Dream20130714 - The Amestrian Mineshaft Incident

Sunday, July 14, 2013

I had a friend with me.  Another girl, I think.

We had fallen down a mineshaft.

But we were past all that at this point; the two of us were in some kind of hospital.  The walls and floors and ceilings were light-colored, and clean.  Our beds were soft and sweet.  White curtains gave us peace and privacy.  We were being well taken care of.

But there was something.... off.  Was it something we noticed ourselves?  Or had we overheard things?  Things people weren’t supposed to say around us?

I remember the tame pink coloring of a few scattered scars.  We were pretty beat-up by our ordeal, but our bodies were in fairly good working order.  Except.... they didn’t feel like our bodies.  I know my friend and I took a few slow and easy walks around our surroundings, but.... were we really walking?  Were we in our skin?  Did our bodies come with us?  Or was it only our spirits?  Or were these thoughts only the woozily confused result of our accident?

We heard people talking about cloning.  I remember one woman asked me outright as I sat up in my bed, “Did anyone ever teach you cloning?”

I stared dumbly back at her for a few seconds.  What did that even mean?  Teach it like a skill of some kind?  “Uh, no,” I finally answered, and she left me alone.  I don’t know whether this memory is pristine or whether I’ve painted it, but she seemed to walk away relieved.  Relieved at my ignorance.

My friend and I decided to see what else we could find out.  We searched farther, and deeper.  We strayed into areas we hadn’t been, places we probably weren’t allowed, no, places we definitely weren’t allowed.  Maybe places we would have found out about sooner or later, on their terms, but.... we wanted to know.

Where did we go?  Downstairs?  A basement?  Somewhere restricted?

I remember a dark passage.  Not as well lit as the upper floors.  Pipes and electrical boxes on the walls.  Panels and little doors probably full of switches.  Metal and glass and dark grey walls.

We walked through a door on the right, and we saw our own bodies.  The very first thing we noticed was a sign with a number on it, four digits long.  23- or 24-hundred something.  It was the number of feet was had fallen.  And I knew—both of us knew—there was no way we could have survived a fall like that.  I could only imagine the deep dusty bottom of the crumbling black depths where they must have found us.

Our bodies lay on hospital beds.  They were thrashed and ruined.  Tubes and bandages encumbered them all over while accompanying machinery beeped and blinked in the background.  I remember more jagged red, more blood than the tame thin pink scars on the bodies in which we walked.  Blood, blood, blood, and my legs.... my legs had been severed.

The next part is a haze.  One or two.... or maybe three.... personnel—doctors?—scientists?—military?—turned their heads as we entered.  We weren’t supposed to be there.  Everything crumbled and I remember moving, stepping in, struggling, gripping, people in my way, a billion raging questions flaring up in my brain, only a few of them escaping through my tongue to fly through the room like flaming arrows, return volleys banging against my head.  I wasn’t supposed to be there.  I wasn’t supposed to see this.  That was my original body?  Was my original body dead?  But if that was my original body, then what was I?  Was I a clone?  Did my original self, the real Connie, die?  What did that make me?  An imposter?  But no, why all the machinery then?  Were our original selves still alive?  But the doctors must have been fighting a losing battle; nobody could endure such a fall, such damage....  I was a whirlwind, a betrayed fluster about the hospital bed.  Had my friend and I really been spirit-walking earlier?  These comparatively sparsely-injured bodies we were in now, were they really ours?  Couldn’t we go into and out of them?  Could I go back into my original body, or was I now only a copy?  Was the real Connie still inside there?  What would she think of me?  I could never go home.... I could never go home....

I needed my body.... I needed my body.... Strong arms pushed me back, held me back.  They wore blue uniforms.  Was it something they said, or something I realized?  Did their shouts finally break through my own?  Somehow it came to me, and I knew it: no, the first body was still mine.  I was the true soul, I was the owner.  My original body, my ruined body was vacant, and I could go back.  There was only one of me: Me.  And I could choose.  And I chose my original body.  But my legs.... my legs....  So much blood, so much ruin....

Could I still go into and out of my original body?  Did I?  It’s so hazy.  I tried.  I tried.  But my legs....

And then “WE COULDN'T SAVE THOSE BODIES!” Colonel Roy Mustang shouted into my face.  His hands gripped my upper arms as he shook me.

I stopped at the jolt.  The argument dropped dead.  The room fell quiet.  Everything fell off a cliff and was freefalling perfectly still, and silent.


I was still in the lightly-scarred body.  My first body was still on the bed.
I was not myself.
My self was dying.
My body was dying.
And if I went back into it.... I would die too.


Or, no, would my going back into it save it?  Save me?  Or had they already saved it for me?  Was I only put into this new body to spare me the trauma of the repairs that would really have killed me?  They’d said—or I’d figured—somehow I’d come to know—they’d said I could choose.  The soft pink and tame scars of this copied vessel, this awful puppet, this thing that looked like me but was so utterly not my own.... or the hard red blood of who I really was.... painful and broken, and still to recover, and with no more legs, forever?

My heart broke.

But the choice was so obvious.