Time(Suspended): Jonathan's (Not So) Wonderful Dream
The dream:
Jonathan sat atop a high mountain. There were no trees at that altitude. The top of the mountain was smooth as glass...like obsidian, if you know what that is. Jonathan was so high up that he couldn't see down. All he could see was sky and a couple of clouds...and a pterodactyl circling lazily overhead. It was a young pterodactyl, you could tell. It had just learned to fly and it was having a wonderful time doing it. It wasn't terribly good at it, though. Several times, it appeared that the pterodactyl was about to fall from the sky...then it caught itself and soared on. It was unnerving, watching a pterodactyl practice flying.
Jonathan lay back and closed his eyes...a mistake. This was what the pterodactyl had been waiting for. No sooner had Jonathan's eyes closed than the pterodactyl folded its wings next to its body and dove. It had plans for Jonathan!
Jonathan saw this happen because this was a dream and how else would he know what was going on if he couldn't see through his eyelids? It's like watching yourself on TV. (It's why actors are schizophrenic.) In a flash, Jonathan jumped up and began to run. He was like a field mouse with a hawk overhead. If there'd been a hole to jump into, he'd have jumped into it. There wasn't. Soon, Jonathan was at the edge of the mountain. The pterodactyl was right above him, dropping like a bent spear.
Jonathan's choices were really limited at that moment. With a cry to bolster his courage, he leaped from the mountain and slid down the smooth obsidian slope. Before him, a crevice opened up. Schluup! He was in it! Just in time, too. The pterodactyl almost had him!
Now, it was the pterodactyl who had the problem. He was young. He was never too sure about this business of pulling out of a dive, grabbing a victim, and swooping back into the sky. He was hoping it would come to him. It almost did, but then his victim disappeared into a crevice and threw the whole thing off! Crash! He hit the side of the obsidian mountain and bounced down the slope in a flurry of Jurassic Era scales and that's the last we will see of that particular pterodactyl.
Jonathan, meanwhile, slid deeper into the crevice. On every side of him there were sparks, flashes, and gleams. He knew immediately that he was inside the big, people eliminating computer. Oh, boy. He'd been sitting on top of the thing! Now, he was sitting in the thing! He had escaped a flying dinosaur by jumping into an electric chair!
Ahead of him, he saw a dazzling light. There was a brightly lit cave at the end of his tunnel. The cave grew in size as he slid towards it. It appeared to be nothing but sparks and flashes and flying numbers, though. Lightning bolts flew across the cave whenever they wanted to. Huge blue arcs of electricity leaped from wall to wall. As Jonathan slid ever closer (and faster), the cave became a big room. Overhead were a million strobe lights popping and flashing. The floor of the room was nothing but a huge glow. Jonathan wasn't even sure there was a floor--could've been nothing but light! He didn't know if he was going to land on something solid or not...been nice to know, huh?
Whoosh! He was dumped into the room like a pair of shorts from a laundry chute. He fell towards the floor, sparks and arcs and flashes and ones and zeros all around him. His skin tingled and his hair stood on end. He was never hit by the business end of an arc, thank God. With an unceremonious thud, he landed on the floor. It was solid (or he couldn't have landed on it--he'd have landed in it). It was one of those lighted dance-floors like discotheques have. As soon as he hit the floor, everything in the room shut off...there was total and utter darkness.
Which was worse? The light or the dark? Or the pterodactyl?
It was academic. Right then, the pterodactyl looked pretty good. Maybe he could have made friends with it. Next to the flying reptile, the darkness was preferable, maybe...or the light. It was academic.
He felt something brush his shoulder. He shrank from the touch. Who wouldn't? He felt something touch his other shoulder. He shrank from that touch, too.
"It's okay. Don't be afraid."
"Yes, don't be afraid."
A woman's voice. Two women! He turned toward the voices. He couldn't see anything. It could have been some kind of hairy computer gorilla with a woman's voice. Or two women's voices, or two gorillas with two women's voices, or a woman with her own voice, and a gorilla with a woman's voice. It could have been the computer trying to lure him into the cruncher section. It could have been the pterodactyl...he didn't know what they sounded like. Probably not like women, though.
"We were told that you wanted two girls."
"Yes. Two, we were told."
"Are you two girls?" Jonathan asked. "You're not gorillas or pterodactyls?" It was a perfectly legitimate question, considering.
