Lack of Logic // Dreams of Green

*Rampant Green and Water.*

Those were always the first things he saw when he closed his eyes at night. He saw water running strangely clear between two expanses of deep chartreuse carpet, and towering ebony poles etched with grooves, the very tops of them branching off to support wreaths of green. Higher than those – if that was even possible – there was an up-above that went on forever. The ceiling's pale blue stretched and stretched until the ends of his sight – until it met the ends of the Rampant Green and Water.

He couldn't understand it – how could someone dream about something that they've never seen? Sometimes he could almost understand it – why wouldn't he dream of water? There was never enough on the ship to satisfy his thirst after a semi-decent meal, so why wouldn't his subconscious create a world where he could drink as much as he wanted, when it was cold and quite clearly lacked that rubbery aftertaste which was so common during mealtimes?

There was the rare occasion when the poles made sense to him, too – though it was usually during the brief moments between sleep and wakefulness.

But there were things that could not – would not – be explained… if he knew them, or he knew why, it was only in his dreams. Dreams, however, were places of little logic, and if something were to make sense there, it was highly unlikely that it were to make sense in the logical world. There was the ceiling, first of all – he could not fathom why or how it could never end. He couldn't understand why the carpet beneath his not-usually bare feet felt so bright upon them. He didn't understand the smell that invigorated him, and he didn't know why or how a single light from a portion of the ceiling could do such an effective job at warming him as well as the entire carpeted surface. He felt wind like a fan on his face, except more total and less brutal than the industrial-sized ones placed strategically around the ship to circulate air and distribute the oxygen.

Among the things he could not explain was why he would wake up from these dreams feeling purified and refreshed, yet somehow have tears on his cheeks.

It took a while before he felt he could confide in someone. He began with his parents – they were quite high up in the hierarchy of the ship, and he knew that they did not get there by asking. If anyone could explain something to him logically it would be them.

"There are poles," he told his mother, who had seated herself daintily on one of the stools in front of the FoodNow™ machine in their kitchen,

"Poles…" She pressed a button on the machine, only half paying attention to her son as the meal in the FoodNow™ expanded rapidly.

"And they reach almost as high as the ceiling. It goes on forever –"

"No such thing," His father said, leaning against the counter, sipping from a mug containing a rare drink of heated water and spices.

"What?"

"No such thing," His father said again, turning towards the counter and last month's edition of Esquire magazine.

"No such thing as forever."

"It was only a dream, honey," his mother said, pulling a ten-calorie nameless breakfast from the FoodNow™.

"Dreams have no place in this world. You'd do best to forget about it…" She went on.

She was right, the part of his mind as logical as his parents said to him as he left the kitchen and headed to his room to get dressed before school. Dreams had no place in this world…

Perhaps, the considerably larger part of his psyche replied, one should not ask definitions of dreams to those who concern their lives with logic.

~

He did not believe that telling his parents would change much - if anything – but he remembered feeling a faint sensation of surprise as he closed his eyes and begun the dream again. He wore no shoes (like the time before) and everything was as beautiful as it once was. He stood on the emerald carpet and breathed deeply, eyes wide and taking in the unaltered surroundings.

The deep feeling of foreboding came before the red light did. It was a beacon – a vermillion hue that chilled him and interfered with his untainted, beautiful world. He didn’t remember ever having this part of the dream; he felt he should move, or at least wake up before something else –

The tears were on his face again as he awoke in the dark.

He decided not to sleep again that night; instead he headed to his desk, turned on the small fluorescent lamp and rummaged through the drawers until he could locate an old fashioned notebook and what was left of a few coloured pens. One was green, he noted detachedly. He sketched out a scene – the only scene – from his dream… Deep brown poles and green and water and blue up-above everywhere… He drew until his right hand was shaking and he fell asleep on the hard plastic of the tabletop.

The next day his mother shook him awake. He could hear his alarm-clock blaring, yelling at him almost as loud as his mother was, telling him to get up, get up now – your education is important!

"If you are late, then I just so happen to be the one who looks bad! Get up, you lazy child, and – what is this?"

Her hand found its way to the picture he had scribbled last night, while half asleep and still in the throes of dreams.

He stared numbly at her as she snatched it from the table, picking it up and studying it with a look of blatant disgust.

"You…" She watched him for a moment before deciding that he wasn't worth her lectures.

There was a harsh tearing sound, and his dream floated into the trash-can in pieces. He stared through the sad-looking picture with sadder-looking eyes – at the greens that weren't so green… at the ceiling that couldn't go on forever because the four walls of the paper had blocked it…

"Hurry," his mother said, throwing clothes from his closet and into his chest, neither of them caring as they fell to the floor. While his mother was busy pulling clothes from hangers he dropped to his knees by the garbage bin and – taking a quick glance behind him – snatched the pieces of his drawing from the very top of the pile of waste. He turned quickly and picked up the clothes, hurrying to stand and pushing the picture behind the school uniform in his arms.

