InsideR

It is perhaps early in the evening, the large clinically white coated set of rooms are bustling with activity with several people intently peering into their console screens that constantly chatter some kind of data that looks gibberish to me! Dull lights illuminate the rooms in an distastefully uncomfortable ambiance. Milling around many geeky techies engrossed in a seemingly exciting chore, uninterested and unacknowledged of my presence, I continue to explore the place with a mix of curiosity and anxiety that borders very closely with fear! The letters USR are boldly emblazoned in several places to denote that this is a research area of the USRobotics. Curiosity is overcome by gut-wrenching fear and chaos as I see myself strapped to a chair with several dozen cables running from my head to a mangle of devices present in vicinity, upon which are focused the intent glares of a dozen or more people!

The scene shifts immediately, and I find myself in a vast lush green corn field more expansive than what the eye can see and the mind can comprehend. It is divided by a thin beaten path and is ominously covered with a mild curtain of mist which seems to make the place more eerie than it already is. Instinctively I am aware of being watched, by beings that are neither animal nor human! There is a mechanical hum that sounds itself intermittently suggesting the presence of electronic eyes that are doing the job of tracking me! I race to safety hardly noticing that I'm in the air and my feet are not in contact with the ground below that is fast receding!

The scene shifts many times during the course of my deep sleep and the morning light brings with it comfort and a soothing reassurance that what I saw hours, or perhaps minutes ago have been mere dreams! But I'm overwhelmed by the intensity of detail that I have seen and tired, as if I've been travelling and physically present in the places that I saw. A mild but annoying headache makes me stay in bed although its long past the waking and rising hour! Thankfully, it is a Sunday morning and I don't have to carry these photographic instances to a complicated workplace. I try to relax a while longer in wait for the Sun to rise before getting myself up and helping my haggard face get a cold burst of water on it in an attempt to wipe away the imposing detail that still lingers in front of my exhausted eyes. I do not look at the mirror, for not wanting to be seen pale and rugged after the night's expeditionary transportation which like many of its predecessors has exhausted me.

As if for comfort, the morning is bright and soothing and I seize the opportunity to savour it before the clamour of the day emerges. The Sun rises in a deep Orange glow. I try to distract my thoughts reminding myself that Orange is perhaps the only fruit, known in name by its colour! The warm glow helps me calm myself and tell me that it is only a dream. The doorbell rings and the paperboy hands me a bundle. I momentarily gaze at my cousin's computer before turning it on and querying for half a dozen news websites that along with the paper will tell me the happenings across the globe.

I'm faintly reminded of the, Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., movie What dreams may come, which I watched, perhaps, a decade ago. In a matter of minutes the calm morning makes me intently focus on the incoming news and I'm back to reality and more importantly, myself!