A Gradual Disintegration

As the fair maiden and the young man were falling down to the sea below, the young man was reminded of a bus ride he had that was following along a coastline similar to the one they were descending from right now. It was in the middle of the night, and he could not get any sleep then. The young man always microslept when he is driving but rarely does he doze off when someone else is operating the vehicle although he would still be able to achieve his forty winks but not without the help of his sleeping aids that he has obtained many different variations of from work and his other endeavors over its brief but rapid development over the years. These sleeping aids that he was referring to were not drugs for sleep medication but actually his dream machine and the one that he used when he was riding the bus along this coastline was the one that he got from the government, which was permeated with advertisements and reminders of how benevolent the ruling party and their royal highness were.

The young man was similar to many other workaholics who were concerned with lack of productivity especially during resting hours. He owned a dream machine which allowed people like himself to do work even in their sleep. The young man could still remember the infancy of virtual reality during his youth. There was a time when not everybody had phones, and they could survive just fine but that has not been the case for a while. The obsolescence of brick phones when smartphones came out is akin to how these dream machines replaced virtual reality. His discovery about it was when he read a book once where a young female model was displaying herself walking up some stairs through a screen where a packed auditorium could see her doing in the virtual reality. She was wearing a thick headset and holding a controller to navigate herself. His friends would always think he was more interested in the presenter than the presentation and it was not really that far from the truth.

This very same woman would demonstrate the dream machine more than a decade later walking up the same set of stairs only this time she was asleep and the small company that she worked for was now a multinational corporation after it was acquired by a conglomerate. It started with her fully awake wearing the early prototype of the dream machine which looked similar to virtual reality headsets. The virtual reality headsets were related to the dream machine in a way that both had headsets and handheld devices. During its early conceptualization, those machines were really uncomfortable for the average person to adorn, and users got dizzy wearing it with its bulky parts being strapped on their heads in the beginning. Complaints were made and the designers heeded them by making the haptic gloves be made from softer materials and the headset became so compact from its initial design that it would later feel more like a blindfold that people wore to sleep even before the advent of the new technology. 

Nowadays, the dream machine is so distinct from its predecessor that not many from the younger generation are aware of its relations at all. The young man was fascinated with the advancement of the technology which is why he knew more about it than the average consumer who mainly obtained it for work by their employers which they had to return it back to after the end of their service. It was not necessarily used for work related purposes. Initially it was designed for its entertainment value in which people could combine their time for recreational activities with their time for resting. But this only made people more burdened with tasks since now they have more hours to spend on work which they can voluntarily utilize for labor. Employers never really had to pressure their employees to do it as avoiding its use, especially from the sceptics, was only detrimental to themselves as they were losing a significant amount of time by ignoring it. 

The young man begrudgingly bought his device that he owned currently which removed most of the intrusive advertisements though not entirely as those were beyond that he could afford since he knew that he would not be able to compete in the job market otherwise. He was going to have to have to use a dream machine whether he liked it or not. The young man did actually like it. The only problem was the product placements and political propaganda that was in abundance with the product if one did not purchase the most premium version of it. If there were so many others at the workplace who had more hours available to them, how could he possibly leave himself behind with crutches by not adapting with the times. The young man was always slow to embrace new technology especially if he did not see its immediate necessity, but this was not the case when it came to dream machines as he was the earliest adopters of the product as he could see its utilization for himself.

The young man had learned about it as a teenager, but he could not afford it at the time but with the government initiatives as a fresh graduate to own it for free, virtually everyone scrambled for their complementary productivity assistant. In the beginning the project was open source but certain groups were able to capitalize on the concept and commercialized it into what the young man and everyone else knows of it today. The young man still remembers the time when he went to collect his state provided dream machine. He had to go to a government center by bus since he had crashed his car a few months prior. The bus was moving faster than the speed limit and he had imagined the bus to lose control, taking the lives of everyone in it, not that he knew anybody else on the ride. He had decided to go by himself without being accompanied by any of his friends. He wanted to test the dream machine by himself on the bus ride home.

*

Never has it left

A sempiternal feeling

Zeroes and ones blurred

It’s horrendous now

For a long time he rambles

Avoiding something

Incidents occur 

Losing their meanings daily 

Yet it never ends

*

The young man had just finished constructing a haiku when the sound of a gunshot disturbed his concentration towards his draft. He had turned off the lucidity in the settings, so he had not realized that he was actually dreaming. The young man erroneously guessed that the loud noise had woken him up. He stood up to look at a few rows in front of him, where the sound was coming from. The young man never thought that he would hear a gunshot in a bus before and he never would since he lived in a country where those types of weapons were banned, and it was only mind making him think that he was. He was expecting some screaming to be heard but that moment never came. There were a few gasps that were audible but nothing more than that. Most of the passengers were too busy recovering from their drowsiness as a result of being woken up to be doing any shouting. Some actually even continued with their slumber, or they were probably already shot dead by the masked man who wielded the gun. 

From where the young man sat, he could see that a masked man had just shot another masked man beside him. The dead body was lying in the aisle, and the masked man was outlining it with his blood. This reminded the young man of the chalk outlines from crime shows that he used to watch. The method has become obsolete these days, though. The police no longer do any of that but the upcoming cop show starring a controversial actor known for dating women young enough to be his daughter still does it as if this entire dream sequence was an advertisement for the young man to go watch it since he has been known to watch the genre before. The splash of fluid on the headrest where the dead man’s head should have been was green. The young man did not have to go near it to know that the slimy substance was not human blood. It was hemolymph which was supposed to be the blood for vertebrates like insects or crustaceans and not a masked man or any human being for that matter. 

