"Upon waking, he stomached through the dizziness and clouded thinking of what felt like being in comatose for hundreds of years. Laying in a pod. A station in the middle of a massive complex. So many people visible through the walls, yet so alone. He unstrapped the vitals and pulled the tube out of his throat. Stumbling out of his position in bed, he creaked and ached as his limbs tried to remember how to be used. Stiff and slowly, he grabbed for his clothes to get out and try to remember where he wasn't. Exit sign, thank goodness.
The world was different, in a new but hopeless kind of way. Computers and Pharmaceuticals were the mainstays of civilization - worlds within worlds - drug induced and virally connected. No one used their eyes, no one cared.
Beautiful women saw him and wanted his affection, but theirs was nothing more than a robotic love. Nothing real. Nothing of substance.
Cars moved fast, positioned 4 feet off the ground. Buildings were massive. Glass, matte white and illuminated with fiber lighting. Obscure shapes to everything, in the name of pilgrimage.
He made it back to the older parts of the cities, where change was least accepted, and cars still ran on petroleum. This was what he remembered, but this felt so archaic. He stumbled back to his home - covered in vines, old news papers and graffiti with boarded up windows.
He turned the handle to the front door. It was rusty, but unlocked. Everything was stale, but in it's right place.
The floor cringed with a cry of not being walked on for a very long time. This was right. This was home. Lingering through the memories of things that happened here, he found his way back into his bedroom. A nice and neatly made bed, desk with a lamp, writing utensils and a journal - all things that started turning on more lights in his head. And the more things he started to take in visually, the more he realized that everyone from yesteryears were dead and gone.
This terrible pitted feeling hollowed him out, bringing him to his knees in sobbing grief against his bed.
After some time passed, he remembered that there was a key. A fulcrum of sorts that he knew would pull all this together. The sense of sorrow left him, and finding this most important key became his directive. What this key would hold, he didn't know, but he had to find it before he vanished forever.
A jarring knock at the door. Cautiously he looks through the curtains. There he sees a cloaked figure with red eyes, observing the house from the front of the lawn. A murmur, 'What is this? I feel in danger, and as if I am surrounded.' A small drone circles the house with surveillance cameras, and safety went missing. Finding that key became that much more important. Robotic men in police uniforms started approaching the house in unison, making a perimeter for no escape..."
- A blisteringly vivid and intense dream I had last night.