"Two girls and two bums. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
"I wanted two girls, each with their own integral bum. I didn't want any freaks." He had an additional thought. "And I meant bum as in buttocks, not bum as in someone who sleeps in cardboard boxes."
"We're just girls."
And, sure enough, that's what they were. He could see them clearly, now. (There was a light on someplace.) They looked like sisters. One was in her twenties and was very beautiful. She was every sixteen-year-old's dream. She had a little mole on her stomach, and that's all she had on it. The rest of it was naked. The other girl was Becky Blank, who'd finally died of heart failure a year or so earlier. She had the same mole and she was naked, too. She looked askance at the older girl. The older girl had filled out. Becky hadn't. She had died before her curves were done.
A naked model and a naked dead girl. Typical dream.
"I love you," he said. (In dreams we usually cut through the bullbeep.)
"We love you, too."
The girls came toward him, Becky first. Where there used to be a dance floor, there was now a thick white carpet. There was furniture. There were pictures of flowers on paneled walls. (The walls were obsidian, the pictures were of flowers on paneled walls.) There was a pterodactyl sleeping before a fireplace. There was a red fire alarm on one of the paneled walls (now, the walls are paneled...), one of those kind where you break the glass in case of fire. There was a carnival in the backyard...people screaming as they fell from the roller-coaster.
All the comforts of home.
Becky approached and knelt beside Jonathan. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned closer to him. Her sister did the same thing. He was surrounded by girlness. He thought, "At last..."
Not so fast, Jonathan. This is a dream.
As he placed his hand on one of the bums before him, it turned into the girdled posterior of his mother, Victoria!
"Ahhrgggh!" He yanked his hand away! He shook it to get the feel of her off of it! Oh, God! It was terrible...to inadvertently feel up one's own mother's girdle! What a mistake! How would he explain it to her?
He couldn't! She glowered at him from a few feet away. He was clearly in big trouble. Not only had he touched his own mother, but she'd caught him in the embrace of a naked girl! And, not just any naked girl, either. This was the girl he'd killed!
"Just once before I die," Becky whispered. She didn't care if his mother was in the room or not. She began to push Jonathan down onto the carpet.
"Wait!" he said, his eyes on Victoria.
"Now look what you've done," his mother said. "You've awakened the dog."
Jonathan looked at what he'd done. The pterodactyl was rousing itself. It stretched like a dog that has just awakened. It craned its neck to see them better. It leaped upwards and took to wing, soaring in lazy circles above Jonathan and Becky like a bored vulture looking for something to rip to pieces.
"No!"
Jonathan bolted upright in bed. He was breathing hard for two reasons: women and terror. Maybe that's one reason. He was in his own room. It was dark, but not too dark. There was a moon. He could see his pile of clothing in front of his closet. He could see his picture of the X-15 experimental airplane on the wall. He collapsed back onto his pillow. He went to sleep.
Immediately, he was back in the dream. His mother stood near the dog, her hands upon her hips, her mouth pursed in a look of disapproval. Becky Blank stood nearby in her incipient curves. She was sobbing quietly, watching him go. Once again, he was running away from her. He couldn't believe it. What had happened? He glanced back. He could see Becky's heart pounding in her chest. Her whole breast moved with each heartbeat. It looked like her chest might explode! He got out of there.
He stepped into another room...a strange place. There were neon signs everywhere; on the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling, and even hanging in midair with no visible means of support. Weird.
Weirder yet, none of them said anything. They all had letters missing. Jonathan could tell what some of the signs were supposed to say, but most he couldn't. For example, there was a sign saying, "Dr leaners" that was obviously "Dry Cleaners." There was a Coors sign with one of the o's missing. There was also a sign that read, "Exi ." "Exit", he supposed.
Some of the signs wouldn't have meant anything even if their letters were replaced. "Dat bas " for example. And, "ASC'I." And " ex deci al." And "H^aGn'tl."
Jonathan stepped gingerly across the floor being careful not to step on any of the signs. He wasn't afraid of anything...he knew this was a dream. He could remember waking up in his room. He just wanted to get on with it--get the dream over with and get on with his life. He had to get through the room and then there'd be something else to dream about and finally, it would be morning. So, hurry it up, he thought.
One of the signs stood up and grinned a deaths-head grin. Jonathan screamed. (This was God reminding Jonathan that he wasn't having one of your ordinary dreams where you knew you were dreaming and just got through it. This was God's affair and you had to be on your toes.)
