Dream Me(42)

“I can’t stop thinking about the Earth. Our Earth. I wish I didn’t know how it ended.”

“Haven’t you always known our sun would eventually die? Didn’t they teach you about red giants in school?” Zat seems genuinely perplexed I might not know this.

“It never seemed real. Of course I learned about it but the massive amount of time until it happened completely negated its reality. But you’ve bridged the time for me like a wormhole. It’s not infinite and incomprehensible anymore. It almost seems like it’s happening to me now.”

We’re riding in the back of a hay wagon, a ride I once took during a school field trip in second grade. My classmates surround us, giggling and squealing as the poor horse trudges along a path it takes multiple times a day. “Wormhole? I’m impressed. You have been learning about space and time,” Zat says as my second grade crush, Marvin Topper, jumps off the side of the wagon to get to the biggest pumpkin in the patch before the other kids. “But I’m sorry for you,” Zat smiles at Marvin’s enthusiasm. “Ignorance really can be bliss, and I’m not saying that to be mean.”

“Why’s it so hot if the sun’s dying? Wouldn’t the opposite be true?”

We wait in the wagon while the other kids spread out in search of the perfect pumpkin. A little girl I don’t recognize calls up to me to join her, but when I don’t answer she scampers off.

“Before it dies, the core heats up. Oceans boil away, solar winds sweep across our atmosphere. And then one day . . .”

“Don’t say it.” My fingertips gently shush his lips. I can’t bear to hear him describe what comes next. I remember learning about how the earth will eventually be sucked into that inferno, but it seemed like a story that had nothing to do with me.

Now it does.

“You know everything, don’t you? Because of the chip?”

“Something like that,” he says without enthusiasm. “I can access every word which has ever been written. But to make meaning of information, I have to live it, to experience it on my own. You have to do the same.”

__________

And then he takes my hand and we run. We run so fast and so easily, I haven’t felt that same joyous physical abandon since I was a little girl. I look all around me and see blue mountains frosted with snow. I see a black pond, thick with algae, where egrets bend their graceful necks toward its stillness. I see fireflies light up a night sky. I see shaggy weeping willows and shimmering, whispering creeks. I feel gray gobs of clouds above me, pregnant with rain. And I smell the rich loamy soil beneath my feet where earthworms toil tirelessly in the dark.

And then I know what Zat meant. I have to fully inhabit this world, to love it and my place in it so much that the thought of losing it, even long after I die, is unthinkable. I have to do whatever I can to preserve and appreciate the splendor of the magical blue orb on which I live. I have to leave behind my memories for everyone who will come long after I’m gone and will never have the gifts I take for granted.

Only in their dreams.

Comments:

DreamMe: That magical blue orb still exists for you. Keep it magical. Keep it blue.

Babe: Who are you?





Fourteen


An epiphany is a wonderful thing but when real life intrudes, it can be hard to focus on the big picture. That’s exactly what happened the next day when Clyde Buell walked through the door and transformed himself into a major buzz kill.

It was midday, lunch time, which was usually pretty quiet. Not only was it hot then, but people were busy eating and taking their early afternoon summer siestas. Bing had taken to leaving me on my own during lunch. He used the time to run errands and once a week he returned the favor and let me take off for a whole hour.

But that day Clyde strolled in acting like none of the bad stuff had ever happened between us.

“Was Bing expecting you?” I asked. I knew he wasn’t. “He’ll be back soon.”

Clyde didn’t have a partner in sight so I was wondering what was up.

“I’m waiting for a friend—expected he’d be here by now. We’ll be using Court 5 if you could make sure no one else takes it.”

Court 5 was a prized court at this time of day, being mostly in the shade of a row of silver maples. Of course Clyde assumed the court was his for the asking, and anyone who might have reserved it would naturally be bumped to a different court. Luckily, it was open.

I brought up the computer reservation program and typed Clyde’s name into court 5. He was doing a whole bit about checking his watch and staring at the door like he expected Mr. X to walk in any moment. But I instinctively distrusted Clyde so I doubted Mr. X’s existence until it was proven otherwise.

I wondered whether Clyde knew about my friendship with his son, but I didn’t think so. They didn’t seem like they shared a lot of personal info.

While all the phony acting was going on, he kept moving closer and closer until he was right by my side, right where all the bad stuff happened before and right where I didn’t want him to be. I looked nervously through the window but there was no sign of Bing, or anyone else for that matter.

“Is there something I can help you with while you’re waiting?” I asked, making direct eye contact in the hopes of getting him to back off a bit. It had the opposite effect.