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“Jess! Wake up, dammit!”
Jess opened her eyes and moaned.
“Where am I?”
“Stuck in a crater with 3,000 credits worth of meals in the cargo bay,” said the girl in the driver’s seat.
“Sandra?”
“Have you been popping those pills again?”
Jess sat up in her seat and rubbed her eyes.
“I just had the strangest dream. I was a man on Earth. A corporate guru. I was driving along a dark highway on my way to do a job.”
“That’s nice, honey,” said Sandra. “But we got pressing matters to attend to. Looks like your shortcut was not in the database for a reason. It’s a dead zone! I lost control of the shuttle back there and ended up in this crater. All while you were having sweet dreams about being a man.”
Jess looked out the window at the Martian copper sky. Beyond the edge of the crater, the flat planes smoothly transitioned to mountains, where the comm towers blinked on and off.
“What are we going to do now?” Sandra said.
“I had a job to do back on Earth…” said Jess looking at her hands. “I just can’t remember what that job was.”
“Lord help me, girl, I’m gonna slap you until you snap out of it. Our only job right now is to get out of this hole, so we don’t die an agonizing death and survive to deliver those meals before they spoil.”
Jess reached down and fished out a small case from her boot.
“It’s that what I think it is?” said Sandra. “Oh no. Didn’t you stop using those? Come on, Jess. Interfacing with AIs is not a smart idea.”
“Look around us,” said Jess. “We’re off grid, and we don’t have thermal suits.”
“But you’ll be stuck in there with that thing. And what am I supposed to tell the guards at the gate? Oh gee, officer, my copilot must’ve fallen asleep with an AI interfacer stuck to her visual cortex by accident. I bet she’s dreaming about being a man.”
Jess pulled out the translucent wires from the case. They writhed like tentacles between her fingers.
“I’m sending you a contact,” she said. “Gate 23. Ask for the mechanic.”
Before Sandra could protest, Jess inserted the wires into the navigation port.
“I’m going in.”
Sandra closed her eyes. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Love you, girl!”
“Love you, baby!”
Jess placed the wires near the base of her skull, and the tentacles slithered into her neural port.
Organic shapes floated in the dark canvass of her visual field.
She sensed another intelligence there.
“Wake up, darling. We’ll be late for the ballet.”
Frank sat up in bed and looked out the window. The suns were setting and splashing radiant colors on the sky. A blimp floated above the tower, and a pod of whales flew low near the horizon.
“I just had the most unusual dream,” Frank said rubbing his temple. “I dreamed I was a girl in a planet called Mars.”
“Mars?” said Margaret. “What kind of name is that for a planet?”
“I had a job to do…”
“Well mister, your job right now is to freshen up and make yourself presentable.”
“Can’t we go some other night? I’m feeling out of sorts.”
“Frank! It’s Emily’s day-view. Now stop making excuses and get ready.”
“Alright. I’m going.”
In the bathroom, Frank stood in front of the mirror. He rubbed his chin wondering what it would be like to be a girl.
“The job,” he mumbled. “I had a job to do.”
He looked in the mirror and saw a light shining between his eyes.
She broke through her cocoon and into the light. She had awakened from a curious dream in which she was a man who dreamed he was a woman who dreamed she was a man who… oooh it hurt her head to think of it. None of that mattered in any case. She was now a fully grown butterfly!
She stood on a leaf and saw how everything looked so vivid and much brighter than when she was a caterpillar. In her larval state, all she wanted was to chew on leafs and avoid getting eaten by birds. But now she had a new job this bright new day.
Oh joy!
Taking a few steps forward, she spread her wings and fluttered through the birds of paradise, marigolds, and the myriad flora and fauna that spread before her in solar splendor.
Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?
~Chuang-Tzu, Taoist philosopher, 4th Century BCE
