WAYSTATION
Dream 3rd March 2023

(This dream tied in with others I had in the past – that of Gravity Defiants and Gravity Compliants, and that of Shakers Valley spaceport)

Alan and I were the last to evacuate the Waystation sphere. He was the best pilot the fleet had and I was the only GD – gravity defiant – based at Waystation. Station crew had kept the rogue AIs occupied until it was only the two of us and smallest of the freighters left in the Waystation space dock. While the AIs dealt with pyrotechnic distractions, the remaining crew had made it to the carriers and off the sphere, and Alan and I had made it to his freighter – the last to leave - before the AIs reached any of the external bulkheads.

“You take the freighter, I’ll take the pod,” I said as we raced towards the freighter’s cockpit.

The pod was a small, extremely manoeuvrable, one-person craft that was stowed in the belly the freighter. Its mods made it ideal for a GD pilot.

Alan was blasting away from Waystation before he was even fully strapped in, my GD reflexes meant the sudden change in force and gravity was no problem for me, I simply flew down the chutes and corridors to the pod. Outside, four rogue AIs had scrambled through an external bulkhead, depressurising that section of Waystation in the process, and were clambering spider-like over the plates and girders of its superstructure.

Three were ordinary technical/repair AIs, skeletal frames with 4 clambering limbs, several additional appendages terminating in tools, and a metal trunk containing all the processing. Sensors across their dark metal bodies meant they had no up or down, no head or tail. The fourth AI was a larger supervisory unit, steely-grey when illuminated by the sphere’s lights, four-limbed but lacking any additional tooling appendages, and with a blocky head section so that humans could better relate to it. This was the rogue unit, the others getting their instructions from it. The AIs also had small propulsion units that were normally used in skipping over the sphere’s exterior during maintenance, but they were now ready to launch after the freighter.

I settled on my belly into the cradle, fitted the sensor cap on my head and stretched my arms into interface connectors either side. I favoured this posture for flying even though it made me look like an old-fashioned aeroplane. In a way I became a plane; it let me imagine manoeuvres in three dimensions..

“I’m in! I called over the comms, drop the pod and jump!”

Alan ejected the pod from the freighter’s belly, gave me time to turn to face the AIs then accelerated the freighter to near maximum, opened a portal into dark space and shot into it, vanishing from normal space. I always imagined portals making yawning and sucking noises as they opened and closed. I followed seconds later with the four AIs hot on my tail, headed by the supervisory unit, with the smaller technicals clinging to three of its limbs.

“Come and get me,” I breathed as I crossed the threshold into dark space.

Dark space is not dark. Rather it is a mass of dark colours all at once, just at the edge of the human visual range, dull reds and dark ochres swirling and eddying with dim green and indigo, and pitch-black holes at the centre of each whirlpool of colour. The freighter would use dark space as a bridge, opening an exit portal into back into normal space, but it would take a few moments to calculate the exit point. This interval could gave the AIs time to catch up with it. Dark space is not just dark, it is also, for want of a better term, corrosive. It eats away at anything from normal space reducing it to sub-atomic particles and rebuilding it into dark matter. We all had a limited time here. Normally the transit across dark space is so fast that only a few atoms are lost from a ship’s skin and maybe a few transient atoms of dark matter would cling to it. I needed to get out of dark space before it corroded too much of the pod’s external structures. The AI units could not open their own portals so I planned to leave them in dark space to be corroded into dark matter.

It was time to dance in three dimensions. As a GD, with a whole lifetime of practice, this was something I excel at. I could run rings – and loops and rolls, backflipping and diving – round the slower AI units. I could react at the speed of a firing neuron, by instinct, faster than their super-computer brains could track my path and calculate trajectory, speed, angle of intercept. And just as they calculated the intercept point I could be somewhere else entirely. And above all, I was in a real hurry to get out of dark space before it ate us all up.

“Come get me,” I whispered.

I shot across the AIs and they automatically tracked the nearest, fastest threat – me – before focusing on the more distant freighter. The benefit of being a GD in a cradle meant the pod reacted as fast as my own reflexes without the lag of handling conventional controls. GCs - Gravity Compliants - couldn’t do this, their brains weren’t wired for it and if they tried, they got sick very quickly and lost spatial awareness. GDs could perform aerobatics for far longer without losing the sense of where they were in 3D space. As soon as the freighter had cleared the second portal and it had closed, the AIs turned their full attention on me. I calculated an approximate exit point, pulled a number of my best moves, turned a full 180 degrees and shot beneath the AIs to punch through the smallest possible portal before they managed to turn around after me. The portal would close before they managed to turn their own 180s to track me.

