By Scott Riddick
http://atypicalread.blogspot.com/
I was midway through a wonderful dream, where I walked atop fluffy puffs of clouds escorted by beautiful women with milky white skin and dark eyes and long jet black hair and wearing nothing but chainmail and stilettos. I was about to be seated upon my throne made up of all my old favorite Nintendo video game cartridges, which formed the ultimate video game on the 200 inch 2160P HD3D television, with an endless bowl of Doritos fixed to one arm and a 40 gallon vat of fountain Coke with a bendy straw that I could insert in and out of my mouth with the power of my mind on the other. I could feel the vibration of the wireless remote control rumble through me, reaching out for it with anticipation and a touch of euphoric delight, when I felt a cold hand touch my left shoulder.
I turned, slightly annoyed by the interference, ready to blast the rudeness right in the mouth for delaying my ultimate video game experience standing eye to eye with…myself. My girls had shuffled away somewhere in the growing darkness behind me. My killer gaming throne fizzled out like Pac-Man, melting in a reverse circle down into a tiny dot and disappearing with a “POP!” sound. The super high definition 3D monstrosity before me flickered and turned to white noise taking away my monster game and the only time I was ever going to have such creative ingenuity again. I was distraught. I was livid at myself for allowing me to ruin such a perfect dream with my own dramatic intro, and without having the first chip crunch under the pressure from my hungry mouth. That was so like me to do.
“We only have one hour to speak, then I have to return to my own dimension leaving you with the knowledge of another realm to inspire your own world with. So lets get cracking me.” I said to me.
“Are you serious? You come here and disturb what was sure to be a badass dream, one where our wife is not present to annoy or nag the hell out of us for playing video games all the time instead of using that time to build a shed in the back or an extra room in the attic to tell me what? That you possess the ability to bring world peace to my own realm?” I shouted.
The other me looked at me with a stern gaze. I knew I was furious and probably wanted to smash me on the chin for being so shallow minded, but I should have known better. I kind of made myself feel a little like the way my wife makes me feel when she knows she has trapped me in a corner. But, like my battles with her, I held firm and returned the gaze back.
“Wait. There were Doritos? Damn it. Look, forget about that. I have news about your daughter that...
“Super Zelda Donkey Kong Samus Brothers.” I pouted.
“...you…what?”
“The game.” I was proud of its construction and flaunted this to myself in the form of crossing my arms and puffing out my chest like a song bird. “Super Zelda Donkey Kong Samus Brothers. I could have added many more things to the title but thought it might get to cumbersome.”
“You’re an idiot.” I said to me.
“Maybe, but your just a figment of my obviously brilliant and very much asleep imagination. I have no clue why I am not yet published to the masses.”
“You’re an idiot.” He reiterated to me.
“Can we get to the part where I tell you about your daughter and the hand you the keys to the future?”
“So, if you are not a figment of my dreaming mind, how the hell did you get here then and why did you make my arrangement go away and where are the women with the armor and high heels?”
The other me took a deep patient breath, before speaking again. Wherever he was from, it must have been a place without emotion, because I could never handle someone like me in such a way without cursing or, at the very least, hitting something.
“Must I answer that? Time is tick, tick, ticking away and I have knowledge that can literally change your world, and all you want to know is how I invaded your dreams?”
Without much thought to his strong point, I thought about how hot the one I called Layla was and answered me.
“Yep.”
The sound the other me made was like air escaping from a helium balloon, when stretching the fleshy end thin to make the escaping air sound like a kind of whoopee cushion.
“Where I come from we have managed to fold time and space via our own mind. The method was based off a theory by Professor Kant...”
“Oh, Bryan wrote about that guy once!” I helped.
“Yes. Anyway, our scientists were able to bridge the gap between the conscious mind and that of cyberspace. In short, because I really need to tell you something, they figured out how to breakdown the human consciousness into tiny fragments of information and transport it through time, much like downloading information from one laptop to another via a wireless connection.”
