Episode One: The Weirdest Dream Ever

2006-01-09T22:32:00.000-06:00

Justin Whorley examined his face closely in the mirror. He was not a vain person—he rarely cared enough to even glance at his reflection—but he was a careful shaver, one who took pride in the art. In his ten years as a mechanic, he’d missed so much work that the devil himself would be ashamed—but he’d sooner break his own arm than miss a day of shaving. Since he’d spent a ludicrous amount of time at the activity, one could even say he’d seen the most mid-shaving mis-adventures of any person. Why, once he’d even been arrested mid-stroke. He’d been engrossed in the endeavor and simply failed to hear the police shouts and the banging on his apartment door. However, offering up “I’m shaving,” even though he’d been arrested by mistake, had been enough to piss the arresting officer off and haul him in anyway. He’d spent four nights in jail over that, and had wondered many times if what they’d done had even been legal. After all, he’d looked like a freak with one half of his jawline shaved cleanly—the other covered with unsightly stubble and whiskers.

But he’d never been teleported across space-time before.

Well, at least, that’s all he could guess that had happened. One minute, he was concentrating on the mid-lower section of the end of his chin (Sector 47-E, as he fondly referred to it), and the next minute, the shaving mirror was nowhere in sight, and he was standing in the middle of...what was it?

A courtyard? It was his first thought, but it really was unlike any courtyard he’d ever encountered. The place was enormous, and filled with people. Weird people. Some of them were very short, like “little people,” and totally proportional. Others had a strange coloring, bronzed skin, only bronze, with a slight metallic tint and everything. They all wore dark to neutral clothing—no bright colors at all—and their clothing was arranged loosely. Justin noted the fanned out baggy pants, like old out-of-fashion bell-bottoms, only they were loose-fitting around the waist as well. He also didn’t see any hip-huggers. The outfit didn’t vary much person to person, or between genders.

Still, he didn’t get much time to ogle. Just a moment after the abrupt arrival, someone—a very tall, very buff someone—collided directly into him, as if he couldn’t see Justin at all. Of course he couldn’t see me, I wasn’t here just a moment ago, he thought to himself. Then he felt oddly cold. Wait, that’s no fair, I was so wearing my pajama pants! Naked? Was it a dream then? Maybe he’d nicked his jugular and was passed out on his floor, bleeding to death and having a weird dream on top of it. Well, that does explain some things. A dream, then.

Then, “Ashani? Yoroshinay, erre maristrame?” Did weird dreams come with gibberish-talking people? Justin didn’t know, but he decided he wasn’t waking up soon, especially if he’d nicked his jugular. Might as well play along, see what’s in the old psyche. Justin was sure his psyche was quite boring, anyway, so he turned to address the verbally-challenged interloper.

He wasn’t really prepared for what he saw. It wasn’t like he’d never seen a beautiful woman before—he was thirty years old—he’d been around. But this woman was simply beyond beauty, and there was no other thing for him to do than stare. Her thin, feathered eyebrows snapped together then, forming a crease between her well-deep black eyes. “Ashani? Maan, yeren astra?”

“Uh...” he managed to choke. It occurred to him again that he was naked, and that a good portion of his face was covered in lather. He moved to cover himself as best as he could, but it didn’t seem like anyone was really staring at that particular part of him, anyway. He realized slowly that he looked out-of-place for other reasons—the lack of clothing being number one, but not the only one. For another thing, his skin was a lot duskier than theirs. The skintones here ranged from a metallic-looking bronze (at the most extreme) to a gentle lemon-creme color. His, on the other hand, was an ordinary shade of too-much-tan—or, perhaps that wasn’t so ordinary here.

His hair was a bit lighter, too. The strange gibberish-woman’s hair was deep as night, like raven feathers. Most of the others’ came that way, too. His own hair was a medium ash-brown.

Thankfully, the beyond-beautiful stranger suddenly took pity on his nakedness. She removed her long jacket. It was much too small for him, which she realized quickly, and she tied the arms around his waist and smiled sheepishly at him. He suddenly hoped that if he died of blood loss on his bathroom floor that it wouldn’t mean he had to stop dreaming. He adjusted the coat so that it covered the most important parts, and fell into step after her when she gestured to follow.

Man I hope I’m not about to become a lab rat, or something. He didn’t know why the thought occurred to him. There was something lab-like about the building they were walking toward, but he chalked the thought up to living next to a research institute. Who knew what wacky shit went on in places like that?

The girl continued to chatter in her strange language as they walked. Justin tried to listen, he honestly did, but he was easily distracted by the things they passed—the things that passed them. Some type of small shuttles zoomed over their heads every few moments. The girl didn’t seem bothered, but it was freaking the hell out of Justin. Thin display screens littered the walk, pointing the ways to things who knew what (arrows are the same in all languages, he realized). Sometimes, an arrow would flash excitedly, turn wild colors, and the symbols surrounding it would change. An event? A warning?

Ugh, why can’t weird dreams come with Universal Translators? And he wondered suddenly aloud, “I wonder if the Universal Translators in Star Trek worked on printed words.” It got the girl’s attention, and she started chattering wildly—but they kept walking. They’d entered the building now, and Justin could only hope someplace inside was their destination. He just wanted clothes.

They came to a dead end, and he probably looked as baffled as he felt, because the girl patted his shoulder—was she trying to be comforting? Was he really going to become a lab rat, after all?

She faced him, and pointed at herself. “Valoa,” she offered. Then she waited. Is that her name?

In case it was, he did the same. “Justin.” He had no idea if she understood that it was his name, because she went off jabbering in the way she had been again. Is she talking to herself? he wondered. Then she pulled a device he hadn’t seen before from her belt. She spoke into the device, more loudly than she had been, and suddenly the dead-end in front of the two of them opened up.

Another girl stepped out, also gripping a similar device. She gestured at Justin (rudely, in his opinion), and started speaking in the same wild way as Valoa had been. Only this one was more animated, and certainly didn’t possess the same other-worldly beauty that Valoa had.

“This is the weirdest dream, ever,” Justin said to himself as a pair of tall, muscular men approached from behind. Valoa had turned around and was saying something very vehemently to them. She sounded very upset, which unfortunately only brought out Justin's hidden bravado, a very out-of-place reaction given that he was wearing a woman's jacket around his waist and had a face covered in very thick, musky-smelling shaving lather. “So, what do you guys want? I really hope you don’t want me to give the lady her coat ba—“

But he didn’t get to finish. The darker of the two men had—as fast as a thought—applied yet another device to Justin’s shoulder, and he fell like a lifeless toy to the ground.

Origins

Episode One: The Weirdest Dream Ever