My arrival point was instinctive rather than precise. I exited into normal space in the vicinity of Jupiter station, an artificial moon built out of several moonlets and metals mined from a dozen others.

“Unknown craft, identify yourself,” a voice barked over the comms.

I identified myself as Al Carter’s auxiliary pilot and requested permission to dock at Jupiter station. I hoped that Alan had warned all of Earth’s satellite stations that I was incoming.

“GD pod, I’m giving you a beacon to a dock, please power down and await an escort once you’re docked.”

“As long as you don’t send an AI!” I replied, “I’ve just come from Waystation, check your files.”

“Understood, GD pod, you’ll have a human escort, we’ve been apprised of the Waystation situation.”

After what seemed like hours, the pod was secured and being decontaminated of any residual dark matter. I was screened for any germs not native to Earth satellite stations, then given clothing that hadn’t been lived in for several days or scorched by pyrotechnics. I also got a hot drink and a square meal before the necessary debriefing session with Jupiter station security. I kept my account brief and factual.

“Al Carter came through three days ago,” the security officer told me, “His ship had minimal dark matter damage so he opened a portal to Earth straight away.”

Dark space is raw space-time. A few extra seconds in dark space can mean you arrive minutes, hours or even days after the ship immediately in front of you. The tales of ships arriving weeks apart were just old spacer stories; you’d be eaten up by dark space before accruing that sort of lag.

“Can I place a call? I need him to transfer funds to get me and pod to Shakers Valley.”

A short while later I was talking to Alan.

“Good to hear you!” he said, and I could feel the warmth in his voice, “For a while I thought you hadn’t made it.”

“I opened a portal within a few minutes of you, blame dark space delay,” I replied.

“I guess you need some company funds transferred to Jupiter Station? They still don’t trust you GDs with money.”

“Enough for a berth for me on the same freighter that brings the pod home, you okay to arrange that?”

“No probs. They’ll cover your accommodation for a few days – just don’t use the station gym!” he laughed, “Looking forward to seeing you back home safely.”

“Looking forward to getting home safely,” I replied and closed the call before it racked up a larger than necessary cost. The Company could be notoriously stingy on anything not considered an absolute necessity. Breathable air cost money.

Two or three days later – my spatial awareness was fine, but aerobatics in dark space had temporarily shot my sense of time – the pod was stowed in an Earth-bound freighter and I was strapped into a passenger seat. I hated being a passenger rather than a aux-pilot and I’d worked with Alan long enough that we could almost read each other’s minds. The transit through dark space was text book, almost instantaneous, and the descent from orbit to Shakers Valley was uneventful. I watched the Company’s ground crew tow the pod into a hangar before I went through all the necessary clearances to go Earth-side of the terminal with my paltry hand-baggage (a change of clothes in urgent need of laundering).

The runways were blisteringly hot and seemed to suck all of the moisture out of my skin. Global warming had continued unabated despite the reduced population of Earth. We’d passed the tipping point more than a century ago. Luckily the underground railway took me straight to Company’s accommodation blocks some 30 odd miles from Shakers Valley terminal so I didn’t have to leave the cooler temperature of the inside. My apartment was small – as a GD I would never get the same luxuries as normal GC staff – and after freshening up I called Alan and went to his larger apartment to catch up on the three days I’d missed.

Alan’s apartment was several times the size of mine with separate galley area and an outside balcony that was in shade in the evenings. He handed me a mango juice and we went to sit on the balcony. Though hot, it wasn’t the energy-sapping desert heat of Shakers Valley.

“Global average is up by another degree,” he said, the ‘since we shipped out to Waystation’ being unspoken. “There’s no polar ice at all, and the Himalayas have lost their glaciers. All the lower lying land is under water and the interiors of the continents are all deserts now.”

“And those who can’t afford to leave?”

He shrugged in resignation, “There are liveable zones along some of the coastlines.”

Depressing stuff. After a silence and a long drink of cold juice I changed the subject.

“Have the Company said what they’re doing about Waystation?”

“Yeah,” he said, “They’re sending a specialist squad out there to fry all the remaining AI units, then they’ll get Waystation back up and functional as soon as they can. There are plenty of people needing to ship out to one of the colonies via Waystation.”

