Long ago, in the
ancient and classical societies, divination by visions and dreams was
already happening. In those times the oneiromancers were hailed as
prophets and oracles, who prudently used their shreds of dreams of
future and past events to ensure their own survival and prosperity.
Together they formed a fragile and widespread network of dreamers,
spread over the whole world but barely aware of its own existence.
The chatter of the
dreamline, never resolving to anything better than fragments of
events and dreams mixed up in the yoghurt of human experience, left
many if not most of the dreamliners in ignorance or denial of their
gifts. This status quo continued for thousands of years, memories and
legends passing up and down the line like fanciful harbingers of what
would be Jung's notion of the collective unconscious. If even one
person could have interpreted something truly meaningfully then
futuristic wizardry could have advanced the world beyond all measure,
but of course it was too early and people didn't understand.
With respect to our
narrative, silly as it may be, there are three telling points about
the history of the dreamline: Never did people appear in others
dreams directly, never had two dreamers lived in such close proximity
as Helen Ostrander and Stanley Simonson, and finally never had there
been so many missing links in the time sequence as there were now.
***
In the shared dream,
Helen and Stanley stood on the raft beached on the darkened island in
the middle of the sunny blue ocean and watched as the shadowy figure
emerged from the shack, waved, and started to pick its way down to
the beach. The domino pagoda lay forgotten at their feet, its message
ignored. The pebbles on its top rearranged into a warning but they
paid no attention.
The figure shambled as
all apparently good shadowy things must, and puffed a little as she
touched down on the beach. She pulled herself together, looked around
and then down at what she was wearing. “Decent this time, thank
goodness. No more tweeds. Hi there, folks. Still in decent sleep
mode, eh?” Their rapt expressions attested to their abstraction.
“You sleepers are so dull. I had almost missed you dummies. Welcome
to the prison.”
Helen and Stanley
couldn't wake up. Trapped.
To be continued...
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