The Nomad Chronicles

I wake up and stretch. I am at the house I lived in in Aina Haina, the weird A-frame...

I was 14 at the time. For some reason, I go outside and check the mail.

It's a letter addressed to me, the return address is a date 200 years in the future, and it says, "UFRUMTEHFUTUREE".

I open the letter, and it sails out of the envelope. I chase it, but it lands, and becomes a 2D image standing in front of me. It looks something like an origami robot hologram in the shape of adult me, but the hair looks ridiculously styled.

The hologram opens his chest, and images appear like a movie. I am drawn into it. I feel like I am falling into a graphic novel. I am three inches high standing on an open comic book on a desk in a boy’s room. The boy walks in with a backpack, and sees me. He stops and his eyes widen.

He lunges to grab me, but i jump into the comic book.

I am in a concrete underground city. I scream in terror. I feel claustrophobic. Where is the sky. A man appears next to me. He looks like me, and also like Timelyst Knight my android Future Self. “I am not you from the future. I am your True Self, and You are now Here.”

“What the fuck do you mean?”

“This is where you are from. This is where your Real Body is. You are sleeping in an underground bunker 200 years in the future in the bowels of Oahu.”

“Alright Morpheus, cut the bullshit.”

An astral tentacle extends from his third eye to mine, and he downloads information not in words, but images. I see myself born as a faun with lion claws on my hands. I have a lion-ish face, with a big goattee. I am born to two parents who look pure human. My mother sets me in a dumpster. Two mutants come by and rescue me right before the trash truck robot comes.

I grow up in the slums with other mutants. Humanity is enslaved. Most people are now chimeras, a mix of animals and humans, but the pure humans rule everyone else. The world is all concrete underground prison cities.

A shaman sees me dreaming power, and trains me.

The mutant government asks me to be part of their secret program, what could possibly be a one-way trip. They describe their program to me. They have discovered time travel. They have learned that the soul can travel through time while dreaming or while the mind meditates. But, the soul can never be made physically manifest in another time, until now. They have been experimenting with hibernating people for extended periods of time to increase their dreaming power. These oneironauts have been sleeping for days and weeks on end, lucid dreaming for weeks of real life time.

Then, they hibernated three brave souls for a year. Their goal: soul insertion. These oneironauts would try to somehow insert a portion of their energy into an embryo in a human womb in order to physically manifest in the past.

The people in this time can communicate with the sleepers, because they all talk in their sleep, which is mainly a stream-of-consciousness.

All the people were apparently able to do this soul insertion, but their manifestations in the past all died when the people awoke. When they were put back to sleep, their past manifestations were ghosts looking at their own dead body. All the past manifestations were ten years old. After the people woke up from this, they were all so traumatized they went insane.

We hibernated three more people for two years. One past manifestation died before the two years and the person awoke screaming. They screamed until they were hoarse. Then they cried for two weeks. Then, she killed herself in the town square. The others’ past manifestations died when they were twenty.

The two people awoke. They were extremely depressed. One slipped into catatonia. The other spoke for awhile about his experience, but he was frustrated that he could never remember his mission in the past timeline: to warn the people of this nightmare future that they may avoid it. He said we wasted two years of his life, but at the same time, he was grateful to be able to have lived another life, and see the beauty of nature, and the sun, and water. He has become a recluse and incessantly draws pictures of trees all over the city.

We realized that for some reason one year of hibernation equals one year of past physical manifestation. In order to have the person remember their mission after the trauma of soul insertion, they must live longer, and in order to come back with a peaceful and sound mind, the person’s past manifestation must live a long full life.

So, we asked you to hibernate for ten years. You accepted. Your present manifestation is always on the brink of death. It’s not easy to keep someone alive and healthy yet asleep for a decade. There is always the threat of civil war, earthquakes, flooding, fire, fallout. We are fucked. Travelers from the future have already warned us of a nuclear power plant failing in seven years from now. We all live underground. There is no way to go but the surface, but the way is heavily guarded. Most people don’t even believe the surface exists. They think it’s a myth. Plus, there are millions of us now in here.

We are planning to escape. But, because we have the technology and magic to time travel, we are taking a multi-pronged approach to tackle this problem. Our species is about to make itself extinct. Maybe we deserve it. But, I don’t want to die, and neither do you. We are doing everything we can on this end to keep your original physical body alive and well. If you die before a hundred, you will wake up here, and report to us your findings from your lifetime 200 years in the past.

He lets go of the astral tentacle.

My eyes are bugging out of my head. We are standing on a busy street now. Everyone around me is a chimera of some sort.

“Would you like to see your real body?”

I nod slowly.

We teleport to a room with a large tank in the center. My body is floating in a clear green gel.

“This simulates a womb. The gel is like amniotic fluid, but thicker. It offers you resistance so your muscles don’t atrophy.”

There are people in lab coats milling about. My face, anus, and urethra are hooked up to hoses.

“You have trained yourself to eat in your sleep. If all works out, your body will come out perfectly healthy, but ten years older.”

“This is not real.”

“This,” he points at me, “is a dream.” He points at himself, “this is a dream.”

“But, all this, Nomad,” he gestures to the world around us, “this, is real.”

I suddenly realize everything he says it’s true. I feel like it’s just me talking to myself. I fall over and vomit. I feel like my mind is being ripped apart. I scream and claw at my face. My future self beams positive energy over me, and I go into a meditative state. I am now watching the scene as if I am ghost watching my life. My future self looks at me and gives me a thumbs up.

I jump back in my body, and stand up. I inhale deeply the nothing dream air. My future self grabs my hand, and opens a portal. He grabs my hand, and we go sailing through dreams.