Dream 1 (Patreon)

@ArcadeDragon asked for something different this month and I was in the mood to do it. Hope you like the different tone of this bit.

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Did you know that the krakun used to be really superstitious? It’s true. Yes, it was a very long time ago—back before we’d unraveled all of science’s mysteries—but nevertheless, there was a time.

How do I know this? In college, I majored in Signs and Symbols. I did a lot of research on ancient cultures.

A stupid major? Well, apparently it was. Back when I was a freshman, the world was absolutely convinced that majoring in S&S was a sure thing, that anyone with an S&S degree could write their own ticket. Somehow, this changed by the time I was ready to graduate, and everyone had decided that S&S was a worthless joke degree. There wasn’t much I could do about it then, so I’ve been waiting for the world to change their mind once more and give me that success I earned.

I’m still waiting.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh, superstition! Yes.

Back then, our ancestors had tried to make a science out of superstition, as bizarre as that sounds now. But I suppose we were always a deep-thinking, analytical people, even before science was a thing! We arranged the three cardinal directions of superstition into a triangle and tried to map the world onto it.

What were the three cardinal directions? Good luck, bad luck, and wishes. Yeah, I have no idea why they felt those three things defined the universe, but I suppose it must have made sense at the time.

Eventually, a belief in good luck fell out of fashion—like my degree, I suppose. Krakun realized that if a good thing came your way, it probably wasn’t luck. You could trace back what led to what, what things you did, what things other people did that brought good fortune your way, and how you made your own luck.

The same was true for bad luck, of course, although our ancestors clung to that notion for far longer. Superstitious worries about someone stepping on your shadow or touching a yellow flower lingered for dozens more millennia before they too faded.

But what of wishing, you might ask? Even though wishing is just as silly as luck, wish beliefs had persisted into the modern era. Even now, in a time of interstellar travel and galaxy domination, krakun will make wishes on every unusual event, hoping they will come true.

Personally? I believe that says more about a society where only a select few are ever allowed the trappings of success while the mass majority is left to scrape by, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyhow, I was at one of my jobs. Yes, one of them. I’m holding down fifteen jobs these days. How do I manage to work fifteen jobs? Don’t be impressed. Someone in the government decided that if an employee only works a few hours a week, then giving them the job was more an act of charity than actually hiring real labor. Ah, you see where this is going, don’t you? So, every corporation that could quickly divided themselves up into smaller companies that all rent the same building from each other.

On paper, I work a little of my week for each of them, and the job requirements for each position is worded slightly differently, but yet I’m doing the same job throughout the day, even if some of my time is for Dream Dynamics A, some is for Dream Dynamics B, some is for Dream Dynamics C, and so on. It’s such a ridiculously thin ruse, and you’d think the government would step in and protect the workers from being taken advantage of, but no, most government representatives have far too many golds invested in corporations that do this exact sort of thing.

And now, all of us nobodies working dozens of Joe-jobs are classified as “charity cases”, so we’re not even entitled to complain about it from the government’s point of view.

But I digress.

Again.

Sorry about that. My point was that I was at work, doing some particularly mindless adjustments, and I was thinking about a meteor I had seen streaking across the sky as I was walking into the office. Meteors exemplified the sort of rare event that our ancestors loved to make wishes on. Of course, with all the city’s light pollution, we can see only the brightest meteors, and most that you can are either space junk on re-entry or a landing ship whose hull is reacting with the atmosphere to generate ionizing radiation.

Across the board, krakun agree that wishes made on falling space junk or on landing ships will never be granted. Granted by whom? Don’t ask that. We don’t know either, but we do “know” that only wishes made on true meteors have any chance of coming true.

I bet that most people don’t even bother wishing on the brilliant streaks of light these days. There’s just so many each night that people don’t even look up to appreciate them. I can’t really blame them for their weariness, but I always watch for them. I love the different colors they make. I love thinking about simpler times when our ancestors would watch the night sky for fun.

