I think Halloween must’ve come a few days late this year.
Ok, so I’m at the end of my on-call, and it’s been hairy, so I’m sleep-deprived and I’m finally in bed and in the middle of sleeping way deep I have this peculiar dream:
I’m a bug. I’m long and flat and have many legs.
Being a bug sounds like a machine. There are always valves opening and closing. There is this built-in gadgetry which is like an organic analog computer that runs on cold steam. (Cold steam? Yeah I know…but it’s a dream, right? Different rules.)
So being a bug sounds like hisses and clanks.
Also I think when I was the bug in the dream even my legs ran on cold steam somehow. Everything was hydraulic; even the process of moving a leg was closing a valve and then filling the leg with steam till it stiffened and sprung out straight, then releasing the value so the leg would relax agian. One thing the little computer-gadgetry did was take care of opening and closing all of the valves and making the steam go where it was supposed to, so that the bug didn’t have to think “move this leg that way,” he could just think “run that way” and off he’d go.
Anyhow, sort of a cool dream…
Odd that I’d say that…I don’t like bugs.
So even if you want to sleep 20 hours your body won’t let you…eventually you have to get up to use the bathroom–there comes a point where nature’s call won’t be ignored.
So I’m moveing towards wakefulness, and fighting it, because I don’t want to wake up yet, because I’m finally in bed asleep, dang it!
And I feel something sort of wiggle on my chest.
Now folks, I’m a fat man whose entering middle-age: nobody’s idea of an athlete. But put a bug in the bed with me, and you better watch out, because suddenly the rules change.
My arm shoots out and my body flips over in a move I could never make work (or even figure out if I was awake and trying) and the bug that was crawling on my chest is flung against the wall, moving at a high rate of speed.
But now I’m awake, and I’m squicked out, because even though dreaming the details of being a bug was kind of cool, having a real bug in the bed with me is Most Definitely Not Cool. (shudder)
So I go to the bathroom, which is just a couple of steps from the bedroom.
And on the floor mat there’s this odd bug. Never seen one like him before.
About the size of a large roach, but silvery-colored, with three big blue dots down his back, and what looks like great big pincher-jaws on the front of him.
And he’s dented up a bit…looks like he’s maybe the worse for wear.
He looks at me like he knows who I am, somehow.
I look at him like he’s a bug.
Because he’s a bug.
And I nod to him, all friendly like, and I reach down and pick up the corner of the bath mat, and in a fast move pick it up and dump him in the toilet.
He sinks like a rock and makes this little “thunk!” when he hits the bottom of the bowl, all legs pistoning in and out like mad.
And I flush him down, and give him a free trip around the city.
Because I hate bugs.
So this is how I happened to be typing on the Chiffboard at 4:20 am on a Friday, hoping the last couple of hours of my oncall stay quiet, and remembering this odd dream of what it was like to be a bug, and wondering what the hell kind of experience I had just lived through.
I hate bugs.
–James
