Life of a Dream

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Dot was his best friend here in the nursing home. He’d often wished he could tell her about his missions. But he was restricted from doing so by regulations.

  The EPL had a lot of very firm regulations. Considering the nature of the job and who was doing the fighting, it had to be strict and clear.

  The young soldier glanced back at him, a look of fear on his face, his hand on his gun on his hip.

  Saber understood the reason for the kid’s fear. If the case warranted, the young soldier was ordered to kill anyone who happened to get in the way of a mission.

  Saber looked at his friend sitting there in her wheelchair clearly looking confused.

  Dot wasn’t in the way.

  Tonight’s mission was over.

  “It’s all right, soldier.” Saber looked the young kid directly in the eyes and smiled. “She’s a friend.”

  The young man stood for a moment, then nodded. “Understood, Captain. Command will be expecting a report on this.”

  “They will have it in the morning.”

  The young soldier nodded to Dot. “Goodnight, ma’am.” He then vanished through the door, closing it behind him.

  Saber lay on his back in his bed, his head turned, staring at Dot. He couldn’t really see the expression on her face, and she said nothing.

  He could feel his heart beating in his chest, and he hoped he still didn’t smell like those aliens he had killed.

  For the next few moments the silence in the room sounded like a roaring engine about to overwhelm them both, the ticking of his wall clock like the timer of a bomb.

  Then finally Dot rolled a little closer to his bed and said, “Have I got you in some sort of trouble?”

  Saber remembered the pitched fight he’d just had with six alien pirates, the success they had had again in defending the Earth Protection League and its space.

  And the death of Sarah.

  That was trouble.

  Not this.

  He laughed.

  But he realized he was back in his old body and the laugh turned into a hacking, coughing, old man’s laugh that lasted for a good thirty ticks of his clock before he finally stopped.

  “You want to know where I was?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He motioned her closer to his bed.

  “You won’t believe me, but I would love to tell you.”

  “You never know what I might believe,” she said.

  He laughed softly this time, avoiding the hacking cough.

  “It’s going to feel good to finally be able to tell you about my missions.”

  She nodded.

  He couldn’t believe it. After all the years of going out and coming back, of defending Earth against all odds, and all alien scum, he finally got to tell someone.

  And for the next hour it felt wonderful.

  Almost as good as killing those alien pirates.

  Almost.

  FOUR

  December 24th, 2018

  Actual Earth Time

  Location: Chicago

  DOT WAS MORE stunned than anything else.

  Brian’s wild story of being a Captain in the Earth Protection League, of fighting alien pirates in deep space as a young man, was outrageous to say the least.

  He told her about how he had had to board a pirate ship, fight all six of them, and how bad they smelled. The details of the story were very clear, right down to how he kicked one of the dead bodies before he left the pirate ship.

  She couldn’t believe any of it, yet she had seen him be carried in and out of the room by a man who had called him Captain. And who wore a gun and was upset that she was there.

  More than likely it was all just some wild fantasy Brian had paid a kid to help him carry out as a Christmas present to himself. After all, he’d only been gone from the room for twenty minutes, not three days like he had claimed.

  Yet a part of her had wanted to believe his wild dream.

  Especially the part about growing young again, because of how time and space and matter worked.

  His explanation of that had almost been funny enough to laugh at. Yet when he had tried to explain it to her, she hadn’t laughed. Just listened, hoping to not break the fantasy world he lived in.

  She liked him enough to do that for him.

  Especially on Christmas Eve.

  It wasn’t until the end of his wild story, after telling her about the loss of his crewmate, Sarah, that he asked her something that bothered her on a deep level. He asked if she was interested in joining up, being a soldier in the Earth Protection League, of being young again to help Earth fight whatever threatened its space borders.

  The question bothered her a great deal, but instead of saying so, she laughed and said, “Who wouldn’t like to be young again?”

  “Great,” he said. “I can’t promise anything, but it never hurts to ask the brass in charge of it all.”

  At that moment, Joyce, the night nurse tonight, poked her head in and smiled at them. She asked if Brian needed anything, then winked at Dot and left.

  Dot laughed and suddenly realized she hadn’t yet made it to the bathroom.

  “I’ll see you at breakfast,” she told Brian, heading for the door as fast as she could move her chair.

  “Can’t say anything about this to anyone,” Brian said behind her.

  Again she laughed as she went into the hall.

  “Who would believe me?”

  She didn’t believe it.

  Not one word of it.

  But she wanted to.

  FIVE

  December 24th, 2018

  Actual Earth Time

  Location: Chicago

  AT BREAKFAST ON Christmas Eve day, Brian was all smiles, his wheelchair pulled up to a table in the corner of the festively decorated lunchroom. No one else was sitting at the table.

  Green and red garland hung from just about everything that wasn’t needed, and the room smelled of a combination of Christmas wreathes and pancakes. Actually a pretty good smell as far as Dot was concerned.

