The Centurion's Dream main
During high school I had some recurring dreams. They were extremely real to me. They clung to me after waking. They made more sense than this life. It is a bit sci-fi, but that can't be helped...
I was a very old man, a centurion, a sentinel, on a far flung world. It was barren and I was alone. Despite my age I was more fit than I am today, I was essentially ageless. I was modified. I could heal, not age, fight with no equal (except for other centurions placed on other planets), and dream. The life of a centurion is a lonely one. Forever alone, with the exception of an attempted invasion. I would have no place in society as I was a living weapon.
The grateful race of man grants a blessing upon those sacrificing the company of their fellow man. The centurions live many satisfying lives through their dreams. These lives are not so saccharine as to be unpalatable, well balanced and ultimately fulfilling. The suit and my modified anatomy worked together to grant me these lives through chemicals and computers. This life, here and now, was of course the dream life. The reason I was 'waking up' was some of the elements necessary to sustain 'this dream life' were in short supply in my suit, I had to achieve a state just awake enough to get to a deposit of the necessary elements. I woke in that life and knew I had to travel some distance in excess of 100 miles to reach that deposit, or this dream life would die. Every night when I went to bed in this world, I'd wake in that one and journey. I'd be culling my memory, remembering the conflict that put me there. Remembering the world I left behind to stand between my people and the others that were driven back. Not being able to return to this world of dreams was horrifying, as there I had nothing.
The desperation in the dreams grew, and after awhile I began having daydreams. During Calculus my mind would fog up, and I'd see the blasted plains and hills of the otherworld. I'd feel a little freaked out, as I feared I was about to lose my dreamworld, that I'd be Steven Long no more. The dreams had always felt very real, but these daydreams made me take it all more seriously. All of the sudden, that world became more plausible than this one. That one had explained the existence of this one, but this one could not explain that one.
Then one day, I reached the deposit, removed some sort of backpack that would harvest the ore for me, guaranteeing thousands more years of sweet dreams. I've not been back to that world ever since. It certainly made the lines of reality and dreams blurred. I don't know my line ever really healed. I still can't shake the idea that I now live the dream.