This is a dream I had in Maryland




The story opens as kim and steve are driving cross country in the modern day united states. They've been driving for a few days and are quite tired when they reach Salt Lake City. Steve spends a good deal of his time on the journey writing in his journal. Perhaps this is the narative point of the story.

Somehow, somewhere in Salt Lake City, the pair and Steves laptop are sucked through a dimmensional rift. Perhaps it is a time rift. They awaken to find themselves in a very different Salt Lake City.

The city as it now stands is at least four times larger than it was in our reality. The buildings around them are now made from the earth itself. There are still steel and glass structures, but they are the exception, rather than the rule. There are no streets, no sidewalks. They awaken seperately, or possibly together in a long abandond part of town. Most likely it is inside of a house. Everything is covered in dust and looks as if it has not been touched in hundreds of years. In this old room, Steve rummages around and finds a white laptop. It is nondescript and looks to be slightly newer than his own laptop. He tucks it into his pack and heads towards the light that is shining into the room from above.

Upstairs, Steve finds that the room below is not the only one in disrepair. Everything here looks modern, steel, highly stylized and designed. He finds a door and opens it. He is greeted by a hazey orange sun. It looks almost as if there is a perpetual sunset here. The sun never reaches a full apex and only occasionally appears over the edges of the horizon. The rest of the time, it skids along the rim of the horizon and illuminates the world in a sickly orange and pink light.

Steve walks along dirt paths that have not been used in a long time. There are no concrete roads or walkways, and there is no vegetation. The air is slightly stale. He walks for a long time, passing a number of sparsely positioned and dilapidated buildings. They are all steel and stylized. High arches and worn out colors. All the colors were once bright, much like the colors used in the 60s.

Eventually, Steve begins to approach what is obviously the civilization of Salt Lake City. The earthen mounds that make houses are here and poked through with windows and a few doors. Most of them do not have doors, however, and the mounds are lined up in neat rows. The only way to travel in this town is by walking through peoples houses. Steve approaches the first house he finds and knocks on the door.

The occupant is extremely kind and friendly. His name is Odune. Odune pulls Steve inside and begins to stuff his face with food. The food is bland, but there is plenty of it. Water is poured from a bladder and tube contraption on the ceiling. A pipe runs from the tube down into the floor.

Odune speaks of Salt Lake City. He tells Steve that the city has been here forever, and basically shows he has no knowledge of anything from the old world that Steve asks about. Odunes clothing is white and splotched with random bright colors. Steve is accosted about his clothing, and Odune lends him some of his own clothing.

Odune sends Steve on his way through his back door and into the next house. He tells steve that he will find some answers if he gets to the central point of this housing structure. Steve walks through many homes, some empty, some full. Most are well maintaned. Everyone he meets is friendly and offers him food and shelter. None of the know anything about our reality.

Along the way, steve finds that some people have cats as pets. The cats seem distant, aloof. But cats always were.

Steve eventually arrives at the central point of this particular housing structure. It is nearly empty, and looks like an oversized parking garage elevator room. There are three elevators here. One says State, one says Town, and one is in disrepair. It says roof.

Steve sits down to rest and plays with the new laptop. Hes surprised to find that it still turns on and has battery power. It boots up immediately to a weird gui. It is extremely responsive and a window covers the entire screen. In this window is an overhead picture of an area much like the one he is sitting in. He sees, after a moment, that it is not just a picture, but a full fledged movie. He sees kim walk up to an elevator, press a button, and enter the car. The door shuts. Steve is extatic. He attempts to exit the program. He has very little luck. He finally finds out how the pointing system work (its a touch screen) and closes the window. He finds a window of a few lines of code behind it. He closes that too, neglecting to save it. There is nothing left for him to play with on the screen now. It is blank and empty. He closes the laptop and puts it back in his pack. He gets into the town elevator, since it looks like this was the one kim entered. He pushes a random button, and feels the elevator jerk downward, slowly.

