Sleeper Seven Read Online Free Page B

away.
    Gradually becoming aware of a slow, methodic, deep breathing, she remembered her single-occupancy room, and upon opening her eyes, was annoyed to discover that not only had she been moved while asleep, but that she was now in the lower portion of a bunk bed, with another patient sleeping above her! Her annoyance turned to bewilderment as she looked around and found herself actually lying on the floor underneath a single bed. She slowly rolled out from underneath, careful not to wake the person above, and stood, only to gaze down upon her own sleeping form.
    This must be the most realistic dream I have ever had,
she thought. She hadn't had one like this since her teens, when she read a book on lucid dreaming and started experiencing a few on occasion, but she soon lost the ability as her interest in the subject waned.
    The strange thing about this dream was her ability to ponder it — her previous lucid dreams quickly collapsed, awakening her, if she actively thought about them too much. But not this time — she even said to herself
I am asleep and dreaming, and I am fully aware of this,
yet the dream kept progressing without any dissolution.
    Well this is certainly new and unique,
she marveled, and she decided to see what else she could get away with in this dream state before it all inevitably fell away from her. Turning away from her slumbering body, she glided — she noted she could glide in this dream — towards the door. Grabbing for the handle, she felt only the sensation of metal, as her hand, finding no purchase, passed right through it.
    Intrigued, she gently pushed on the large wooden door, only to have her fingers sink into it, creating a cold, dense, fibrous feeling within them. Pulling her hand out abruptly, she then punched at the door, sinking her fist into it up to her wrist, which produced only a faint knock.
    OK,
she thought to herself, retracting her hand,
let's tell this lucid dream who's boss. I want this door to open...now!
she commanded, yet it stubbornly ignored her.
This is supposed to be
my
reality,
she thought, confusion and frustration setting in. Slowly and carefully, she slid her arm all the way through the door, as though reaching out to pet a strange dog. With no resistance all the way to her shoulder, she dipped her head forward, unsure if her dream-state awareness would be affected by this intermingling of substances. Reminding herself it was only a dream, she mustered her courage and dove in.
    As she had predicted, her consciousness
was
affected by the intermingling with the door material: her vision blurred as an atonal mixture of randomly changing frequencies assaulted her hearing. Noticing no ill-effect on her awareness, however, she bobbed her head slowly back and forth through the door, finding the strangeness only occurred when the door material intermingled with the areas of her brain in charge of those particular senses, as opposed to the physical sense organs themselves. For example, if she moved her head through facing forwards, she could still "see" the door even when her "eyes" exited the other side; it was only when the back of her head, containing her occipital lobes, entered the door that the visual dulling effects manifested.
    Feeling more confident, she quickly stepped through the door and into the hospital hallway. This action produced a jumble of sensations internally, but nothing externally, save for a faint
thump
. Standing in the hall, she discerned the noise of shuffling papers, and turning to discover the source, spotted a nurse's station down the hallway. The shuffling stopped as someone's head leaned out over the station desk and looked directly at her. Startled, she froze, hoping she wouldn't be noticed. The nurse, staring intently, caught her breath and waited a few moments before speaking.
    "Plymouth? That you making the rounds? You sure gave me a start there, you gotta quit with that now."
    Relieved she wasn't in trouble, Jess was nevertheless confused