Chapter 1
This was by far the most defining dream of my life to date.
It started like many dreams. I was on a tropical island several stories up in a wooden tower basking in the warm sunlight. Many smaller buildings surrounded me, most of them constructed from bamboo, rough wood, and palm leaves. A warm, salty wind caressed my face as I stood with my hands the carved railing in front of me. In the distance, an early afternoon sun shone on the water. I could see it over the tops of the tall palm trees that hid the sandy beach from my view.
Suddenly, from the direction of the ocean, I heard a commotion. People were running away from the ocean towards the town, shouting illegibly and trying to get as far away from the water as possible. I looked back towards the ocean and this time noticed a massive wave headed straight for the town: a tsunami. The water was filled with trees and dirt and rocks, giving it a muddy brown hue as it demolished everything that stood in the path of its raging swell.
There was going to be no escape for me or the other townspeople. The wave was coming too fast and we were far to close to it.
I assessed my options. Being positioned several stories up from the ground, I realized I might be able to ride out the wave. My hypothesis proved true as I was able to escape the wave’s initial impact as it obliterated the building beneath me and tore through the village, ripping apart buildings and killing hundreds. The floor I was standing on was swept down what had been the central road between the buildings, leaving me clutching the wood beneath me for dear life.
The water carried me into the jungle on a raging river created as more trees gave way to the onslaught of the wave, but after a moment, I was able to stabilize myself on my raft. For an instant I felt hopeful. If the water dissipated, I might be able to make it to shore before much longer.
But my dream had other plans.
Ahead, I spotted a sharp end to the river as it poured over the edge of a cliff. I prepared myself for the drop that awaited me, clutching frantically at the twine holding together my raft. As my craft shot over the edge of the cliff, I knew immediately that my death was imminent. Below me was a drop of hundreds of meters towards a shallow pool that had formed at the base of the cliff. I had no chance of surviving.
In that moment, my dream turned lucid. I was aware that I was going to die, but also that this was a dream. I could feel the rapidly approaching reality that wakefulness would soon bring once I died in this fall.
But then, I had a thought: what lay in store for me if I didn’t allow myself to wake once I died? I resolved myself to do exactly that, and after I felt a painless shattering my skull against a rock at the bottom of the drop, the world of my dream faded to darkness.
In the dark there was neither the presence nor the absence of anything. Light, sound, and touch neither existed nor did not exist. It was nothing and yet not nothing at the same time. I concurrently did not exist and never existed more. All I felt was a clarity in my death and a warm sense of acceptance that my time had come to an end.
After a notable period of time, the twinges of perception began to seep in. Movement shook the darkness, and a faint light began to shine. The sound of men speaking and a woman singing close by filtered in. As a world filtered back into view, I, Samson, ceased to exist. The consciousness of the dream was superseded by a new conscious being. I became someone awakening from a drunken stupor that had resulted in me passing out for a short nap, my head rested on the small round table in front of me.
I jerked myself to the sitting position. I was in a bar, flanked by colleagues who were also clearly in the midst of processing the many drinks they too had consumed. Ahead of me atop a stage and holding a microphone intimately as she bent towards the crowd was a woman, her tight shimmering dress accentuating her form in the beam of soft yellow light focused on her from above. Gentle but slightly off key music sounded from the small band sitting to the side of the stage outside the light. The air smelled of stale cigarette smoke and the worn maroon padding on the bench beneath me felt harder than usual.
It was a scene characterized by the place and the date: New York City on May 2nd, 1928.
Confused and disoriented, I rose unsteadily to my feet, those around me barely noticing my clumsiness due to the alcohol clouding their awareness. I crossed the room to the left and dangerously stumbled down the stairs. I passed others, but they, like my colleagues, were too inebriated to pay me mind. At the bottom of the stairs I followed the wall to the left until I’d turned completely around and entered a gilded bathroom glistening in sharp white light. Men were exiting immaculately maintained bathroom stalls to the sound of toilets flushing, still zipping up their pants as they walked across the room towards the row of sinks.
This row of sinks is what I sought. But it wasn’t water that I needed: it was the mirrors. I had to see my face. To ground myself in the person I was. At this point, after the reality of the dream I had just experienced, I wasn’t sure who I might see looking back at me.
I pushed my way to a sink and fixed my eyes on the mirror. The face staring back at me was my own, not Samson’s. A soft white face, flecked with bits of gold that had grown from my skin. Most of it was nestled among my eyebrow hair and dusted the sharp cheekbones that shaped my face into what many regarded as beautiful. I placed my hands on my cheeks to make sure my face was real. The cold touch certified that it was. But it was a face far different than those of the people in the world I had just dreamed of.
In an instant I understood. I remembered the life I had just lived during my brief, alcohol induced unconsciousness. I had lived Samson’s entire life, from his moment of birth seventy years from now to his death that I had experienced only a moment ago. The room began to spin as I realized that every moment of his life had never truly existed, but had been a mere rendering of a reality created entirely by my dream. I placed my hands on the counter in front of me and leaned forward to steady myself.
My unsteadiness gave way to dismay as I remembered the clarity and quality of his thoughts. I could remember how smart he had been. No, it was more than that. I could remember his every thought, and how easy it’d been for him to make sense of them. My thoughts and his had been intertwined, but now, it was clear that l that my intellectual capabilities were far below his, and nearly every person in his world. I understood now that the intelligence he had possessed was unattainable for me. And now, the feeling his brain’s superior capabilities was slipping away from mine. I clung onto it, try to extract all I could from the last whiffs of a level of intelligence I would never experience again.
Gradually, my mind settled. Already my understanding of what had just happened was beginning to fade, just like any other dream. I turned on the faucet and splashed water on my beautiful face. The beauty my face and the faces of those around me were what the people in my reality possessed. Our beautiful faces were all we had in compensation for our unescapable lack of intelligence.
