Okay, I promise this will be my last dream post for a while. I just can't resist. The dream was every pubescent boy's sci-fi wet dream:
"I was aboard a star-ship in some remote region of space, next to a lesser known but peaceful planet where we had stopped off to refuel and briefly meet their representatives. We were successfully refueled, in idle orbit waiting for the captain and the welcome crew. They had left the ship and gone to the planet to verify the goods and visit the representatives, to thank them for the gift. Two of the crew in the docking bay were inspecting the small cargo we had received as a peace offering.
A game or a video or some kind of media was found on the gifted goods. Once it was uploaded to our ship's systems for analysis, it was discovered that it contained a virus; some kind of worm. It turns out, the simple act of playing it had activated the program; it already infected part of the ship's computer. Through some quick command-line drudgery we thought we had it quarantined. One of the science officers, fascinated by the complexity of its mutations and the organic quality of the code, began poking at it, accidentally freeing it from quarantine. The code-based organism rapidly spread throughout the operating system. The operating system maintains all vessel function from life-support and oxygen regulation to course navigation. The captain isn't on the ship and the creature has jammed telecommunications. There's no reaching him or anyone else.
But it's too late. The ship itself mutinies, and sets course for some uncharted territory in deep space.
On the way there the crew is panicking; sections of the sleeping quarters lose power and life support as the ship diverts power for speed, hurtling madly in the darkness as if fleeing something fearsome. Or moving toward it. Dozens of crew members suffocated, lying lifeless as if suddenly overtaken by sleep. I work frantically at the computer station trying to regain control of the system, but to no avail.
Things culminate in the vacuum of space.
Suddenly I'm on another ship, as though I've just woken up. We're responding to a distress call from a nearby ship, which reached us as we were crossing some unknown sector experiencing severe fluctuations in mass. I realize too late that the distress call is one spoofed by the infected onboard computer of the ship I had just been on; our ship. Somehow two separate universes have collided and we hover before each other like two mirrors. I know we've been led straight into a trap. What starts as a strong vibration quickly metastasizes into violent unfettered shaking. Objects fall from flat surfaces, people topple over and the space around us starts to quake. Then the creature reveals itself. Emerging out of the rift between the two ships, undetected and cloaked space; it is space. A colossal inter-dimensional monster materializes, like a giant spider hanging onto a web. Everything around us rippling ominously, oppressed by its mass. It's so vast that only its razor sharp teeth, and mouth like galaxies of black holes are visible - devouring the light from around it - pulling us closer.
We were helpless. Trapped like two flies in a jar. The horror of the jar is the emptiness as much as it is the glass; the illusion that you aren't trapped.
I remember screams and crunching and the sound of swirling wind. The hull had been breached. The ship's lights flickered like strobes. Metal wrenching and tearing apart in the blackness. The creature sat heavy in space, on it. Everything falling toward its mass. Stars streaming into the nothing like tears.
Two universes lined up like closed lips, un-seamed by a yawn. Peeling back slowly, showing teeth, stretching and contorting the flesh around it, inhaling all the existence before it. With a sigh, we were obliterated.
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