Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Which brings up to Ghost Weeks (5).
Today is March 9, 2011. It is rainy. It will rain more tonight, perhaps thunderstorms. Much farther to the south a line of tornado-prone weather is push across Alabama and Georgia.
As I mentioned before, a lot of reality peeks through the medical sedation. I had to do some thinking about why this was so - that and some real-life politics got first priority.
Anyway, I offer my best understanding of why sometimes the dreams were almost-real...and at others times freakishly (or comically) not so.
Meanwhile back in the second person, where last time you had just been knocked out with morphine...
“Keep our secrets and we will keep you our friend. Remember this if nothing else.”
Then you fade to darkness but before you go you hear one last thing.
“Much harder tests await you now.”
You hear voices. You see backlit forms move to your right. There are occasional announcements over a speaker – perhaps from the television monitors in front of you on the wall.
You are in a reclining position. You feel intoxicated. What did you drink? You actually do not remember Mr. Wei’s giving you a morphine shot in the neck. You do feel a strange pain in your neck. You reach up but something holds you back. You cannot reach so high. So weak. Your hand flops down on the armrest.
The lighting is low and amber. There are small ceiling lights, barely on. Something pings and chirps and whirs. Game machines, perhaps. There seems to be a party going on to your front and left; you are tucked away in a dark corner away from it. Sometimes an outburst or laugh cuts through the dullness.
A couple of women come near, talking over you as if you are not even there. It is rather insulting. Hello? But you cannot talk, you are half-asleep. Need to sleep off whatever this is.
You turn what little attention you are capable of toward the wall displays. Heh, it’s an online auction... very fine vases, prints, jewelry...all top-notch stuff. The bids are listed in the flying numbers in the corners. You feel a remote control nearby, glance at it. OK, you are thinking to yourself, if I aim this… and …
BID ACCEPTED FROM REMOTE 1007.
You glance at the amount indicated. 80,000. You’re pretty sure that even if that’s is in yuan, that’s a lot of money. Oops.
Someone comes in. It is the two women again. They are very well dressed, in red and gold, respectively. They are very beautiful. And very cross. The remote is taken away. The numbers change. Some series of tones indicates a cancelled bid. The women have a heated discussion.
“If he’s so active, maybe we should bring him up.”
You try to move. You want to be awake not asleep!
“No! We need to increase the dosage. Oh – now look! He is agitated!”
“OK, but we were told not too much.”
It dawns on you that you are not here of your own free will. That you might be a prisoner… then… oh, that’s nice. Suddenly you do not mind the cords that seem to be wrapped around you.
“OK, that’s done. He’ll rest now.”
Fade to deeper medical sedation.
_
There are levels of sedation, levels of awareness within the coma. You are introduced to the truth of this. You will later learn that sometimes the sedation dosage is altered on diurnal basis or as needed before and after the various surgeries. You are eventually told you were revived briefly from time to time, to see if you were ready for consciousness.
Your mind functions differently depending on the dosages. Your dreams have always been very realistic all your life – you do not have flying dreams. You do not see things in impossible colors. People do not change forms before your eyes. You do not change form. The world is never black and white, you never see God or relatives of same, and the dream calendar year is rarely if ever different from the actual one.
Throw all of that out the window.
Some of the experiences are actually informative – you realize that during a curious simple dream involving nothing but a conic of red sparks that perfect information and perfect identity are mutually exclusive. That, in a sense, knowing everything is a path is annihilation…or nirvana. It is, as you know right in that moment – a fast train to insanity. .. that the paranoia threatening to overcome you WILL do so.
But paranoia is what you feel at this point in the coma dreams. Somehow, you are recognizing more and more that you are not in control of your body, that you are confined – sometimes a bed, sometimes seated upright. The scenes vary.
A young blonde woman is checking on you. It is sinking in that perhaps you are ill. For some reason you think she is the singer Jewel and ask why she has changed careers and become a nurse. So you know you are in a place that has nurses. She laughs says her name is Courtney. Courtney Love is a nurse too? More laughter. Then she fades into that backlit place where the party never stops. Only now it feels like you are behind the bar of a restaurant.
You doze off within the dozing. This time it’s an actual dream, though bound by the rules of the coma. You are in a room you know to be your home – however it is a very different styled home than the one you thought you had. This one…is elsewhere. You know, somehow… this is Asia. You are just not sure why or how it should be so.
Your younger son is being himself, marching in and out of the room making play-acting noises. You would like for him to stop.
Your older son is nearby. He is grabbing your hand. “Get up, Dad.” He is just staring coldly. “OK, just pull your hand free of mine if you can. Come on you can do it.. you just don’t want to!”