He arrives in an underground town square that is filled with people. Here, he sees kim. He runs to her and grabs her. They talk and discuss their experiences. Kims experience was much the same as steves. She insists that she saw one of the cats fly. She insists that it was using its ears like wings, and smiling wickedly.

The two head to a restaurant and sit down to eat. They sit next to a window that looks out on the canyon below the building theyre in. Far off in the distance there are two mountains that are filled with oddly shaped structures, many of which look as though they cant be structurally sound. Everyone refers to these structures as heaven, and say that when they die, thats where their spirit goes. You are not allowed to go there. It is a forbidden place.

Kim and steve mill around the town square for a time, then decide to head towards heaven. They walk through many many houses, encountering interesting people, and seeing more cats. Steve and kim stop for a short time to watch the cats interact with eachother. One of them does indeed fly for a short time. Steve attempts to show this to the owner of the cats, but the cat does not repeat the feat.

After a few days of walking, they find that they are not much closer to heaven. They find another town square and sit to regroup themselves. Steve writes on his Mac laptop, kim talks turkey with the locals. One intimates that the sun causes a strange disease in some folks, and that they are taken down to the nexus for treatment. When asked whats the nexus the reply is youve never taken the state elevator? Kim thoygght that it was a restricted elevator for state officals only. It is not. It is an elevator that takes you from place to place inside of the state. They decide to get on. They are greeted by over 100 buttons. They ask another person in the elevator which floor has a throughway to the next town square. 56 is the reply.

They arrive on the 56th floor and are greeted by a large room filled with sick people in hospital beds. They exit cautiously and hear shouts of agony. People are being treated barbarically, having legs hacked off with knives, being injected with needles, are covered in IVs. They quiver and cringe at the sight of it all. The workers here are still chipper and friendly. They wander around and come to a large room with a desk at the front of it. The woman behind the desk hands them pamphets and and lets them into the room. The room is filled with kiosks that have rudimentary explanations of the sun sickness and its treatments. Most of the treatments sound like midevil medicin and involve the balancing of humors. They wander into another room from here and find a tunnel and an ancient car-like vehicle. They climb inside and hear shouts behind them. Peope are running at them, screaming No! dont! you cant! they freak and hit the gas. They ride through glass tunnels and are treated to an arial view of the caverns below. They ride for a long time and eventually end up in heaven.

Heaven is deserted. The only living things here are cats. Beside the tube is a large pile of bodies. A small robot ferries them to and from other cars and stacks them here, where another robot grabs them and takes them into one of the spiralling structures. They follow the robots. They end up inside a giant reactor of sorts. The reactor is spewing gas into the sky, and bodies are being fed into it. It is the air recycling system which allows for the plaent to continue to breath. They find an old info kiosk which explains this and states that there are otherreactors like this for water, food, and power. All are fueled by the dead.

They wander through the reactor and eventually find a large control room. Here, an extremely obese man is wired into a giant chair and seems to be tending the system. They meet and he explains the world around them, after a long process of goading.

It is far in the future, about 3000 years, to be precise. The earths rotation was shifted by something and thus the sun only appears at the cusp of the horizon here. The rest of the earth is scorched by the sun now, constantlyand is uninhabitable. Humanity spent years building the complex series of tunnels and structures around the planet, and after a nearly 500 year development cycle, they were completed. It has been almost 400 years since they were put into place, and humanity has forgotten all it knew. The people are savage now, and do not learn of the finer things in life. This man has been tending this structure for nearly 200 years, his life extended by machines.

At one time, there was an attempt to build a time machine. It was tested, but seemed not to work. This is what brought them here. It opened a time rift into the future and the past, and was unnoticable in the present. The laptop is a quantum computer made to aid time travelers on their quest. He is astonished it still works.

The man directs kim and steve to the town center of heaven. There they settle in and decide to help maintane the planet. They get desks and sit down. Each one has a cat at his or her desk. It is their computer. It cryptically answers their questions.





To the archive