~

He was playing a dangerous game.

He had been doing this all day, and had nearly been caught – teachers like the ones at this school would not let any misbehavior slide, and more likely than not they would be harder on him because of who his parents were. And of course, having such respectable, logical parents dictated (logically) that he was to have inherited a fair share of their logic as well.

Ironically, it seemed to have a reverse – or at least a 'cancelling out' effect. He stole another glance at the taped-together pieces of his dreamscape on his lap; not making sure the teacher was facing the chalkboard, and not making sure that the teacher was… somewhere else.

He heard his name and his head snapped up sharply

"Pay attention," the teacher growled, pointing to the medical jargon on the board. He nodded, using the head motion to catch another eyeful of his picture.

The teacher began to lecture again, and it wasn't long before he was staring outright. This wasn't just the badly duplicated image of his… nocturnal world that he was seeing – at some times his head would fall forward and he would start to see water running strangely clear between two expanses of deep chartreuse carpet, and towering ebony poles etched with grooves, the very tops of them branching off to support wreaths of –

"I don't need this so early in the morning!"

The burly professor yanked him from his dream and wrenched his arm and snatched the picture from his lap. He rose from his seat, albeit unwillingly.

"Honestly," the adult was none too gentle in pushing him out the door and towards the psychiatrist's office. "I expected better of you. Your parents being intergalactic political *heroes* and all… And here you are… colouring! In class, nonetheless!"

The office was cozy in an old-fashioned sort of way. There were two arm chairs in the middle of the floor – not facing each other, but not quite side-by-side.

There was a woman in the room – had she come for an appointment, too? Or perhaps she worked for the psychiatrist.

"Here," the teacher said to the woman, shoving both him and the picture at her.

"Please – deal with this. I sure can't."

He turned and would have slammed the door but for the mechanism that slowed the hinges.

The woman motioned him to sit, smiling at him but looking at his drawing. He felt as if he should say something to excuse himself perhaps, or to laugh off the fact that not only his parents – but his teacher as well – thought him insane. Perhaps, since this woman knew the psychiatrist, she would be somewhat less judgmental. After all, if she were to work for someone who assisted those whom society deemed 'abnormal', perhaps he would seem less so to her.

"You draw well."

His mind went blank with disbelief before he could think of a suitable reply.

"Umm…. I –" he bowed his head before continuing. "Th… thanks, I guess."

"Do you know what it is?"

He didn't even attempt a reply this time. He shook his head to let the woman continue.

She frowned and he broke eye contact. So much for her working for the psychiatrist…

"Where did it come from?"

"I dreamed it."

He was shocked by her shock – awe bordering disbelief brightened her face before she was able to regain her composure.

"…I see."

Her pondering expression unnerved him, and he wanted very desperately to see the psychiatrist before she could judge him any more than she already had.

"Um… excuse me, I –"

The woman sat in the chair across from him and he stopped short of his full sentence. A good thing he had, too… if he had dared to continue, he would have insulted the very person who would most likely 'fix' him.

"Yes…?"

She motioned for him to continue, and he shook his head, refusing. She sat, admiring his picture before he gathered enough courage to speak.

"What's wrong with me?"

He kept his eyes to the desk even when he felt her looking at him. Perhaps it was *because* she was looking at him that he did so.

"What's *wrong* with you…?" she echoed…

"From what *I* can see, the only thing that is wrong with you is that you think *you're* weird just because you've been having weird dreams. What's wrong with you is the same thing that's wrong with 'most everybody else."

If he had not been puzzled before, he was most *certainly* puzzled now.

"Logic says," she told him seriously, "that those who host strange dreams have strange thoughts; and those who have strange thoughts are strange themselves. But dreams cannot be explained with logic, can they?"

It was his turn, now, to be in awe – someone was telling him what he had known all along but had been too frightened to admit…

"I'm going to give you some homework today," the psychiatrist said almost happily, folding his drawing into quarters and putting it in the very top drawer of her desk,

"I'm going to give myself homework, too!" she laughed. "I promise to find out more if you promise to dream…"

His mouth worked for a moment before he was able to squeeze the words out.

"Wh… what?"

"*You* go home. You sleep. You dream… *I* will find out more about *this*."

She patted her desk, indicating the drawing within.

His parents were in the kitchen when he finally arrived at home. He was surprised – expecting one or both to be either napping or at a press conference when he had arrived.

