Chapter 8

Jim and Cindy spent the next half hour walking the inside perimeter of their 300-foot by 500-foot prison. It was after 5 PM, and sunlight was reaching only the upper parts of the northern and eastern walls. Everything else was in shadows.

Cindy felt a great wave of resignation wash over her as they completed their walk. "Do you think we'll ever get any sunlight down here?"

Jim muttered, "Not much..." without thinking, but then began to consider the issue. "Certainly not near the winter solstice, but now? Maybe. Let's keep track tomorrow when and where the sunlight is..."

Cindy nodded and looked at the high walls. "Yeah, okay. What else is there TO DO? Shit Jim. This situation is so bizarre... Wait a minute! Could this be a dream too, like the lodge?"

Jim stared at Cindy in amazement. "You're serious, aren't you? The lodge seems real when we're there, not dreamlike at all, just like this feels now. But we can wake up from the lodge. If we wake up from this, where will we be?"

"Yikes! Yeah, a scary thought. Do we have any clues? Wait! How about we take another look at that bag of vegetable chips?"

A minute later, Cindy and Jim were examining the bag outside his car. The bag itself seemed to be made of very thin foil. The front side had a cartoonish picture of a volcano spewing all sorts of vegetable chips out from its conical top. There were little tongues of fire erupting from the chips to show their hot taste. The words Spicy Kilauea Power Chips were written underneath in many wild colors. The back side was a blank gold background with some tiny lettering on the bottom.

Cindy squinted and said, "I can barely read it, but I think it says Product of QFA, and then underneath it says Quantum Farmers Associates, Where Building Dreams Come True. What an odd slogan... Sounds more like the theme of an amusement park. What's it doing on a veggie bag? This is all so insane..."

Jim nodded and took the bag. "Yeah, it sure is..." He stared at it for a while, but could pull nothing more from it. Eventually he looked up and said, "Cindy, I'm hoping we can dream our way back to the lodge. Let's not wake up if we do, at least not at once. We should try exploring there..."

Cindy blinked in surprise at the suggestion. "But it's only a... Oh, why not? Yeah, okay. Tell you what. Let's both imagine ourselves in the lodge before we sleep, but in younger bodies. Maybe we can control where we enter the dream. It'll be easier to explore without an infant to care for. I know this sounds insane. It's only a dream! But still..."

They had a light dinner and tried to sack out, but the dread of their situation kept them awake for hours. They chatted with each other for half the night. They finally realized they could relax and get sleepy by petting each other's bodies. Keeping the caresses moderately non-sexy, they both fell asleep shortly after 2 AM, their hands resting on each other's stomachs. Jim thought it felt like about an hour later when he woke up on the couch.

Jim was sitting on one end of a long couch. Cindy was sleeping peacefully lying down on her back across the couch. She was wearing shorts and a halter top, and her bare feet and calves were resting in Jim's lap. Jim smiled and began petting her feet and lower legs until she woke up.

Cindy opened her eyes, smiled and yawned. "Wow! Look at all the light outside!" The view out the windows was spectacular, short trees and flowering brush dropping down and leading to a beach and calm water. There seemed to be a bay to the left and an open sea to the right. The sky and the sea were different shades of deep blue. The landscape looked pristine and very beautiful.

Cindy looked at Jim thoughtfully. His hand had drifted up and he was caressing her bare thighs and her hips through her shorts. Cindy found herself pleased with the physically intimacy, and yearning for more. She found herself completely at ease with the display of affection. "My love..." she whispered.

"My love..." Jim whispered back.

Cindy smiled and was silent for a moment, sighing and enjoying the caresses. She finally said, "Come on, we should explore! Want to take a walk?" Jim nodded and they both put on their hiking boots and went outside.

They took a short walk down the hill and were soon standing at the edge of the land. A huge circular arc of land was visible to their left. It curved around and seemed to end about a kilometer and a half directly in front of them forming a bay to their left. To their right was an open sea. Gentle waves were lapping the sloping beach. Cindy turned around and stared back up at the lodge. It was superbly camouflaged in the rocks. The entrance was about twenty meters above sea level and 120 meters from the shore and almost invisible, its oval walls blending in with the foliage. The sun was barely above the horizon, and now hidden by the house.

Cindy commented, "Look at the sun Jim! Somehow I'm certain the sea is due south of home... Huh? I mean that lodge. But the sun is behind it now, due north..."

"Yeah, it's summertime here. Late summertime I think. Don't ask me how I know. Still pretty cool, 50F maybe. Maybe it's midnight. We must be very close to the pole."

Cindy nodded and stooped down to dip her hand into the ocean. "Yikes! It's freezing! Ice water..." She stood up and looked around, surprised to feel how homelike the environment felt. "Come on, let's take a walk."

