. The step felt weird, almost as if I was in a different gravity that was normal to me. Made my knee feel like it was soft, a different barometric pressure maybe, I was not too sure. With each step feeling strange, I was kind of bouncing with each stride.
In the alcove was the helmet, a suit and a hard backpack, of a sort. The backpack had a solid exterior, looked kind of like an inside out abalone shell, shimmering as I changed my viewing angle to it. I reached out to it to touch it and got a static shock off of it. Then it started humming, almost like a soft purring of a cat. My hand pulled back instinctively.
“I must be under water,” I murmured softly.
The shock brought my senses to full alert. I would never put myself in a place like this… then who did? And for what purpose?
I turned my attention to the suit hanging in front of me, roughly measuring myself up against its size. Laughing to myself, “It doesn’t look like I will be able to put this one on” I said softly to myself. The suit looked like it would fit a three to four-foot tall individual, a child sized suit. Unfortunately, my physique was heavy set and six foot, two inches tall.
So, some petite midget has kidnapped me and left me here. Somehow that does not seem very likely.
I stepped back a little and examined the other suits in the rest of the alcoves. They were all the same size.
“Well no more desserts for me anymore” I exclaimed to myself.
I am not fitting in this suit. It seems my captor did not want me to leave this… place… where ever that is.
I counted the alcoves around the room, there were ten, twelve, sixteen, no twenty stations in this room, ten on each long wall. All of the stations had their equipment, none of them were being used.
It dawned on me that I was in some kind of changing chamber where you could put on one of these suits and go outside of the ship. I have seen something similar on submarines. Although this was a grand sized one to have a setup for twenty people at once.
So, I could be dealing with twenty or more captors… child-sized captors. What if they are not my captor but having saved me instead? I am starting to confuse me… Do not get too far ahead of yourself.
I stood back, righting my mind. I was in a chamber, possibly inside of a ship. A door that leads outside the ship at one end and the opposing door that looks to leads deeper into the ship. The door that I suspected lead outside of the ship had the only interface that I could see. A small control panel on the side of the heavy doorframe.
“But outside to where” I exclaimed aloud. My gaze was fixed on the doorway with the small portal at far end of the chamber.
So here are the facts. I have been put in a chamber that it does not look like I can get out of. The inner door is a serious door but is lighter in construction than the other door. It looks like someone is constraining me to this place…and if this room is of any indication, there are many of them…
I drew my attention back to the alcove and focusing on the helmet. The exterior seemed to be similar to that of the tank hanging behind it. It was very smooth and contoured. The faceplate had a definite look of being able to withstand very high pressures. The odd item with it was that you could not see thru the faceplate to the interior. Not mirrored but blocked by some means. From the general size of it, it also looked as if it was made for a child. Although it does look like it is solid enough. I mean, from the appearance of this I would have to say that it was very much able to contain an atmosphere in it. In fact, it looks damn good if you ask me.
I steadied myself, reached to touch this item, kind of expecting it to … ah I do not know what I am expecting it to do. Again, I felt another shock, softer than the one I got from the tank. But instead of making a purring noise it lit up. I could see a HUD lighting up on the faceplate and other interior lights. Then lights on the front of the helmet started to illuminate through the odd surface. I had seen no definition of them being there before.
The lights startled me, I put my right hand on my chest. I could feel my heart rate racing. Righting myself and checking if I … ah, you know wet myself. I had pulled my right hand down and grabbed my crotch area, no not this time.
I always joked with myself about being incontinent in a situation like this, I am approaching fifty now, and things like this happen to men as they age.
The lights on the helmet called my attention back to the situation. Their brightness was astonishing, but I am having a little difficulty telling how it is done. The surface seems to be emitting the light.
This has got to be something for extremely deep water to have lights as bright as these, real dark…
I could see something on the faceplate, various lighted shapes were being shown on it. This was definitely some operating data, showing various symbols in various corners of the faceplate. It was odd that I could not see thru the faceplate, just the symbols flashing around the faceplate.
This is a structured display like nothing that I have ever seen…why can’t you see inside the helmet?
So, I reached out with both hands and picked up the helmet. The familiar blue electrical arc reached out and made contact with the middle finger on my right hand. The little zap was expected this time, it was not so bad. It still made my finger jump more than I was expecting.
