Dearest Mr. Arrow
Interesting dream last night. I woke up and the following was on my phone:
"Dearest Mr. Arrow,
The best thing is not always the easy choice, but it's always the right one. Do take care of the crew for me."
I apparently thought it was important enough to warrant writing down. I can remember little bits and pieces of the dream, and from what I remember, it was pretty awesome and fascinating, and as usual with such dreams, clear.
The premise of the dream is that I was a captain on a futuristic space shuttle, though I was not myself. I was a British woman, likely a little bit older than I am now, poised, no-nonsense, dutiful. The shuttle was huge and had a large crew, and it accommodated them and had several high-tech features like force fields in the brig and portals to carry you from one part of the ship to another. My lieutenant commander was Sean, at least I knew who it was at the core, but his name was Arrow and he was an anthropomorphic black rat with a red beard and hair, and he looked a bit rugged (he seemed more pirate-ish while I was more...navy-ish I guess). In the dream I thought of him as a reliable first officer, but I recognized that he was strong-willed almost to a fault and we butted heads a lot on protocol. It almost felt like we were actors in this dream, we consciously but distantly retained who we really were on the inside but we were playing the roles of our "characters" so well that it was like we really were them. He was like my lovable nemesis, we were both partners and enemies at the same time.
The part I remember best was near the end of the dream. We were down in some part of the ship, and Arrow and I were getting into a heated discussion about something. Probably ten to twenty of our crew was in the room with us. It seemed to be building up to a possible mutiny. I think Arrow or one of the crew suggested I step down from my position as captain. When this happened, one of the crew backed me up, then another of the crew backed him up, then another for me, and so on until the room was fairly divided in its loyalty. We decided to resolve it by taking a count of how many people favored me versus how many people favored him. The winner would assume the captain's mantle.
I walked the halls taking counts. When I had tallied all of them (twenty-seven I believe was the final number I came up with), I was going back to meet Arrow when all of a sudden alarms started going off. The ship's guidance system was failing, and we were careening off course towards a planet. We were trying to pull back but we were dipping into its atmosphere, blazing in a shallow re-entry. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. The ship would be light enough to pull free of the gravitational pull on its own if it was lighter, and the huge, now-empty fuel columns attached to the shuttle were massively weighting it down. I knew I had to detach them and pilot them away, but with no fuel and falling into the atmosphere, I knew it was a suicide mission at best. But it had to be done.
Before I left, I knew that Arrow would get what he wanted and maybe ultimately deserved, his position as captain. I bore him no ill-will, so I went to his quarters and drafted a note to him.
"Dearest Mr. Arrow,
The best thing is not always the easy choice, but it's always the right one. Do take care of the crew for me."
I left it where he would find it, and went to board the cockpit of the fuel columns. We couldn't simply detach them, it required a pilot to keep them clear of the shuttle and properly disengage them. I took a look back at the shuttle as the clamps were disengaging, and an orange conflagration nearly blinded me as the light of our flaming re-entry began to flood into my vision. This was it.
"Dearest Mr. Arrow,
The best thing is not always the easy choice, but it's always the right one. Do take care of the crew for me."
I apparently thought it was important enough to warrant writing down. I can remember little bits and pieces of the dream, and from what I remember, it was pretty awesome and fascinating, and as usual with such dreams, clear.
The premise of the dream is that I was a captain on a futuristic space shuttle, though I was not myself. I was a British woman, likely a little bit older than I am now, poised, no-nonsense, dutiful. The shuttle was huge and had a large crew, and it accommodated them and had several high-tech features like force fields in the brig and portals to carry you from one part of the ship to another. My lieutenant commander was Sean, at least I knew who it was at the core, but his name was Arrow and he was an anthropomorphic black rat with a red beard and hair, and he looked a bit rugged (he seemed more pirate-ish while I was more...navy-ish I guess). In the dream I thought of him as a reliable first officer, but I recognized that he was strong-willed almost to a fault and we butted heads a lot on protocol. It almost felt like we were actors in this dream, we consciously but distantly retained who we really were on the inside but we were playing the roles of our "characters" so well that it was like we really were them. He was like my lovable nemesis, we were both partners and enemies at the same time.
The part I remember best was near the end of the dream. We were down in some part of the ship, and Arrow and I were getting into a heated discussion about something. Probably ten to twenty of our crew was in the room with us. It seemed to be building up to a possible mutiny. I think Arrow or one of the crew suggested I step down from my position as captain. When this happened, one of the crew backed me up, then another of the crew backed him up, then another for me, and so on until the room was fairly divided in its loyalty. We decided to resolve it by taking a count of how many people favored me versus how many people favored him. The winner would assume the captain's mantle.
I walked the halls taking counts. When I had tallied all of them (twenty-seven I believe was the final number I came up with), I was going back to meet Arrow when all of a sudden alarms started going off. The ship's guidance system was failing, and we were careening off course towards a planet. We were trying to pull back but we were dipping into its atmosphere, blazing in a shallow re-entry. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. The ship would be light enough to pull free of the gravitational pull on its own if it was lighter, and the huge, now-empty fuel columns attached to the shuttle were massively weighting it down. I knew I had to detach them and pilot them away, but with no fuel and falling into the atmosphere, I knew it was a suicide mission at best. But it had to be done.
Before I left, I knew that Arrow would get what he wanted and maybe ultimately deserved, his position as captain. I bore him no ill-will, so I went to his quarters and drafted a note to him.
"Dearest Mr. Arrow,
The best thing is not always the easy choice, but it's always the right one. Do take care of the crew for me."
I left it where he would find it, and went to board the cockpit of the fuel columns. We couldn't simply detach them, it required a pilot to keep them clear of the shuttle and properly disengage them. I took a look back at the shuttle as the clamps were disengaging, and an orange conflagration nearly blinded me as the light of our flaming re-entry began to flood into my vision. This was it.