"What happened?"
He stared blankly before almost realizing the question.

"Oh…"

"With the psychiatrist? What did she say?"

'I promise to find out more if you promise to dream…'

He could easily imagine his parents' response to that…

"..Nothing."

He avoided his mother's cold, dissatisfied gaze as he stole away to his room and his bed and his –

~

The dream had begun again. He was nearly used to it by now, and he let the beauty of it wash over him as he stood beneath the wreaths and the up-above. Perhaps, he thought to himself, if he dreamt fast enough, he did not have to worry about the crimson sky coming to make his stomach turn and the hair on the back of his neck stand on end…

Perhaps he hadn't done it fast enough – or maybe the red had taken to arriving faster. It was here now, and he was frightened – or as frightened as one could be in a dream. Perhaps he would wake up now and would never have to know what came after the light…

Something drew his gaze to the up-above. There, where the light used to be was a falling flame. He had no reason to be scared, he realized, sighing as the tiny flare spun closer. His face relaxed into an almost-smile... It was small, and probably harmless….

He had been watching for what seemed like an extremely long time – hours maybe – as the tiny flame flew towards him and the poles and the green carpet.

The ceiling-light was gone now, and all that was there with him was the speeding fireball. He did not even have his smile with him – for he had remembered that often large things far off seem extremely small; until they get closer…

What should have been days more passed. He felt himself sweat… well, as much as one could in a dream. He felt the fire approaching – the light was stronger, almost like the light that had been in the up-above. Except this light was a little too warm and the light was a little to bright…

All of a sudden it was there, right there! His body became hot, hot, burning as the fire tore through the green and the blue and his self and heart and soul…

He was screaming, he was shouting because his body was on light, on heat, on pain… he could not think of that old, old word that was gone with the ebony poles and the wreaths of emerald and the chartreuse carpets and the Rampant Green and Water…

Then the pain was gone – everything was gone and it was just him… him and the whispers of dreams, sobbing themselves into his pillow.

The cold fluorescent lights snapped on; harsh white piercing his eyelids like needles from the physician. He shuddered into his blankets as his mother whispered dark, vehement, logical things at him and his father pulled him from the bed.

He found himself in front of the psychiatrist again, her own face trying to produce something akin to comfort even though it was so tired…

"Are you alright?"

He shook his head, trying to separate logic from dream. He was still in that half awake state, and now that everything was clear – too clear – to him, he wished that he was more like his mother.

"Did you dream again?"

A rocking tremor disguised itself as a nod.

"Same thing?"

"Yes," he quivered, "Almost the same."

"What was different this time?"

"There was heat…" he said, his mouth feeling slow and dead, "and light. And it hurt… there was too much. And death… there was too much…"

The psychiatrist nodded and he shivered across from her.

"You saw Earth," she said gently, reaching across her desk to take hold of his tightly furled fists. She eased his hands open, freeing his palm from the bite of his fingernails.

"You saw your home planet, consumed by flames. That was how the planet was born… that was how it died."

"How…?"

She gave him a piece of paper.

It was his drawing; the too-short poles and the too-narrow up-above…

"I did some research when I found this. The history… they all tried to cover it up. Make it look like all we ever had was out here… But if you look hard enough you can find what we used to have…"

He made a fist again, this time around the paper.

"Dreams," he said hollowly, tears leaking like a slow blood from the corners of his haunted eyes.

"They have no place. I should forget…"

"It's your place. I hope that you remember…"

He stared, eyes large and puzzled, mouth gaping for something to say.

"It's the *logical* thing…" she continued, "that a race should use a planet for all that it is worth, don’t you think? It is *logical* that once it has been stripped of all of its uses and possibilities that it should be *destroyed*, correct?"

He broke into himself, weeping as he hunched into the chair and put his arms around his shoulders.

"It's *logical* that no one should remember it… and that no one should dream of what they have never seen… and that no one should weep for it…"

She rose from her chair and went to him, helping him to stand. She led him out of her office, through the halls and into his room, passing the empty kitchen and his parent's room where the two of them were asleep. He was on his own bed, just as he was less than an hour ago. His pillow had dried and someone had tried in vain to straighten the sheets into a logical pattern.

He couldn't understand it – how could someone use logic to dampen a dream about something that they've never seen?

The ceiling's pale blue stretched and stretched until the ends of his sight – until it met the ends of the Rampant Green and Water.

He saw wreaths of green, branches stemming from them to join them to towering ebony poles etched with grooves. Between two expanses of chartreuse carpet lay strangely clear water.

Those were always the first things he saw when he closed his eyes at night.

*Rampant Green and Water.*