The Way Things Were

I had a dream that, like many dreams, was likely an assemblage of recent events tossed around in random order. Or maybe the order wasn’t random.

In the dream I was somewhere in the Midwest and was told by a relative that a new doctor was rising in fame with an offer to fix any physical imperfection, on any volunteer, through surgery. I thought about this proposition for a bit and then signed up to make some alterations on my face.

The doctor had a team pick me up for the surgery and place me in the bed of a pickup truck. I second-guessed my decision on the way to the medical facility (can’t I accept myself as I am?) and jumped out of the truck at a stoplight. Relieved, I started walking home until suddenly a car zigzagged through a red light and hit me.

With a newly disfigured face from the car crash, I backtracked again and took the surgeon up on the offer, wishing to have my face carved into what it was before the car crash. The dream fast forwarded in a flash to after the operation. By all visible indications I looked like I did before the crash.

However, in the dream the car crash left my mind deranged and subject to sudden and violent mood swings. I had apparently alienated myself from everyone and found myself in a state of misery.

“There is an orb, deep in space, that can alter the fabric of space and time and take you back to the way things were,” I was told. “Just let it swallow you whole. If you enter this orb you’ll be transported back to another time, a better time, and you can change your decisions.”

“Are there dangers to going through this orb?” I asked.

“Yes,” the stranger replied. “It’s guarded by space zombies.”

The next thing I knew a space shuttle reminiscent of the recent SpaceX designs propelled me at the speed of light across our solar system. Ahead, a giant orange orb that seemed like a cross between a star and a black hole pulsed and throbbed. It simultaneously glowed and sucked in matter.

The titanium exterior of the ship ripped apart as space zombies (literally just human zombies in space; hey, it’s a dream) clawed their way into the ship their incredible claws and surrounded me. Their bites tore into my flesh, but I escaped to a solo pilot pod and ejected this pod from the ship with me inside. I went through the orb, bitten by zombies and wounded but not yet dead.

I emerged from this orb and returned back to who I was, before the surgery proposition and all of the madness. I thought that going back in time would cure my problems, but I felt an emptying feeling that lingered.

I was back to the way things were, but I was no longer the person who experienced those things. Reliving past events while making better decisions did not cure me; it made me more miserable than ever. There’s something hollow about experiencing the same things twice for the sake of preferring the past to the present.

All of this surreal madness, I can only assume, was a reminder not to yearn too much for the past. The past is dead, and running backwards can bring deadly consequences.