The Aerie
(It's been quite the week for dreams. I just woke up from this one and
ran down to type it up. It's oddly coherent for a dream. I also had
other dreams last night: one about putting my foot on a kind of brick
and sliding frictionlessly around the lobby of a grand hotel, and
another involving carrying something and almost getting killed by a
forklift dropping a load on me. But this dream was clear in my mind
when I awoke just now.)
I dreamt of a post-apocalypitc future, a barren dusty Earth populated
by ragged "Mad Max" wannabees without enough style to make the casting
cut.
I was some lumpish young fellow in dusty tan rags, living in a
community of men who were all put to work by some unseen warlord. Our
job was to dig in the mines, mere holes dug in the dirt.
My best friend was Mark, a tall, good looking blond fellow, but his
best friend wasn't me it was Steve and Steve was dead. He had just
died because he'd Gone Down.
Going Down wasn't a euphemism for sex, it referred to someone who digs
or climbs down too deeply, and touches one of the black Tiles that
covered the Earth. Instant death follows.
Everyone there knew that the entire Earth was covered with these
tiles, a mosaic of glossy black, white, and matte black rectangles
that interlocked and covered the entire surface of the world. Various
theories existed as to why this was, but everyone knew that if you
touched a matte black Tile, you died.
And everyone knew that these were why most of the people in the world
were dead. Religion and custom ruled regarding the Tiles, enforced by
the warlord's vicious priests, and speculation or disobedience were
not tolerated. The mines were a hole dug carefully out of the tiles at
the cost of many lives, from beneath which we extracted riches of the
ancient world. The mines were why we were here and why the warlord was
rich. Our camp was atop the fill extracted from the mine, giving us a
broad area where it was safe to walk carelessly without having to
watch for Tiles.
So when the dream began, Steve had just died and Mark was grieving in
a very silent, solitary way. Our shifts in the mine were over, and he
was kicking a thing like a black and white plastic brick around the
camp. It was a scrap of something unearthed in the mines and judged
worthless enough to let the miners keep, and Mark was kicking it about
the camp as he dealt with the death of our friend.
I was watching from the corner of some wall or building as he kicked
the brick randomly, but ever closer to the cliff that marked the edge
of the camp and the begining of the Tiles. I watched anxiously, hoping
he wouldn't do anything stupid, and sure enough he kicked the brick
off the cliff and it fell down towards the Tiles. I was about to call
out after him but he jumped off the edge too.
From my vantage atop the wall I could see where he landed, in a fan of
spilled soil just on the edge of the Tiles. His brick was there, too,
resting on a Tile. He squatted trying to reach for it, but the brick
was on a glossy Tile just beside a matte Tile. Instead of picking it
up, he carefully nudged it onto the matte black surface, and I was
prepared to be terrified.
Nothing happened. After a moment he straightened in surprise, then
reached out with his shoe and I was afraid he was going to STEP on the
black Tile. Instead he kicked the brick again, as he had been doing in
the camp. It skittered away onto the Tiles, and I thought, "Well,
that's done with that."
Then he jumped after the brick, landing balanced on one foot on one of
the glossy black Tiles. My heart leapt into my throat. He was playing
the Dangerous Game, one that children sometimes goaded each other
into. One that usually resulted in death.
It was possible to move across the Tiles if one stepped only upon the
glossy black and white ones, without touching the matte black
scattered randomly about. Daring lads might accept a challenge to take
one, two, or three steps on the Tiles. Four was unheard of. Five was
legendary. Six was insane.
Mark leapt again and kicked the brick skittering away. He leapt again.
The sun was setting, reflecting glare off the smooth Tiles, and his
form became hard to follow as he chased the brick into the glare. He
leapt again, and yet again. He was now farther out into the Tiles than
anyone who did not follow the careful parallel ruts of known safe
paths ever went. He leapt again.
_________________________________________________________________
It was the weekend, the day when we didn't have to dig. I had left the
camp and returned to the village where I had been raised before my
parents died. I kept my parents' home in repair, although I lived six
days a week at the camp. Today I was using a spade to prevent the
encroachment of more Tiles.
Everybody had this chore. The Tiles were like weeds, and would cover
the ground in an area if left unchecked. If you got them early they
were safe, but tedious to thwart: you dug a spade in the ground under
them, and turned up the soil to break them off, then you dumped them
in a bin at the edge of the street and they were carried off for
burning. If you needed the soil back you could take a wheelbarrow to
the incinerator and retrieve some that had been burned clean.
