//------------------------------// // 1 // Story: Betwixt Dreams and Reality // by GeekyGami //------------------------------// '... Ah, a dead bird on the pre-categorization conveyor. What a surprise.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? Not in a dream it doesn't. Dreams are peculiar that way. Anything that is out of sight does not strictly exist, in a way not unlike Schrödinger's cat. The idea of Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, explained simply, is that there is a cat in a closed box. Is it alive, or is it dead? How may we know unless we open the box? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- '... Ah, another dead bird, this time on conveyor C-14.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, here's the thing. Were it a dream, until the box is opened, the cat is neither alive nor dead, yet both alive and dead. It is also both in the box and not in the box. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- '... That's been 8 birds so far.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... Dreams. The only reason I take the time to sleep. They keep life fresh. It's like a free videogame or story every night, except I don't have to explain why I waste time on them. Hi. My name is Willhelm. Born in Canada, bald at 21. Working at a recycling plant. That's right, people don't know how to recycle. Hunters are especially troublesome. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- '... 12 birds. None of them have reached a state of rigor mortis. They haven't been dead for long.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have many passions, despite the dead-end job I've chosen to put myself through. One of those passions just so happens to be dreaming. Lucid dreaming to be exact. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Jesus H Christ, not only were there 12 dead birds, but now we've found a raccoon on conveyor C-17! Doesn't seem to be from the same batch, it had started decaying at least a month or two ago from the looks of it. Still, that's 13 dead animals on the same day! Never thought I'd see that many.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lucid dreams are especially pleasant ... When they're not nightmares anyways. Then they become mostly annoying. They're honestly very comparable to virtual reality, in the sense that they feel real, but since you know it's fake, all sense of fear leaves you. In fact, the moment you feel fear in a lucid dream is one of the many moments you're bound to accidentally wake yourself up, as you're in a half-conscious state. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- '... Alright, that's one day of work done.' I put the things I found and wanted to keep in my bag, and proceeded on to the car I was hitching a ride in. As per usual, the ride home was uneventful. There were complaints about the managers here, complaints about needy kids there, coupled with obnoxiously bland pop/trap music. While it shouldn't be important, I'll point out the lyrics of said songs were as trite as you could've gotten. "I'll kiss you inside out" here, "I like your body" there, "I miss your body" from time to time. Finally, I arrived home. I took a 30 minute shower after eating dinner, and moved on to sitting at my computer for the 2 hours I had left to do anything substantial. I would have played games or watched shows, but I had a habit of doing both of those hobbies for hours at a time, and I wanted to do multiple things with my alotted time, mostly routine. Checking Deviantart, Memebase, Youtube, RoadToVR, Discord, and sites that needn't be mentioned. There were also short activities that needn't be mentioned, as well as taking some time to flesh out some songs I was working on, bit by bit. Clock hit 9 PM. I would usually go to bed then, but I would often derail into a Discord conversation, a video or whatever else I decided to procrastinate on. 9:30 PM No choice, I was out of time. Headed to bed, did a few spine stretching exercises, then a few breathing exercises, before slowly falling asleep. It was time to dream. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A white, dusty surface full of craters, a black sky. The moon, presumably. In the sky up above, a planet. It looked like Earth, but I couldn't have told you for sure. I didn't pay attention to the continents, it was just blue and green, with some big clouds here and there. I can tell you that it was pretty bloody close though. As in, closer than it had any right to be. It took up more of my vision than my glasses (which I'm fairly certain I wasn't wearing. (I had my hair back, upon closer inspection.)) In fact, I could barely see the sky in my peripheral vision. While usually I would've relied on symbols surrounding me to tell whether I was dreaming or not, in this case, it was fairly obvious. You wouldn't just walk normally on the moon without even a helmet for protection now would you. But that's precisely what I did. The gravity was the same as on earth, providing gravity in dreams isn't different when you don't know it's a dream, and you don't happen to be floating like a third-person camera. I spotted a figure on the edge of the moon. (That's right, it had an edge, it didn't just continue on forever like a desert. It was more akin to a cinematic shot that entirely let go of logic for the sake of drama.) I decided to investigate. A horse, laying down, staring at "Earth" Cyan eyes. A dark blue coat, hair like stars. A horn and wings. Upon closer inspection, it was Luna. As in, Luna from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Anybody who had done a Google search for the name Luna could tell you I am justified in this specification. That's right. I had enjoyed that show greatly around 2012 to 2016. While it certainly didn't stand out from your typical anime fare, it certainly stood out from everything else on TV in Western regions. The fantasy setting, with how fleshed out it was, made it incredibly interesting. Nevermind the fact it was way ahead of any fantasy show that had relied on tropes like elves and dwarves, by going from a biped species to a quadruped one. Certainly, previous generations of the show didn't quite click the way that generation did, but their ideas were similarly interesting, if somewhat misguided. In fact, that show sparked the inspiration I had needed to get back into drawing and illustration. I was surprised to see a pony of all things in my dream. I don't often have cartoons running amok in there, let alone real versions of them. ... Well, real. Same proportions as in the show, but in full perspective, properly lit. Her fur was somewhat similar to that of a short-haired dog, while her mane was seemingly a dimension in itself, with a film surrounding it not unlike the whites of an egg around its core. I figured the reason she looked like a real life rendition rather than a cartoon was that I had done 3D modeling of ponies prior, as a study of sorts. Still, it was quite a surprise. So, I sat beside her, and looked at the m- I'm sorry, I meant "Earth." I looked at "Earth." Of course, I got bored of that, and decided to look over to Luna. With me sitting, and her laying down, we were at eye level. Nevermind the fact her eyes were as big as fists. That just means you find the center of the eyes to find the eye level. I decided to wrap my arm around her. It was comfortable. I stayed like that for a little while, then I thought '... You know, I've always wondered what kissing a pony would be like.' 'I wouldn't do that if it was real life, but this is a bloody dream. No one will judge, right.' And so, I turned to her, made her face me, turned my head sideways, and we kissed. It was oddly pleasant. I was expecting a more rubber-like texture, but it wasn't exactly a smooth surface, it was quite diffuse. My heart started pounding. Despite beating very slow, it felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. I knew I had to calm down, or I would wake up. Thus, I tried taking slow, deep and methodical breaths. Alas, to no avail. I soon woke up from my dream, delving into another one afterwards. All I could remember of the second dream was that I had passed in a backstreet alley, and arrived onto a boulevard that had fairly fancy buildings. Everything was inside this big block, with walls of brick and a ceiling of smoothed sandstone. There were people on the sides of the street walking around. I flew around a bit, and soon, my alarm played "Drax - Happy Happy Christmas" also known as "It's a Mystery." It was time to wake up, another day of work started.