“You going back?”

“Maybe. Or I’ll sign on with one of the other stations. All the others have debugged their AI units to the nth degree. There’s no guarantee one can’t become self-aware and go rogue, but the techie guys have done everything they can and we know what to look for. You?”

I sighed, “You know how the Company feel about GDs. I suppose I’ll ship out to a GD-friendly colony.”

“One of the ghettoes.”

“Or I could apply as your aux-pilot if you put in a good word for me,” I said.

“I can do that. If you can still put up with anti-GD feeling.”

“Like it’s all our fault. Ever thought that GD was evolution’s response to the global crisis, not the cause of it?”

“I guess the GCs need someone to blame. If you can put up with Company attitude a bit longer I’d be glad to have you piloting with me.”

“Cheers,” I said, and we clinked glasses.

Later that evening I stood on the communal balcony outside my apartment, looking into the sunset behind the glass and steel tower blocks either side of an almost dry river. Hardy shrubs dotted the landscape. The surface was mostly hard caliche, trapping the moisture underground where their roots could find it, but there was still plenty of dust blowing across from eroding rocks, filling the river basin. I took a deep breath and dived into the dry air (this time I was covered in UV-screen cream which also protected my skin from the dry air, but acted like glue for any airborne dust). I hovered over the landscape, cradled on air currents. It took no effort. This planet was home, and it had given me the gift of gravity being optional.

Earth had given many GDs another gift. I reached my mind into the Earth’s memory. It’s something many GDs could do – shifting perception from here-and-now into the planet’s recent history before it faded. I reached into its memory and saw this place as it was just two centuries ago. It was like seeing an semi-transparent image overlaying reality.

Stilt houses stood around a wide river that spilled out into reed beds either side. The air was warm and humid. Behind the stilt houses were lush forests, noisy with bird life. The moist air was fragrant with life. Jump forward in increments through the planet’s recording – the river shrank and the people moved away. The forest dried out and fell silent. The dried forest caught fire and the desert dust buried even that. Then there was just desert and a scattering of rain. A tough surface of caliche – a crust – formed, broken by tough spiny, drought-resistant shrubs. A city of glass towers rose to house the staff attached to Shakers Valley as the Great Human Diaspora began, and then accelerated. For now, Earth memory still held the tail end of that time before the great drying and the great drowning, though even this would fade. And none of this was the fault of us GDs.

GRAVITY DEFIANT: HOTEL OMEGA
Dream – 2019

The Hotel Omega had stood on the same corner since the 1800s when it was a 3 storey build with clapboard exterior and a wooden porch along the length of the building’s front. The most noticeable thing about it was the huge clock – with wooden surround and Roman numerals - hanging from a bracket above the porch. For decades, the townsfolk had relied on that clock when setting their own timepieces. The clock was still a major feature of Hotel Omega, but over the centuries it had been rebuilt until it occupied the whole block of buildings and not just one corner at a crossroads. It was now set back from the road with a glass atrium at the front and gardens either side of the atrium. The iconic clock was now on a wall in the full height reception area above the reception desk.

O! (his name really did have an exclamation mark to indicate its inflection), Selene and I were discreetly looking for a criminal who was attempting to meddle with time travel. Hotel Omega was his last known address. To the left of the reception desk, in the corner, was the stairwell leading to staff suites in a tower abutting the main hotel. Their suites might not have been huge, but they had a rooftop terrace with a hot tub. Opposite the entrance were the three balconies of the upper floors. Diagonally opposite was another stairwell and 2 elevators for guests. A prominent sigh on the lowest balcony read “Gravity Defiant Guests may not fly within the Hotel.”

On the first floor above ground level was the restaurant where Gravity Defiant waiters glided upright between tables, a foot or so above the carpet. There was also the large pool filled with super-dense, warm red-tinted liquid that could give Gravity Compliants the sensation of flying. The pool was in a glass-sided, glass-roofed room with spectacular views of the stars at night. We walked around these public areas with the relaxed air of three friends visiting the hotel facilities. We stopped to gaze over the reception area from the lowest balcony.

“Anyone see him?” I asked.

“Not so far,” said O! “Hang on . . “ he pointed at a man who had slipped into one of the staff staircases behind the elevators, “I am pretty sure that’s our man.”

“He’s gone down to reception,” Selene added, “I can see his reflection in the front window from here.”