There was a secret about these new, as-yet unhardened Tiles that
nobody spoke of. They were edible.
It was forbidden to eat them of course, and for good reason. When they
were unfinished, you couldn't tell which ones were matte black. And if
you ate one of those you died, and everyone knew a childhood friend
who had died in just that way. Because although the priests forebade
the practice with strict punishment, every child was hungry, and every
child eventually tried eating a Tile that tempted its way into the
edge of the dusty yard.
I had cleared the Tiles from around my parents' empty home yet again
and was looking at my bin of dirty, dusty Tiles. Each one, black and
white, looked like a cellophane-wrapped candy: some chocolate, some
like dried fruit, others creamy. I was dreadfully hungry as were all
people everywhere, and I thought once again to try one of the unripe
tiles. I picked one up -- they were safe to touch when they weren't
ripe, even the matte ones -- and peered at it closely. It looked like
it would be a white Tile, and that it contained three dried apricots.
I sniffed it and detected only the faintest fruity scent.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." a voice startled me, causing me to
drop the Tile back in the bin.
"I was just..." I began making my excuses before I even turned.
It was Mark. He had been missing and assumed dead for days, and here
he was, dusty and haggard, in my parents' front yard. With a start I
realized that he must have been hiding in my parents abandoned house:
escaping camp was punishable with whipping, but hale miners were too
valuable to kill. If caught now he could be tortured and restored to
health repeatedly until the priests decided he'd suffered enough to
make up for his crime: in between times he'd still have to dig.
I was excited to see him, but we exchanged few words. I realized that
he had only risked coming out of the house because he was afraid I was
going to eat one of the Tiles and die. He went back inside, and I saw
him drop his plastic brick and kick it into the living room before the
door closed. As I put away my shovel and headed back to camp, I could
hear faintly the sound of the brick clattering inside the house.
_________________________________________________________________
At the end of shift the next day, my friend Mouse came running up to
me with the look of one bearing important news. I was leaning on my
shovel next to the latest trench, within which the second shift was
starting to dig. As Mouse approached I prevented him from telling me
what I suspected he would say by speaking first.
"I have a theory what they are," I said as he panted up. These were
dangerous words, because speculating about the Tiles was forbidden by
the priests. Next to me in the trench the attitude of one of the
miners changed. He tensed, but kept digging, and I could tell he was
listening closely, eager to earn favor by reporting heretical thoughts
to the priests.
"I think," I paused dramatically, "I think they are nanomachines from
a candy factory."
Mouse said nothing, his eyes wide with fright. If he were involved, he
could suffer too.
"I don't think God handed down punishment," I said. There, that
guaranteed trouble if word got back to the priests. In the trench the
miner was scarcely scraping at the soil, probably dizzy with the
wealth of heresy he was gleaning.
"I think that the Ancients had a candy factory run by nanomachines.
They were supposed to take raw elements and construct them into edible
foods, including fruit, chocolate, and other things. And I think one
day something went wrong: the nanomachines ate their way out of the
factory, and got loose. They reproduced wildly, converting everything
first into candy and food packets, but then hardening into Tiles as
they consumed each others' products, then each other. Soon the entire
Earth was covered in Tiles as they raged across the land, converting
everything.
"And now they wait there, having painted themselves into a corner, as
matte black Tiles. They've eaten everything they can eat, they're
surrounded by their own waste, and so they just sit and wait. Till
something they can eat steps on them. And that's why they kill you.
"But they don't eat everything. They didn't eat Mark's black and white
brick. They don't eat black and white Tiles. And I bet we could get
rid of them entirely now if we were careful. But the priests don't let
us. The priests like things they way they are."
I looked at Mouse after delivering this suicidal monologue. Behind me
the miner was pelting away towards the warlord's house with his burden
of news. "What did you have to say?" I asked him.
"Oh!" he jumped, and blurted, "Mark's dead."
He had been found underneath my parents house by the neighbors, who
had followed the smell. In the darkness it was hard to see, but he
seemed to be reaching for something, which I guessed was his plastic
brick, kicked beneath the house by accident. Apparently my tending was
not good enough, because some Tiles had formed in the crawlspace
underneath the house and groping in the darkness that should have been
safe, he had touched a matte black one. His body was half eaten away
when they found him, and the Tiles had gotten into the floor of the
living room and were at work on the house.
(Only hours later, reviewing this in my head, did I realize how much
of this dream came from seeing the movie "Holes" a couple weeks ago.)
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Posted by Albatross at July 23, 2003 12:00 AM