Levers

A dream I had, recounted to the best of my ability.

It was at night and I was sitting somewhere in the middle of a bus, its destination a place I only knew of in my dream. The seats were a gray cloth with blue geometric patterns down the middle, not unlike the seats on the long bus rides home from Eastern that I took during my freshman and sophomore years. The night was lit up brightly by a full moon, and there was an eerie calm it drove perpetually on a simple gray road on top of a hill.

Sitting to my right was Petronella, a coworker of mine. In front of me, Cathy, my supervisor who has been on extended leave for about a month now. They conversing with each other as a watched out the window, their voices speaking clearly but saying nothing.

As my attention drifted away from the conversation, it concentrated on just how quiet our surroundings were. The kind of quiet where you know something really bad is just about the happen. The proverbial calm before the storm if you will. I felt a wave a fear similar to the one I had when first cresting the hill of a roller coaster. A feeling I imagine I would have felt seeing atom bomb being dropped a block away. Something along the lines of impending doom. I covered my face with my hands, and waited.

I can't remember what happened next, which makes me want to think that it was a quiet transition to the next scene, but there is a space there where it feels like something happened. There isn't much, just a view of the world from high up above, enough to see the entire sphere. But instead of the usual black background with little specks of white, it was a canvas of pure light. The Earth itself was discolored as well, any more detail than that would be impossible to provide though.

The red boxy car pulled up in front of a large brick building, a warehouse. Cathy and Petronella got out and I followed. Strangely enough I wasn't all that confused. There was a feeling of excitement, as if the three of us were out for a night on the town, or something to that extent.

This is where it got vivid... very vivid. We entered the warehouse through a steel door, the inside shared the red brick walls as it's outside did. The floor was the textbook dull gray cement color, and there was a small room sectioned off in the right corner (facing me) at the very end. Yellow, shapeless machinery was in the other corner. We proceeded to make our way to
the machines, on the way I grabbed a handful of salt out of something.

This salt wasn't table salt, mind you, it was the flaky more mild sea salt they seem to put on everything anymore. I had a very large handful of it, large enough that I could pick from it with my free hand and take decent sized mouth fulls, still having enough left over so that I wouldn't run out. I could taste the salt dancing on my tongue, literally taste the salt. I could feel the tiny flakes lumped up on my tongue, and the burn of the freshly salted saliva as it rushed down my throat.

The three of us stood my the machines. Cathy and Petronella engaged in the same wordless conversation as before. I stood there, eating my salt, until I was called over via intercom to the room in the right corner.

I remember every step there.

I stood in front of a large pane of glass. On the other side was a tall, thin man. He had medium length, unkempt brown hair that curled into lockes as it stopped around the middle of his neck. He had a beard, but only as a result of not shaving. His eyes were large, very similar to mine. Similar enough that I could swear that they were my own. Over these were a simple pair of thin rimmed glasses. A black business suit with a red tie hung on his thin frame. His face almost gaunt as he loomed over me.

The man smiled warmly and waved his hand, still behind the glass. "Hello Mr. Mitchell. Thank you coming here today."

I responded in my usual fashion when dealing with work related meetings such as these. "No problem, wasn't out of my way at all."

"I've been looking at your performance and unfortunately, I'm afraid I will not be able to extend the contract to you for another year. You see, you've ranked third, and we can't accept that."

Shocked that I was loosing my contract (that I had no knowledge prior to this meeting), I began to bargain with the man, "I understand your decision, I really do, but I think that with a little more effort I could raise my ranking. If I could just have a little while longer to get the hang of it."

He shook his head, "I'm sorry, I can't." And walked out of the room to where I was standing. The man got uncomfortably close to me, only about a foot away.

I placed another handful of salt in my mouth. It burned a little more this time.

"I can't help you now. You just haven't learned yet"

He started to reach into the air in front of him, grabbing at tiny invisible knobs, seemingly pulling them out of some machine. His body swayed back and forth with the motions of his arms, and his voice became rhythmic and calming.

"All you have to learn to do is pull the levers, nothing wrong with that. Just pull the levers, and it will all come together. Just pull the levers, and keep moving now, just pull the levers and it will all come together."

He repeated this, over and over, his voice becoming almost hypnotic, sounding as if he was speaking in front of a fan. It was disorienting, confusing, disturbing. The man's face got closer to mine until it felt like I lost my footing.

I woke up just one hour ago, remembering a dream more vividly than I have in a long time, the man's voice still stuck in my head.