“You take the stairs,” I said, “As soon as he crosses reception I’ll take the quick way down.”

I kept my eye on the reflection in the plate glass front window and when the target emerged from under the balcony and headed towards the staff stairwell I dived over the balcony rails – to shrieks of alarm from guests – and flew in pursuit of the man. O! and Selene were in pursuit on foot.

He managed to reach the stairwell first, but that wasn’t a big issue – we wanted him to lead us to his machine. O! and Selene ran up the stairs in pursuit and I flew in his wake. He barged through the door of one of the staff suites, legged it across the sparsely furnished room and through an unlocked door onto the terrace. He was within reaching distance when he appeared to leap towards the hot tub and “pfff” vanished. Two off-duty staff looked astonished at the sudden appearance and disappearance. Their mouths flapped open and closed like fish.

“We’re Agency,” I gasped, “Selene – can you figure out where he went?”

“He opened a portal and jumped through, but he’s left a faint trail. Gimme a mo and I’ll reopen the portal.”

She twiddled some controls on what looked like a chunky remote control, and a dark space yawned open in front of us. O! and Selene jumped into the darkness and I lunged and flew into it. Selene had followed the trail accurately. We emerged on the same terrace, but everything was dark with just the glow of an almost full moon to save us from pitch-darkness. The hotel was closed, and appeared to have been closed for years. There were terracotta pots of desiccated pelargoniums around the dry hot tub. Dead leaves and dust lined the tub. To its left, under a canopy was a small, dark pod which our man was getting into. Though we’d exited the portal running – or, in my case, flying - he had the advantage of knowing where he was heading, while we had to look out for hazards.

Selene reached the egg-like pod first and scrambled through the closing door, intent on apprehending our target. The door closed with a sucking sound and the pod lunged forwards and upwards, like a cat jumping from a standstill. A larger portal opened ahead of it with a yawning noise. The other side of it was a maelstrom of almost-black colours, mostly deep magenta and red, deepening into infra-red beyond our visual range. It was like an eye, but with a black iris and dimly lit pupil.

“Selene!” both O! and I yelled helplessly as the pod cleared the threshold of the portal and it closed with a sucking noise.

“Where’d they go?” I asked.

O! shook his head. “Can’t tell. Selene’s the technician. Without her . . . “

“Can’t follow and can’t get back either,” I said in a tone of resignation. “How’d we end up here?”

“Portals seem to have a time distorting effect. He’s used that to cross time rather than space,” O! responded.

Without Selene we were stranded.

“Ideas?” I asked O!

“Better look for an Agency office. They’re bound to have us registered as missing persons . . . see how much we’ve missed. Let them know we’re not dead.”

“Looks like it’s been quite a few years,” said O!, kicking at dead leaves, “long enough for the Omega to shut down.”

Around us everything was dark and quiet: no streetlights, no traffic noise, no voices of night-time strollers. There was just the pale moonlight reflecting from surfaces and the night-time sky full of stars.

I recognised the agent at once. Unfortunately, so did the trio of enemy agents.

“Follow me,” I told him, “I can get you to your car and then I’ll decoy them while you get out of town.”

We made our way into a connecting tunnel in the nearest underground station, disused of course, but not yet drowned, and through the maze of passages to a staff room.

“That locker has a false back, it leads into the lower level of the car park. I can meet you later on.”

He nodded, thanked me and went through the anonymous looking locker in the middle of a row of identical metal lockers. Meanwhile, I kept going along the passage, making enough noise that the trio of grey suits would follow me.

The ruse worked and I had made my way up several ramps and staircases before my pursuers caught sight of me and realised I was now alone. Their only option now was to catch me and find out where the agent and I had parted company. Luckily I had another trick up my sleeve and led them a merry chase in the labyrinthine building, among shop fronts and market stalls and finally into a restaurant area. There were several people drinking coffee at the wooden tables and they looked surprised to see a woman run towards the casement windows with their multiple panels of glass and dark wooden astragal bars in the Georgian style. Surely I wasn’t going to jump from the 2nd storey?

I paused briefly, standing on the frame. Below me was a lake, bounded by white stone walls. I jumped headfirst . . .