  Beyond the window, the Chicago weather had turned cold and clear, the sun almost too bright off the white ground. All the snow was going to freeze solid by the time the day was done and it got dark. It was lucky she wasn’t going anywhere for Christmas tomorrow. The roads would be awful.

  After all the years of living in this area, she knew that without a doubt. But she had no reason left in her life at this point to even step outside.

  She had forced herself to do a little walking this morning, even though she was tired from being up so late and talking with Brian last night, so she moved along behind her wheelchair, slowing pushing it around the other tables so she could join him.

  “Good morning,” she said, sitting with her back to the window so she wouldn’t be blinded from the bright sunlight. “Going to get cold tonight out there.”

  He glanced at the window behind her, then back at her, his smile growing even bigger. “I hadn’t honestly noticed. But might be a problem for my son getting here later on.”

  She knew Brian had a son in the area, but hadn’t met him in all the years they had known each other. Maybe today she would get a chance.

  Brian waited for the orderly to give her some orange juice, ask if she would like her normal eggs and pancakes, and leave.

  Then he leaned over slightly and whispered, “There’s a mission tonight and League Command said that if I was willing to train you on the ship’s proton weapons, you could join up. You would take Sarah’s place. You’d be a private, but there’s room for advancement.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Dot asked, staring at him.

  He had shaved this morning, but his skin was still rough with light stubble, and there was a twinkle in his eye that she’d never seen before. “Not in the slightest,” he said.

  Then his expression got very serious and a coldness came into his eyes.

  That made her sit back, surprised.

  “But it’s dangerous.” His voice
was a low whisper. “I won’t kid you on that. You die out there and they bring your body back here and you’re found dead in your sleep in the morning. The time travel part of things just doesn’t revive anyone.”

  She hadn’t been so confused in years. She took her red cloth napkin with some Christmas scene on it and unfolded it and put it on her lap to give her a moment to think.

  Brian was seriously asking her to join in his delusions.

  And he was telling her it was dangerous.

  What were he and that friend that had carried him out going to do? Would Brian kill her if she went with them in the middle of the night?

  Brian reached across and touched her hand.

  She could feel the roughness of his hand against her brittle skin. It was the first time a man, other than an aide, had touched her in any way since her husband had died all those years ago.

  “You said you wanted to be young again,” he said, staring into her eyes with those intense brown eyes of his.

  “I do,” she said, moving her hand away.

  “But you don’t trust me, do you?” Brian said, smiling. The boyish twinkle was back in his eyes.

  “Would you?” she asked. “You have to admit, your story is pretty wild stuff.”

  “I didn’t believe it either, my first night,” he said, laughing and clearly remembering something since he seemed to be looking off into the distance. After a moment he went on. “To be honest with you, even after going on more than a hundred missions, I still don’t believe it.”

  “So I should just trust you?” she asked.

  “How old are you, Dot?” he asked in return.

  “Eighty-four,” she said, squaring her shoulders. No man had asked her that question in years. She wasn’t sure she liked telling a man her age. She was still very old-fashioned that way.

  “I’m eighty-five,” he said. “And this old body is getting worse by the day it seems. What I do for the League is a dream come true. At our age, what else do we have to live for but dreams?”

  At that moment, for some crazy reason, she decided he was right. Maybe it was because it was Christmas Eve and there was a faint Christmas song playing in the background and the sun was shining and she would have no family visiting today.

  Or just maybe she really didn’t have anything to lose.

  Either way she’d play along with him and his wild fantasy, maybe even let herself believe that she might be young again for a short time.

  Every night she dreamed of dancing anyway. Why not join Brian in his dreams for a night?

  “I’ll go,” she said, smiling at him.

  The light in his eyes was like a child seeing the presents under a Christmas tree. She knew she had made the right decision.

  With that the orderly brought their breakfast and they talked about family and Christmas memories.

  And at lunch they sat together and did the same, sharing the past with each other. Dot learned more about Brian that day than she had in years. It seemed that because she was willing to go with him, he felt more open with her.

  And she felt more open with him for some reason.

  She really had made the right decision, she knew that.

  She went to bed at her normal time of eight and managed to doze, but awoke at midnight, worried that she had made a really stupid decision.

  She could hear Brian’s clock ticking and not much else. The worry about what was going to happen kept her awake far too long and she kept waking up at any sound.

  At one point she almost wheeled across the hall and told Brian to forget about her going along, but before she could get up enough energy to do that, she had just gone back to sleep, deciding she would deal with it in the morning.

  It was three in the morning, Christmas morning, when the young woman dressed in black came across the hall from Brian’s room.

  Dot heard her coming because Brian had laughed.

  Dot was suddenly scared out of her wits.

  But the fact that there was a young woman also involved calmed her a little. It wasn’t just Brian and some friend of his.

  “My name is Lieutenant Sherri,” the woman said, stopping beside her bed and smiling. “Brian says you’re thinking of joining the League, Mrs. Leeds. I sure envy you.”