You try. You cannot. You are dismayed.
He snorts dismissively. “No…you can’t even do that.”
“Where is your mother?” You ask, though you can hear her in the other room, talking to people.
“You’re very sick. She’s talking to the doctor. She’s pretty upset but now you’re here you’ll make it alright.”
He walks off. You call for him. He looks back, frowns, and walks away.
_
You wake up, a firm hard grip on your wrist. You are pulling against it feebly. It is a young man, very strong. His hand fits easily around your wrist. It is not squeezing painfully but he is not letting go.
“Let me go please,” you ask.
“Just a few moments,” he says.
You glance to the light in the left. Courtney is there in the distance. Maybe she can help. Who IS this guy? You do not like him at all.
He is in the way of the light. He looks over his shoulder to talk to Courtney. He is telling her that he has this under control, and wishing her good night. She leaves.
You are very disappointed and afraid.
Your wrist is released. You are quite cross about it. “Why did you have to do that?”
He apologizes and then offers an explanation. (There may or may not have been a real explanation but you are so sedated even by being-sedated terms that you botch it completely – to the point you even know you are not hearing it right as it happens.) What was his explanation, you ask? Apparently, all the nurses that night were former professional musicians, in this guy’s case a one-hit country wonder – he even shows you a CD cover he keeps in his pocket. Apparently he had the fate of child actors – hit the Country charts at age seventeen, peaked by nineteen… did studio work through his mid-twenties… and then nursing school and at age 28, stuck in the ICU Ward of Lost Dreams…with Jewel and Courtney Love (no, it’s not really them but you don’t quite know that yet).
At which point it occurs to you…Uh oh. I’m actually very sick here. What exactly happened?
_
More dreams in the coma dream. One is kind of nice but rather racy. You end up in a tiki bar near a marina in the Caribbean. There are lots of boats and people dressed for warm weather. It is evening. Drinks are being served. Since it is an actual dream you can actual move about – stand, drink, talk coherently, the works. You’re there for a reunion of college friends. Thing is – you have no clue who any of these people are. They’re vaguely from you alma mater but you are wondering…no… something or someone is missing. You find a restroom and wash your face. You look in the mirror…. Hey…it’s you, only significantly younger in a kind of clubby attire you just never got good at wearing. Nice three day shadow going on too. Some nagging voice says go out to the bar. You do. You notice there is a pay phone. You notice there is a phone book. You notice music videos are playing on the television.
No, not the Caribbean, but close, really close. Try Bay of Biscayne. Yes, that’s right,
You are in mid-1980s Miami, dressed like Don Johnson.
You contemplate looking into buying some Apple stock and holding it for 20 years, when the group you are with (but do not really know at all) motions that it is time to get on the charter yacht. The party is taking a tour.
Sure, why not?
_
Sometime later, you are not quite sure how, the location is not Miami. Now it’s Brazil. The big sugarloaf shaped mountain there and the barely visible Christ statue way over there are big clues. That and everyone is speaking Portuguese. Even when they are speaking English, they are speaking Portuguese. Since you have never ever learned more than a few words of the language, ever, in any state of consciousness, this is a disorienting experience.
Well, it would be if you had time to stop and talk to people. You don’t – you see, you are being hunted by the triads. (Remember this is a dream within a dream! You’re worried and properly so that you won’t stay in their good graces!) And, since you are someone who had some exposure to pulp and anime and worst of all, Kurt Russell and Kim Catrall in Big Trouble in Little China, your nightmare-assassins come with … you guessed it …special powers!
Alas, for some strange reason your sedated subconscious did not see fit to grant you any special powers. Bad subconscious!
Short form: You run. A lot. You desperately look for weapons. Where to go looking…. Ah! In an absolutely righteous go-right-where-surely-they-have-posted –a guard genius move… you go straight to their lair, where you find a wall chock full of Asian maces, knives, axes and swords (none of which you are competent to gaze at never mind wield). Perhaps that short wrapped-foil sword there with the black handle… you select it.
Oddly enough, picking the one truly valuable item on the wall sets off an alarm. You are quickly confronted by four Cardinal Direction-named agents that go by Nan, Bei, Shan, Jiang that have elemental powers too (Fire, Air, Water and Earth, respectively). They don’t do a lot of talking. The talker, gratefully in English, is a short thin woman with no name who makes it clear that you are not their actual target.
They’re after a list of emerging special-powers children. Lucky you – your oldest son just happens to be among them.
They need you as bait before he joins ... (this was the last movie you saw with your family before you got sick)... G.I. Joe.
Hoo, boy. (To be continued)