Dream Worlds

I had an incredibly vivid and very memorable dream the other night...

I found a guy who looked like he was made of plastic. I shook him, and he slowly came back to life. "Are you okay?" 

He started to move, stiffly at first, then as his eyes turned back into liquid orbs, he grimaced and nodded. We had found another of the old crew a little while ago near the kitchen. This guy looked even worse now that the color was returning to his cheeks. 

He grimaced again. 

"Look, the medic is over there." I pointed across the large abandoned conference room towards the outside door. "Go see if she can help you." I turned away to continue my exploration, making my way back towards the kitchen to try a new door. I turned the corner and found the other crewman with a lock and fob in his hand. 

"What's that?" 

"Just the lock for that door." He pointed to a sturdy door to the right.

"I'll take it." I took the lock, but he was loathe to hand over the fob and we struggled for a minute. "Hell no am I separating these. We did that once before. We ended up being chased by the creatures and we almost died on either side of that freaking door." He grudgingly ceded the contraption and I turned away. I didn't trust the old crew.

Somehow we ended up in another building, and I glimpsed the crewman in a checkup with the medic. She checked a number of orifices, encountered angry yellow pus and raw patches, and grimly turned to the crewman to ask questions. He knew he was dying. He had been for ages. The plastilization had put him in stasis for a while, maybe even decades, but for him it would feel like just a blink of an eye. His crew had clearly failed their mission, whatever it was. Otherwise they wouldn't have left two men, one in good condition as far as I could tell, and the other gravely ill, plasticized until another human touch woke them again. I wondered if maybe the crewman we found near the kitchen was untrustworthy. He certainly felt that way to me, and it would explain better why he was left behind when physically he seemed strong and capable.

I heard over the com, "Prepped and ready for launch!" 

"What the hell?" 

We raced out and the two girls, the youngest in our crew, had launched our sleek red and white space cruiser. 

"Where the hell are you going?" I shouted through the com.

Their voices, risen in debate and panic, flew over the com. "You shouldn't have woken it!" 

"We need to go back." 

"Get us on the ground so we can grab the rest of the crew." 

"Fuck, we woke it, chief." 

Even as the cruiser turned and the girls announced again, tentatively, "Successful landing..." we were sprinting towards them. 

The captain, directing our crew, turned towards me and asked, "Do you know how to fly the air wings?"

"No, but I can figure it out!" I started towards them, but his shout at my retreating back made me shift course. 

"No, no! Get in with Grace instead!" Grace was already keeping pace with me, and as we reached the airwing jets I jumped in the back while she took the cockpit. Grace has hair cut just below her jaw. She's highly competent and good under fire, and the best airwing pilot we've got.

"Ready?"

"Always."

We strapped in and were off in seconds as the rest of the crew streamed onto the shuttle. I noticed that we still had the two old crew members, though the one I woke up more recently looked much the worse for wear. I replayed in my mind's eye the last time we woke a creature. The ground had erupted. A giant, vaguely mechanical, vaguely serpentine head emerged that, weirdly like in the movies, when it struck left a perfectly round space about three feet in diameter where someone could stand. Which, ironically, is what happened last time. Last time we were caught with crew on the ground because of the damn lock and fob. The monster struck and miraculously they were unharmed in that tiny space where the teeth don't meet. They were swept away a few moments later by its serpentine neck, though. 

"Dang. I don't have my camera."

"I don't think we're going to be taking video here."

"No, remember our little comedy act? I was gonna video us here in the jet before the action starts." 

"Dang, that would have been good." Grace rustled around the cockpit, but no dice. 

I glanced around and pulled at my straps. "Why don't we have parachutes?" I asked.

"Well, would you rather be flying...or this?" She dropped us into free fall and I felt my stomach join my heart in my throat.

I gritted my teeth. "More than dying, yeah. I'd rather not go down, eject and die." 

She made a noncommittal noise. "Good point. I dunno why we don't have them. That sucks." 

Then the dang alarm went off just as everything was getting interesting.
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