With it firmly held between both of my hands, I rolled it forward, so I could look through the bottom opening.
“WOW!”, I said.
What I was seeing on the outside could not even hold a candle to what I am seeing now. There was an intense glow coming from the faceplate and I can see several icon, symbolic looking items. I do not think that I can read them, they’re kind of small.
How are they doing this?
The intense glow was the view looking out from the inside of the helmet. I could not believe what I was seeing. Some kind of variable light imaging technology, it did not look like night vision, I have seen that before. I could see the interior door through it, it glows green around the perimeter.
If only I could get my head in there… this was some pretty high tech equipment here… bright lights and a dark windowed shield, it does not make sense…
So far, I have been looking inside of the helmet, trying to see something of importance and it never came to me to really look at the helmet. Moreover, the bottom surface of the helmet, until now.
It is alive…
There seems to be a mussel like wiggling creature living along the edge of the helmet. What I can see, closely resembles the edge of an abalone around its shell. And it is moving in gentle waves around the opening. The outer surface looks as if it is its shell. Must be the reason for the beautiful but odd texture and coloration in the surface. There, I can see its mussel like… whatever you are… it looks like it has griped onto the inner shell of the helmet.
I bring my finger up to touch it and the mussel seems to react. It reached for me, anticipating me touching it. I pull back reflexively.
How grouse. Wow, they put a living helmet on their heads… I am not touching that thing again…
Interesting, holding it in my hands I can feel a slight vibration coming from somewhere inside.
Must be some kind of fan in there … somewhere…
I twisted the helmet around to get a better view on the display.
I got the best view that I could. I could not read the information on the display, it was definitely showing a language, but not one that I understood. In fact, I have seen many written languages, I think it is kind of elegant the waving and special characters that are used in them. Take most oriental languages, they are almost works of art than a written language, I think that they are absolutely beautiful. But this was nothing like I have ever seen before. Some of it had oriental characteristics with an artful flair, but it was not Japanese, Chinese, Cambodian, or any other language that I have seen written. Others were very symbolic in nature. And one of those characters caught my attention. It was an upside-down triangle that had a solid circle in it. But it was more than that. The triangle was made of three smaller solid triangles, each creating a point in the bigger triangle. There was such detail in it. The center circle was pulsing in a red color.
Red of all colors. I would only use red if there were an issue or something that needed attention. This had to be some kind of warning to some kind of a problem, but what was the problem?
I looked down at where I lifted the helmet off of, there was a wiggling pink ring where the helmet sat. It might be some kind of a seat for it, I thought. I went to place the helmet back on this seat that I took it off a few seconds before. Call me crazy, but as I neared the seat it jumped out of my hands and reseated itself. I stood and stared down at the helmet as it adjusted itself rotating side to side on the seat until it came firmly in contact with it and stopped. Then the lights and display slowly dimmed to darkness, obviously shutting down.
I startled myself again and jumped as the backpack drew my attention as it purred down. Wetness check again, no I’m still OK. It is not that I know what I am going to do if, well when I wet myself. I am just aware of the thought that it might happen.
As I collected myself, the flashing red symbol kept running through my head. I looked around the room, past the row of suiting stations another time trying to see if they have a … ah! there it is. I had caught sight of an interface panel near the airlock looking doorway. I moved closer to it to see it closer. I did not see any controls or knobs or buttons anywhere on it. It just looked like a smooth surface. I turned my attention to the portal in the doorway. I casually looked through it and there was another smaller room on the other side of it, as I suspected, it was the airlock. I could see the outside door now, it was made of a single window that looked to bulge inward. And through the door leading outside the ship.
… outside the ship …
… Ah …
Outside the ship I see stars …
I stood there in astonishment with my gaze focused out the inner door porthole, I am sure that it was long enough that drool started to run down my chin. Yes, my mouth is open, better close it, and I snapped closed my jaw.
I watched intently, to insure that what I was seeing was really what I was seeing. I focused on a light. It was blinking just like a star would. I expand my sight and I see a star constellation right out there beyond the door, it kind of looks like Orion’s belt. Yes, there are the three stars in a kind of crooked line. I was having trouble as I could not see enough from my vantage point, but as I concentrated on the surrounding stars … I believe that this is Orion’s belt. I could see more stars. These ones I do not know of and did not look familiar. I never did very much star recognition, just browsing through encyclopedias and seeing some fold out from the middle of the book. I never really spent a lot of time memorizing information like this, boy do I feel foolish and needy now for this. If I only had known then that I would need this information now, well so much for hind sight.
