The Dream Vortex

A Dream Not Imagined

Rusk's initial break-through experience came in the form of shocking dream.  It was the dramatic realization that the dream may not be a dream. He had been sleeping lightly, with the sound of the freeway in the distance coming in through a window that had not been closed fully.  Even though he was asleep, his mind was racing.  This particular racing of the mind, with a slight elevated heart rate always seemed to come after a day of programming.  It did something to Rusk's mind.  The mathematics made him wander in his sleep, reaching out to new thoughts after new thoughts. 

Not that Rusk was a big time programmer, but sometimes his job required him to look over the code.  He was not a programmer per se.  Rusk was a product manager in a small software firm in downtown LA, right next to the Fremont Hotel and across the street from the Whole Foods. It was bright and cheery during the daytime, but at night it almost appeared to be out of a Philip K Dick novel like Blade Runner. That area of LA is where his mind was focusing that night.  It was as if he was still at work looking out his office window at the street 4 stories below.  But it was night time.  In Rusk's mind he could almost fly at night between locations and scenes from his past.

So, when the screech of a pickup truck breaking in the distance woke Rusk slightly, he sat up for a sec. Then he settled back asleep.  With Lindsey by his side, he could see around the dark room and checked his Fitbit on his wrist.  It was only 3am and he was half-asleep. So he settled in and turned on his right side to get his sleeping position just right.  Rusk placed a pillow between his legs. Another pillow under his right arm. He reached over to make sure Lindsey was by his side.  She was there, a beautiful 38 year old women in bed with Rusk, soft and warm to the touch when he felt her hand.

Slowly Rusk fell back to sleep and the room, the distant sounds and everything in his world faded to dark.  He was in deep REM sleep and was sleeping soundly.  That's when the dream began.  It started simply as a walk around the house in the dark.  Rusk walked in his underwear with a black tea-shirt down the main hallway. Suddenly he stopped and noticed there was no sound at all.  "That's unusual" Rusk muttered to himself.  He could not tell if he were awake or asleep.  He did notice the pictures in the hallway as he looked around.  They were lined up in the dark like normal, except there was some junk on the ground as he walked that he bumped into. He did not remember a stack of stuff there. The lack of sound made Rusk feel a little bit like something was not right. So, he continued to walk.

At the end of the hallway, when he looked to the right he saw the kitchen entrance.  He approached the kitchen and turned. It just happened that he and the family had decided a couple years earlier to move the kitchen table out of the kitchen and put a couch in the kitchen.  It was cozier and easier to watch TV quietly while Lindsey and Rusk cooked dinner.  It was also a place where anyone could flop, while the rest of the family slept. 

When Rusk looked across the kitchen through the darkness, he noticed there was a person sleeping on the old couch.  "That's a bit unusual" Rusk thought to himself.  In the early years of their marriage, when the boys were young, and one of them jumped in bed with Rusk and Lindsey, either he or Lindsey would often get out of bed, rather than disturb their son.  They would often retreat to the kitchen couch and sleep there.  That was also where the dogs slept.  It was a comfy place to sleep and silent there as well.  And that's when Rusk realized the dogs were not barking or making a commotion. "Odd" he thought.

From the dull lights from outside, Rusk could just about tell it was Lindsey sleeping on that couch. How could he know it was Lindsey?  Well, he really couldn't tell exactly.  He was pretty sure it was her silhouette in the distance. So Rusk whispered "Lindsey?"  She did not hear him.  So Rusk called again.  Still she did not hear him.  So Rusk got a bit louder "Lindsey is that you there?"  She did not move.  Lindsey was a pretty intense sleeper, but it just annoyed Rusk, Lindsey was not responding.  He had a bad feeling that he needed to know this was not a stranger in the house.  So he raised his voice even louder.  Lindsey moved slightly.  Rusk just wanted to make sure it was her so he yelled "Lindsey" with a booming voice.  At that moment Lindsey sat up and responded "Yes" with more than a tired voice.  It was crackly and distorted and almost a different sound to it.   Lindsey looked around and could not see anything and so she fell back down on her pillow and went back to a light murmur. 

While Lindsey sat up, that was the moment Rusk saw her clearly in the light from the window when the streetlights from the expressway came across the kitchen and hit Lindsey's face.  He could see her fully. And what he saw was definitely Lindsey.  But she was not the Lindsey he remembered.  It was Lindsey, but she was older,  much older, perhaps 75 or 80.  He could tells by her eyes and her white hair.  And it is at that moment, Rusk had his moment of amazing clarity, and he knew immediately what was happening. "Time", Rusk thought, "hold no bounds on energy."  Rusk new what this meant.  Rusk was so shocked, he woke and he was back in bed, but he seemed to have a thought similar to the thoughts of the man who described the concept of a black hole while fighting in world war 1 or the thoughts of relativity that Einstein suddenly understood when dreaming of a train in motion while time differed from those watching the train pass by. In his mind Rusk put the pieces together. It was clear to Rusk that Lindsey had experienced a ghost event, but that ghost was no ghost.  It was simply Rusk, 40 years earlier dreaming and connecting with Lindsey in his dream.  What had Rusk stumbled upon and would his life ever be the same?