Dream Anthology 3

The Captain

I woke up in my bed and it was still dark at 3am, but a computer screen came flying into my room, and it said that I now had a new job at a university. 

I don't remember ever applying to this job, but I was happy to get it and i almost flew into the other room, but just as I landed, a blue portal opened up out of the radiator and it sucked me in before I could defend myself.

Anyway, when I came out it was 5am and I was outside. An orange Jeep from ty2 rolled up with no driver. I thought I was supposed to go inside, so I did, but I went in through the shut door. 

The Jeep was much bigger on the inside, and the interior was swirly and windy like the warp tunnel. I made my way to the other door and as I oozed my way through the other side, it was 9am and everything was flooded with an early dawn light, and everything was covered in drops of glistening honey dew.

I saw a big oddly shaped building made of dull red bricks and I thought this must be the place so I walked in. It was shaped like a building but put on 4 massive legs for walking. The interior was like a dining hall built into a library built into a restaurant. I said I just got a job here, and told them my name, the woman said oh then you have to speak to the captain.

I thought that by captain, she must have meant school principal. She showed me to another woman to take me to the captain. The room down the hall had an orange light. There was one woman dressed in yellow metallic Arab clothes, and another woman in jeans. The jeans woman said some people would like to congratulate you on your new ship. The Arab woman said thank you, let's make it so that we can have a successful tenure.

The woman next to me said this is the boy asking about his new job. The Arab woman turns her head to my direction. Her eyes were like white headlights. She approaches me. I am captain nusrameli, this is my new ship. I will expect you to follow orders like every one else aboard my ship. Right now the orders are to seal off all exits, jumpstart the boiler, recalibrate the coordinate navigational system, and clean out the hover jets to prepare this ship for operation in deep space.

I thought this was a school. No it is not, we will be up in about 10 mins. 50 minutes later, the cool glow of a swirly blue sky was still shining through the bulletproof windows 10 inches thick. The various people were walking around and the buzz of all their conversations filled the room like a loud waiting area. Many of the people were crowded around the captain.

It has been 50 minutes! Why are the jump jets not started yet? I yell above the cacophony at the top of my lungs. The captain seems not to hear me, but seconds later, the directional controls are still being recalibrated, the time it takes to do these things indicates to me how much someone is not doing their job.

I was frustrated because I was asking, but no one was giving me any orders. At this point it seemed that the captain was new, i went over to the directional control station to see what was going on. People who were supposed to be technicians came up to the table, pondered, and then went to ask the next person. I observed them as I watched the table of beeping flashing buttons.

The buttons seemed to me like zeroes and ones, but no one there seemed to have an understanding of linear algebra. I pushed the buttons to do the course corrections of inverses until the grids started flashing in diagonal, using the last column as a comparator. Then I fed the zero vectors back to the main computer.

Captain, o captain, the jets are ready to be started now. The plots are zeroed out. Nothing else seems to happen for a while, when I look over, the captain was writing things down on a clipboard. I tried to talk to the chief engineer, who was a big black guy in all white clothes. He said he needed permission from the captain in order to do anything.

Since apparently I needed the captain in order to do anything, I tried calling the captain again. What do you want so often, can't you see I'm very busy? Captain, could you please check my calibrations so the jets can start? The captain approaches the beeping table of buttons. I am still working on sealing off the exits right now. 

I can't authorize that now because I am busy getting the orders of what everybody wants from the store. What do you want from the store. The captain looks quizzingly at me with her pen dotting a clipboard. Captain, doesn't this ship have its own cafeteria? No it does not, and I am stocking the food pantry right now. But now it has been 70 minutes, the boiler room is still cold. When are we leaving? 

The captain goes over to the other side of the table and puts the clipboard down. Then wavy ribbons of light pour out of her back. She starts transforming and reversing her age. If I can't fulfill everyone all the time, if I can't be everywhere at one, how can I constantly fulfill the needs of the people? How can I be giving to people if they don't really know what they want?

Her voice fills the room and the large dining room of technology is flooded with white light, but then it fades, and she is back to her original self. Nobody else seemed to notice what just happened. Just then, the doors fly open, and other people in white clothes walking with huge boxes of food from Panera bread. Right after the cafeteria is stuffed, the four huge jets start whirring loudly. 

After some time, the blue sky eventually fades to dark purple to black. Night falls on the school as the clouds fade and disappear. Attention everyone, we are now above the ionosphere of the planet. I am turning the ignition key to the warp drives to go into warp. The ship very suddenly accelerates as the star gets smaller and smaller. 

Without warning, the same blue vortex appears and sucks me into it again. The force was so strong that the the captain's bonnet flew off her head. The shocked captain looks into the camera before the dream ends.