Coming True

It was foggy deep in the woods. He didn't know how long he'd been walking among the rough, leafless trees. His ears had long since grown accustomed to the soft crunching of fresh snow and old leaves underfoot, his lungs to the crisp sting of cold morning air. The forest may well have gone on forever, for in the languid fog only the nearest few trees ahead of him were visible, and if he occasionally looked behind him it was not long before they disappeared.

At times he toyed with the thought that the entire forest consisted of only a few dozen trees, and as soon as he had walked past each one it would laboriously uproot itself and hurry to sneak past him unnoticed in the fog to wait in its new place for him to pass it once again. He smiled with the idea of turning suddenly and catching the great oaks unaware and scrambling to plant themselves back in the dark, frozen soil. He like that idea, but knew he was carving the proper path through the woods, and that he must continue forward. Even though he felt that his feet were being placed in the right spots, that each footprint in the newly fallen snow was precisely where it should be, he could not tell in what direction he was traveling. The sun overhead was diffused by many layers of fog. It appeared only as an indistinct glow spread over too much of the branch-obscured sky to be helpful in finding his bearings.

The unsureness of his destination was, in its own way, comforting. Without knowledge of how much farther it was to his goal, the journey itself could be fully appreciated without the stress of anticipated completion. It was much more pleasant than the project deadlines and network troubleshooting that were all ready gradually becoming dim and remote memories, fading behind him in the mists of time as his trail faded behind him in the fog of this old forest.

In the midst of the seemingly endless woods he felt that he'd been walking tirelessly for years and at the same time that his journey had only begun moments ago. In this strange timeless awareness he was surprised to notice a new and different silhouette in the fog in front of him.

At first he could only make out that the shadow was a person, moving slowly within a soft yellow glow between the trees ahead. When he got nearer he could tell that he was approaching a clearing in the trees, and that the yellow glow was coming from a low ring of candles around the edge of the open area.

Soon he could see that the moving silhouette was a delicate feminine form, facing away from him and dancing gracefully in the candlelit mist. The dancer had waist length hair which trailed smoothly along with the dance, and wore a flowing robe-like garment whose thin, shimmering material sometimes clung tight to the dancer's slender legs and sometimes flared out passionately with the quicker movements of the dance.

The stunning grace and loveliness of the dancer made him stop cautiously just outside the forest clearing. He knew deep in his heart that he was witnessing the most incredibly beautiful he had ever seen in his life.

His palms grew sweaty and his heart started throbbing faster, but he swallowed this sudden nervousness and brought back the calmness and comfort that his dreamlike walk through the unusual woods had instilled in him. Memories of being shy and, because of that, lonely in what now almost seemed like previous life welled up. He couldn't stand the thought of losing what may be his only chance to talk to the gorgeous vision before him. He followed the same attraction that had been drawing him through the woods and guiding his feet along their path, smiled, and stepped out into the clearing.

As soon as he had passed within the ring of candles the dancer sensed his presence and spun to face him.

"Pleasant day to you, Traveler," the lilting voice of the dancer rose to his ears like the sweetest music, "My name is Gerald."

"Oh," he replied, staring at the soft-featured face of the man who stood before him. There was an awkward, thoughtful silence before he added, "Damn."

The effeminate dancer looked puzzled. He made some fluid gestures with his arms and a warm breeze blew into the clearing. It dispelled most of the fog into the woods and made his silky hair flow back languidly.

"Congratulations, Traveler," Gerald continued, "You have reached a level of thought and imagination which few men can even hope to attain. I will be your guide on this first step, and soon you will embark on incredible new experiences, expand your horizons across amazing vistas, and let your soul soar to unimaginable peaks of ecstasy and wisdom!"

"With you?," he asked incredulously, "Like hell, I will!"

"Traveler, you seem somewhat disappointed," said Gerald, "This is supposed to be a beautiful transition to an existence of new pleasures. What is upsetting you?"

