He was laying out on the beach as the sun warmed his body and soul at the same time. It was a beautiful day and the ocean waves made the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. He knew that he had been shot poison tipped arrows because he was not even on earth and this was definite an earth ocean. He was on the grasslands of a planet that they had crashed landed on and the local intelligent lifeforms had a chemical that took you to another world in your mind. In small doses it was a cheap vacation but if too large you would get stuck there in a beautiful place. The local life was not too happy with aliens because many had tried to invade them but they had all died in a battlefield of dreams where they could not escape so some starved to death. At Least it was better than getting shot but still to waste away in an imaginary world. You can wake yourself if you become aware of the holes in your imaginations. Break the illusion break the illusion break the illusion I kept telling myself as I lay there defendless. I hope we can get the ship repaired or the communication system working. I don’t know how many times I can leave paradise before I give into the delusion. I managed to wake myself up this time. We just need to get some rocks to melt into metal for wires to the communication system. The best rocks are by the river which means the native species thinks we are trying to invade their territory. I never invaded a planet and I am just a transporter of various goods. Invasion is a fool’s game trade is where it’s at or at least that is what my grandmother told me. She was a smart woman and had the best trade routes. Spices to one planet and fabric to another. Everyone loved her because she was fair to everyone just taking a little off the top for profits as she told her customers. She became rich slowly. If the local life forms would trade their drugs they could be the richest in the galaxy. The drug degraded too fast to be copied which is good for them if they ever did want to trade it. I pick myself up and gather the rocks I had and put them in my backpack. I get back to the ship and my small crew works on fixing the ship. They melt the rocks and make wires from the metal that separates from the impurities. There is enough to make several long wires which are wrapped in plastic to use to repair the ship. We get some sleep because at night it is more dangerous than because you can’t see if you’re being attacked. We have been searching the wooded area around us for some of the berries they use to come up with an antidote so we can gather supplies without risking our lives. That beach seems to get nicer and nicer as the time goes on. The ship needs a few more wires to complete the communication system and a few more to see if the ship will take off. I am going to get enough for both and I only go or we could all get knocked out and have a pleasant death. I wait for the brightest part of the day and I bring a winter gear coat to give me a little padding this time. I hope that makes the difference. I adjusted my coat and set off into the open field and hid towards the river for the proper rocks. I make it there with no problem gathering my rocks and putting them in the backpack. I set off into the open grass and keep an ear and eye around me. I hear the sound of an arrow whiz by. I wake up in a building with squares on the walls. Someone is there to tell me that my team lost but I had passed out during the game. What game I said. I am on a planet that is just a delusion from the arrows. The woman says no, you’re on a team building exercise with your company at virtual paintball. Don’t you remember and I said this is a delusion from chemicals. No that is just a story for team building simulations. I am calling an ambulance. You hit your head on a wall. Paramedics show up and carry me away to the hospital. I keep telling them it’s not real but everyone insists this is real. I think I am in a field on a planet dying if I don’t wake up. They scan my brain and tell me I have swelling in my brain and that is why I don’t remember my life. I just keep looking for something wrong in this reality hoping to wake up soon. I know my team is depending on me. I look for a flaw, a blurry sign or static in the image of a far off distance because my brain can not reproduce exact details. That is the thing about the human mind great for reasoning but detail replication is harder. I lay in the hospital bed staring at the ceiling titles and counting them. I realize that the mirror on the bathroom wall does not reverse my reflections. A minor detail but very important. I wake up on the sidewalk and realize I am just another addict running from his problems injecting this drug of escape. This drug is so insidious that I went from one delusion to another. Now I am awake in the cold hard truth. I get up and stumble to find some food. I feel like I have not eaten anything for a long time. I decide I want to be like the captain in my first delusion from now on. I went on to clean myself up and took online classes on engineering so I can do something with space ships. I stayed focused and got good marks on my courses and eventually got a degree. I learned all I could about ships systems. I learned how to repair anything just like my delusion. I even got a job at NASA and repaired any ship they had. I did this the rest of my life and got a gold watch and retired to a beach. I thought about how I had really woke up that day in the street. I am glad I figured that I spotted the mirror was not right. I looked at the mirror in my bathroom and realized to my horror it was also wrong too. I woke up on that damn planet and carried those rocks to my crew and said I can get us off this planet. I repaired the ship with all the tricks I had learned in my delusion. We started the ship’s launch systems. I looked forward to the real world again.
Amelio's Palace of Stories 