Echo-1 The Whale

2: Only in Dreams

Out of the endless infinite darkness, emerged a soft little light. An Oort cloud of moving shimmering objects encapsulated it. I approached the outer edge and was dwarfed by the enormity of a solar system. The cloud of comets drifted apart leaving huge open expanses for me to move through. What could have only been the Voyager spacecraft shot out of the darkness and whizzed passed me. I watched it fade into darkness and when I faced forward again, I saw a pair of dark blue orbs drifting away to my left. 

Ahead, the rings around Saturn gave me some sense of my location. Its delicate beauty was muffled by the enormous swirling gas storms of Jupiter. I strained to see all its moons as I flew through the asteroid belt and approached the inner planets. The sun appeared to rise over the edge of Mars. The illuminated orange planet spun by with a wink. I came up on the dark side of the moon, gliding close over its craters until the marble shaped Earth sat in full view in front of me. I watched the sunlight drift across its surface. 

To my immediate left, a lone astronaut looked down with me from the observation deck of the International Space Station. I left her behind and burst through the atmosphere somewhere over North America, heading toward the west coast. 

I dropped down over the ocean waves to witness a pod of humpbacks swimming north on their fall migration. One of them breached, holding its mass in mid-air for a frozen second, then splashed down with a thunderous force. I moved parallel along the coast and back up onto the highway.

I was riding my bike again, this time at night. Lightning ripped the sky, reflecting jagged lines in the water. I raced around curves even faster than before and could see fire licking the night around the next turn. When I came round the bend I knew they would be there but I wasn't slowing down. The trailer was burning, fire shooting out of its broken windows gave the scene a horrific glow. The woman stood in the center of the road covered in blood, pulling at her hair. I saw the silent scream on her face echoing out of her open mouth. The baby and the puppy lay smoldering on the pavement. The young man in the leather jacket was there again, right in front of me, waving his arms, his body engulfed in flames. 

I aimed my bike toward the guardrail again and twisted the throttle as far as it would go. I blasted through, sailing out over the breakers below. The bike and I hit the rocks at the same time and bounced off into the water. My legs were crushed in the process. Above me, there was an explosion and fire lit the water as I sank. I drifted deeper, returning to the still darkness. 

Far below I saw a shape. It moved up toward me, getting bigger and clearer. A huge shark opened its gaping mouth of pointed triangular teeth and its eyes rolled back white just before it struck.