A deal worth making

Is this a lucid dream?

„Am I having a stroke?“ I address the pillars of light congregating at the end of my hospital bed. „Not yet“ comes the reply. „It will occur in six plus or minus four minutes. We have stopped time to negotiate with you.“ Indeed the raindrops outside the window of my hospital room are frozen in the air. „What about and why me?“ I respond. The situation is so bizarre that I don’t show an emotional response. „Our search patterns have shown that you have a robust attitude towards self preservation and the kind of scientific knowledge our task will require.“ Is that something my brain would come up with? Probably yes, for the very reason they stated. „How do I know you are real?“. „You do not. Your question is valid, but in last consequence never answerable. We would suggest that you take into account that negotiation with us if we are not real costs you nothing, while it will likely cost you everything, if you refuse to negotiate although we are real.“ – „Why?“, I demand. „We estimate that your chance of surviving that stroke is 9%. Your chances of surviving it without grave impairment are so small that we cannot tell them.“, these things have very good arguments. „Very well. You mentioned a task … „

I bolt upright. By general unspoken consensus we had decided that night has begun. The environment in the cave we are still locked in hasn’t changed in response to time so far. Maybe we should have agreed on putting up watches, but how do you do that if you are all traumatized and share no language?

Anyway, after this, well dream, vision or memory, I will not go back to sleep any time soon. So no harm has been done. The dream was interesting, but it is not relevant right now. I am certainly not doing any likely task while trapped here. Am I about to suffer a stroke, though? I do the equivalent of healing I have done surprisingly often, considering the time we have been here, on myself, just in case.

I want to concentrate on actually making stuff. Making stuff is the mysterious part. I can make oxygen. Can I make something else? I could try other gases, but we are in an enclosed environment. I don’t want to suffocate myself or create an explosive mixture. Hence I don’t start with hydrogen as the simplest. I try plain air. That works like a charme. Something that will go up. Helium is very hard. I can make small amounts. Neon. This feels, well, … serious constipation is the best comparison. It feels like it should work in principle, but there is an obstacle. I will cease this line of investigation.

I get one of the beakers out from the storage. Can I fill it with water. Nope. Can I make it rain? Yes. I can make a cloud around my hand and drops of water come out of it. Great. We won’t die from thirst, though I will have to do something about the pitcher in the corner soon.

The baby is starting to make noises. I pick her up. She is hungry. I can heal. Does that create living tissue? It seems to. Can I create the product of tissue? I have a drop of white liquid on the tip of my index finger. I am very much unsure how I feel about that. It does taste like milk. Do I really want to start doing human experimentation on a baby? No, I try to gently wake the mother.

She is stiff with fright, as soon as she is fully awake. Yet she does not scream. I hand her the baby.

But now I can do something that has been bothering me. My eyebrows are back. Am I limited to human tissue and its products? I cannot just generate a piece of meat. But I can generate a pear, which I’m reluctant to just bite into. It smells like a pear, though.

Something stirs in my mind. I listen to my inner voice. It speaks about arthropods. Why not? A bolt of sticky silk spurts out of my wrist and hits the ceiling. This is well and good, but what do I do with that? Am I to become a tailor?

Anjali is watching the wizard. She has never seen that power in human wizards. Nature spirits can do such things, but usually only a subset of them. She has seen healing powers in nature wizards. Some had fire or air powers. Just the combination was unusual. Yet, if an Atlantean goes to such lengths to capture a slave, that slave is bound to be unusual.