Taking a road flare from the floor in the back, I light it and open the door just enough to toss it out. It lands in the puddle next to the overturned second spare tank. Depressing the gas pedal, the jeep gains traction, and we leave as more bullets strike the metal skin. Speeding away into the night, the extra tank explodes into a ball of flames behind us. The dangling hose ignites, and a flame quickly climbs to the top where the fire spreads. Large flames erupt on the front half of the tanker, as we increase distance. A mushroom cloud lights up the sky all around, followed instants later by the loud explosion.
Chunks of ice and water rain down around the jeep while we continue to drive away. The tanker burns behind us until turning into a dull glow on the night’s horizon. I slow down the jeep to a fuel efficient speed and follow a compass on the dash east into the night. Driving alone in the darkness towards Oahu, I turn to Allison.
“I’m so happy to see you. Are you ok?” I ask.
Leaning over, she says, “I am now, thanks to you Gabriel.”
Clearly shaken by the intense chase, she continues, “My family left after Greg died and we arrived at our wind turbine farm on Kauai before the war. We converted the structures into greenhouses and invited two other families nearby to join us. Living inside in safety, the world froze and died following the nuclear attack. We took turns using a second sleep chamber my mother brought from the laboratory on the Big Island to dream lifetimes.
“Kauai was quiet for some time, and we thought we were alone. Just when the ocean was freezing, an oil tanker arrived and anchored offshore. The ship soon froze into place and the crew came ashore looking for food.
“We initially traded fuel from the tanker for small amounts of food from our greenhouse. The men from the tanker decided that we weren’t giving them enough, so they attacked us, killing my parents and six others. The three women remaining were kept to garden. My only comfort has been the chamber which they allowed me to use. Over the years, the other two women were killed and I’ve lived in fear for my life. I gave up all hope long ago.”
“Allison, I’m sorry about your parents and everything you’ve been through. It must’ve been terrifying. I’ve lived alone on the Big Island. My parents left only a few months after the freeze because there wasn’t enough food. They died on Maui, and I’ve lived alone, entering my own chamber for escape ever since. If I known you were alive here, I would’ve come long ago.”
I look into her eyes in the dark passenger seat and know I love her. We continue across the ice towards Oahu through the early morning darkness while sharing our difficult lives and memories of childhood. Allison leans over and grabs my hand. For the first time in this icy world, I feel happy, knowing there’s something worth living for in this reality.
Driving around the southern tip of Oahu in the early morning light, we approach the submarine I entered a few days ago. It’ll be a good place to add the spare fuel into the main tank. Climbing out of the jeep, I look into Allison’s eyes, and she smiles. While adding extra fuel to the main tank, all I think about is how nice it’ll be to get her back to the compound and begin our new life.
Allison leans over towards the driver’s side window. Looking into her eyes, it’s clear I’ve loved her my entire life and always will. Leaning inside the driver’s window, I kiss her. All the feelings in the chamber for her are here, but intensified. We embrace, melting away. She suddenly pulls away with an intense and serious look on her face, but doesn’t speak. Something is wrong. Time slows down.
“Gabriel, look out!” she screams.
Spinning around, I see the second jeep barreling down on us. Without a second to spare, I dive out of the way just when the speeding jeep nearly crushes me but hits the side of the rear bumper instead. Both vehicles spin in opposite directions across the ice. Jumping up, I run to Allison and climb inside. Blood trickles down her forehead, but her eyes are open. Her captors have found us.
Chapter 28
When Dreams End
“When one realizes one is asleep,
at that moment one is already half awake.”
-P. D. Ouspensky
The other jeep sits motionless, close to ours but facing away. The four men inside are slow to move. A few seconds pass. The men climb out and come for us. Starting the jeep, I speed towards land just before they approach. In the rearview mirror, the men climb inside and are soon hot on our tail. The man in the passenger’s seat fires shots from a rifle.
Allison regains consciousness, so I hand her one of my gloves, and say, “Hold this tightly on your forehead.”
Unable to gain distance the shots seem to be getting closer and closer, ricocheting off the metal skin. The rear window shatters, so I know they are homing in. Looking at the ruined city on the shore nearby, I jerk the wheel and turn towards the crumbled city wall. The other jeep follows.
The tires shake while we cross onto the exposed frozen rock and past the shoreline. The jeep passes between two narrow sections of the crumbling wall on the edge of Waikiki. Once inside the wall, twisted metal and concrete structures remain along the sides of the former streets. Weaving in and out of the skeletal remains of the hotels, I try to shake the pursuers.
The second jeep follows closely. We leave the surface and jump from an angled slab of concrete from a collapsed hotel. I’d be in awe of the devastation, if I wasn’t in fear for our lives. After weaving in and out of the frozen rubble without success I turn towards Diamond Head Crater.
The jeep struggles to use all its power to climb the steep, frozen and uneven road around the north side of Diamond Head Crater. Reaching the crest of the road, the other jeep closes to within a few feet. Several shots are fired from short range. The jeep swerves violently. We just lost a tire. While turning with the spin into Diamond Head Crater, the other jeep slides down the road, missing the entrance. They will be back on us soon.
