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I dreamed my brother and I had gone down to the Pinelands to visit a couple of friends I haven't seen in a few years, we'll call one Dr. Todds and the other Mr. Feels Real. They were rooming together, it seemed, in a spacious abode. It was night, and my brother and I had a long road back.
But I had developed a device that would make things easier. It was a handheld scanner like you see at the checkout counter at supermarkets, but I had modified it so that anything that it zapped would be transported through space and time. I had done some astral travels into the depths of space, and, communing with a strange race of purplish octopus beings, had learned the cosmological reference number for our universe...it was something like IT7L096Ca. Once you strung this together with the galactic and planetary address and latitude and longitude of a location, it was easy enough to specify an exact point to travel to, and I had somehow encoded all this information (referencing North Jersey) inside the scanner, which was banged up and had some tape hanging off the handle.
I knew the device worked, and had used it on myself, even, but I hadn't shared the secret with anybody else. I said to the good Doctor and Mister Real: "Hey, watch this." I turned the scanner on my brother and shot him in the chest. There was a little red light on his collarbone, and then nothing.
Our friends laughed, watching us, and I explained the theory of the scanner. Basically it created a duplicate of one's material body in the specified cosmological location, and then one's soul was whisked away and pushed back into the new body, while the "old" physical body crumpled up and was erased. They laughed some more. Then I looked back at my brother. Where I had zapped him had become a red weal that opened like a wound. Soon, other holes began to open on his chest, and then across his body.
"It's working," I told them.
My brother began to hover off the ground, his arms outstretched. His skin had now peeled back to reveal ligaments and tendons and various connective tissue, all of which were the color of pale stone. Still levitating in midair, he began to curl up on himself, so that he became a sort of ball of sinewy tissue, a tiny homunculus, burbling incomprehensible words. He fell then to the ground, and as my friends rushed over in horror the ball slowly folded up and vanished in a blot of black, a couple of inkspots that splattered and dried. He was gone.
I tried to reassure my friends everything was okay, but they were frantic, searching the ground where my brother had fallen on all fours, as if he had plunged through some trap door. Then there was a buzz: it was my cell phone. My brother was calling. He had found himself suddenly back at home, and was wondering what had happened and where I was.
Maybe I would just take the car back, I told him.
**
I dreamed my son and his friend, the goalkeeper, were to put on some weird play that was to take place in a semi-abandoned auto body shop parking lot. One was to be dressed up as a blue rabbit, the other a bear.
But when the parents had assembled to watch it, turns out both the boys had dressed up as blue rabbits. Grinning, they made the best of it, singing: "I am the blue bunny!" "No, I am the blue bunny!" Would be the response, and then: "No, I am the blue bunny," and on and on. One would roll on the ground and the other would jump over the roller, and then they would switch places. They laughed and went back and forth continuously, jumping over each other on the stage.
But I had developed a device that would make things easier. It was a handheld scanner like you see at the checkout counter at supermarkets, but I had modified it so that anything that it zapped would be transported through space and time. I had done some astral travels into the depths of space, and, communing with a strange race of purplish octopus beings, had learned the cosmological reference number for our universe...it was something like IT7L096Ca. Once you strung this together with the galactic and planetary address and latitude and longitude of a location, it was easy enough to specify an exact point to travel to, and I had somehow encoded all this information (referencing North Jersey) inside the scanner, which was banged up and had some tape hanging off the handle.
I knew the device worked, and had used it on myself, even, but I hadn't shared the secret with anybody else. I said to the good Doctor and Mister Real: "Hey, watch this." I turned the scanner on my brother and shot him in the chest. There was a little red light on his collarbone, and then nothing.
Our friends laughed, watching us, and I explained the theory of the scanner. Basically it created a duplicate of one's material body in the specified cosmological location, and then one's soul was whisked away and pushed back into the new body, while the "old" physical body crumpled up and was erased. They laughed some more. Then I looked back at my brother. Where I had zapped him had become a red weal that opened like a wound. Soon, other holes began to open on his chest, and then across his body.
"It's working," I told them.
My brother began to hover off the ground, his arms outstretched. His skin had now peeled back to reveal ligaments and tendons and various connective tissue, all of which were the color of pale stone. Still levitating in midair, he began to curl up on himself, so that he became a sort of ball of sinewy tissue, a tiny homunculus, burbling incomprehensible words. He fell then to the ground, and as my friends rushed over in horror the ball slowly folded up and vanished in a blot of black, a couple of inkspots that splattered and dried. He was gone.
I tried to reassure my friends everything was okay, but they were frantic, searching the ground where my brother had fallen on all fours, as if he had plunged through some trap door. Then there was a buzz: it was my cell phone. My brother was calling. He had found himself suddenly back at home, and was wondering what had happened and where I was.
Maybe I would just take the car back, I told him.
**
I dreamed my son and his friend, the goalkeeper, were to put on some weird play that was to take place in a semi-abandoned auto body shop parking lot. One was to be dressed up as a blue rabbit, the other a bear.
But when the parents had assembled to watch it, turns out both the boys had dressed up as blue rabbits. Grinning, they made the best of it, singing: "I am the blue bunny!" "No, I am the blue bunny!" Would be the response, and then: "No, I am the blue bunny," and on and on. One would roll on the ground and the other would jump over the roller, and then they would switch places. They laughed and went back and forth continuously, jumping over each other on the stage.