I am in space … these suits are not underwater gear they’re space suits. Looking back at one of the suits, “for very small people” I said aloud.
WOW! I returned my gaze outside of the ship. Realizing that I am on a space ship I just stood there and gazed.
I do not know for how long I just stood there looking at the great beyond. How did I get here?
I started to rethink my last steps and pulled back from the portal. A whish of a sound happened right beside me. A panel unfolded from the wall. It was in two sections. The one above looked to be some sort of display and the lower one, more horizontal, could be in the input area, a keyboard possibly. Both were solid black in color, you could not see through them.
Feeling a chill up my back I spun around quickly to see if there was someone that was about to scare me by touching my shoulder.
… But there was no one there …
… Fear …
Fear had started to crawl through me. My senses were now running on overload as I spun around, not knowing what I will see or find. Fear was taking more of a grip on me and I think that I felt a breeze across my right ear, so I spun around again.
But this time I brushed my hand across the console. Another activation spark brought me back to my senses, which made the console illuminate.
I looked down at the console, wondering how WSIWYG this device would be. Most of the console was dimmed except for one icon at the upper left corner of the panel. I touched it. The panel came to life, symbols appeared on it and moved across and around it until they lined up and stopped moving. “Well so far so good” I said.
The screen immediately started displaying a larger symbol of the red one that I saw in the helmet. Same three triangles and the flashing center circle. This is bad. I believe that something is trying to tell me that there is a problem here.
Still shaken from the discovery I thought that I felt the wisp of air blow by my ear again. I was startled again and spun around not knowing what to expect, there was nothing there. Just my nerves falling all about the place. I need to get a grip …
I regained my composure and turned back to the console. I searched the console for something intuitive, but I found very little, it all looked like gibberish to me.
The display was displaying several lines of symbols, most were darker in color. They started from the right side of the display the extended to the left. The lit up one was the suspected warning symbol. No wait, there were three others that were illuminated more to its left, but they were not flashing red. I gathered my nerve and gently touched the first one to the left of the warning symbol.
“I really hope that this is not the emergency door open button” I whispered under my tongue.
Fear started to come up within me again. then the display changed to some kind of view of a ship and I calmed down. I looked back at the airlock door, it was still closed. The display was showing a side view of a ship of some configuration, and it was big. It looked like a very fat cigar. There was a flashing blue light that was showing some location in this ship. Just as I was focusing on the blue light the ship on the display began to rotate on the screen. It rolled up, so I was looking at the top view of the ship. The image blinked, and a curved section disappeared from the side of it. As the view rolled around I was able to see the damage much better. It was a as if something took a giant bite out of the ship removing maybe a third in the center section of the ship. It was probably lucky that it was even holding together as it was. There were many flashing lights around the edge of the missing area of the ship.
And then there is this blue light, still flashing away. I put my finger up to the screen and it focused closer on the area of the ship. As it continued to rotate it kept focused on this area. I think that this is me and where I am in this … ah … ship.
Man, it’s was a big ship.
I saw a symbol that looked like a sun showing on the upper corner of the screen. Hoping that I do not do something wrong or that I would regret in my after life, I closed my eyes and touched the sun character. The view returned to the full ship still rotating on the display. Then it rotated to an isometric view of the ship and leaders with a symbol that looked like the letter “R” but backwards, sat the end of them showed up pointing at the damaged areas. There were more than you could count.
Before I touched another item, I stopped and thought about what I was doing. Reality check: I stated the facts.
• I have no idea where I am. And I mean this in multiple contexts.
• I have no memory of how I got here.
• I am in outer space. WOW!!! This is something that everyone must think about at some time in their life, and I am actually there. A smile comes to my face just thinking about this idea.
• I am in a changing area connected to an airlock that can let you go outside of the ship.
• There are many spacesuits with air tanks, nothing in my size.
• I have found a console that I can communicate with the ship.
• The ship looks to be having a titanic sized event. Not good!
• I do not know the language that is used on the console, the language of these people.
• I am messing around with items on the console, wait … what!