The two began to hike the shoreline, walking with the sea to their left and away from the bay. The shoreline was clean sand in places, arctic brush in others. It was a beautiful nature hike. Several parts of the pristine beach even had sea caves. It was close to three hours later before they were back from where they started.

Cindy looked up at her home at the end of the hike. "This island! It must be a dream! What do you think Jim?"

"Yeah. Only a dream could create such symmetry! A perfect circle, I think, except for the two spiral peninsulas. I think the core island is a perfect circle. Let's call the home the point of zero degrees."

"Radius of about one kilometer?"

Jim nodded. "Yeah, maybe even exactly... Perhaps we could make some surveying equipment, make some measurements. With the peninsulas, I mean... What a fantastic dream! And it all seems so real..."

Their circular island had two large spiraling peninsulas projecting from opposite ends of the circle. Viewed from above, the island was in the idealized shape of a galaxy, with a one kilometer circular core, and two graceful and symmetric spiraling arms rotating in a clockwise motion to points 2.5 kilometers away and directly opposite from the center of the core circle.

With the lodge at zero degrees for a reference, the first spiral was attached to the core island starting at 90 degrees on the circumference and ending at 110 degrees. From there the peninsula made a tapering circular arc (of radius 3 km) an additional 1.5 kilometers away from the shoreline. The peninsula was about a quarter kilometer wide (bay side to ocean side) for about two kilometers, and then tapered to a point at 180 degrees on the reference circle of the main island.

During their hike, Jim and Cindy had cut across the peninsula and continued to hike the circumference of the core island. On the other side of the island, they found an identical peninsula, attached to the core island from 270 to 290 degrees, and spiraling out to a point at 360 degrees. It was this second spiral that formed the bay seen to the left of their lodge.

Cindy stared at the spot of their home when they finished their circular hike. "With the peninsulas, maybe 4.5 square kilometers of land?"

"Yeah, a very good guess..." Jim was silent for a moment. "What do you want to do now, explore the interior or check out the lodge?"

Cindy stared into the interior of the island. "Amazing how difficult it is to see the lodge, even when we're so close... I know exactly where it is, and I still can't see it... Let's look at the lodge first."

They returned to the lodge and walked around its outside perimeter. It was in the shape of an oval, with a short axis of six meters, and a long axis of twelve meters. The long axis was aligned radially with the main island. There was an interior wall along the short axis, dividing the lodge into two bullet-shaped rooms of about 300 square feet each. The front room faced the ocean and bay, and the back room pointed to the center of the island.

Cindy and Jim walked inside. Both rooms were set up to be living rooms, with just a couch and some easy chairs and side tables in each. The temperature inside was a comfortable 68F, even though there was no visible heat source, nor any light sources except for the windows. The floor was warm stone with some rugs thrown on top. The back room had an outside exit, plus an empty closet along the interior wall separating the two rooms. Cindy and Jim finished their exploration and returned to sitting on the couch in the front room.

"Well," said Cindy, "What do you think?"

"Not much of a lodge, only two rooms. I'm surprised there's no kitchen area... And yet..."

"Yeah, I feel it too. This is our home, and it's a good one. Baths, bedrooms, a wonderful kitchen, a library. There's a machine shop, near the top... Huh?!" Cindy looked up at the roof. "Why did I say that?" She paused for a moment. "It's all here... But where?" Cindy looked confused and then burst out laughing. "But it's all a dream anyway! Why should I care?"

Jim shook his head. "Oh, don't think that! That's the way to wake up, and I want to stay here for a while. I wonder if I can, stay here I mean, if you wake up..."

Cindy nodded, and then said in Cantonese, "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Jim looked at her startled and then tried to reply in Cantonese. "A little..."

Cindy giggled at his accent. "Ah, I shouldn't laugh. I did understand you."

Jim sighed and switched to English. "I think you've already started to teach me. This is so amazing, so impossible..."

"Yeah... What year is it Jim?"

"Here, in the dream? Summer of 2010 I think, a year from now. Early September? Don't ask me how I know..."

"Yeah, I think so too, summer, one year from now... And why are we here?"

Jim was quiet for a long while. Then he whispered, "Because we want to be."

Cindy nodded. "How about in our earlier dream, with Charlotte... You told me you were twenty-two. I think you were right. I think that was early March of 2013. And why did we bring Charlotte here?"

"Why? Yeah... Why... Because... We're hiding... That's why, we're hiding! But from what? It feels like we're running from something... something huge... Are we escaped convicts or something?"

Cindy nodded. "I feel it too, something huge, something awful, and... And what? Did we rob a bank?" Cindy gasped with a sudden burst of intuition. "No! It's bigger than that! Something awful has happened! We're running from... running from everything, I think. And we want to protect our daughter! Our future daughter! Somehow she's in danger! Or should I say she will be in danger? She's... She's what?"

Cindy blinked as she considered her words. "Why should we be worried about something like that? Why would anyone be after our daughter? She's only an infant! Is she contagious or something?"