Quoted By:
>NIGHTMARES IX
You don't dream. It is not in your biology. You were not created to waste time. When you did dream, then— when she slept (finally) and you roused and stood and stretched and checked (compulsively) the instruments, when you walked out and back and resettled and set the on-air sign to off and cracked your neck (vigorously) and worked the plugs, when you settled back to rest, and then, appearing in your mind, were various semi-interactive videolike scenes, you were frightened and repulsed. This is not to say that you didn't recognize them for what they were. Indeed, you were frightened and repulsed because you did. Something was drastically, inarguably, perhaps irreversibly altered in you. You were uncertain even a complete recycling (which is not to say you wanted a complete recycling) could cure it. This was deep and structural.
You did however recognize the scenes as 'dreams' as they were occurring, which put you several levels above her, and indeed most of them, as they were mostly blind and deaf and dumb. This was important to remind yourself of. Panic was conducive to exactly nothing. You remained aware and in control even as your conscious perception was stormed and overtaken.
In the first scene, you found yourself seated at a large musical instrument. Your hands were on the keys. You took them off, not knowing how to play any instruments, and were greeted with jeering. "C'mon! Play!" "Give us a song!"
You looked up at the audience, which was small but horrifically attentive, and down again at the keys. You were aware that the scene was illusory and that refusing would have no true consequence. Marked as you were with an infernal thirst for knowledge, though, you waved down the complaints and laid your fingers again on the instrument. (You were given to think it was a 'piano.') You felt the tug, then, the tide rolling out, the track laid before you, and you smiled and played the piano and sang, clearly and strongly, a light-hearted tune you had never heard. The crowd applauded. You felt compelled to stand and bow, so you did, and your wife came out from the crowd and kissed and embraced you and you held her back, your fingers resting on her spine, her head resting on your cheek, and you felt within yourself a heat and a poisonous weakness. You had felt its kind before, but you could pretend that the previous manifestation was within your interests, that it was professional motivation, that it successfully occluded your intentions, as you intended, as you always intended. And the previous manifestation was warm and glowing, harmless-seeming, which aided the pretense.
(1/3)
