After Olivia

9

Bill waited in the office kitchen early on Monday morning as the coffee machine dispensed a cup of hot black coffee. A box of donuts on the table offered a variety of sweet treats to the workers as they filed through, putting lunches in the fridge or taking their turn at the coffee machine. Friendly morning greetings were exchanged amongst bits of office banter and occasional jokes. He picked out a Boston Cream and waited while Heather filled her water bottle at the cooler on the opposite side of the room.

"Can we talk a bit? It's about my dreams," Bill asked Heather as they left the kitchen.

Heather stepped into an empty meeting room and replied, "Of course. Did you look at that web site I told you about last week?"

"Yeah, I downloaded the sample audio files but they didn't really do it for me. I went back to that lucid dream set you gave me a last year. I'm actually doing fine with getting into a dream and I can usually keep it going. Well, usually I can stay with it, and every night they get more and more realistic."

"Are you doing it every night? Is Olivia in all of them?"

"No, not every night. Some nights I'm just too tired. And, yes, she is in them, now. Actually, I had the same dream, every night, for months."

"The one where you sit in the park with her."

"Yeah..."

"Does it change at all? Other than the colour and detail of the park, does your conversation change?"

"For the longest time everything was the same. Everything... But, it all changed the last few nights. She asked me to add in the gazebo in the park and a picnic, so I did. Then she asked for more people in the park, so I added them. Then Saturday night we were walking through a completely different part of the park."

"Wait! So, in your dream, Olivia talks like she knows it's just a dream. She asks you to add things?"

"She didn't used to. But now, yeah, I guess she does. Is that normal?"

"Not in my dreams, but that could just be me," Heather replied as she pondered for a moment. "I'm an artsy kind of person and you're a technical, matter of fact, type. I don't really know. Does it bother you that she acts that way? I know it would kill the buzz for me. Does it take away from her seeming to be real? I only knew her for a few months, so I don't know what she was really like."

"No, it's actually sort of the way she was; in touch with reality, in control. Everything in the dreams is so real, the park, Olivia, everything. The problem is... I can see her, and she looks and acts exactly as I remember her. She smells, just as I remember her, the perfume she used to wear. She talks the same, the little sounds she makes, her voice, everything. I can feel everything, just as if it were real—"

"That's amazing," Heather interrupted.

"But, I can't touch her."

"Oh. Do you mean your hand pass through her, or you just don't feel her when you touch? Do you wake up?"

"No, it's none of that."

"Oh, 'cause waking up, that's just a matter of staying in control. You might get excited and that snaps you out, and the others would probably be related to being aware it's a dream. What happens if you touch her, or is the problem that you are afraid to touch her?"

"Well, right now I'm afraid because every time I do those nightmares come back."

"The ones you had after the accident? Exactly the same ones, or is something different?"

"Yeah, the same ones. It's like I'm in the middle of it, all over again."

"Okay, well, I'm not an expert or anything, so this could all be a load of crap; it's just what I believe. Okay? Our dreams, especially lucid dreams, are our creative minds running lose. And, to create the dream and everything in it, our minds dig into our memories, to fill in all the details about how something is supposed to look, how people look, how they act and, well, everything."