Invasion of the Waking World
I dreamt I was in a futuristic sci-fi world that was some post-peak civilisation. I was in a city of sleek and graceful buildings, many of which had been abandoned and showed signs of neglect. There was electricity, but service seemed to be limited to particular buildings or collections of buildings, as though the network had stopped functioning long ago and electricity was now produced locally, where possible.
We were also undergoing alien invasion.
The aliens were not physical. They could be seen only with special lamps constructed for that purpose. They roamed the city in small packs, hunting humans.
The dream was quite long; I remember only seconds of certain scenes. The first scene I remember was that of being in the mezzanine of the lobby of a tall office building. It was night and I was with a group of humans who were preparing themselves for attack. I very quickly found a weapon. It was a plastic sci-fi rifle that shot pulses of light. There was a button on its side that activated a lamp under the barrel of the weapon; this illuminated the aliens.
There was seemingly no shortage of such pistols and rifles to be found. They were just lying around. Once a human was infected, he had no further use for his. Most interestingly, he saw no need to destroy his weapon, as he no longer believed in the aliens. The problem for him was the crazy humans who did believe, and who refused to participate in (the alien) civilisation. In his view, these humans needed to be punished or destroyed.
The next scene I remember was being in a darkened and abandoned curiosities boutique. The lights were out and I again was huddled with a small group of humans. This provided my the first glimpse of the aliens. A group of six or eight shambled down the darkened street before us. They were all quite ghoulish, some even to the point of comical exaggeration. I noticed in the groups that followed that there were several categories or classes of alien, none of which resembled any other; they had different optimisations.
Survival requires sacrifice
As we inhabited different worlds, the aliens could not see us any better than we could see them (without the revealing lamps), but they could sense fear, anger, and other dark emotions. We went unnoticed in the boutique, not because we were still or silent, but because we were not afraid of them, nor were we bothered by the invasion.
This was no small accomplishment. The survivors had developed through persistent effort a culture of mindfulness. We could not allow ourselves to experience resentment, despair, or fear because these emotions were like beacons which would draw the aliens to us. The invasion was just bad weather to be dealt with, but not resented. We could not afford to even quarrel amongst ourselves; it had become essential to our survival to function together harmoniously. Every other requirement of life was secondary to that.
I remember, in another part of the dream, being in a different office building that had been penetrated by the invaders. We were shooting them with light-rifles like in a first person shooter video game. During the day, we visualised engaging the enemy in a dry and professional manner. I remembered this when the aliens arrived; the habit kicked in automatically. Nevertheless, once a battle started, there was always some residual emotional reaction that attracted more and more aliens. They were not impeded by the walls, so the principle threat was the sudden appearance of one of them from a wall and the fright that this elicited. The creature would then immediately swoop in on its imperiled victim and inhabit the human’s body. Then the host would attack his former colleagues physically. There was little point in reacting to the physical attack because the emotional arousal and the distraction would leave you vulnerable to the aliens. If you had your wits about you, you would shoot the host with your light-rifle, at which point the parasite would be killed and the human would fall asleep unharmed. This was nevertheless a battle-field loss because it meant that the proportion of shooters to aliens had shrunk. Howbeit, no one was to be bothered by this. One had simply to do his best at each moment, regardless of the degree of peril. The only option was to increase the peril.
I awoke, but nothing changed
When I awoke, it was as though nothing had changed, other than I’d switched worlds. The waking world is similarly separated into those infected and those not; the infected humans have only the business of making the others vulnerable to infection, for example, the creation stressful jobs, complicated tax laws, complaints about immigrants, fear of homosexuality, and insulting minorities. They use social media to broadcast messages that annoy, frighten, and anger. The invasions in some countries are so advanced that political control has been acquired. Here are implemented policies that have seemingly little other purpose than to frustrate and offend. Whoever is troubled by these things — whether agreeing or disagreeing — is likely to become infected himself.
The dream world differs only in that infection can be observed for what it is. It is as though the aliens had attacked us where we are most vulnerable — in the waking world — to better inhabit our dreams.
Do I believe the invasion is real? I realise that I must start forcing myself to, because the only option is to increase the peril.
And now, a word from our sponsor
In The Salt Island Diaries, a feral girl is introduced to the protagonists’ household bearing the scars of physical abuse. They discover that she can be vicious, but not vengeful; wary but not fearful; she is wild. The family members slowly learn that, in fact, they too need no emotional reaction to the repressive and unfair society that 19th century New England has to offer them. They learn that mental sovereignty is the only wealth worth having, for no other kind of wealth compensates for its dearth.