Banshee

17. A Chance to Dream

Staring at the dreamstate device brought more questions to my mind than it did answers. For now, however, the main question kept standing: how did it get on the bridge?

I had only seen a dreamstate device before, many years ago, but I was still very familiar with its uses. Shortly after Okarron had taken me into his care and eventual tutelage, he had showed me one and told me to touch it. The device did not look threatening at all, and Okarron was kind the whole time, so I had touched it, not knowing that he had altered the variables...

In my dreamstate, my parents had grown to hate me, and they threw me out among other Silcarin to be summarily executed by ironfaced guards. Okarron had swooped in to save us, and he killed the guards while my father had bellowed against him in malign defiance. The Kanarr had pulled me up to safety, after which the dreamstate ended. 

I woke up in a panic, only to find myself being held tightly by Okarron. In my young and shocked state, I took the dreamstate for true, and saw this person as the one who had saved me from certain death. Yet although I was scared of my parents for a while after that, it could not stop me form hanging on to their memory. The memories I had of my parents before the invasion eventually drowned out the dreamstate's nightmare.

Then the dreams came...

I remember the first time I dreamed of my father.  I screamed in shock when I saw him. He stood before me as clearly as I would have seen him had he stood in front of me in the waking world.

"Do you remember me?" he asked.

I had answered yes.

"We live," he had said next, "...and we are looking for you..."

He stepped backwards and disappeared into nothing.

This dream had repeated itself ever since, increasing in frequency over time. Most of the time, he would just let me know that he was looking for me, never explaining who "we" was. Sometimes, we would have a short conversation. My father took an interest in my life, and what had happened to me since the invasion, and I would tell him when he asked about it.

Then, the day before we invaded Earth, my father came to me again. I was ready to tell him about how I was about to go into battle but he did not ask about my life that day. Instead, he told me that they had found me at long last. I had the same dream couple of times since then, but I did not truly know what to make of it. Was he still alive? Had he actually found me? Did this mean that he was coming for me?  In truth, there was only one way to find out if the dreams were true or false, but up till last night, I had not thought this option to be open to her.

A working dreamstate device, on this very ship!

I could induce a dreamstate and find out the truth about her father, but I would need someone to get her out once she had what I was after. The Humans did not know how the device worked. The only Human who might be able to help me was still hospitalized from his own dreamstate. I had to see him though...

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I don't know about you, but morphine feels pretty great! Of course it's not something that I would like to get addicted to or anything, but if your body is in terrible pain, morphine will feel like the grace of God. Of course there was the downside of feeling drowsy at times, but right now, I was feeling pretty damn grateful.

I heard the door open and saw Karina walk up to the foot board of my bed.

"We need to talk," she said.

"About what?" I was surprised at how slurry my voice sounded...

Am I that drowsy?

...and corrected myself.