My first story post on my first optional, personal blog.

This blog will be the new home to my short stories and novels that I just don't think are that great. Right now it will be all short stories.

My stories run the gamut of genres, from science-fiction to fantasy, to human interest, to action and others. This first story will be one of the science-fiction persuasion.

It's not the greatest story ever, but it surely isn't the worst. May I present to you, "John had Dream"


John had a Dream
by
Nick Wilson
John awoke with a start.

Where was he again? All he could think about was the dream he had which was repeating over and over in his mind. The dream about tricycles, finding love, dinosaurs and the end of the world.

It wasn’t the first time he had the dream and it probably wouldn’t be the last, it was always the same. First he would wake up from some slumber, not realizing where he was. Then he would get out of bed, brush his teeth and go about his day. At some point there would be a tricycle painted fire engine red.

In spite of all of the times he had the dream, John could never quite remember the details of it. The beginning was fine, it was normal enough, but things got hazy towards the end.

He didn’t want to face the day, but John forced himself out of bed and marched out of his room. Upon entering the kitchen he finally noticed the time. Blast! He was running late again, he would have to skip breakfast.

He checked his breath and was immediately repulsed. Whether he was late for work or not, John could not go to work with breath as hideous as his own.

A few moments later John was in his bathroom, brushing his teeth, trying to remember the rest of his dream. An image of a red tricycle was emblazoned in his mind, but there was more to it. Where was the trike? Who was riding it? It was inconsequential, really, because of where the dream went next.

An indeterminate amount of time after seeing the tricycle, John would find out that mankind has recreated dinosaurs on an island somewhere. Sort of like how it was done in the movies. But the next image John had was of a massive beast running amok in the city, killing ruthlessly anyone that crossed its path.

Well, John’s teeth were clean enough. He threw on a pair of pants and a nice button up shirt and rushed out of his house.

Driving to work was a pretty boring proposition that involved sitting in traffic for forty minutes and ignoring the honking from angry drivers. It left time for John’s mind to wander, and his wandering mind usually ended up thinking about his strange recurring dream.

As if a dinosaur rampaging through the city wasn’t a good enough sign that the end of the world was upon him, there was something later that really made the Earth stop spinning, but all John could remember was a countdown.

Something flashed by in John’s peripheral vision. On the outside shoulder of the interstate was a red motorcycle flying up the shoulder at what was easily eighty-five miles per hour.
Wait a second… Did it have a side car? Now that it was in the distance a little ways it looked just like a tricycle.

No, it couldn’t be. John thought that his mind was playing tricks on him, he had spent so much time dwelling on his dream that he was starting to see it in real life.

For the rest of the ride to work John just couldn’t help but feel his dream might have been coming to life. First he brushed his teeth without eating breakfast and now he saw a red tricycle. Which would mean that soon he would hear news of a dinosaur island. John turned up the news radio in hopes of hearing anything about resurrected dinosaurs.

Sadly, between his car and his work desk no news of dinosaurs arrived.

John wasn’t too perturbed, once he got to work he didn’t have time to idly think about his dreams. His boss, a beautiful woman his own age named Tracy, kept him pretty busy.
John didn’t mind, he just loved looking at her whenever she walked past his cubicle. He longed for her, yet she was his superior and he was way too scared to ask her out on a date.

About two hours into his shift John happily watched as Tracy walked past to the cubicle next to him.

“McKenzie, can you come with me to the convention this weekend?” John heard Tracy ask the girl who worked in the cubicle next to him.

“No, sorry, but I have to finish filing those reports on Saturday.” McKenzie replied.

“Is there any way you can put that off and do it on Monday?” Tracy’s voice again. John loved the sound of it, so soft, yet so strong.

“No, I missed two weeks of work last month while I took a vacation to Europe. I got a little too loose with my spending. Now I need the overtime hours to recover financially.”

Tracy thanked her for her time and walked to the cubicle across from John. He couldn’t help but look at her backside as she leaned to look over the top Harvey’s cubicle.

“Can you come to the convention this weekend?” Tracy asked.

“Sorry,” Harvey replied. “I can’t because my wife is expecting to have our baby sometime in the next couple of day and I need to be here just in case.”

“Very well.” Tracy turned around and John quickly started scribbling on a piece of paper to look like he was doing something important.

“John?”

John pretended to just now notice her presence. “Hey boss, what can I do for you?”

“There is a convention this weekend in Ohio and I need to bring along an assistant. Can you come along with me?”

John’s heart went all a flutter. He tried once to say “Yes” but couldn’t say anything because his throat had quickly become to dry. He covered it up with a cough and said. “Sure, I’d love to see Ohio.”

“Thank you so much. Meet me here on Friday at eight pm. We’ll take a business car to the airport. Plane leaves at 10:30.”

John gave her a cheesy thumbs up. Tracy smiled and left.

A few moments later, his heart rate had finally dropped enough for normal breathing again. He was going to a convention with Tracy. So what if he wasn’t the first, or even second choice. At least he was a choice, right? This was his chance to score some points, look good and ask her out on a real date! Life was looking up.

Later, at lunch, John was sitting alone eating his usual lunch of microwave chicken alfredo. He couldn’t even remember the last time he ate anything else for lunch.

