Phase Q/Foresight

Looking straight ahead, you practically stare. Yet an outside observer would say that you seem absent-minded. Anyway, you see plenty.

Before you, like looking into a crystal ball, you see with pure clarity a vision of the sky people. Flying freely, of their own volition, they somersault through the air like children. You watch for a while, not caring if they see you.

Their voices ring like laughter. Gleefully, they tell each other stories, share helpful hints, and spread good words. You remember the sound of their chatter from previous dreaming.

Music begins to play. It transports you through a lifetime of experiences. Are you remembering, or dreaming?

You look around you. In the dream lair, dozens, hundreds, thousands of other bodies share your distracted gaze. The faces look familiar. You recognize some of them from your vision.

As your awareness of your surroundings fades out again, you rejoin the sky people anew. Now flying with them, you float up effortlessly. They welcome you into their presence warmly. You feel like an old friend, long unseen, now getting back to exactly the way things were before.

And you also feel new emotions. The sky people take you into a secret opening in a cloud. There, they perform an unusual dance, which looks almost awkward in its aerial grace. As if on command, the clouds reshape themselves, showing you what your life will look like in fifty years.

With the peaceful, soothing images moving all around you, tears fall down your cheeks. Each tear morphs into a miniature version of yourself at various points along the way of your next fifty years.

You glance out at the other flying people. Your neighbors. They are not staring you, or even watching you at all. They are each as involved in their own futurescapes as you are in yours.

Some of the people have found a new job or hobby in their future. Others heal old wounds, and find new loves.

The sky people gradually become aware of each other. You too. You are now one of them. As more newcomers arrive, you point them towards the opening, where they learn their futures. And the sky people gradually fly higher, up, up to new levels.

You dream and you dream and you dream. After what feels like a million years of dreaming, although may only have been minutes or hours in the waking world, you wonder what is happening in the waking world.

Struggling to wake yourself up, you find that you are now unable to will yourself back into the dream lair.

After thinking that you may be stuck here, a chorus of sky people instantly teletell you: “It’s OK. You can wake up whenever you want. But now you have a different way of doing so. It’s more like going to sleep.”

You realize that most of the sky people don’t ever want to wake up.

Trying what they teletold you, you go to sleep, or wake up as it were. Around you, you still see the blazed out bodies, although now you can tell that they’re all blissfully happy, completely uninterested in their surroundings.

Whalmb!

An explosion rocks the outside of the dream lair. Yet, almost all of the dreamers remain in their trance.

• Realize.
• Shut down.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.