Dreamed 1992/9/5-6 by Chris Wayan
FIRST NIGHT
I dream I'm in one of three groups of psychic children. My name is Saleem Sinai; I'm the telepath who Salman Rushdie interviewed for his book MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN. Not the one that has all the Muslim fundies out for his blood, the book before that, that insults Hindu fundies--and secularists. The dirty laundry of Indian politics...
As Saleem, I live through lengthy adventures with a sense of defeat underneath. Normal people and their majority-ruled government tried to stamp out us Midnight Children for being different--threatening.
Still, I was alive to be interviewed! Alive and ready to speak out.
NEXT MORNING
I finish MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN. I was only half way through. It ends as bitterly as my dream predicted--Indira Gandhi rounds them up, has them sterilized, and cuts out their wild talents with a surgeon's knife.
I'm sick again today. Lie around naked in the sun, and slowly feel better.
Watch a Star Trek episode. A separatist group of Klingons, warriors obsessed with their honor, hold the main reactor of the Enterprise as "hostage." Lame drama.
Read a bit of "The Plains of Passage", one of Jean Auel's ice age sagas. Interesting animal- and herb-lore, but slow and verbose as a story.
I go to bed early...
THAT NIGHT
It's the future--after things fall apart.
Few people now. I only know of two California tribes. One's a desert group descended from hippies and cowboys, living east of Sierras somewhere... they're developing psychic powers to the point others might call magic.
The other's a San Diego or San Onofre tribe, inspired by the coastal ruins, trying to revive high tech. Very high tech. They're building a nuke.
I'm in the psychic tribe, passionately antinuclear. We're out to sabotage the reactor before it fires up. A group of six of us, two women four men, get inside their complex. Did we teleport, walk through mirrors?
We have guns, long assault rifles. Guards appear. They shoot at Jamila, the youngest of us, hardly more than a girl. She slumps without a word. Kneels, still clutching her rifle, leaning on it as a support, pointing it up at the ceiling, not at anyone. The guards hesitate, guilty now.
Jamila fishes out an iron spindle--a rocket grenade. Attaches it to the barrel of her gun, fires it in an arc up toward the roof... and down to the reactor wall! It explodes, smashing the containment and damaging the soon-to-be-loaded core...
We flee, dragging her with us... We teleport back home?
Her wound's not fatal, but for a long time she's drained, listless, just trying to heal.
Not a time to talk about my love for her. I've had a crush on Jamila for so long. But she's too drained to feel anything now.
The tribe has built a wooden fence, ranch style, with a gate. It won't stand up against serious high-tech attack, but if their people try a ground assault, it'll slow them down. We have lots of sharpshooters. The cowboys at the gate seem pretty confident we can survive any punitive raids. Most of us feel great relief. They won't be able to fire up a nuke for years, if ever. And it's the first time we've defeated the high-tech people. They'll have to factor our opposition into any other dangerous projects they cook up. Teleporting saboteurs! I'm not sure they'll even try rebuilding the reactor. Too vulnerable.
Maybe we saved the world.
I wake feeling happy, despite all the tension and violence of the dream. Jamila's injury seemed a fair price to pay; at least she thought so. For saving the world.
NOTES IN THE MORNING
A battle I barely yet realize I won.
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