. . . and, spreading my arms out wide to help with orientation and manoeuvring, I levelled off before hitting the water. I was gravity-defiant. They were not. Below me, a man picked his way across a series of stepping stones from one side of a channel to another. The tops of neo-Roman style stone arches were just above the water level. The stepping stones were the protruding stubs of walls of drowned buildings. Atop the buildings still standing were the buildings of New London, a mishmash of timber framed buildings with Georgian windows. Stone and wooden bridges spanned the channels that replaced the major roads. A few flat-bottomed boats rowed along the waterways. Elsewhere, the upper stories of buildings had collapsed, forming the solid ground. New London was a city of interconnected islands built on top of the sunken old London, only the tallest roofs, and old viaducts and flyovers standing high and dry, albeit sinking into water-sodden decay as their metal parts rusted and mortar crumbled and the structures sank under their own weight.

The three grey suits were leaning out of the restaurant window. A shot whistled past me, but they could not follow. Flying high above the channels, I followed the old roads out of the city and into the green islands of the suburbs. A tangle of motorway junctions marked the old roadways. Below me, a train sped by on an embankment heading into the green northern hills, above sea level and affluent. To the east were the fenlands of East Anglia, sinking towards the uncertain boundary between land and sea. My home was now an island in the Essex marshes, but I was heading north, but I was heading north.

"Get out! There's nothing I can teach you!" she shouted at me.

While the other gravity-defiant kids were cautiously flying, or rather floating, from one end of the gym to the other, I was doing mid-air backflips and other aerobatics, my arms outstretched like aeroplane wings for balance and counter-balance. I landed - on my feet of course, and not on my butt like the beginners - and walked out of the door.

In a softer voice, the teacher said "but you are welcome back when it's time to pick your team."

"Don't worry, I won't need one," I said defiantly, and jumped into the air from the staircase rather than walk down.

It wasn't my fault I was a natural. The gravity-defiant mutation manifested strongly in me and flying was second nature. I don't know how I did it, it was like I could switch off gravity's pull at will. While the gravity-compliant walked, we gravity-defiant flew, floated or levitated. How we flew was up to us. I favoured an aeroplane style (best for aerobatics), others went for a streamlined diving posture (for speed) and those with weaker gravity-defiance levitated upright or cross-legged at walking pace.

The next decade were my wilderness years in the north of the country, acting as a messenger or courier in return for the price of a meal and a hostel for the night. No team, no ground support, just me, a backpack and the freedom of the air. During that time more and more youngsters manifested gravity-defiance and the government set up an agency to control it. Luckily I'd dropped off their radar (northerners can be very closed-mouthed and resented interference from London) or they would have wanted my DNA. By now they were encouraging gravity-defiants to marry among themselves to produce a next generation with even stronger abilities. Hah! The penalty of my ability was barrenness - strong-flying women found themselves wed to the skies.

After nearly fifteen years I decided to return to society. Regulation had succeeded in making my profession tenuous, even in the rural north, and I was being personally attacked by one of the Agents who'd become aware of my existence. I wasn't getting any younger and I could feel my abilities waning, so it was time to face down the Agency - and especially this particular Agent.

"The Agency will train you and protect you," the Agent was telling the outdoor class of 8 - 10 year olds. I saw his eyes widen as changed from aeroplane to upright and landed softly on my feet, "... because you wouldn't want to be an Outcast."

"The Agency will control when and where you fly, and who you marry. It wants to breed you," I replied softly, "Some of you will become weapons. You won't be free to fly anymore."

"Perhaps we'd better see who's the best flyer - an Outcast or a trained Agent?" he retorted.

Our duel was above the field. The decades in the wilderness had let me perfect my own virtuoso style and I knew tricks and dodges that never occurred to his trained mind. That, and the fact that I fight dirty. I pretty much knocked him out of the sky, much to the children's delight, but at the same time his colleagues took note of my aerial abilities and two took to the air to tackle me. Tired from the duel and older than my opponents I may have been, but my years of practice made many manoeuvres unconscious. Unhindered by rules or regulations, I made it back to one of my aeries.

It wasn't my first attack on the authorities, but it had to be my last. They were wising up to my style. Where to now? Maybe across the border to the Kingdom of Scotland, which takes no notice of Westminster's edicts (and likes to cock a snook at requests to turn Outcasts over to the English authorities). With more years behind me than ahead of me, I might yet make my living encouraging young fliers to test their limits and develop their strengths, not follow the textbook formula. I've sown my seeds of dissent and now it's time to see what grows.

