For in That Sleep of Death

So I just woke from a dream. And a frightening dream at that. I dreamt I was a soldier fighting in World War One. And don’t ask me to explain any anomalies of time that might crop up. But I fought in one battle, just one, three weeks after having been recruited. And, mercifully, the battle wasn’t part of the dream, but the before and after were. And the strongest thing within this dream was the fear. The fear of the first battle, from which I and my faceless friend were among the 3 percent who made it. But more than that, the desperate fear that I would have to go back, for after the battle we made our way to a youth hostel in Morocco where we were waiting for our next assignment. Don’t know where this dream came from, but I have always wondered how those men did it. How did they conquer that fear? Although I s’pose in my dream I conquered it, even as we were building our own coffins before the battle. But in reality, I have nothing with which to relate it. The closest I can come maybe, and it’s not very close at all, is playing rugby. Where before it starts you might have butterflies, but as soon as it kicks off you forget everything, and you do whatever the hell you need to so as not to let down the other fourteen. But the greatest fear there is the fear of injury; not of death. Our generation is blessedly lucky to not have an experience like that. For it’s the age we are now that would feel it most strongly. But anyway, in my dream I sat around for days waiting, and began to wonder if Army Headquarters had the wrong phone number for the hostel. And so like anyone would do, I began a project; one which my high school soccer team, bunch of pricks that they happened to be, were rather disapproving of. But then, they didn’t understand it.

I invented electricity.