The young man paid closer attention towards the masked man with the gun who still had a head. He had a pair of antennas where his ears should have been. The young man just glared at him as he said whatever he was saying. For some reason, he was not intimidated at all by his threats. The young man looked at the little girl who was sitting beside him. She did not look terrified, either; rather she appeared a bit more displeased that her sleep had been disturbed. She looked out the window. The night sky was shining bright tonight. There was a full moon, and the little girl looked at it probably thinking it was following us like most children do. Her mother told the young man that she liked to sit by the window. He could no longer see the little girl’s mother. 

It was too dark for him to see but he was sure she was here somewhere since she had been on the bus before the ride started. She had previously gotten asleep the same way the little girl did by staring at the moon until the gentle goodnight hit her. Even the old woman who sat by the emergency exit managed to sleep through the whole commotion despite the noise. The young man had been asleep too and he was still sleeping but he was about to realize that he was dreaming. He remembered that he wanted to try making a haiku somewhere in some woods in his dream, at least that was the plan before he went to sleep. The young man was still figuring out the settings when his exhaustion overcame, and he left the settings unfinished before getting to be in the middle of the woods. There was a long line when he went to retrieve the dream machine. There was talk about how even with the lucidity in the settings turned off, experienced lucid dreamers will still be able to know that they are asleep. That would explain why the young man was finally able to distinguish his reality as he heard another gunshot in the near distance. The young man drafted another haiku this time while he was lucid.

*

Some dreams are gathered

In an ambivalent mind

Feels quite cumbersome

What could all this mean?

No solution ever comes

Lost in translation

Forever it stays

Misunderstood when pondered

Lying it makes sense

*

The masked man removed the wristwatch that the dead man had been wearing and put it in a black plastic bag that he was holding. Everybody that the masked man passed by gave up all their valuables without any resistance and threw them into the opaque bag never to be seen again by their owners. The young man was thinking of a way to get out of this situation without waking up. He remembered reading the manual before entering the dream which mentioned that getting too excited would increase the chances of early awakening. That would spoil all the fun now for the young man as he was still new to this lucid dreaming thing. After going through all the other passengers, the masked man finally reached the back of the bus where the young man was sitting beside the little girl and the old woman. He tried to understand the masked man’s question. They had asked a question, but the young man had not been paying him any attention. 

The masked man’s unheard question was left unanswered as the young man took his leather jacket off. He approached the masked man and wrapped the piece of clothing around his neck. But when the young man did that the masked man’s head and consequently their mask fell to the floor, and he got hemolymph staining his shirt. If he was not dreaming right now, he would have been bothered by the smell but he was not so it had no effect on him in that regard, but the sight of the greenish substance splattered all over revolted him. This did not bother anybody else in the bus, though. They all applauded the young man for his bravery, but he ignored them as he took the gun and the black plastic bag that the masked man left on the floor. They were lighter to carry than the young man had expected for them to be.

The young man shouted to the driver to stop the bus. He was surprised when he saw the bus driver’s face or what was left of it as they did not resemble a human being at all. They had the features of a cockroach. The bus driver had antennas instead of ears like the two masked men who had just got shot. They let go of the wheel then walked over to the young man. There was nobody driving the bus, but it was still moving faster than ever. Maybe the driver had placed a brick on the accelerator. Even if that was true it did not explain why the steering wheel was moving by itself. All that the young man wanted to do was to get out of this bus without waking up from this dream but now he has gotten into a fight with the bus driver. He tried to look for any other options, but the young man could not find any besides waking up.

While the young man was busy thinking of his options, the driver hit him in the face. He should have seen that coming. The young man had tried to retaliate but it was hard to punch someone in a dream. The fist feels like it is going through air resistance like a piece of paper falling to the ground. The movement becomes so slow that when it actually comes into contact with the target no damage is inflicted. He gave up and tried shooting himself in the chest only to realize that there was no bullet coming out from the gun. The masked man had been making empty threats when he in fact had already run out of bullets. It seems like his intention of waking up now had to be delayed. It was not always this difficult to wake up from a dream. Normally the young man had a tougher time staying in a dream.

The bus driver was surprised to see the young man trying to shoot himself. They asked him if he had always known the gun was empty, but the young man ignored him. He did not feel like explaining stuff to characters in his own dreams. The young man thought that they could figure it out themselves. They were all a part of him anyway. The bus had been driving itself for a while now. He reckoned that at any moment this bus will fall off some ravine and will eventually wake him up and he was correct at least for the first part but as to the latter, the bus had started to descend but he was still stuck in the dream. The young man was upset about that. He was more upset about being wrong than not getting what he wanted. The young man now had other questions. What sort of terrain had this bus gone over? How long was this fall going to last?

The young man noticed there was someone who had managed to fly away with her umbrella while the rest had surrendered to their fate. If she had not sat close to him, he might have actually missed it. She did not really struggle with the process at all. It was as if she had been planning to leave the bus in that way from the start of the journey. She almost seemed a little upset with herself that she had not woken up sooner to leave the bus. The old woman went out the emergency exit and tried to land safely to the ground with it as opposed to flying back up to the road from where the bus dropped. The young man was not sure if she did either, though. It was too dark to see. There were not any streetlights where they were falling from, or they were not functional if there were.

The little girl who had been sitting next to him during the entirety of the bus ride suddenly came to him and asked if he wanted to try to escape their fate in a similar fashion. The young man was not too sure about the idea but as to not disappoint her by rejecting the idea she came up with told her that he did not have an umbrella with him. She told him that all he had to do was imagine it in his mind and it would conjure in his hand. She showed the young man an example of her doing it. He tried doing it himself but could not for the life of his spawn an umbrella like she just did and when he eventually gave up, the bus crashed to the ground which led him back in the real world riding a normal bus ride back home.