Coffee Cup Half Moons

“There are those of us who persistently, stubbornly continue to peer out beyond the boundaries of this existence.  Not because we were born with a superior vantage point, but because we were born with the uncontrollable urge to sidle up to the wall, leap to where our hands barely grip the top, poke our nose over and revel in what we can perceive far beyond.  Nonetheless, this wall holding us in and, in this instance, allowing us to see is itself billions of times more complex than any tiny fraction of what else we will ever understand in our lifetime.”

This quote defines my struggle between the urge to boil down philosophy of existence, and discover the infinite truths that nature already possesses, and it came to me immediately after the following dream in which part of my psyche revealed itself to me in the character of John Crichton.  (The setting of this dream was a morph from Firefly to Farscape).

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There were three of us — closely examining our hangar, garage — a large metal building that, although I did not recognize it, was familiar to me as our base.  The large door, although I now seem to think it may have been multiple doors, was open, and while two of us circled the perimeter of the building, Shepherd Book was examining tiny fragments of evidence near the roof line.  When I noticed what he was doing, I, too, took a closer look, as I could see there was something there causing him to pontificate.

I am not sure how we were examining these things, as the top of this building was at least fifteen or twenty feet high.  Again, it was a large metal structure that more resembled a garage than a base.  Regardless, what I saw upon closer examination were tiny “scratches” in the metal where something high-velocity had glanced off, causing the rusty surface of the old building to peel up, revealing the shiny metal underneath.

I looked more — on the inside of the building.  At this point, I became conscious of the fact that someone of our crew was missing, and we believed her to be stolen.  Although it was never really clear who it was, I had and still, while writing this, have the impression that it was Kaylee.

We examined closer, following the tiny trail of evidence inside the building, following the ceiling as we went toward a hanging apparatus that I’m pretty sure was the garage door opener.  Simple, but the sci-fi ambiance of this place failed to give me any reason to think that it was an object out of place or time.  Something opened the door, why not a motorized contraption that mounts to the ceiling?

Then suddenly, I noticed a slightly different “peeling of metal.”  This one was about the same size, but it was shinier, more rounded, and it became immediately clear to me that there was something embedded there — right in the motor of the door opener.  I could not tell right away what it was, but it appeared to be a round disc — actually, two round discs that were maybe pressed together — the top one smaller than the bottom.

I looked around more, and suddenly I knew exactly what these objects were.  I saw one embedded flat-ways in the ceiling, and the unmistakable lightly engraved writing of a Sony CR2032 battery came into focus.

Whatever ship had taken our crew member had been firing out Sony CR2032 batteries when it took off.  The strange thing is, of course, that the batteries themselves were incidental.  Nothing about them struck me as out of place.  Rather, this was simple, clear evidence to me that it was humans — people of my own kind and of my own time — that were the culprit.

Also, at this time, I realized that Shepherd Book had morphed into D’Argo, and I was now aware that I was, indeed, John Crichton.  I’m not entirely sure that I hadn’t been the whole time, although I knew very distinctly that I was in the future.  Not just a century or two in the future, but long enough in the future that the human race could have actually evolved into the alien forms surrounding me.  Millions of years in the future!  (Contrary to the proposed timelines of either Firefly OR Farscape.)

As I held one of the batteries in my hand, D’Argo asked me what it was, and I explained that it was a power source from my time.

Someone else contributed: “Something used before the discovery of infinite power.”

I nodded, and continued the explanation, but not before interjecting with the trait that very much makes me me: “Well, almost infinite power.”  A tongue-in-cheek clarification that, for some reason, as usual, I felt compelled to express.  (Clearly this John Crichton had many attributes from Jeremy Tharp.)  Anyway, the obvious flaw in “infinite power” (in terms of electrical power) is that existence of such a thing would surely lead to the instant collapse of the universe.

(In regards to the instant collapse of the universe, I am not trying to argue a point here — regardless of whether such a postulation is true logically, it was completely true in this dream, so it’s best to read it that way.)

I showed the others my watch as a demonstration of the type of device such a little module might power.  My watch had not been working for a very long time, but I explained that I recently began wearing it, even though it was not even working then, because I liked the watch.  (The watch in this dream was a direct allusion to one I wore during my freshman year of college.  Although it did not look exactly the same, it was probably the watch I would have to find today — as in 12 years later, 2009 — to make me want to wear it as I did in 1997.)

Everyone kind of shrugged off the watch thing as yet another of my human, illogical idiosyncrasies, but they got the general point (Very Crichton-esque), and I then began musing and digesting all of this aloud.  After all, the character in my dream was well settled in this place, but the perspective of me — the one hosting this dream — was still blending with the personality of this John Crichton.

“Millions of years!” I shouted.  Holding one of the batteries pried from the wall, I emphatically reiterated “You’re millions of years in my future, and yet it was someone of my own time — my own race — that did this.”  There was a very distinct aroma of “Eureka!” (Not the show, just the sense of clarification) here, but, alas, this discovery was, ultimately, not the culmination of this dream.

All of us were gathered there now, most sitting on a sofa as if this were the lounge in a local fire station.  I, Aeryn Suhn, and D’Argo (and possibly someone else) were still standing.

I perceived a subtle hint of apathy from the crew, and now I realized that, for some reason, that they did not want to leave this place.  Not only did they not want to find our lost companion, but they did not care to continue their personal explorations of the stars, and, to me, this was a travesty.

“I want to see it all!” I screeched so emphatically that every blood vessel in my body must have been visible through my skin.  “Every square inch of it, and I cannot stop until I do!”  By this point, even my own mind had wandered away from the lost member of our crew, and it would never return there.

“I don’t know why, but I do,” I emphasized, disheartened by the looming logic that always begets me when examining infinity: I will die, humans will die, and none of this exotic exploration of the unknown bears any ultimate meaning to anyone but those who will, eventually, cease to exist.

“I do, I do, and there is no other way.”  Perplexed by my own intricacies, I was so overwhelmed with passion that I began to cry, and I fell to my knees before the table (think “coffee table”) that sat in front of the couch.  I sat back on my heels, then crossed my arms on the table as I fell forward and lay my head upon them.  I noticed that this was not actually a coffee table, but an old record player we had in the house throughout my childhood (my real childhood, not John Crichton’s), and, before my head reached its resting place on my arms, I brushed a bit of dust away from the knobs.

Aeryn, quite overwhelmed by my empassioned tirade, found herself crying as well, and she knelt down on the other side of the table, her head atop mine, and somehow consoled me with her own tearful expression.

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And then I woke up.