“Whoa.”
“Not really, not compared to what I have to tell you, so if you could stop interrupting me.”
“Right. Go on.”
“You did it again! Golly-gee, surely I am not this difficult in other timelines.”
Before I had a chance to answer me, the other me shoved his filmy sweaty hand over my mouth.
“The difficult part is finding the IP address, if you will, to the self existing in the same space just in another dimension. Once you have the IP, which has its own acronym of MIDC.”
I raised my hand politely. This seemed to be a better method of communication with me as he took notice and answered the obvious question.
“Multiverse Identification Consciousness. Plug in the destination and voila! Time travel. As for the reason your dream was interrupted, the human conscious can only hold one series of algorithms at one time, which is why dreams do not blend into others resulting in the sudden end of one dream into the beginning of another.”
“Like changing the channel.”
“Yes. Very good. Anyway, the Kanteleport machine allows the user to replace his own consciousness into the mind of his parallel, while the dream is stored on the Kanteleport machine’s hard drive.”
“So I will get my dream back when you leave?” I asked now interested in what I was saying.
“I am beginning to hate you.”
“Self hate is a terrible disease where I am from.”
I was not trying to test my nerves, it just came across that way. Looking back, I think there might have been some crosses wires with that Kanteleport contraption.
“SO TO FINISH, the gaming chair and the women will return.”
“Can I ask, um, you a question?”
The other me sat down and crossed his legs, almost in a zen-like fashion, refusing to lose whatever spiritual training he had achieved to turn to violence. I envied that me in a way.
“Is your wife the same woman I am married to?”
“I think you would love to know about your daughter as she finds a cure for...”
“Is she?”
“Yes. We are very happy together and more in love today than the first time we laid eyes on one another.”
“Aha! Proof that I am dreaming, because that is just a load of…”
“Scott! Please, for the love of your daughter listen to me!”
“Fine. Not like you are real anyway. Tell me about this life altering knowledge you have for me.”
After the redness had faded from the other me, he took a deep breath once more and started to share in the knowledge of ages. That was the moment he started to fade out. The white noise on the screen beyond his tomato colored cheeks was now one of electronic bliss that grabbed my attention like the loving embrace of heroin addiction, pulling my eyes from the muffled shouts of myself. I wanted to listen, so I felt around for the remote and turned up the volume to the added surround sound system fashioning itself from thin air. Apparently the Kanteleport Machine worked better than I could have imagined it.
I sat onto my game throne and took the remote control from Layla, who had returned with just her chainmail leggings, stilettos, and changed her chest plate in for a nice teddy with a coat-of-arms sewn onto the front that loosely held the strings to her teddy in place. Luckily for me, her twin, Donna, showed up carrying a silver platter of my favorite snack foods; pizza rolls, tiny pigs-in-a-blanket, fried pickle spears, and loaded potato skins. I could see now that the game of my dreams finally boot to the title screen, bringing an orgasmic sensation to my groin and a tear of joy to my eyes...
The ladies stepped aside allowing for proper space to indulge. I held the remote controller in my hand as though it were Excalibur and I were presenting it to King Arthur himself, humbled by this opportunity that only my own genius could muster. My thumb hovered over the Start Button.
“This is it gals, a dream come true.”
It wasn’t my best moment, but I was asleep and recanting this to you should only humble all of you as much as it humble me…the current me anyway. I pressed the button with care…and then I woke up. My daughter lay beside me, dreaming of whatever cure she was going to conceive and my wife snoring up a storm next to her. I was saddened with this. I could still smell the cheese from the Doritos and taste the sugary goodness of my vat of Coke, and poor Donna and Layla. It was more than a dream, more than a figment of my own device. As I closed my eyes to get in the last five minutes or so before the alarm I could hear a voice echo deep in my subconscious. It was vaguely familiar to me, but the message did not seem right. Being highly unlikely, I ignored the message and went back to sleep.