And perhaps with fewer krakun making wishes on the true meteors, that will leave more wish juice—or whatever form of fuel might power wishes—for me, more chance that my wishes might be granted.

I saw a great streak tonight, just moments before arriving at our building. The trail was bright red—a rocky meteor, perhaps—and the glow persisted for several seconds. It was glorious and breathtaking. I’m so glad that I happened to be looking the right way when it passed. So, I immediately made a wish.

Honestly, I’m not even certain what it was that I wished for. My big’ol head is full of so many different things that I want and that I don’t think I’ll ever get, that I can always snatch a few of these reflexively from the top of the pile. I don’t even have to stop and think about what it is that I want. Some time to relax? A sense of community? A girlfriend, perhaps? I’m not real sure. But I saw the streak, I closed my eyes, and I made a wish that was every bit as sincere as I was able.

Then I opened the door and went to work, not thinking about it again.

Until now, that is. I was adjusting a potentiometer and focused on the oscilloscope screen when something came loose from the warehouse ceiling high overhead. I had no idea what it was, but there was a brief moment—not enough time to react, certainly—where I could hear it whistling through the air, and then BLAM! something slammed down hard on the top of my head.

That might not have been so bad—I have a tremendously hard head, I’m told—but I must have been leaning all my weight on the edge of the table, and when whatever it was struck me, the entire bench upended, dropping a cascade of heavy equipment down on me, and the lights went out.

When I came to, I remember feeling terribly disoriented. I was lying among the jumble of gear as if buried under the rubble of a collapsed building. I rubbed my head only half with-it and pulled myself free.

Then I looked over the gear and sighed. Half of it was probably wrecked, and if I knew my boss—and I do—he’d find a way to take all of it out of my fifteen meager paychecks. That hardly seems fair, right? I was only working for one company at the time of the accident, so they shouldn’t all be able to punish me, but those trolls in accounting certainly wouldn’t see it my way no matter how long and loudly I argued the point.

I suppose the crash must have made quite a bang when everything came tumbling down on me, and several of the guys from the shop floor came running. Typically, they’d be laughing at my carelessness or maybe asking if I was all right, but instead, they were keeping their distance and pointing with outstretched arms.

“It’s right there!”

“Yeah, I see it, what the hell? Did that thing fall from the ceiling?”

And then one of the gals from the front walked in. She shouted, “What in the dead gods’ names is going on back here?” But she took one look my way, threw back her head, and trumpeted a blood-curdling scream like you only ever see in movies. “Sourang!”

Sourang? Oh shit. I knew this old warehouse was lousy with the vermin, but the last thing I needed was to get bit or scratched by them! As a “charity case” worker, my job came with no insurance whatsoever, and so I’d be totally on the hook for the zillions of vaccinations and immunizations or whatever they administer to people when they do get bit. It’s anyone’s guess what those nasty beasts can carry.

So, I scrambled back away from where everyone was pointing, and then frantically looked about, trying to spot what they were seeing. But whatever they were looking at, I had yet to find it.

I looked back over at the guys and squeaked, “Which way did it go?”

Then I froze. My voice should not have been that high pitched. I raised a claw as if in a horror movie and saw it: fuzzy and weird, with two thumbs and three fingers. The thing on the end of my now-furry arm was nothing like the krakun claw that should have been there.

“Oh, shit,” I whispered to no one.

One of the guys had grabbed a broom and was quickly advancing on me, holding it overhead with both claws as if it was a sledgehammer, and I was some sort of carnival game that he hoped might win him a plushy. I had to get out of there and fast!

In a panic, I looked quickly about and only just barely noticed a sourang standing beside a hole in the wall. He was waving urgently at me, signaling a clear “come here” with his paw.

He screeched, “Hurry!” and I did.

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-wUJX09qK4ziqcztuQopnw_2GfHeF-xPD_PIIW1OKJo/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?