"Mr Kleitos? Wake up."
Stanley opened his eyes as if they were just open.
"H-hey, Mr Ufushimi."
"Mr Kleitos, are you alright?" Tallurre looked at Stanley, who was rubbing his hands together, trying to gather warmth.
Tallurre: "Don't tell me you're cold. The heater has been on for this entire ride."
Stanley: "I might just be, Mr Ufushimi. I just had the fucking weirdest experience, you know."
Tallurre glanced back at Stanley whilst driving around giant debris. His breathing got heavier, so Tallurre couldn't ignore it.
"Tell me more. I won't bite. Take a deep breath if you must."
"Hmm. Well, I was in nothing. I was nothing. I lived as nothing. Life and death felt meaningless while I was non-existent. Then a giant eyeball appeared. I swear it told me something along the lines of, "You're not ready."
"Giant eyeball. Do you experience sleep paralysis a lot?"
Stanley put his hands in his pockets and closed his legs for even more warmth.
"Nope, never have. I don't think this was either. Maybe a freak-ass dream."
Tallurre: "Anything else happened in this dream sequence?"
Stanley: "No. I don't think so."
Tallurre: "Mm-hmm."
{Oh. My fucking God. I-I-I died? Is that how death feels? Holy shit. Fucking Hell. Breathe, Stanley, breathe.}
Silence. Only the sounds of a low hum in the back and debris hitting the vehicle now and then. Stanley's breath was gradually becoming calmer by the second.
Stanley looked outside. His eyes were nearly blinded by looking the wrong way at the blue giant star to his left on the passenger seat. Thirteen planets and plenty of asteroids, comets, moons, and only a few private shuttles like Tallurre's are going back and forth from only two planets. One was an extremely industrialised planet with a bit of light exiting from some purposely built holes. Ragner and Co. mining took this planet for its resources. The other was a terracotta-looking planet, with a smooth earthen texture to its surface. Its atmosphere was extremely high up compared to normal planets.
Tallurre: "That's our destination, by the way. Persei Ymir-22. I know you can see it."
Stanley: "It's peaceful from what I can see. nothing except its environment and other small settlers from a big migration journey."
Tallurre exhaled and replied, "We are going to stay there for the time being. An estimate of two weeks."
Then Stanley quickly said, "Mr Ufushimi, why did you take me? I never wanted to come."
"Didn't I already say before? You're like a tool right now, sadly. We could've taken you more aggressively if you had become hostile."
Stanley took out his right hand and scratched his head.
"You know, I reminisce about the childhood I had a lot. It was only positive for me. Your evidence, which you collected in that second trial, still gives me the creeps, you know?"
Tallurre: "Those people were idiots to document and remember that they did all those hateful, racist things to those Sil. The past is the past now. Mr Kleitos."
Stanley turned his head slightly and blinked a lot at Tallurre while he was driving ever so closely to Persei, Ymir-22.
"Uh-yeah", coughed Stanley.
Tallurre: "I'm just thinking about that dream you said you experienced. An eye, you say?"
Stanley: "Um, yeah. An eyeball. It was like ten times bigger than me, and its pupil was big enough to fill me in. Now that I think about it, it wasn't a normal eye either. Instead of normal eyes like white around the iris, right? It was black. Voided out. The iris, instead, was white, broken into rings around the pupil, like four or three. Like a planet. The pupil was also white. fully white. Weird-ass dream.
Tallurre switched to one-handed driving and used the other hand to scratch a big itch on his temple.
"Have you ever lucid-dreamed before, Mr Kleitos?"
"Yeah, no. This was too real, Mr Ufushimi. Too real. I also don't want to hear some bullshit like "OH NO! THAT MUST BE AN ANOMALY!"
Tallurre once again quickly glanced at Stanley whilst talking.
"Never planned on saying that, too. People tend to have weird dreams. If this so happened to be an anomaly, what wrong has it done right now? Let it be and keep it in check if possible."
Stanley took a breather again and then spoke.
"For a start, it kind of told me 'Not yet' or 'Not ready yet'. Which would make anyone confused, even Emperor Nigel himself."
Silence. Again.
"If all weird dreams were anomalies, the first Earthling migrants would've gone insane; we'd all be dead due to paranoia, like in the first month in space exploration. I really don't think it would be it, but I'm not leaving it on the table yet. See this?"
