The Time Table

I dreamt a very cool SF story in the making last night (so if you are reading this, that is The Time TableTM to you!). When or how the story will come to be is as yet unknown, but the idea is straight out of my dreaming mind - and I'm so grateful to have access to it today!

The table was actually last in a series of dreams that flashed one after the other just before my waking state took over. The first flash was what some might consider a nightmare, but that I didn't feel particularly upset about at the time, therefore not a nightmare to me.

The scene was very strange: OBGYN setting, seen through my eyes, as the patient. I'm pregnant, which is a little disturbing, as that is a state I hope never to find myself in. I'm sitting up, dressed in an open-backed hospital gown. My legs are spread open, and I'm looking at the space between them, where a medical tray is being held by the doctor. On the tray are kernels of bright, yellow corn and light pink - nearly transparent, ripe pomegranate seeds.

I know somehow that these have come from inside of me - like bleeding some pregnant woman experience. The doctor is commenting on how odd the excretions are, but does not seemed alarmed, and I somehow know that they are simply a sign of having a healthy product contained within me.

I chose those descriptors carefully - in the dream, I don't think it is a "baby" I'm pregnant with - otherwise the scene would have been more disturbing and nightmarish. There is instead something inside of me growing, building and ready to be born - the symbols of corn and pomegranate seem to indicate that it is simply time to (or close to time to) give birth; Harvest the growth within that is ready to be in the world.

I am going to ignore for the moment the fact that only corn is of the harvest, while pomegranate seeds are the food which will trap you in the long winter of Hades. Yes. Definitely going to pretend I don't know about that.

There was a second flash-dream which was less clear. It involved shifts in time around a Victorian style home most like the Dunsmuir house of any house I can recall being inside of. There is a family in the home, and the family members change, and time passes. Styles of clothing change, from the 1840s to 80's and then into the 19teens. The people look different, and my presence there is as an observer. These flashes set the stage for the Time Table, which I start to clearly see on a second story landing.

Most of the dream characters are concerned with someone in a room off of the landing who is ill. I have the awareness however, that the illness (or someone trying to prevent the illness?) is slowing the passage of time.

They are doing this by tampering with the Time Table: A huge table that is a crazy dream combination of pool table, sand table and HO scale model railroad table.

Standing at pool table height, with a pool table lip, the Time Table is filled with a very fine and soft beach sand. The expanse is molded into ruts and curves and hills. A ropey substance lays in the grooves and over the contours of the table. Solid and heavy, the ropey substance is melded into place over the sand's surface - not causing any change to the variety of sand heights and depths despite its weight. I feel how the heavy cable is simply lying without impact on the miniature landscapes, while at the same time utterly immovable and cemented in place.

In front of me is a tool - like a fancy Levenger ballpoint pen with screw-on cap. Large, and streamlined at both ends, this tool lays in a shallow groove of sand running along the edge of the table. From the back end of the tool stretches the ropy substance - the thread of life.

The pen-tool isn't moving through the sand, but I know that it needs too in order for the world to spin and everyone to keep on living. Struggling, against what antagonist I do not know, I reach the edge of the table and start to pull the pen along its route in the sand. Slowly at first, with the cording trailing behind, I manage to pull faster and faster - getting time going again.

Now I am having fun, zooming the finely braided rope back and forth to create patterns. My action is actually similar to a pastry chef making swirls of frosting in luscious patterns on a cake surface - but I don't have to squeeze - the time thread of life just flows for me.

I am laying lines next to each other, allowing them to overlap, and feeling a moment of disoriented vision as people meet, bump into each other and become a part of each other's lives. I create layers of round coils, building up in height around a little mountain of sand. I realize this is a city, or a catastrophic event where thousands, millions of lives intersect.

Luckily, although it is a narrative let down, I woke up before I got in over my head like Milo directing the sunrise.