Drenched in sweat, JC woke up with a shock and thought to himself. “Again, this strange dream, what does it all mean?” He had this nightmare about a newly discovered comet just before it was reported in the news at the beginning of the year. The discovery was made by Professor Armando Rodriguez and his team at the Arecibo radio telescope. In an interview, he explained that the comet was on its way to the center of our solar system, and although it didn’t seem that it was going to hit, it would pass relatively close to Earth.
It was quite silly, but JC was worried about such an event, even though there wasn’t anything that any ordinary person like him could do about it. But here he was, thinking about it more than he wanted to admit. He got out of bed and walked over to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Pondering on his dream, he suddenly got startled when a large white Persian cat jumped on the kitchen counter with a loud meow. “Oh my, what are you scaring me for, you silly cat!” He didn’t mean it like that because he knew that the cat just wanted some food and attention. The cat had belonged to his ex-girlfriend, who had left him quite unexpectedly earlier that year. Right around the time, the comet was reported in the news. The fact that she left him made him extra sensitive. “Sorry she let us both down, you can’t help it either.”
Meanwhile, steam was coming out of the water boiler, and the button clicked off. This brought him back to his weird dream, which he kept having over and over again. He tried to piece it all back together as he poured his cup of tea. It was not that difficult to remember, because, for a few months, the dream always started the same way and only seemed to expand further in both length and detail.
It began with an image of the comet speeding through the vast emptiness of space, towards the center of our solar system. He found himself right in the path of this object made of stone and ice, and it almost seemed alive. The rock changed into a strange creature that wanted to talk to him. He couldn’t quite make out what it was; this icy giant reminded him of a sea creature with tentacles or limbs. “Perhaps it was some kind of octopus or jellyfish.” He thought to himself. Before, he normally woke up at the moment he was about to disappear into the creature’s mouth. But this time, it seemed he had found some inner strength not to wake up yet. At first, it was like a dark, gaping cave, but it gradually got brighter once he went deeper inside. He then entered a space filled with bright light, where all sorts of geometric shapes emerged from the light in the center. They became symbols and floated towards him, where they merged with his forehead with a flash. Every time this happened, he heard strange sounds, as if it were some kind of unknown language.
The words still echoed in his head after he woke up while the rain began to trickle down the windows of his apartment. He took the last sip of his tea and touched his forehead on the spot where the symbols had fused with him during his dream. It gave him a strange feeling, and he was wondering what they could mean. It reminded him of some kind of software code, probably because he was a developer.
The company he worked for was a start-up at the Babylon Media Corporation, where he developed translation software. The Genesis Eleven project, as it was called, was an ambitious effort to create real-time translations of spoken and written language. This is a huge undertaking, but he thought to himself. “We are at the beginning of the 21st century, so we have the technology and processing power to do it; we just need to put all the pieces together.” The code was still clear in his mind, and he quickly wrote it down before he forgot. He yawned and thought. “I will show this to John tomorrow morning in the office.” John and eleven other developers were working on the main part of the code. JC fell asleep again, and after a couple of hours, he woke up without the strange dream returning. Still half asleep, he sat on a commuter train on his way to the office in the city of London. The symbols were repeating in his mind, and he was so concentrated that he did not notice the conductor standing next to him. Only after the third time he was asked for his ticket, and was tapped on the shoulder, did he react to the conductor handing over the little yellow rail pass. He got the card back with a grumpy comment and put it back in his pocket. The conductor walked on to the next group of people, and JC wanted to say something about the comment, but looked at the man standing in the distance. The conductor was now standing next to a woman with long brown hair, who was sitting with her back towards him. She reminded him of someone, but he could not put his mind on it. He let the comment slide since the conductor was already walking away, and JC continued thinking about the code some more. The train driver’s voice sounded over the intercom.
“Ladies and gentlemen, in a couple of minutes we will be arriving at Liverpool Street station, next stop Liverpool Street station.”
A few minutes later, as the train slowed down, people got up and packed their belongings from the overhead compartments. Also, the woman with brown hair got up and moved towards the exit. On the left side, the platform came into view. He also got up and walked towards the exit, where the woman was already standing in line. Everybody was getting anxious to get off the train, and one big fat man got up and pushed himself between him and the brown-haired woman. Then he noticed on the other side of the hallway, in the doorway, there was some commotion.
“The Dark Lord is coming! The end is near, lo to them who do not find the true master within!” shouted a strange man while pushing everybody out of his way to leave the train as fast as possible.
JC saw that the man was about to pull the emergency brake above the door, and he grabbed hold of the seats and braced himself. With a terrible screech, the train came to an abrupt halt, and everybody was falling on top of each other. JC could hold on for a while, but the backlash made the big man fall back on top of him. Everybody was panicking and screaming while he pulled himself up by the seats. In this chaos, the strange man had opened the door on the other side of the train, and just before he jumped out, he looked at JC and shouted:
“You must find your true self within! Only then can you resist the dark lord!”
The man jumped out into the cool morning air and ran away while he barely avoided a train passing by at high speed.
JC helped the people in front of him stand up, first the big man who had fallen on him, then the brown-haired woman. He took her by the arms and lifted her from underneath the person in front of her. He recognized the smell of her hair, and it brought back memories. She turned around and recognized him as well. She had a sad look on her face, but when she saw him, a little smile appeared.
“Miriam, is it really you!” He said, surprised, and he looked deep into her big brown eyes.
“JC, what are you doing here?” She replied, still a bit confused.
His thoughts were now racing through his mind when he remembered his first high school love standing in front of him.
“Well, I am on my way to work, and how about you? Are you also trying to get by in this train full of crazy people?” He gave back her bag that she had dropped while their hands touched.
“Oh yeah, I also have to get to work.” She replied while she was holding his hand. Neither one knew what to say, standing here hand in hand and looking into each other’s eyes.
It seemed to last forever, and they both remembered the last time they broke up was quite awkward. Their relationship ended as strangely as it had begun. It became a competition over who loved whom more, where they first tried to prove their love to each other, and in the end, it turned into a suffocating relationship for both. It was true love for them, but somehow things got out of control, finally erupting like a volcano. During their last argument, JC told her that she would be the first to come back if they broke up, and she told him the same. It was a statement neither of them wanted to concede, and so finally, they both went their own way and never saw each other again.
Until today, and now here was his chance to tell her how he really felt about her. It was like they were in their own microcosmos, and everything around them ceased to exist.
— ∗ —
