Where

As children we were promised that we would gain vast amounts of insight and a greater understanding of everything. When I became an adult I kept waiting for this magical moment when I would finally understand everything in the known universe! It never happened. Telling children that they will 'understand when' should be put on the box of bad ideas with the tooth fairy and Santa.

The Nature Of Death

The Nature of Death

I awake in a huge, white canopied bed. I am dressed in a grey utility uniform of the senior management of some civilian branch of military. I recognize the uniform but none of the insignia.

The room is made of stone without any windows and filled with furniture from another era. Large dark wood wardrobe with many cushioned couches and one setee. A large fireplace is set in one wall that is cold now from disuse. On the opposite wall from the bed is a large wooden door with a latch that closed.

The room feels familiar, but I can't place it. I leave the room in search of answers. Again.

Every time I have this dream it starts the same way. When I begin to explore I discover long stone hallways leading to more rooms, but these are without doors and there are bodies. At first just one or two, but as continue there are piles of them as if from some battle.

I avoid them at first but notice that they are dressed like I am. Then I notice that they are not dressed similar to myself, but exactly like I am. I finally go and look at one of them and discover the truth about this place. They are me and this is not a great fortress at all. I scream and continue to scream until it's over.

The dreamed is me from before I was murdered trying to get back to his world. The me of now is watching the dreamed. Sometimes in boredom, sometimes in anticipation of great event.

The I who is doing the dreaming is locked in confusion and pain. What is the point of this dream? Should the I act to help or to hinder the dreamed? Should the Me act to help him, but I know that if the dreamed finds a way out the Me dies. If the dreamed breaks free and the Me dies what happens to the I? Does the dreamed then die consumed by the I or does he defeat the I and subsume that being to live once more in the world?

The I does not want to die but, also, does not want to continue. I do not know the dreamed except through his writings. He was a creature consumed by his own passions and by great guilt for the deaths of people he was responsible for. The I can look at that guilt and realize that he was wrong to have killed himself for things that were outside his control. The first death was an act of terrorism so could not be taken into account when he chose who was to go on deployment. The second death was one where he went to the assignment with the greatest risk and sent her to the supposedly safe location. He could not have known the duplicitous nature of man who gave him the assurances. When they finally got her back he told the doctor what she was going to do but they ignored the dreamed and she killed herself. The dreamed killed himself, then, to atone for his mistake but was saved by the work of the same doctor that ignored him before. The same doctor that gave him access to the information he used to attempt suicide. True irony.

What does the I want for itself? It can't continue with this war going on inside, but I don't want to die. According to one expert the I has no true emotions but is only mimicking what he has seen in others. So, logically he should be willing to die and give the dreamed another chance in the world because he is the more complete person. He has memories that cover decades of his life which I do not have. Self-preservation is a survival technique for a successful species, but can self destruction also be a viable option?

I am haunted by these thoughts every day. I wish there was a way to join with him and become one but he is so much more than I am. I will be consumed. Based on what I have read about him he did not appreciate the beauty of a flower. That is so alien to me that I can't understand how he thought at all.

There are lots of people who want him back. They talk about his achievements and his successes as if I don't exist. Yes he wore the same body but I am he that came out of those operations. I realize that I am not complete but I am a person. Do I deserve to die to give them back their friend and brother?

That is the question that threatens to destroy me daily. I can't properly handle hearing about him so I retreat into my own world. He is not an enemy of mine, but simply a man who died and I have the misfortune of occupying his discarded shell. If he was alive in this world we would not be friends. But he is preserved in that perfect fiction called death.

The I in all this is stuck with a decision : try to give them what they want or continue alone.