Reasons to Hate the Commute

#1750 Kalachuchi Tea ~ PirmeNaRaot

It was really great when the Sinauna made those sleeper cars going from Manila to Bicol on the PNR. They have sleeper buses going to provincial areas too and that's fine, but their train services were their own special brand of awesome.

My grandfather recalls that in his time, sleeper trains were excellent ways to make friends. You and the other passengers have nothing to do for hours and hours, so you end up talking to each other from your seats or your bunk beds, or maybe strike up a conversation while taking a walk together up and down the long, shaky corridors.

Now that people basically can't live without their gadgets, sleeper trains have become more boring. People hide their faces behind VR masks or their holo-monitors, and pretty much ignore everyone else. You get on the train and get off after a night of grueling travel not even knowing your fellow passengers' names.

The Sinauna Group had a solution for that. They introduced a recreational drink that was somehow legal at the time, to be served to adult guests who were still awake when 11 PM rolled around. The official label on the drink was "Kalachuchi Tea", and it was apparently patented as an exclusive offering of the Manila-Bicol express.

So sometimes, people made it a point to stay awake until 11 PM. Those were the really adventurous people. Because you never knew what to expect from Kalachuchi Tea.

The "tea" was a clear, fragrant liquid (smelled like adenium, obviously) served in small tea cups, and you were supposed to finish your entire cup in one sitting. You could take your time, but it was generally understood that you had to finish it quickly, so it would go to your head faster.

There was a tiny white pearl of concentrated flavor at the bottom of the drink. You had to take it with your last gulp. If you didn't drink it, or if you drank it too soon and gulped another mouthful of liquid after it, the tea wouldn't work. You'd know if you'd done it right if there was a flavor explosion in your last gulp...like hundreds of small white flower petals bursting open on your tongue and behind your eyes.

Within ten minutes after drinking the last drop, the tea would put you to sleep. And when everyone in the car was asleep, they would enter a state of shared dreaming.

No one could tell what happened in that state. I think the norm was that people in the car took turns - like first you'd all dream Person A's dream, and next you'd dream Person B's, and so on. And no one could tell when one dream ended and another began. There was no signal. Transitions just happened.

And sometimes, one person monopolized the entire dreaming session, locking everyone in the car in their own personal dream. That was sometimes frustrating. But dream worlds were vast and there were usually "safe zones" where one could ride out an unfavorable dreaming session, surrounded by an always-pleasant dream of one's own devising.

Children wouldn't be given that drink. And a good thing, too! I don't think children are equipped to handle adult dreams, and have you ever thought about being lost in a child's dream...? I can't even begin to imagine the nightmare that could turn into!

No, children were given another drink, if their guardians permitted it, of course. I think that one just put them to sleep.

There were people who dreamed entire lifetimes, I think. Maybe it had happened to me, too, I'm not sure. All I know is that I enjoyed my sessions every time. I looked forward to taking the sleeper express train home to Bicol, because I got to know my fellow passengers better by exploring their dream worlds - and coming away with a sense of having shared in their joys, their frustrations, their griefs and their fears.

I always woke up feeling like I had just come from a long, exciting vacation, a jaunt through a myriad of undiscovered countries. When we woke up, my fellow passengers and I looked at each other and laughed or smiled, feeling a precious closeness for a fleeting moment, having fought wars together, slain demons together, and even formed family units together...even if we all usually forgot what we'd dreamt about!

But they stopped serving Kalachuchi Tea eventually. I think they did it after a deluge of complaints about people having wild orgy dreams too often. I don't know how they know, though...do some people remember their dreams clearly when they wake up, if they were about wild orgies?

There was also a rumor that a politician woke up from a frustrating sex dream, then fumed and raged that he was going to ban dreaming on the train altogether.

At any rate, the golden age of dreaming on the road from Manila to Bicol came to an end. I hate the commute home now, because I feel I have no choice but to stick my nose behind a VR mask. Strangers you have to share a car with on long journeys could be such a pain. So noisy. So inconsiderate. And more often than not, so bloody weird.