Parking by a path in the crater, I see them approach in the distance.
“Allison, can you run?”
She nods and we jump from the jeep and run up an old concrete staircase leading to a bunker embedded in the mountain above. I look back at the four men climbing out in pursuit. I remove the pistol, knowing there are nine shots remaining.
Bullets hit a rock next to me as we climb. Spinning around, I take three shots. One hits the closest attacker in the chest. He drops to the ground, but his three friends continue to give chase.
Climbing a few more stairs, bullets ricochet around us off the concrete and old metal railings lining the path. One long flight of stairs remains before the safety of the bunker where my pistol will have an advantage in the narrow corridors. The steeper stairs slow our progress, bringing the attackers closer behind.
Almost there, I watch a bullet enter Allison’s right thigh. She falls to the stairs and screams out in pain. A second shot hits her behind the shoulder blade, causing her to cry out a second time, louder. With the attackers almost on top of us, I pick her up onto my shoulder. I carry her up the last few stairs into bunker at the top.
While setting her down, suddenly my left hip is on fire, shot from close range. Turning around, I take two shots at the man only feet away, hitting him in the chest and stomach. He falls backwards onto the other attackers climbing the stairs below.
Three men stumble down the staircase, stopping their progress. The two remaining attackers move the body of the third out of the way at the bottom of the stairs out of pistol range. They strategically take position behind rocks, carefully aiming their rifles at the only exit, knowing we eventually have to emerge.
We’re pinned down, but safe for the moment. Ducking back inside, I turn to Allison. Blood spits from the wound in her back. I try in vain to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.
Softly pushing my hand away, she smiles, “Gabriel, you rescued me. I was free again if only for a short time.”
A tear rolls down her cheek.
“I love you, and always have,” I reply, “You can’t die. We are all that remains for each o
ther in this world.”
She cries, closes her eyes then reopens them.
She’s fading away. I finally found meaning, and now it’s being ripped away. Not fair!
“Gabriel, it’s beautiful.”
“What’s beautiful Allison?”
“The light…The world is outlined in beautiful, colored energy. It covers everything, even you. Gabriel, I‘m not afraid to die.”
Leaning over, I kiss her just when she closes her eyes and becomes motionless in my arms. My heart sinks. All remaining meaning in this world departs with her.
But wait…She just described what happens at the end of every dream right before I awake in exact detail, but here. How’s it possible?
Deep down in my heart I know the truth. Since my last dream, even this world transformed into something that is unable to hold my attention- especially now that Allison is gone. This is a dream containing nothing left to create. I’m finished being a dreamer in any dream world.
I picture my death just a few miles from here when the nuclear warhead detonated over Honolulu. I’ve lived so many dreams, always ending in awakening. I picture the rusting ship on the coast of Lanai and remember- time recycles all that’s form back into idea in a system devoid of any waste. The calming energy pattern fills the edges of my vision, coating the physical world around me. Everything transforms into light. I have no sensation of the bullet wound or my body. Looking down at the pistol in my hand, coated in light, I smile.
I say aloud, “If it’s nothing but a dream, then why not?”
Rushing around the corner and outside the bunker, I immediately fire two shot at the first man, hiding behind a rock. One bullet grazes the top of his shoulder. His return fire disappears into the light coating my leg, just above my knee. I feel nothing. Laughing loudly, I fire the remaining two shots towards the second attacker, hitting the rock in front of him. The gun makes a click, click, telling me it’s empty. Both men stand up, aim with their rifles, and fire their entire clips into my body.
I merge with the energy field while bullets riddle my body, unfelt. Laughing again, I rise above my body and watch it lifelessly collapse, tumbling down the long staircase below. While floating higher above the frozen landscape, the world disappears, emerging me in light. I’m ready for all dreams to end.
Chapter 29
Conscious Awakening
“Only that day dawns to which we awake.”
-Henry David Thoreau
A glass window is inches in front of me. This looks like a chamber, but I’m definitely not in the compound. My hands are those of a twenty year old. Looking through the glass, I’m inside a large building with rows of identical sleep chambers.
A video projects on the inside of the glass in front of me. An older man speaks, “Hello, I’m Mark Andrews, the director of the FHSA or Federal Human Survival Agency. My agency is dedicated to ensuring the survival of the human race. If you’re watching this, it means our efforts have paid off.
“You are one of the few humans chosen to begin our species again. Many resources were allocated to enable your survival when our planet became uninhabitable, so please cherish your life and this new opportunity. You just awoke from a sleep chamber that’s kept your body in stasis for decades or possibly even centuries.
“Your body was preserved with the hope that the human race can one day continue on. Survival requires evolving as a species, using new technology smartly, and not repeating the same mistakes which destroyed our planet.
