Launch Delayed Due to Fog

The woman who doesn’t believe in or have dreams appeared in one of my dreams last night. That one and another dream stand out among the untold REM thoughts I had.

Lately, a few months after seeing people in nursing homes who have no quality of life left ahead of them and just last week, after seeing similar people in the hospital hooked up to a spider web of tubes in their last hours of life, I have wondered if a society should allow self-elimination as a decision to make a major change in the way people live. Needless to say, self-elimination is the choice not to live any longer, but if one has excruciating, unbearable pain in the midst of terminal cancer or faces a fate worse than death, is death of one’s choosing a viable option? Although my life is a happy one, self-elimination is still the a possible decision that looms when I come up on the fear that I might end up a ‘vegetable’ putting costly economic and emotional burdens on family, friends and society.

The first dream I had I can barely remember because the people and their activities in my dream constitute the classic nightmare. They performed acts of unconscionable, deplorable but imaginable violence on people and other animals – murder, torture, cruelty of all sorts – as if their actions had no consequences and they just happened to be torturing and killing that day instead of feeding the poor or attending to the sick. I woke up realizing that if I or someone else chooses self-elimination, then we are no different than those non-conscientious people in my first dream.

The second dream stands out for its theme of hope.

In this part of the world on an early January Saturday morning, fog hangs over the landscape. As I look out on the 270-degree view from the sunroom into the backyard, my eyes wander up the hillside, over the wet leaves, around the big boulders, through the gray and light brown tree stalks and into the fog that obscures a distant view. My dreams will fade away with time like the foggy forest beside me, unless I record all the details while they’re fresh in my mind.

Before I went to sleep last night, I sat up in bed and read “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” The epic tale contains many references to the importance of dreams, just as other ancient texts such as the Talmud and Bible do. Therefore, I am not surprised that my dreams gained more than average importance for me this morning. I attribute the technological aspects of the dream I’m about to recount to the two books I’ve just finished, “Outliers: The Story of Success” and “The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives,” and the book I’m currently reading, “The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal.”

Space exploration serves as a thematic background for me. In last night’s second dream, I found myself sitting with a group of about 70 friends and family, including Gwynn, her husband and children, her parents and other familiar faces. We sat in rows of chairs that were like seats in the cabin of a space shuttle (each row composed of two sets of seven seats divided by a center aisle, with five rows; thus 2 x 5 x 7 = 70). We faced a speaker who pointed at a 3D projection and explained why a particular experimental spacecraft had been built. The space plane he described had two hulls that were like delta wings attached to each other in a hinged manner so that the plane ‘flapped’ to gain momentum. A previous version of the plane used freely sliding weights to cause the hulls to flap up and down but gravity was not sufficient to keep the plane flying so a piston system had been installed to increase the plane’s chance of taking off from the ground and flying into space. The speaker asked for volunteers to ride in the plane during its maiden flight so they could provide weight balance and give a subjective account of the flight.

I sat in the middle of the third row that was in the section on the right side of the aisle facing the speaker. Gwynn sat in the same row but in the middle of the section on the left side of the aisle. She spoke up and joked that all her father’s constant talk about community responsibility (getting good grades in school, having children, chaperoning your kids’ school events, joining social groups, etc.) could be summarized into sending all his offspring onto the plane for the experiment. If the experiment succeeded, Gwynn's father could point proudly to the bravery and honor that his children and grandchildren have shown. If the experiment failed, why couldn’t he exclaim the same thing, Gwynn asked out loud in a mocking voice, even though he would have no surviving representatives of his genetic output left to hear his wisdom and carry it out?

Gwynn's father, who sat ahead of me in the first aisle, started to speak and we all turned to face him. “I believe…,” he said, hesitating before continuing, “I believe that you misunderstand my philosophy. Responsibility to the community includes NOT taking unnecessary chances.”

Gwynn laughed. “Dad, that’s where I disagree. Each generation makes its own decisions, even while taking the advice of previous generations into account. I say we all get on that plane and help test this plane.”

