Foreign Dreams
Outer Van Allen radiation belt, September 16, 2047
Robert looked at the radiation display. It was as if the Van Allen radiation belt wasn't even there. The G-foil was working, it was really working. Working even better than expected. Robert checked his nav. He was in the van Allen belt alright, but this wasn't right? He was way of course. Not heading for the moon at all! How could this happen? As Robert tried to keep himself from panicking, the readings on his navigation display changed and Robert felt his body getting really heavy for a moment as he was pressed into his seat.
"Impossible!"
In just seconds, Robert's moon pod hadn't just corrected course. Completely corrected course. His pod seemed to have accelerated, no seemed to continue to accelerate at an acceleration that just wasn't physically possible. At this rate of acceleration, the trip would take just …… As Robert felt a panic overcome him and tried to reason about how to slow his pod from crashing into the moon at an indescribable speed, Robert felt the acceleration stop abruptly. He was weightless again. His pod was turning. Then Robert felt a new acceleration, but it wasn't. The nav console revealed the ship had turned around 180 degrees and was now decelerating at 2.7g. It was as if the ship, his pod was responding to his thoughts, like Robert was navigating, commanding his moon vessel with just his mind.
A memory of a friendly voice:
"Calm down young pilot!"
Robert couldn't quite think straight. His mind was fuzzy. When was this memory? Who was it that had called him a young pilot? It was like a memory of a dream. The type you desperately try to cling onto. Trying to remember the dream but the more you try the faster the memory would fade.
But now somehow things didn't feel weird anymore. Robert felt one with his space pod and everything was alright. The ship repeated the same maneuver as before, but Robert felt in control, 'he' was steering his ship with his mind, he was in control. No, not quite, it was as if Robert was the navigator, not the pilot. But there wasn't anyone else here. Robert realized suddenly none of this was real. It was a dream. A lucid dream. A dream about an adventure long past. Robert knew he had been here before, he had re-lived his moon trip every single night since he had come back. The whole trip. But his mind was fuzzy. Why was he afraid now? Something lay ahead that Robert didn't want to dream about, but while Robert remembered he had been having this same dream each and every night, he couldn't remember what would come next other than that fear.
Just when Robert finally felt he was about to remember, a glimpse of things to come. A menacing silhouette of what looked almost like some kind of dog. At that moment his feeling of fear changed. Fear turned to anger, but the anger wasn't his. Frustration. But the frustration wasn't his. The pilot, or not the pilot. The ship, or not the ship. They were brothers. Robert felt like he was drowning in emotions that were not his own. His ship, but not his ship was a brother to what Robert remembered yet did not remember lay ahead. Robert had dreamt this dream many times but he knew today it was different. Very different. In a way, it felt more surreal than any dream he had ever had. But then, part of it, his bonding with his ship felt real in a way that could not be described with mere words.
"Grammer!"
Another glimpse of a memory that didn't quite stick.
As bright light of the moon filled up the whole of Robert's viewscreen now, Robert… or the ship, it was hard to know where Robert ended and the ship began, repeated the maneuver that it had now made a few times before. Fear. Robert realized he had not has his head at navigating. He had been distracted. They were going too fast. They were going to crash on the moon. It was just a dream, but then it wasn't. A menacing voice in Robert's head bellowed like thunder. Speaking an alien language yet Robert understood. He remembered.
"Oh God!"
Robert remembered everything. His dream! What had he done?! His dream! His nightmare! It has guided the ship, not just out of the dangerous debrisphere as Azraella had asked of him. His dream had guided the ship to the Moon. To Mare
Tranquillitatis. To the monster Fenrir!
"No no no no!"
Robert felt himself getting heavy. He felt himself getting pressed into his chair harder than before, Much harder. Instinctively Robert looked at his nav. 5.3g. But then he realized his nav was just a dream. Or was it?
Then it was over. No crash?! Yet Robert felt his body, his real body was hurting badly. Why didn't he wake up yet? And where was she? He couldn't have linked to the ship without her. Without Azraella. Where was she? Why didn't he feel her in his mind?
Robert's mind frantically tried to search for Azraella's mind in this strange dream reality. Robert closed his eyes for a moment to focus.
"Where are you, Azraella?"
Nothing. But then as Robert opened his eyes, she was there. Well there? Where were they now? Robert's moon lander had gone. He was inside of some type of cave system. Dozens of busy and alien looking short grey people were working on something resembling a wall of long diagonal white crystals that were flickering between a dull greyish color and a bright white color that looked almost luminescent.
"Azraella?"
One of the little grey alien looking figures turned around and looked at him in surprise.
"You shouldn't be here, Homo Sapiens! How did you get here!?"
It was her voice, but the creature didn't actually look to match the voice. Somehow Robert had formed a picture in his head of an alien but very much feminine and most definitely attractive woman. Nothing however in the stature of Azraella nor any of the other creatures gave any hint at all about gender.
"Azraella! We need to wake up Azraella! We are back! In danger!"
Azraella just looked at him with her huge black eyes.
"I don't have time for this, Sapiens. Unless we get the crystals working, those foresters! Get out of here Sapiens, we need to finish this!"
Azraela turned away from Robert, then disappeared behind the crystal wall.
"Azraella!" Robert shouted out, "We are in a dream! We crashed on the moon because somehow we are linked, all three of us! We need to wake up! We either need to wake up, or I need to get back to 'my' dream so I could navigate us away from here. Away from the monster wolf Fenrir!"
As Robert spoke the name of the giant wolf. The name at least that it wore in Norse mythology, all of the tiny gray figures turned to face him. A fraction of a second later Azraella reappeared from behind the crystal wall. A wall that now not only had stopped flickering, there was now a bright white light emanating from the crystals that the wall was made up of.
"Hróðvitnir?"
As Azraella spoke this strange but familiar name, a section of the crystal wall started pulsating between emanating a red light, even brighter than the white surrounding it, and a deep dark black. The red-black pulsating section of the wall spanned an jagged almost circle shaped section of the wall about six or seven meters high.
A thundering voice not unlike the one of the alien ship came from the pulsating section of the wall. The language was different and Robert didn't understand the words, but the grammar. The emotions that spoke from the grammar. There were the same as the language he and the ship spoke.
Then a second thundering voice. This one Robert recognized. It was the ship. They were fighting, verbally. Whatever they were telling each other, Robert had no idea, but the grammar revealed neither the ship or the owner of the second voice was either happy or friendly. Than Robert realized who the second voice belonged to. It was the monster. It was Fenrir.
"Azraella!"
Azraella looked at Robert intensely.
"Azraella, we need to wake up. You need to wake us up. We are here Azraella, we are on the moon, and it 'will' tear us and our ships to pieces!"
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Cover art by Keith Draws