“You are in a facility on a mountainside of the Big Island of Hawaii. Your dream may have had a similar theme, but that has an explanation which I’ll get to shortly. What you need to know is that in the first few decades of the twenty first century, we humans destroyed our planet with weapons, carbon emissions, and every other type of pollution imaginable. We also destroyed our humanity in the same process. We lost our integrity in an attempt to gain our survival, failing on both accounts.
“We became too addicted to consuming the earth’s precious resources and too apathetic to implement any real changes to stop the transformation we were causing. Our government, realizing it was too late to halt the global momentum, focused on ensuring human survival.
“With the destruction of our civilization imminent, we know someday in the distant future whatever damage we caused will eventually heal because the earth is a very resilient organism when left to recover without interference. The preservation of the human species being paramount, we built these large complexes in the United States while other governments made similar attempts elsewhere in the world. These complexes are powered by geothermal energy and will enable your survival and transformation.
“One thousand humans are kept in sleep stasis at your facility, preserving your bodies until it’s time to awaken and repopulate the earth. You and the other humans were chosen from the most physically and mentally capable people available. Your former lifetimes were erased from your memories to delete the remnants of the mistakes and selfishness that scarred you from the thousands of generations before.
“You were then placed in the chambers and programmed with a base dream. Your dream took place in an environment as close to our post apocalyptical world as possible. This is done to ensure that you are familiar with your environment upon awakening, and are fully aware of the consequences of what humanity did to our planet.
“In each of your dreams, you were actually interacting with the other people in this facility so that you would be familiar with them after awakening and also have a shared basis for interaction in this world. Your journey was individual in that your selfish human mind had to be conquered by you alone, under all circumstances. The long journey you just completed was a path of awakening and self discovery.
“You were given the opportunity to create as many dream lives as you needed. This served to allow you to exhaust all personal desire for manifesting destructive or consuming circumstances in your life. You likely lived thousands of lifetimes, all of which fed into some self-serving desire, held at the core of your being. Inside the chamber, you created anything you wished and the consequences were only projected onto your dream.
“Only after your desires were exhausted or you saw past the need to manifest them did you awaken, marking your worthiness to inherit the healed planet. A personal desire to awaken from all dreams is why you are here now. Think of yourself as a caterpillar in a cocoon, only emerging after your transformation into a butterfly was complete.
“There’s a station by the front entrance that’ll scan your brain, causing a memory re-sequencing and instantly enabling you to recall every lifetime you dreamt. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe, and after the scan you’ll fully understand what’s meant by ‘fully exhausting all of your self-serving desires.’
“After the planet healed, you were allowed to wake up. In the years prior to the first human awakening, seeds were scattered around the landscape by this facility, so there should be a thriving ecosystem outside. Hopefully you understand the value of the world you’re about to inherit.
“If you begin excessively consuming this world, the chambers will remain fully available for re-entry, to live out these fantasies non-destructively. Ahead of you lies the noblest task in human history- to help create a civilization in harmony with itself and the world it inhabits. You’re armed with the lessons learned from our past and the wisdom from countless lifetimes of personal growth. We from the past wish you the best of luck in this great endeavor.”
The screen goes dark, and the lid opens into the large room. My eyes adjust to the light, and I see a woman standing in front of me. It’s Allison, only she’s about twenty. I stare in silent awe as our eyes meet.
Chapter 30
Beginning Anew
“Of course you don't die. Nobody dies. Death doesn't exist.
You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm
of consciousness, a new unknown world.”
- Henry Miller
I sit up and sh
e gives me a hug, a long kiss on the lips, and begins to cry.
She proclaims, “You finally woke up! It worked!”
I reply, “I’m so happy to see you here! What worked? What is going on?”
She explains, “We were linked in a dream many weeks ago, sharing a love so intense it brought about my awakening here after your death. I awoke here while you continued to search for that same happiness in your dreams. I was the first person in this facility to awaken. I came back into your dreams for you after realizing the magnificence of this place and the meaning of life here.
“I was going to dream however long it took to get you to awaken. I wanted to tell you to awaken, but the only way was for you to complete your transformation and to exhaust your desires inside. I decided to try to help you and chased you through dream world after dream world, sharing our love if only just for a short time, repeating similar dreams that caused my own awakening. Somehow, it eventually worked and you stopped chasing dreams of me and here we are. We are the first two people to awake in a world of meaning, together.”
Allison takes a tube out of a port in my arm that is labeled, “nutrient system tube” She carefully helps me into a wheelchair and pushes me down the rows of chambers.
“When I died on Diamond Head, I thought the dream was another failure. I tried to enter another dream with you, but you were nowhere to be found. That’s when I woke here and climbed out of the chamber and here you are, awake.”
“I lost you so many times.” I look at her and smile, “So you knew in each of our dreams that we were asleep?”
“Yes, I knew but I couldn’t tell you. I was just happy to be spending time with you.”
“Thank you for what you did for me.”
“I would’ve done whatever it took.”
Happy she’s real, I imagine being able to start a life of meaning in this place with her. Allison continues to wheel me down the rows and rows of chambers towards the front door. Passing one of the chambers, I glance inside. The face was oddly familiar, so I ask, “Who is this woman?”