Gwynn's father cleared his throat. “In times of threat such as war, yes, then we must volunteer to protect the community. But this is just a plane, and one limited mainly to space use at that. Our community responsibility does not mean we have to help test a plane of which few citizens will ever use.”

Gwynn laughed again, got up and walked toward the door at the rear of the room.

Her laughter reminded me that I’d had some good times with her when we were in high school together so I followed her to see what she was up to. She slowed down when she saw me so we could walk together.

We walked out of the briefing room and down a corridor that further indicated to me we were inside a vehicle in outer space. Or at least we were in such a vehicle. I had no idea if we were on Earth or in space.

Gwynn motioned us inside a small control room. I could hear the quiet rhythm of hidden machinery, like someone breathing behind me. Gwynn quickly talked me through the uses of the keys and knobs on a panel in front of us, which operated the launch and guidance of a small experimental sphere into the midst of space debris. She then looked at me and laughed again.

“You know what. This experiment is more important than that other one. And for you, even more so, because it involves exactly two people, you and someone else.”

“Really?” I looked back down at the knobs and calculated the risks involved in launching a two-person craft from the space station we were on. I felt someone step in between Gwynn and me and could see out of my peripheral vision the other person was wearing a space suit but no helmet.

I lifted my head and standing next to me was Helen. We smiled at each other with a look of familiarity that spoke of a long time apart and the satisfaction of being back in each other’s company once again.

Helen put her arm around my waist. “Hey.”

“Hello.” I felt a warm glow running up my back from where Helen pressed her hand.

“So you want to go up in this thing with me?”

I smiled even bigger than before, sending signals to Helen that only she and I could interpret, my face saying, ‘There’s no one else I’d want to go out into space on a dangerous mission with.’

She returned the smile, her eyes saying, ‘Of course, what was I thinking?’

I put my arm over her shoulders and looked back at the control panel. “Well, Gwynn, the launch is set for tomorrow night, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Rick, it is.”

I looked at Helen, sighing with the satisfaction of the restoration of my inner peace. “There’s a meteor shower tomorrow…”

“And…” Helen jumped to continue my sentence, as she used to.

“And that means there’s a two in a million chance of our being hit by micrometeors. In other words, of a million meteors of different sizes flying around us, two of them will go undetected and hit our spacecraft, creating untold damage, up to total destruction of the craft. What that means about the rest of them flying around us and their influence on our flight, I don’t know.”

Helen squeezed my waist, telling me she didn’t care.

I pulled her to me, hugging her, leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Do you want to go out there tomorrow night and take the chance of dying with me in space?”

She leaned the side of her head into my face, letting me know that she could die with me and be happy. “But I don’t want to die yet, do you?” she whispered in my ear.

I pulled back and looked down into her eyes. “No.” There was still just too much more life left to live, especially with her.

Helen hugged me tightly, her face buried in my chest.

I nodded at Gwynn. “Some things are more important than advancing technology.”

Gwynn laughed again. “It’s funny hearing you, of all people, saying that. Oh well.” Gwynn shrugged her shoulders and walked out of the room, disappointed that I wouldn’t help her with a technological experiment but happier that she had gotten Helen and me back together.

I woke up, noting that I had slept on my left side, with our oldest Cornish Rex cat asleep under the covers of the bed, leaning against my chest, and our youngest Cornish Rex cat sleeping against the crook of my back. My wife dozed quietly behind me.

I got up, used the bathroom to pee and wash my hands. My wife woke up and requested I bring her the mouthpiece that helps her sleep without snoring. I gave her the mouthpiece, fed the cats who were then begging for food, cooked myself a bowl of oatmeal, fed the fish, heated a mug of Earl Gray tea and walked out to the sunroom to write. I sat next to the copy of National Geographic that detailed the 50 years of humans traveling into space that I had read a couple of days ago. Hmm...

The fog has lifted but full sunshine is still just out of reach. Time to eat my oatmeal and figure out what to do about my dream. My dreams have come true before. Haven't yours?