As he was biting into his next to last bite of prepackaged goodness, he heard the theme from Jurassic Park coming from the staff room. Curious, John rose from his seat and to see what was going on. There was nobody in the staff room, yet the small television had its volume set to full and Jurassic Park was playing on screen.

Tracy walked up behind John. “Turn that down, would you. I can hear it from my office.”
John turned around to say it wasn’t him, but she had already returned to her office a little ways down the hall. Oh well, John walked up to the little television and turned it off.

He returned to his desk and finished his meal before resuming work.

Twenty minutes later Jurassic Park was blasting throughout the office again. John went back and found nobody in the staff room. Once again he turned it off and returned to his desk.

Another twenty minutes went by and once again the movie was blasting the roars of dinosaurs and the music of John Williams all throughout the office. This time before he turned it off John went into Tracy’s office to tell her what was going on.

“What is it John?” She asked him.

“Someone keeps turning on the television in the staff room, and it ain’t me.”

“Whatever, lets take a look at it.” Tracy then rose from her desk and followed John to the staff room. He turned down the volume and then turned off the television. “Somehow it keeps turning on at full volume. It’s probably Frank who keeps doing it.”

“Frank is sick today.” Tracy responded. “Here, let me take a look at the knobs and things.”

As she was toying with the television, John looked out the window. “Wow Tracy, do you get this view from your office too?”

Without even looking up from her work Tracy responded “Yes, sure do.”

“I didn’t even realize we were this close to the airport.” John stated. “I just don’t hear the airplane.”

“Well, I don’t think the planes come to close to the building.” Tracy said as she left the television. She walked up next to John to look out of the window. “Do you see that?”

“See what?” John asked.

“That plane coming into the runway, it looks like its smoking or something.”

John scanned the horizon for a few frantic seconds before finally finding what Tracy was looking at. “How did you see that, your vision is amazing.”

Instead of answering Tracy said, “I don’t think that plane is going to make it.”

John stared at the plane for a few more moments before voicing his thoughts. “He’ll make it, they always do. It’s a trained pilot in there. Just watch, you’ll see.”

The two watched in silence as the aircraft approached the runway, somehow the jumbo jet seemed to be speeding up as it approached the runway. John now knew the aircraft wasn’t going to make.

“Tracy, we should look away.” he advised.

They didn’t, they watched in abject horror as the jet came down to attempt a landing. It was traveling too fast to actually land on the runway and didn’t touchdown until the final hundred yards of tarmac.

John grabbed Tracy and quickly turned her around. The explosion was unmistakable, the massive boom actually shook the office building.

John was afraid to look back at the accident, but he did anyway. The fireball was so intense that he didn’t notice the flying piece of plane debris that was flying straight at him until it was too late.

The massive chunk of metal was twisting and turning violently through the air and by the time John finally noticed, it was crashing through the window.

John braced himself to face death. Then everything froze. The piece of plane was just floating in the window, pieces of broken glass were hovering in the air. A chunk of debris stopped about four inches in front of Tracy’s terrified face.

A woman’s voice boomed from everywhere around him. “Simulation paused. Death of subject imminent.”

John looked around, but could find no source for the voice. “Where are you!”

Everything started to disappear around John. First the ceiling folded over onto itself and vanished, then the walls, then the floor.

Now all that was left was floating debris, Tracy and John. But the floating debris disappeared piece by piece. “What? No!” John screamed as Tracy’s lower body folded over onto her upper body, and then just disappeared.

John was standing alone in a massive expanse of pure white.

“Simulation will restart in sixty seconds unless the terminate button is pressed.”

John’s dream came back to him in a flurry. He woke up, brushed his teeth, saw the three wheeled vehicle, the “tricycle”, finally started on a path with Tracy, the violent explosions. It was all in his dream, he just remembered it fuzzy and out of order.

Now the world ended, and his time was counting down to from sixty.

“Simulation will restart in thirty seconds.”

John panicked. “How do I cancel the restart?”

“The simulation can be cancelled by pressing the terminate button.”

That didn’t help John in the slightest. “Where is the Terminate button?”

“The subject need merely to initiate the terminate button.”

John’s heart rate was elevated higher than he had ever thought it could go. “What does that mean?”

“Twenty seconds until simulation restart. Subject must initiate the terminate button.”

“Initiate the terminate button?!” John shouted in exasperation. But to his surprise a podium appeared in the floor and rose up until it was about chest high. In the middle of the podium was a button. Presumably the terminate button.

John reached for the button, but found it had a clear covering over top of it.

“Fifteen seconds. Please enter you password.”

John didn’t have time to be annoyed. A keyboard appeared on the podium between the edge and the button. What could the password be. He tried typing his name J-O-H-N. A small beep told him it was the wrong password.

T-R-A-C-Y John tried the name of the woman he longed for. Nothing.

“Ten Seconds”

John was in full panic. His mind raced as his time counted down.

“Five seconds.”

T-R-Y-C-I-C-L-E Another small beep. Wait, he spelled tricycle wrong.

“Four seconds.”

T-R-I-C-Y-C-L-E. The beep again.

“Three seconds.”

John thought as hard as he could. But the only thing that came to his mind was the damned Jurassic Park theme song.

“Two seconds.”

Wait a second. J-U-R-A-S-S-I-C “One second” P-A-R-K. The glass lifted away. John reached for the button, his fingers were just about to touch it.

John awoke with a start. Where was he again?