SPACEPORT AT SHAKERS VALLEY
Copyright 1991, S Hartwell

I am in a corridor on a deck of what is evidently a space vessel. By the look of it, it is one that undertakes long journeys or at least it spends a lot of time in space. Everything still looks very new, white and gleaming and a bit like an ultra-modern shopping mall. I am standing in a triangular plaza. At each of the three corners are sets of escalators leading to and from the level above. There is a corridor leading off one side of the triangle and the triangular plaza has some seats, all covered in blue fabric. I have to draw this to give an idea of the layout.

At this point I am still very much myself in the dream, with none of the dream insights which I normally get with a dream (that "dream logic" feeling that everything makes sense, however bizarre it really is). Most dreams provide me with some sort of accompanying knowledge so that even the strangest things seem normal, but at this moment I have none of that inside knowledge while standing in the plaza. I am a stranger exploring a new place.

I am exploring the corridor by one set of escalators. Although I have no insights into this dream-scenario and I don't know where I am heading (or why I am heading there) I am not lost. I feel as though I am a passenger in somebody else's mind seeing what they are seeing. Because of what they are doing, I am getting a sort of tour of this part of the space vessel, but cannot dictate where I want to go - I am "carried" about by this other person, looking at things through their eyes. I now realise that I have some sort of access to their "surface knowledge" - I can look at things and know what they are, and I feel that I know where I am going, but still none of the "deeper knowledge", no underlying knowledge and no sense of questioning anything that I saw, merely accepting that it was as it should be - no scene shifts, incongruities or bizarre actions. I have a rudimentary knowledge, but no real understanding. I keep saying " do this" and "I do that", but it is my host who is doing these things and I can't influence her actions.

Along the corridor are several rooms with chairs and tables in. The first thing that springs to mind is a corridor with class rooms or offices. My host looks into one of the rooms. One side of the room is a huge clear panel (it felt like a window rather than a screen, but I cannot be sure) looking out into space. The data in my host's mind tells me that these are viewing rooms where people can come and sit. At present these rooms are empty. Further along the corridor are closed white doors. Everything - the walls, floor, doors etc - is white or grey white. It is also clean!

Evidently my host has checked on whatever she was looking for - may she was looking to see if anyone was in that room? I walk back the way I came to the triangular plaza. There are signs suspended from the ceiling (or possibly from a gallery overlooking the area) directing people to other parts. I note that one sign is for the toilets. This appears to be the public part of the vessel. The escalators lead between the plaza and the next level up. The floor below is accessed via metal steps underneath the escalators (see diagram). I access my "host's" memory and get the impression that the steps lead down to cargo areas, lockers or even engines. Although I understand that the public is not barred from the deck below (cabins maybe?) it is not interesting and not gleaming new and brightly lit like the plaza (that must be why there were boring old steps, not escalators!)

According to my host's thoughts, one set of escalators (diagram, lower right corner of triangle) leads to a wide corridor area, reminiscent of a shopping mall. Perhaps it is the on-board shopping or some sort of gallery to keep passengers entertained. My own mind tells me that if this is a space liner then it must have the same sort of facilities you would find on a cruise ship. There are large glass cases in the middle, displaying items, but I can't remember what, possibly clothing though my host wasn't paying any attention so I didn't get a good look. That wide corridor is lit by small, bright spotlight bulbs inset in the ceiling (I cannot tell how the other corridor/plaza were lit, the lighting seemed to be all around and not from discrete sources). There are also benches up there as well as displays. My host recalls sitting down on one of the benches.

My host is looking for the Ladies toilets. They are at the top of the escalators (diagram, top centre of triangle). My host does not have time to look around the upper area (the thoughts in her mind tell me that she has been told to be at Airlock 2 at 1.18, the thoughts are very specific about the time), so she goes straight to the toilets which are very close to the top of the escalator and on the right hand side. There are other women in their, some are fixing their make-up as though about to go on a trip or meet someone. My own mind, inside this host, wants me to look at the make-up styles and clothing fashions. I see blue nail polish and silver eye shadow (applied thickly), but my host isn't noticing these things and goes straight into a cubicle.

