Have you ever awoken from a deep sleep with your lips pulsating as if from a lover’s kiss? Have you ever been alone in the middle of the night and yet awoken gasping and wet as if from an intimate embrace? Dreams. In the middle of the night our defences are at their weakest. We cannot protect ourselves from the dreams that enter our minds when we are asleep. The experts say that we dream constantly, that our minds are solving complex problems that we cannot contend with when conscious. That would explain many dreams but not all of them. Some people do not remember their dreams. Some awaken feeling as if something wonderful has happened but they have no recollection of what. Others awaken with the dream intact.

Dreams are not reality. Or are they? What if they are manifestations of a different reality? What if dreams are engineered by a person or persons with more powerful minds than the average dreamer? What if . . . . .

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Jeremy laid his head on the pillow. He sighed. It had been an exhausting day and he needed his sleep desperately. Preferably eight blissfully uninterrupted hours of unconsciousness. Then he could start this nonsense all over again. His eyes closed, his body relaxed.

There was a gentle breeze wafting through the glen. That seemed to keep the temperature comfortable although he couldn’t actually feel it. He knew it was there by watching the long grasses moving as if to a gentle love ballad. Jeremy didn’t know where he was. He did know that he was at peace here; the rest of the world was far away and unimportant. And then he saw her.

A tall slender figure slowly materialized out of the dense forest. They say that beauty is quantifiable, that there are certain effects that are the difference between beautiful and merely attractive. They say that our visual understanding is predicated on our past experiences and that our interpretation of what we see is primal. Jeremy had no words to speak or even to think of as she walked towards him. His body betrayed him; he leaned forward as if to embrace her and she stopped. Even the words she spoke touched his heart as if a gentle kiss brushed his lips. He waited. His breath came quicker as he watched her. He wanted her. He wanted to embrace her. He wanted to rest his head on her lap like a child and feel safe. He did feel safe. He felt as if this is where he was meant to be.

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Anna didn’t want to fall asleep, yet she felt the strong pull of her bed. She had been up too long, working too hard on too many projects. She needed the relief of nothingness, the mindless abandonment of sleep. She turned out the lights and rolled into a more comfortable position. Anna sighed.

The elevator doors opened quickly, she darted inside. She had to be in time, she had to catch him. With a slight jolt the elevator began it’s decent. Ninety floors, it would take too long, she had to stop him. Anna glanced at the floor indicator, it was moving as if in a free fall. Bullet Elevator. She remembered. It was the new Bullet Elevator that moved three times faster than the fastest elevator in use. She was going to make it. Before she had finished her next thought, the elevator doors opened on the ground floor and Anna began looking for him, the man she cared for. She knew he was headed for the parking lot and it was a bit of a walk. There were two routes he could take: underground via a shopping concourse or outside across a courtyard and a street. There was a turnstile ahead and a tall, slender woman taking tickets. Tickets! Anna didn’t have a ticket. She looked down at her hand and at the necessary ticket. The slender woman smiled as she accepted the ticket. Anna moved quickly, she would catch John and everything would be all right.

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Car fumes, she could smell car fumes. Madelaine tried to turn over. She was lying on her side and she was painfully aware of the very hard surface beneath her. What the hell was she doing in a parking garage? That’s where she was, an underground parking garage. Sue. She was here with Sue. They were practicing with the sword. Why? Sue had purchased a very old sword of some obscure parentage and she wanted to practice with it. Her apartment held too many breakables to risk swinging a potentially deadly weapon so the garage it was. Kidnapped! She remembered, Sue has been kidnapped! She had to reach a phone, call the police, but there was still one of the kidnappers in the garage. A woman, a tall, slender woman and she had a gun. Madelaine was the target, she had tried to protect Sue and now she was in trouble. She was hiding beneath a car, she was frightened, confused. There were footsteps coming towards her, they stopped. Madelaine held her breath.

5:00 am came much too early in the morning to suit Madelaine but it was what her job required. It hadn’t been a restful night. She had a nagging head ache behind her eyes and she was exhausted. Madeline sighed, someone had to be at the office first and she had been nominated. Oh well, it paid the bills.

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Do you ever awakened from a dream and wonder about the people you have just met? You swear you have never seen them before and yet they are familiar to you. Does the same person show up in many of your dreams, sort of a recurring figure and yet you don’t know them, or do you? Is it a tall slender woman with a warm smile or perhaps a solid, stocky man with a glint in his eye? Maybe both. What actually happens in our dreams? It is almost like entertainment. Entertainment for whom? Is it for our benefit or for someone else’s, someone with the ability to insert themselves into our minds and follow or perhaps control our dreams? Interesting thought. Oh and pleasant dreams. Maybe I’ll see you there.