The Ark

Date: 9/30/2019

The dream started off in an underground basement that was only accessible from an outside door This basement appeared to be a private collection of anthropological artifacts and taxidermy animals. It appeared that I had been on a class field trip as both parents and students from my middle school were with me. I had begun to tire, so I lay down on a mattress that was set near the exit. Supposedly it had been set up for the owner as of this collection as he would spend the night down here. As I’m laying down, I enter a dream like state where cats are approaching me. When my eyes are closed, I can vaguely visualize my surroundings along with these cats who keep nuzzling up against me. As I start to open my eyes, I realize that it must have been a dream. But I close my eyes again and once again visualize the cats. This time I reach out and try to pet one. The cats I reach out for quickly runaway, but I’m allowed give physical attention to those who touch me first as long as they don’t back away. I come to the realization that I can feel these cats and I know that they are there, but when I open my eyes they disappear and I can’t feel them any longer. At this point, my parents come to wake me up and I try to convince them of what I’m experiencing. Essentially, I end up getting this weird second vision where I can sense the phantoms that are related to objects in the exhibit. I can only physically interact with them when my eyes are shut. In this “view” the phantoms appear real while the space around me is like the screen on a radar. Pulses will come out of me and vaguely reveal the space I’m in, but only for none living objects. Many unique and emotional experiences happen between me and the phantoms in the museum. I’m finally forced out as the collection starts to flood from the bottom up. I’m distraught as I get out, as the flooding signifies the death of everything that was in there. I then flash between different world. All of these worlds contain this same museum at different stages. Some worlds are still digging up the space, others have the museum already flooded. Strangely enough, those worlds where the museum is flooded are the worlds where people are taking strange creatures and artifacts and throwing them into the water. At this point, I realize that the water isn’t really the death of these animals, but some weird space they exist. When the water recedes, there will be exhibits based on what was thrown into it. Meanwhile, the water represents this weird astral plane that contains no constant laws governing movement or physics. At this point, all of the worlds start to suffer from cataclysmic disasters. In all these worlds, different versions of me have been building these arks to preserve what we can of what existed before. Outside of the arks will only be oblivion. As the disasters start, I start to sob. I’m stricken by sadness as there are so many things I couldn’t preserve. And those which are preserved will only remain as phantoms in the ark. Stuck in time and never able to change their state or nature. Only a reminder of what had been lost. Oblivious to the world that exists no longer. I realize that the me in the beginning of the dream is both a part of and different from everything in the ark. That me in the beginning was something another me left behind. I have become a curator. I am the last guardian and keeper of whatever the ark was able to preserve of earth. Every other living thing I interacted with was simply a phantom that was unable to understand the greater truth. I was alone and lost. I was on an ark that had no destination and no hope of opening up to a new world. I was the last keeper and the only thing remaining that could sustain these phantoms. I cried for the lost world and the loneliness that I couldn’t share.