The Dreaming Breakaway Civilization (Short Sci-Fi Story)

(The header illustration is by Vjekoslav Brešić 1926-2012)

You’re on a long space journey, a really long one, and you’re asleep, in a deep sleep.

Being hibernated in a pod for centuries would get you killed.

Not your body, but the mind still in it.

Static nothingness makes your consciousness stop eventually.

Unless, your sleep is spiced up by a grand dream, to keep you going on, learning, feeling, exploring and yearning.

An endless dream until you reach your destination, your new world to call home.

Together with the others on board.

Back on Earth dream simulations have been around for centuries and while you’re hibernating the dream simulations are probably getting more advanced.

The future and past objects of fascination in your dream simulation are probably incorporated in the latest versions of dream simulation back home.

But that’s none of your concern.

Your mission as a crew is simple, to start a new human colony.

You will never see or hear from Earth again.

The crew on board are the whole population of our kind in the new star system you reach.

All in various ages, genetically picked in order to reduce any mutation in future family formations.

You’re all dreaming various dreams.

Some are having a day job, nine to five, taking their kids to school, to sports and watching series late at night with their loved ones.

Others are fighting a world war, getting out alive and lecturing about compassion.

While others are so called enlightened and have died many times in their simulation, so they begin to call it reincarnation.

All those simulations are keeping you and the rest of the crew active, and your various lives lived have made new neural pathways.

The dreams are mundane, most often relating to what is known as everyday aspects of life.

This is because on the new home planet, there will be no rock stars, no Napoleon Bonaparte’s, Caesars, Prophets and such.

So if you’re wondering why you’re not constantly high and doing almost endless wingsuit flying while ruling the world easily – there was your answer.

You need to be prepared for what awaits, and that’s life, within a colony and an immaculate beginning.

Hopefully, the plentiful lifetimes will make you all feel awaken in a way you could never imagine.

When you awake, you will all be much maturer and much more ready and realized to start a new on that beautiful planet awaiting you all.

All those collective lifetimes of all the spectrums of human emotional and intellectual life will make you look at one another in a way they on Earth never could have time for, even with all the dream simulations.

If time heals all wounds then light years surely must do something good.

Good luck on your mission, even if you’ll never hear from Earth again, humanity lives on with you, if you succeed.

Upon awakening, please be kind to one another.