25
A dull throbbing pulsed through the cave, accentuated by the changing intensity of the magenta glow from the alien ship. Reclined on one of the command deck couches, completely immersed in the holographic experience as her mind probed the onboard computer systems, Jennifer didn’t notice. Neither did she notice when she rose from the couch and began climbing down through the hole between decks.
Reaching the room she thought of as the medical lab, Jennifer moved directly across to the door that blocked access to the inner part of the ship, the door they had never discovered how to open.
Jennifer stopped, her unseeing eyes staring straight ahead, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her head tilting slightly to the left, as if some part of her subconscious was aware of the problem the door presented. Suddenly, she stepped forward again, passing through the wall as if it had no more substance than the holographic field that cloaked the cave entrance.
The room was smaller than the medical lab, crowded with glowing transparent tubes of varying thickness, like the tentacles of some psychedelic sea anemone. Each of the tubes pulsed with flowing, multicolored globules of light. Thousands of the plasma globules climbed and danced atop each other where the tubes connected together, like a great hive of bees rubbing together in a dance of communication.
Amidst the forest of plasma tubes, a lone central couch, a larger replica of the tentacle couch in the medical lab, awaited. Jennifer moved forward, settling into the couch as easily as if she were sliding into her own bed. And as she settled in, tiny tendrils sprouted from the surrounding tubes, each feeling its way across her body toward the desired nerve ending that would form its connection. The tendrils continued to multiply until there were thousands of them, millions, each lit with its own internal light.
As the last of these came to rest, a new pulse rippled through the room, the light rising in intensity several orders of magnitude greater than before. Deep within the confines of the couch, Jennifer’s small body convulsed.
Ten miles away, stretched out in their own beds, Heather’s and Mark’s bodies shook their bed frames hard enough to rattle the floor. But not hard enough to dispel the dream.