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The Oblivious Man and Urban Sprawl on the Moon

A DREAM

I dreamt I was looking down into a low-lit room the size and shape of a high school gymnasium. The room was bare—not a pole or a column or a piece of furniture on the floor or a picture on the wall or lights hanging down from the high ceiling—just cinder block walls painted so many coats of eggshell blue that the paint was thick as taffy.

In the ceiling, in one corner of the room, a 12 foot by 12 foot window opened the room up to the heavens and it’s millions of stars provided the only lighting for the room and this soft starlight rolled out and over the flat ceiling like a wet tide washing over the walls, subtly moistening the eggshell blue color into a low glow that crept onto the dark carpet, illuminating tiny specks of white in the fabric and the floor appeared as though it were a muted reflection of the stars and another universe unto itself. In the middle of the this universe I was a tall skinny man with dark hair wearing a navy blue jump suit resting on the floor without a pillow or a blanket. I was utterly relaxed though—hands folded and resting just below my chest— staring out into the heavens through the skylight planetarium window.

I was thinking of Pompeii and the great Mount Vesuvius. I thought about how fascinating it must have been to stand in the center of this once beautiful town on the sea and watch Vesuvius erupt and feel its power as it shook the earth. I imagined standing with the multitudes pointing up in awe at the plume of ash and fire until…until the ash poured over the city, blotting out the sun, plunging everyone into darkness. Suddenly I was trying to flee with the terrified and the doomed screaming and wailing as we collected up our jewels and our family and our dogs and ran through the streets crying out to the gods who we are sure must now hate us and this is the end of the world. How betrayed we felt by the beauty of Mount Vesuvius as its curse poured down with such fury that there was nowhere to run but into the hands of death. And death came swiftly in the form of a rushing mighty wind heated to the temperature of inferno by the breath of the volcano killing us all within seconds. Everywhere there had been moaning and wailing, but now I observed the irreversible descent into silence as the ash fell burying the dead and this once beautiful and highly advanced city for centuries to come. I faded away… returning to the middle of my vast, empty room.

The room was silent. I was silent. My mind was silent. I stared out the planetarium window and off into the universe. I thought of nothing. I was as calm and as fixed as those points of light in the sky.

Then, I heard the metallic sound of a latch clicking followed by the groaning of hinges in need of oil. I glanced at the doors and saw the tops of three heads pass through the doorway and noticed the night sky behind them. As the door closed itself with a groan, three men in street clothes walked up the stairs and then in my direction. As they came nearer, two of the men branched off in different directions, but a man with red shirt, dark hair, and a Hispanic face continued towards me. As he neared, he said in low, soft, astonished tone, “You’re still here. After so long, you’ve waited.”

He stopped next to me and I looked up at him. He appeared amazed to see me, but I was engaged in the silence of the room and looked at him as one may look up from a book while riding the train and a person bumps you as they sit down beside you.

When the Hispanic man saw my disengaged expression he said, “We’re here to rescue you.” He appeared anxious for me to do something, maybe jump up and scream Halleluiah and wrap my arms around him and pat him on the back feverishly, but when I just kept looking at him, he scanned the room and understood my state of mind and so chose to wait patiently for the words to set in.

Movement in the room caught my eye and I looked around. The other two men were taking readings of the walls with electronic scanning devices. I looked back at the Hispanic man still surveying the room, “How did you make it here so long?” he said to himself as he took in the vast emptiness of the room. Suddenly, he smiled and put his hand out to me, “Come on,” he said, “it’s time to go home now. You’ve been gone for some time.”

I sat up and hugged my knees but didn’t take his hand. “How long have I been here on the moon?” I asked.

He paused, considered his words before speaking and looked at his feet, “Ten years. You’ve been on the moon for ten years now.”

“Ten years?” I gasped.

He nodded, still looking at his feet.

I could hardly breath.

Ten years! I’ve been in this room for ten years! Knowing that it’s been ten years, it seems so long now… so lonely… my God, I’ve aged ten years and haven’t even known it.

I looked at my thin body, at my hands, then at his muscular physique and young face. “How do I look?” I asked.

He smirked and let a little grunt of a laugh out through his nose, “You haven’t aged a month, I swear it. It’s amazing.” He smiled and gestured with his hand again, “Come on, let’s go.”

I slowly put my hand out and he helped me up to my feet. He lead me towards the doors and I followed taking slow, groggy steps.

Ten years. Ten years?

I clasped the Hispanic man’s shoulder and then turned him to look me in the eyes, “Why didn’t you come sooner?”

He looked at the floor and took a deep breath, “We forgot you were here.” He lifted his head and apologized with his eyes.

But I wasn’t mad—it was too late to be mad—I was more interested in what catastrophic event could have distracted them to forget for ten years about a man stranded on the moon.

Abruptly, he retorted, “Why didn’t you ever leave?”

I scrunched my face, “There’s no atmosphere on the moon except in this room. Where was I supposed to go?”

He answered my question with an aren’t-you-a-silly-fool look, then shuffled his expressions and smiled, letting out a small patronizing laugh, “Come on,” he said, “let’s go.” And waved me on.

As we descended the stairs to the doors, the other men fell in behind us. I stole one last glance at my planetarium and I was startled when I saw a space station with various sized wheels fixed on a long axle, a giant glass ball on the top of the axle, a small glass ball on the bottom of the axle, and ships docking on the wheels. But it was such a brief glimpse, and one of the other men stepped in my way just as I saw the space station, that I wasn’t sure what I saw was real and before I could get another look, the Hispanic man opened a door and a hot blast of white sunlight seared my eyes and I cowered down and wrapped my arms around my face and clenched my eyes shut as tears gushed out the corners and the man behind me pushed me through the doorway and onto a landing just above another set of stairs where he guided me down to the bottom and we stopped to let my eyes to adjust to the sunlight.

And when my eyes did adjust, I nearly fainted. The moon was there, all rocks and craters, but the sky was blue and full of clouds and the air was abuzz with flying cars scurrying about as a swarm of disturbed and frantic bees going in all directions. On the rocks and craters there were houses and grass and people and cars and malls and parks and streets and on and on and it were all appearing right before my eyes and growing like a tide of humanity washing over the barren plains and rocks and sprawling cityscapes appearing on the moon right before my eyes. The space station I had seen earlier was being joined by another space station and the two were at work with robotic cranes building a great expansion bridge with enclosed tubes to span the chasm between the earth and the moon. I looked out again over the moon and already the houses were stretched to the horizon in grids of perfect squares or circles within circles. Each house looked the same like a small rectangle with walls made out of cinder blocks and bearing drab colors of brown and white covered by slightly V-shaped roofs.

I turned around to take flight back up the stairs and into to my planetarium room. But before my foot even touched the first step, a loud crack exploded a few inches in front of me and crumbs of concrete shot away as a bullet skipped off in another direction. I froze in this position with one foot in the air. I looked at the top of the stairs where one of the men from the rescue party was holding a high-caliber rifle up to his shoulder, aiming it at the steps just in front of me. He looked at me and obeyed his orders saying, “I’m sorry sir, but you are no longer allowed in here. This area is restricted. If you try to reenter, I have orders to shoot you, even kill you if I must. Once again sir, I am sorry. I really am sorry.”

END
© 2007 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on January 12, 2007 in
Emotion: Subjection, Type: Dream