I'm caught somewhere in between alive and living in a dream

Posted on 28 Jul 2013 @ 9:01am by Commander Andreus Kohl

496 words; about a 2 minute read

Andreus Kohl's Personal Log, Stardate 67570.9

It was heavy, that last crate. I chose to carrying it by hand, of course, rather than arrange for a site-to-site transport. I needed to do it myself. I had to experience moving out to make it real for me. I spread it out over a week, only taking a few things each day, but now it's done. Last night, I officially moved out of from the quarters I shared with Aria Rice.

We were first bunked together when Galileo was crowded with new transfers and visitors, and it became semi-permanent when an entire deck of living quarters became awash with radiation. After the ship was repaired, the two of us being left together must have been an oversight by the Operations department, but we weren't complaining. But now, now with our important new jobs, we each have larger quarters waiting with our names on the doors.

I've been sleeping in my new bed for a few days and it happened again. Sometimes I can't sleep or I wake too early, but once I'm asleep, I always sleep heavily through the night. This time, I woke up in the middle of the night. I got out of bed, and I tried to find the head, but I got lost in the dark. My muscle memory doesn't recognize the layout of my new quarters. Because I was still half-asleep, I started having a kind of waking dream. A waking nightmare, really. I was dreaming that I was lost and that I was trapped. As I padded around the perimeter of the room, dragging my hands along the bulkheads to feel my way to a door, I thought I was still down there. Down in the caves on the third moon of Rojar Two.

The same thing happened the night before, and the night before that. I can't explain it. Not entirely. When we got out of the caves, I was too relieved to be alive to think about it very much. All of my fear had been redirected as anger towards Liyar and his stubborn refusal to participate in medical treatment. Later, when I spoke to Liyar, he said something about not being able to remember what happened in the caves, not even how we got out. I didn't really think about it again, and I'd been sleeping just fine.

Something about this simple, mundane situation is striking a chord in me. Getting lost in the groggy dark, in a bedroom I'm not familiar with, is making me remember being lost in those caves. If I'm honest with myself, I'm not sure if I entirely remember what happened either. I know there were... creatures down there with us, and some of them attacked the away team, but I can't picture the events in my mind's eye.

I don't really remember how we escaped the caves either.

Hunh.

I'm gonna go back to sleep.

Computer. End log.

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