I exit the Ladies toilets and go back down the escalator. Airlock 2 is on the junction of the triangular plaza and the corridor where I saw the viewing rooms. There are large double doors which are open so that people can go into the airlock or whatever (in retrospect it was possibly some sort of shuttle docking area). A uniformed stewardess takes a group of us through the airlock. The doors lead into a short corridor. The gravity seems to be less than in the plaza, so that I feel lighter or buoyant as though in water but without the thick resisting nature of liquid. My own mind suggests that this could be an awkward environment to work in long-term. My host briefly notices that the stewardess has velcro-soled slipper-type shoes. The corridor is dark, with more subdued lighting, but it is not grimy, just dimmer than the plaza. It is a boarding corridor to a shuttlecraft.

As we board the shuttle, we have to show the stewardess some sort of ID folder which acts as a passport or boarding ticket. My own mind really wants to look at this document and see who the host is and also the date! Infuriatingly, my host does not bother to look at hers, I get the distinct impression of a photograph in the folder, but I get no chance to read the details. I get the feeling that this is so mundane, that my host doesn't pay much attention to her ID folder. I definitely feel that I am riding about in someone else's head and witnessing what they experience through their eyes. It reinforces the feeling that I can take in what I see through their eyes, but not influence their actions - just a passenger in their brain. I notice a couple boarding with me, the woman has a brown leather-type jacket.

It feels awkward moving in low gravity. It should feel light and airy, but I just feel cumbersome as it is impossible to aim for somewhere without overshooting. No wonder the stewardess wears sticky soles - she has to walk about in this much more than we do. Passengers must strap themselves into forward facing seats (red, interior seems mainly a dark red/rust/ochre colour in this passenger area, lighting is more subdued than in the plaza) as the shuttle will be without gravity until it leaves the gravity field of the "Galactic/Interstellar" (data from my host's mind) class ship we are leaving. The shuttle will take us to Earth, it can land on a planet while the other ship is too big and must remain spaceborne. At this point I feel that the big ship is in Earth's solar system, probably beyond the planet Mars (at least). My own mind tells me that the trip from Mars to Earth is close to 6 months, but my host's mind acts like it isn't much more than a plane flight is for me.

After casting off into space the low gravity is switched on. We are invited to go to our sleeping quarters. The journey is not very interesting (not to my host anyway). Presumably it was not safe to go to sleeping quarters during take off (may like aircraft we must have seats in upright position during take-off and landing). The sleeping quarters are like the Japanese capsule hotels - sort of coffin-like shelves with hatchway doors (hexagonal, dark grey or black, I think) stacked in tiers on the wall. Inside the capsule is grey/blue with a cushioned bed area. Some people want to stay in their seats, but my host is opting for some sleep. Again this is irritating, because there is so much to investigate and she acts as though it is an everyday event. Maybe it is everyday for her!

When the passenger (i.e. me!) gets her thoughts together, my host is sitting back in the main passenger section of the shuttle, ready to strap in for the approach to Earth. The shuttle's low gravity will be switched off as it moves closer to Earth. There is a large forward viewing screen or window. I can't tell how may of these are really windows and how many are huge screens. I can see the "runway". Orbitting the Earth at varying distances (like the concentric rings of an onion) from the planet are pairs of objects that are like marker buoys. They are orbitting at set distances and set speeds so that they form a pair of "ribbons" marking either side of a "runway" leading to a space-port. They must move as the Earth rotates in order to keep their positions. (A friend later said I was trying to describe satellites in geo-stationary orbit at varying distances from the surface of the Earth.)

The markers remind me of silver and blue baubles or buoys, like upside-down teardrops with some sort of knob at the top. There and bottom halves are different colours, but I cannot remember which half was blue and which silver. There is a lot of visible pipework on the lower section of each buoy and each one is half the size of this shuttle craft. (My friend suggested that the pipework was to do with engines which stopped the markers' orbits from decaying.) My host pays attention to the lower part with the pipework; I think they look like pipes in a heating system of factory.

The shuttle is due to land in the US at a space terminal (spaceport) located at "Shakers Valley". I got only sketchy details of the spaceport, from my host's memories I think as I do not remember the landing or disembarkation - it seemed much like an airport, possibly less busy (or my host's memories were of an off-peak time?). I wonder if Shakers Valley is a real place that exists today and whether I can locate it on a map.

At that point the dream began to break up and I drifted into ordinary dreams (shifting scenes, meaningless things etc). However, for most of the night I felt that I'd been inside someone else's mind travelling with them. The entire dream had been coherent, my "host" evidently felt certain parts of it to be mundane and I was merely a passenger. I can still recall some parts of it as though it was a real-life event - a past life lived in a future time.

DRAGONQUEEN'S LAIR

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