Snovid's diary

Chapter 19. Classmates

I was in a huge building, an academic building, where people were studying, from the nursery on the first floors to the university classrooms on the upper floors. I walked behind my wife, who, being late for her class, had quickened her pace. Ascending a huge staircase, she stepped through a set of doors and I followed without delay.

I found myself in a vast bright room with desks from end to end. The lecture had already started and the students had taken their seats. My momentary confusion upon entering the room caused me to lose track of my wife, and I couldn't find her in the crowd, no matter how long I looked. This wasn't necessarily a surprise to me, however, as I was already holding in my mind the idea that this was a dream. So someone vanishing is just par for the course. The middle seat of the back row, which was situated by a window, was still empty. So I went across the room and sat down in that seat, next to a female student.

It was quiet in the auditorium, only the lecturer, a portly-looking woman in her sixties, was confidently giving a lecture. She vaguely reminded me of my high school chemistry teacher, except this woman had dyed her hair blond, an expression of personality my strict teacher would never have allowed herself.

I can still vividly remember a story associated with her. In eighth grade, I had trouble understanding the concepts of chemistry. As I hadn't been able to memorize the valence table of chemical elements, I had been incapable of solving chemical problems. And so, fed up with this, on the day of the finals, I woke up and found that I had become a rebel. Instead of solving even a single problem, I wrote an essay on "Why do I need chemistry", the thesis of which was "I will become an artist, and chemistry is of no use to me beyond the ability to mix pigment and oil." As the bell rang, I handed in this essay, certain that I would be in trouble. Maybe they'd even call my parents, since this teacher was the strictest one at school, and did not take kindly to jokes.

Instead, a miracle happened. I got a "B" on my test! I was so touched by this gesture and felt so grateful that I voluntarily learned the entire table of elements over the summer break and reported back to my teacher at the beginning of the ninth grade.

Suddenly, the student sitting next to me turned to face me. She said, as if she had read my mind:

- Look, at the lecturer that's her. She teaches here now. Go and tell her that you were right.

When she had said these words, I looked around at the people in the hall. I knew many of them!

They were my classmates from all three schools I had gone to in my life, as well as my peers from the academy. Everyone was here...

I looked back at the female student.

- I know this is a dream.

At that very second, the word "dream" rang out loud like a bell, plainly audible to everyone present. Immediately, they began filing out of the hall in a hurry, the lesson had been completely disrupted.

- Wait!

I exclaimed.

- Nothing has changed. I have known for a while that this is a dream. Stay. I want to talk to you.

My words seemed to have the desired effect because the snovids stopped, indecisive. I could hear them whispering amongst themselves.

- Why is it such a big deal to you whether I've realized that this is a dream?

- It's not according to plan.

My old roommate, who was standing nearby, replied.

The female student simply nodded.

I turned to the desk next to us where my classmate Filip from the academy was standing.

- You look just like Filip, but you're not him and it shows.

He fidgeted nervously in response to these words, afraid to look directly at me.

- Tell me, who are you? Who do you think you are?

He became even more nervous, and in a shaky voice he said a couple of incoherent words, and then a couple more. If this had been a normal dream, he could have banked on getting away with that.

I interrupted him rudely:

- No, I can tell you're not saying anything. Nothing you said made any sense.

He looked at me, puzzled.

I got up and walked to the center of the room.

- Simply answer me this: Are you a part of me, all in my head? Or are you self-aware?

All around me, they were humming my question back at me.

- In my head.

- Self-aware.

That's all I could make out.

Suddenly, another student, who had recently joined us, and was standing next to me, cut in.

- Of course we're in your head, and we don't have self-awareness. Otherwise it would be like schizophrenia.

The thought flashed through my head, and I kind of smiled to myself.

In that moment, sunlight filled the room from the large windows, illuminating everything with warm light. I felt cozy and even good at heart. I was surrounded by a couple of dozen snovids now: Such malleable, yet human-like creatures. As the sun shone on us all, they stopped being afraid, and I believed them. We embraced.

In that instant, my wife walked into the classroom, and, taking my hand, she whispered to me that she wanted to show me something. I turned to the snovids.

- Thanks for the conversation, we will finish the discussion later.

And then I went out the door led by my wife's snovid.

I wondered what she had to show me.

We took the large staircase back to the first floor and went down a corridor to the right into the children's wing. We stopped at a large glass wall. On the other side, there was a kind of a nurse's office for the broken toys of children.

There was an operating table where a teddy bear's torn off paw was being sewn back on. A boy of about 4-5 was excitedly standing nearby, and watching the procedure. Along the wall sat other children who had put their own broken toys on a small stretcher in the center of the room and were waiting to be called up. Interestingly, the toys moved a little as if they were alive. However, my wife's snovid asked me not to look at them too closely, and I took that very seriously because the illusion of the dream had been disturbed too much already.

We had to walk a short stretch back down the corridor before we reached the main hall again. Once more, we stopped near another glass wall; on the other side was a typical kindergarten. The kids were running around and playing games there.

My wife's snovid asked:

- They have classes for young parents here on Wednesdays. Shall we go there together?

- Would they even take couples who don't have a child on the way?

To which she just smiled enigmatically.