Dreams of Babel

1. Where One Story Ends

This is a story about dreams.

Dreams are an amazing thing. They come to us in the night, when we're tired, exhausted, and the world has worn us out. Sometimes during the day they'll take us, absent minded or as we're slipping away. With a warm touch they close our eyes and embrace us until we forget all about the world. And, in the most selfless of acts, they use their incredible power to bring our inner thoughts, desires, and ever more to life.

Humans dream. Animals dream. In some form, all things take their rest and escape into dreams. You do, I do, and so on to all things.

But very few dream of The Tower.

You've heard of it before, but you don't know where or when.

Somewhere far off in your dreams, you've seen it. A massive tower, blurred yet distinct. Looming impossibly in the distance. Enormous and omnipresent. The color seems to shift with the changing of dreams, from a deep violet hue to a burning crimson to a wondrous blue as deep as the darkest sapphires. But the tower itself always stays the same in the horizon. Dream after dream, the clouds seem to begin where it reaches its peak.

Why do you keep seeing it in your dreams time and time again? What does it mean? You can't know for sure, but something draws you to it. Perhaps it's your innate sense of curiosity. That human drive to discover the unknown and seek out all that is hidden and mysterious. Or is it something beyond that, beyond all things. Some strange power that the ominous obilisk holds somewhere within.

Whatever the case, you can't shake it. And soon, so soon, you may not have a choice to turn away. With each night's sleep it returns, but when you wake you forget all else you dreamt except for that mysterious obstruction on the horizon line of your mind.

The Tower.

Perhaps it's about time you paid it a visit.

---

You lift your head suddenly, panting. The edges of your vision are blurred and fuzzy, but it's not an uncomfortable feeling. You raise your head from a cloud. You are awake, right? No, of course you are. But this isn't your bed nor is it your home. You cast your eyes around you and take in the environment.

Your pajamas adorn you, soft and just slightly too large. It's more comfortable that way. But did you even fall asleep in them tonight? You can't seem to recall, and trying to gives you a headache. You push yourself to your feet, bare as they are, and feel the softness of the cloud beneath you. It's a greyish color, oddly, and as you look up you realize what's so off about your surroundings.

You stand on a cloud above a humming abyss. Far off, all along the edge of the wound in the earth beneath you seems to be a city. The colors of the buildings have gone greyscale but that's not all. The world seems to trail off within the edges of that unthinkably large hole beneath you, like threads being unraveled and slowly drawn apart. But when you gaze down into the abyss you see nothing but black, and feel only an uncomfortable weight in your stomach. Wisps and trails of color seem to swirl and dance away from that impossible city far and away from you, crumbling flakes of what may have once been a lively metropolis now silently being swallowed up by the blackness beneath. You peer all around, barely raising your eyes above the tops of the buildings, and see a deep purple sky and stars beyond the city. That's when you realize it.

Where you stand, on these clouds, is directly above the center of the hole that is devouring this city.

You lose your balance and fall down at the dizzying scale of it all. A brief panic seizes you at the thought of ripping through the cloud with your own weight and falling infinitely into that terrifying nothingness below. But, thankfully, the cloud gleefully catches your rear end and responds only with a gentle bounce. Then, nothing.