I dreamed I travelled into space with the team of engineers from my very first job out of college. The others had all been before, but this was my first trip. Dozens of us were seated on benches in a big lobby sort of room, where everything looked like an oil rig, with steel pipe and girders and panels, painted dark blue with bright yellow accents. We were strapped to the benches, and the whole rig lifted off into space.
There were wide glass windows behind some of the panels. The steel slid back as we rose above the earth, and I could see the blue curve of oceans falling away, beneath clouds turned rosy by the sun sliding out over them from behind the planet as we left Earth behind. Stars began to shimmer in the darkness around us. There was the thick belt of the Milky Way, but we turned away from it. Against the darkness now I could see a shaft jutting out from below the window, a long spar of triangular truss work. The far end slid slowly into alignment with a constellation of three bright stars, until the stars gleamed st the apex of each point, and someone leaned over and explained that this meant we were heading right. This was the Delta Path, navigated by this heading.
The rest of my group was in Squad 1, and went up to the cafeteria 15 minutes before me, as I was in Squad 2. They said I could come. Eat in their lunchroom, I just couldn’t go up to the galleys until my squad was called. But that when it was, I needed to go to the back staircase, up onto e floor, then over two halls to the left. I went up when my squad was called, but I couldn’t find my group in any of the dining halls.
I wandered for a bit, until I found a large dark room with only a few people standing around. Three of them were from my group, so I went to join them. They gave me an orange jumpsuit to put on over my blue coveralls, like the ones they all were wearing. I watched nervously as one of my friends stretched out on what looked like an old-fashioned dentist’s chair.
The chair was padded with an orange foam made up of a sort of triangular honeycomb of memory polymer. The operators bound my friend to the chair with a thick sort of ragged cord that looked like it was loosely woven of seaweed. It was a bright greenish yellow, with tufts of frayed fiber sticking out all along its length. Once he was tied down, they used a hose to soak my friend down with a clear, pale blue-purple serum. When he opened his eyes, his stare was blank and glassy. He got up from the chair and left the room. One by one my other coworkers laid down in the chair and got doused and left. Then it was my turn.
I laid down in the chair and tried to relax. They bound the chord around me, and I thought it would feel rough, but it was soft and feathery, though strong. I was reasonably comfortable, lying on the foam, and the air was dry and fresh smelling, in spite of the dank look of the walls and the pools of serum. My orange suit rustled a bit when I moved, but that was the only sound as the serum coated my feet, then my legs, then my torso. As it poured over my face, it didn’t feel wet, or hot or cold, or anything at all. But it seemed to permeate my pores and flow into my eyes and nose, though I could still see and breathe.
Then, there was someone else there, inside me, and myself me went into a little glass box. I could see and hear and feel everything around me, and I knew the thoughts of the other mind within mine, but I had no agency. The other mind was in charge.
As I got up and walked out of the room, I learned that this was a specialist that was needed for the work we were doing in space, and that this was the only way to get their expertise to the work site. None of it was permanent, nor meant to be sinister. And really, knowing the mind within my own, I could see the truth of it, and felt very safe.
The technician I was hosting explained it all, and began to tell me about the movie that was in the making that would tell the story of the work we were doing and how it would be accomplished. They’d gotten some big name stars. Mark Ruffalo was going to be playing the role of the green feather rope! And then I woke up.