  Those words rocked Dot completely out of her fear, which drained away like someone had pulled a plug in a sink.

  She looked up into the young dark eyes and the smiling face of Lieutenant Sherri over her bed. “Envy me? Why?”

  “Because you get to go out there, into space, to defend Earth. It will be years before I can go, even on a short-run mission.”

  Dot only nodded.

  She had no idea what the young woman had said or meant. And she still didn’t believe she was going into space, but at this point she really didn’t know what to believe was going to happen. But at least the fear was gone.

  “Are you ready?” the young woman asked as she moved in beside Dot’s bed and lowered the railing.

  “Why not?” Dot said. “After all, it’s Christmas morning.”

  The woman picked her up as easily as the orderly, stepped to the door and glanced down the hall to make sure the nurse wasn’t watching. Then quickly, she carried Dot across the hall and into Brian’s room.

  Brian was already gone and the young woman carrying her didn’t hesitate. She went right through Brian’s open sliding glass door and out into the cold night air, her feet crunching on the frozen snow, her arms holding Dot gently, but firmly.

  “Aren’t I going to be missed?” Dot asked as the night air bit at her, sharp, pin-like. Not in a million years had she expected to go out into this cold night air.

  “You’ll be back in twenty minutes,” the young woman said. “Everything is taken care of on this end.”

  “We won’t be outside that long, will we?” Dot asked, starting to shiver. The older she had gotten, the more sensitive she had become to the cold. This was like a knife cutting at her skin.

  “Only a moment,” Lieutenant Sherri said.

  The rest went like a blur for Dot.

  One moment they were in the cold, then she and the woman carrying her were floating up through the air into something big above her in the night sky. That was a nightmare and Dot wanted to close her eyes, but didn’t.

  The minute they lifted off the ground, she started to really believe Brian’s story.

  And suddenly she was scared again.

  The young Lieutenant Sherri walked her quickly down a hallway that looked like it could be a hallway on a cruise liner. Then she carried Dot into a single room.

  The coffin-like sleep chamber in the small room was exactly like Brian had described.

  Lieutenant Sherri laid her in the deep chamber, on the soft padding, and then pointed to a closet. “Your uniform is in there, made to fit you exactly. When you wake up, just shove the lid open and get dressed.”

  “How will I get out of this?” Dot asked, indicating the sleep chamber. She knew without a doubt she was too weak to push herself over the edge of something this deep.

  The young lieutenant just laughed softly and then said with a smile, “Just trust me, you won’t have any trouble.”

  With that the lieutenant closed the lid.

  Before Dot could even think another thought or begin to panic, she was asleep.

  SIX

  December 25th, 1958

  Equivalent Earth Time

  Location: Deep Space

  DOT DIDN’T DREAM, or at least she didn’t remember dreaming.

  She awoke without opening her eyes.

  She was almost afraid to.

  She could feel the softness of the padding under her, so she knew she wasn’t in her own bed in the nursing home.

  She could remember clearly the frightening moments of floating through the air above the Shady Valley Nursing Home and seeing the Chicago skyline out over the cold, clear winter’s night.

  Slowly, she opened her eyes to see the top of the lid of the sleep chamber. Th
ere was a faint light coming from around the edge and the top seemed much farther away than it actually was, more than likely to keep down claustrophobia.

  She raised a hand and pushed the lid open, then stared at the skin on her bare arm.

  Young skin.

  Perfect skin, not the blemished, dried skin of an eighty-four year old woman.

  Was that even possible?

  Then she moved her leg.

  It was as if her heart stopped at that moment.

  Her breath caught and she wasn’t sure if she was going to burst into tears.

  Not since the accident that had killed her husband and crippled her had she been able to move her legs without a lot of work after waking up.

  Yet now she could.

  Both of them.

  Easily.

  She sat up and watched her legs move under her old nightgown.

  Not possible, but she needed to really test this.

  Quickly, not allowing herself to think about it, she swung herself up and out of the sleep chamber, landing on the floor, on her feet, as if she’d done that every day for years.

  Now she really did feel like crying.

  For a moment she just stood there shaking.

  Brian had been telling the truth.

  Or this really was the most vivid dream she had ever had.

  She touched her own soft skin on her arms. It didn’t feel like she was dreaming.

  She glanced around.

  She was alone in what looked to be a small cabin of a ship, the only furniture a bolted down chair and the coffin-like sleep chamber. This was the same room the woman had carried her into.

  Dot quickly pulled off her nightgown and studied herself in a full-length mirror that was bolted to the back of the closet door.

  It was her young body, all right. From her eighty-four year old mind, it looked perfect, even though she knew that in her twenties, she had thought her body far from perfect.

  How little she had known then. She was one damn fine-looking broad, as they used to say.

  That thought made her laugh. Her voice was higher and clearer to her ears than she remembered.

  If she was going insane or this was some sort of trick, it was a great trick.