"Look here, Gerry," he tried to explain while looking for the path that he came in on through the now impenetrable wall of fog surrounding the clearing, "I don't know what sort of vibes or whatever you picked up when I first walked in here, but you have to understand: You're not what I was expecting. When I saw you from outside the clearing I thought you were… I thought you were, you know, a woman."

"I don't think you understand," Gerald said, "In these matters, gender is unimportant."

"Maybe not to you, buddy, but it sure is to me! Nothing personal, but when it comes to exploring new experiences and incredible vistas of pleasure I'd definitely prefer it was with a woman.

"It's not that I have anything against people like you," he continued, somewhat apologetically, "I'm all for your right to live whatever sort of lifestyle you want to. I just don't want to personally take part in it, you know? It's just not my thing. As lousy as my romantic life may be going at the moment I'm not ready to give up and bat for the other team just yet."

"There must be some sort of misunderstanding here, Traveler," Gerald sounded confused. "It's so difficult sometimes to converse with people from the realm of flesh."

"Yeah, whatever," he said, "How do I get out of here anyway? I really enjoyed walking through the forest back there, but if this is all that's left I'd like to wake up anytime now. I mean, this is all a dream, right? Now that I've been talking I've been thinking more, and it really feels like a dream."

"Yes, in most ways it's a dream," Gerald explained, "but it's also so much more than a mere dream."

"No kidding. Even in my dreams I can't meet any girls. I'm probably going to have to go talk to a shrink about this one." He sat down in the grassy clearing and laid his head in his hands.

"I mean that this dream is also a gateway to a higher plane of reality." Gerald said, gesturing to the fog covered sky above them. The fog clouds rolled away, revealing spiraling nebulae of fantastic colors and glimpses of strange unknown worlds whose geometries conflicted everything written by Euclid.

"Wow," he said when he looked up, and then leaned back so that he could take the whole view in. "That's amazing. But it's still only a dream."

"Not A dream," explained Gerald, getting excited now, "THE dream. EVERY dream. Over the last few months you've begun to dream outside of your own nocturnal imagination, to tap into the dreams of the collective consciousness of humanity. This is the dream can never end, because even though people wake from their individual dreams all the time, other people begin dreaming before the dreams can disappear. This is the continual dream that feeds, and is at the same time created by, all the others.

"The fact that tonight you've managed to reach this clearing means that you're ready to pass fully from the Realm of Flesh to the Realm of Dream and join the other Travelers who walk amongst the dreamscapes."

"Absolutely incredible," he whispered reverently. "So all those things you said about new experiences and exploring pleasures, that wasn't a pickup line, then. Right?"

"I don't think I know what you mean, Traveler," said Gerald.

"That's okay, Gerald," he said, standing up and stretching his arms and back to get ready for his new journey. "I guess you're just some construct of the big dream, anyway, a figment of the collective subconscious. Sorry I freaked out before. This is going to be so great, every night I can walk through the dreams of the entire planet. It's all so amazing."

"Traveler, not just every night," Gerald corrected, "Every always, forever. When you walk fully into the Realm of Dream you leave your flesh behind you. There is no longer any need to wake up, to have pain or grow old. But you must embrace this fully. If you walk the dreams tonight you will never wake up and live forever. If you choose to stop dreaming you will go back to your mundane existence, and though you will dream as normal people do, you will never reach this clearing again. The choice is yours, and it is forever."

With the shock of this new realization he slumped back against a tree. He leaned there, thinking about his life up until this point and the offer being made to him.

"So you're saying that if I accept the title of Traveler and explore the Realm of Dream not only will I see and do things beyond my wildest imagination, I'll never have to work fifty hours a week for a boss who couldn't even hope to understand my job? I'll never again go through the rejection of having a woman say she'd rather just be friends? All the stress, the frustration, the awkwardness, the fears, the exhaustion of life, all that would be gone?"

"Yes," said Gerald pleasantly, "Before long it would all just be a distant memory."

"I understand," he said, and suddenly sat up sharply in his bed.

It was Monday morning and his alarm clock had been buzzing angrily for five minutes.

He went to work.