The sign said "Hel Want'd." It had an arrow beneath it that pointed to the left, toward the OK corral, but the sign, itself, was gesturing for Jonathan to go to the right. Don't ask how, but Jonathan knew it wanted him to go right. Considering the condition of the signs in the room, the arrow could have been on backwards, so Jonathan took the sign's advice and went right. He wasn't about to argue with that particular sign, anyway.
To his right was the Arizona desert, with tall cactus and sagebrush and cholla waving in a slight breeze and a chuck wagon with Gabby Hayes standing near it, and off to one side, a tall imposing man dressed all in white from his cowboy hat down to his boots and including his six-shooter which was nickel plated with ivory handles. The only thing not white was the red end of a roll of caps poking out from beneath the hammer of the pistol. The man was talking to an angel. He was giving orders.
Gabby dipped a ladle into a barrel that was strapped to the side of the chuck wagon and held it out to Jonathan. By God, he was thirsty, come to think of it!
"Thanks, podner," Jonathan said. "...believe I will." He raised the ladle to his lips and was about to drink when the man in white dashed it from his hands onto the ground!
"No drinkin' on the job!"
"Yeah, but--"
"No sassin', neither! Git on yer hoss an' ride, hombre!"
"I ain't got no hoss," Jonathan said. This was just a dream. He could stop talking cowboy talk as soon as he woke up. For now, he couldn't seem to help it.
"Then git one!" the man said, pointing to a string of ponies tied between two trees. "Ya'll thank we're out here fer a picnic?"
Jonathan had no idea why they were out there, but he was just getting through a stupid dream. He headed for the horses.
"Hold on!"
He stopped.
"What's yer name, fella?"
"H^aGn'tl," Jonathan said. He was irritated and had just picked a word from all the broken neon signs he'd seen. If they had to know his real name, they could wake him up and ask for it.
"Say it again. I didn't hear."
He didn't hear, of course, because it was impossible for a mortal to say it. The name could only be read...or thought. Jonathan had come about as close as anybody, but he hadn't really said it.
"H^aGn'tl," Jonathan repeated. He thought he was saying it perfectly.
"I still cain't understand ya," the man said. "I'm goin' ta call ya Jon." He threw an arm over Jonathan's shoulder and led him away from the string of ponies. "Now then, Jon, tell me. Ya'll know anythin' 'bout computers?"
Jonathan knew all about computers. He'd just escaped from one. Unless he hadn't escaped, yet....
"They're big," he ventured.
The man looked at him blankly. That didn't seem to be what he wanted to hear. "What else do ya know?"
"Nothin'. I know ponies, though." Jonathan didn't know ponies, either. But at least he wasn't afraid of them.
"Fergit the ponies, Jon. I need someone'll break this here computer. It's been eatin' folks on me!"
"Eatin' folks?"
"Wal, I don't know as it actually eats 'em. But, it's been suckin' 'em inta itself an' they don't come back out."
"They don't?" Jonathan scuffed his toe in the dirt the way cowboys do. "Say, are we in thet computer now?"
The man shrugged. "I ain't sure. We're on it's range, I figger. I don't know fer sure what th' insides look like. Raw meat, I 'spect..." The man paused and pushed his hat up on his brow. His hair was white, even. "...or Hell. I don't know why I ever let 'em make the dern thang."
"...an' it eats folks?"
"It ain't s'pose ta...."
"What's it s'pose ta do?"
"He'p folks with their taxes and such."
"Thet's all?"
"Thet's all I know of."
"Wal, it kin do a dern sight more'n that," Jonathan said. "Tain't all ones 'n zeros in thar."
"I know that, Jon," the man said. "There's got ta be a heap 'a charred remains some'eres."
"Naw. I don't thank so. 'S possible, they's a few missin' fangers and some burned up hair, but that'd be 'bout it. Most a yer missin' folks are pro'ly layin' on couches and watchin' pterodactyls fly."
"Pterodactyls? What're they doin' in thar?"
"They's ev'rythin' in there! Ev'rythin' there ever was! It's like a museum 'n a rolly-coaster 'n a gunfight 'n a junkyard 'n a...hope-chest," he said, thinking of the two girls. " 'n home," he added, thinking of Victoria.
"How d'ya know all this?"
"I jus' come from outa' the thang, I think," Jonathan said, waking up and looking around his bedroom. "Actually, it has a lot of potential."