From the Desk of Director Sarah Martinez, Entry 13
October 27, 2101
I had a dream last night. Or a nightmare. I’m not sure.
I was back on the Ladder, but not as Director Sarah Martinez. No, I was Staff. Except this time I could see and feel. Like a normal job; just sweeping floors and nodding at the faceless people my brain said I knew. Because, and this is the weird fucking thing, I was me, now. Not me in ‘76, but good ol’ 47-year-old me.
Through it all was this thread of wrong, like when you go to school as a kid and one of the teachers has died, but no one will tell you how or why. Just this building foreboding that everything you built is balanced on a knife’s edge between two different types of failure.
Then I found him. Eating a lunch of four different types of pickles. Fucking David Parker. Just sitting in the mess hall surrounded by a bunch of people I didn’t know, eating goddamned gerkins. Some skinny dude in a “Save the LOLs” t-shirt sat on his left. On his right was an empty chair, but a half-empty cup of coffee in front of that spot said the owner would be back soon. There were others, too, but faceless like the rest of the building.
I think this is when I knew it was a dream because I broke from my Staff cycle and walked over.
And he smiled at me. And gestured to a new seat across from him while his skinny friend murmured about how much he “didn’t like this.”
“How’re you doing, Sayre?” Dave asked.
I couldn’t answer until he sent away his cadre of tagalongs. And then I opened my mouth and said, “Not great. I’ve been having a really hard time…”
Dave just smiled that stupid smile at me. The one that told me everything would be all right.
At which point my brain had a sensitivity overload or something, screamed “NOPE!”, and woke me up out of a dead sleep.
I cried. Oh fuck, did I cry. I couldn’t stop and it just kept building until I soaked the front of my fucking night shirt and snotted all over my hands.
I’m still shaking.
I’m sure I’ll look back on some of this with new eyes tomorrow. Maybe pick out little gems that my subconscious was trying to send me or something.
Or maybe I’ll never read this again. Maybe I’ll treat it like the result of randomly firing neurons that it truly is.
Who knows?
All I know is I’m already up and finally home departure prep for the ARK isn’t going to micromanage itself.
Nothing heals fallen tears like a deadline.
Until next time,
Sayre