Tallurre used his left index finger to point up at the dash cam lying around the middle mirror that's on every single modern car, recording everything in HD.
"Dash cam. You don't use that for catching crashes, I'm guessing." Said Stanley.
"It's for recording everything that happens in the car. It's a Tretane alloy. Don't even try to touch it. You should be smart enough to know the pain that comes after that.
Stanley looked at Tallurre with confusion. "I never planned to?"
Tallurre then looked at the dash cam, saying, "Letting you know in advance. It doesn't look like a Tretane alloy, and you wouldn't know unless you researched that type of thing before I met you."
"Speaking of when I met you, why didn't you run away from me? You had all the opportunity to, but you followed me as if I made you."
{Uh. Shit um. I thought I didn't have a choice, actually. Hearing the name drop of CELESTICA in a random town would scare people. No way I would be risking it. Though this is a good time to make myself seem freer than I look or seem. I really do love free choice.}
Stanley hummed to himself while he thought for about three seconds, then answered, "I honestly was curious. I had nowhere to go, and you were the only person I recognised. Even if my whole family despises you, I'll have respect for you and your actions in that case. That's why I came, I guess."
Tallurre, however, didn't look convinced.
"Uh-huh, that's nice. When you were asleep, did you talk to anyone before that dream?" Commented Tallurre straight after Stanley finished saying his words deeply.
Stanley: "No, Mr Ufushimi, I told you."
Tallurre replied quickly, "Well, why would your dream be that short? Most people would tend to remember more than five seconds of a dream."
"Well, you're probably wrong here, I—"
Stanley stopped.
Stanley then realised. Something didn't add up.
Why would a dream finish in the blink of an eye?
This had never happened to him until the night of a random Friday.
He absolutely did talk for a long time. To another.
His memory kept slipping away sadly, like a child trying to catch a balloon flying away in the air away from him.
Stanley: "What? What is going on with me???"
Stanley's voice rose a bit louder than the background lo-fi music. It floated around while he stared at the palms of his hands.
Tallurre then saw this as an opportunity to convince.
Tallurre: "Honestly, Stanley, someone's been messing with you. Real CELESTICA members, perhaps?"
Stanley: "Bullshit. No way they can remove dreams. That's an invasion of my rights."
Tallurre then sighed calmly.
Tallurre: "I wouldn't outright deny that. CELESTICA is mysterious and on the front lines of borderline god-level science. I know.""Then explain. Why did my brain just fight itself?"
"This is just a smart guess, right, but this may have happened because they were interested in that door. The reason I also came to you. Interrogation tended to be a big use in these sequences, which I heard from a buddy of mine. No lying."
{I-I could've been tortured? God, I hate pain. I hate it. Hate it. Hate it. HATE pain. I would've easily told them about my life's story. How am I not a fucking unique person? Did they actually torture me? Is Tallurre lying to me? I don't know…}
Tallurre's head turned slowly to the left, and he said, "Just an educational guess. CELESTICA is known to be brutal to keep its calamities and inner functions of society in check."
Stanley: "You know I hate torture. I really do. Interrogation mostly leads to those situations. I really hoped I wasn't investigated. Nobody should have to go through that type of thingy."
Tallurre: 'We can prevent that thing. You don't want your consciousness being whisked away, I assume."
"Y-Yeah?" Muttered the distressed Stanley. He looked up to see Tallurre still driving with two hands and looking back at him.
"Idol pills. Old technology. I have plenty inside our small base camp."
Stanley: "H-hold on. What information will be going on with the pill?" He said angrily, his tone accelerating.
Tallurre: "I'll let you decide. You're smart enough to have free rein on your body. Pick a goal and take one at least."
Tallurre shrugged and raised both of his hands with it.
{Distant memories are coming. I don't know which ones or if it's true or not.}
Stanley was about to open his mouth to say something.
Nothing came out except dry vocal notes that made him sound like he realised an idea.
For a blink, a lounge chair was what Stanley sat on. Then, it reverted to furnished car seats.
The car space was larger than ever in that blink of a second, seeming infinite and having no bounds.
A smooth, lavish place. Ceilings with far, far height. A fluffy rug.
A silhouette of a person grinning with big body language.
What was not coming to him?
{D-did I? That's the only explanation I have. It must be it. I can't remember stuff, and I have faint memories of certain things. My brain got programmed to block it out.}
What could've happened to me?