W11 2BQ
London, England
May 5th 1914
Dear Sebastian,
Following your letter transcribing a dream that I must say was rather strange and spectacular I was impelled to do the same with a similar experience I recently had. My dream began with me inhabiting a personage of some importance in the age I lived. I say age as the setting was clearly in such a age foreign to us either in the very distant past or future. This world was one filled with machines of flight and capability far beyond our own. As I was saying I somehow or another was someone of great importance in this world, so important that I was chosen to be one of the few to board a sort of shuttle that would take us beyond the earthly sphere into space. The purpose of this shuttle was none more urgent than the survival of the human race, as men of wisdom had recently come to the conclusion that this world, or at least the human inhabitation of it, was soon coming to an end. So firmly was thus believed that all the developed nations of the world cooperated in building this shuttle that would remain in orbit of the earth till it was safe to reinhabit. This brings us back to myself, who somehow was found important enough to be included on those to board this shuttle. I then recall thoughts filling me of the importance of this mission and the part I was to play, that I and the others were truly the only hope for humanity. I aided in the shuttles construction and made sure that its mission would be completed. Only on the day before the launch did the trouble begin. For whatever reason my mind began to be filled with second thoughts, that perhaps this was not the end or if it was whether it was my place to preserve what obviously was fated to end. My exact reasoning remains shrouded in the form dreams often take. A new factor was then introduced, a small girl named Penelope. I know not what her relation to me was supposed to be, only that I was responsible for her. It is at this moment that by some compulsion I still do not understand I unequivocally separated myself from the project, and filled my seat on the shuttle with that of Penelope. The clearest picture I recall from the dream is that of launch day, when that shuttle I had worked on most of my life departed this sphere for the next carrying what all believed to be humanity's future. We then all awaited the end. Hours turned to days to weeks to months however, and the end never came. We continued our lives and eventually even those who believed the strongest began to relax and realize the end was not coming. The fate of Penelope haunts me even in the waking world as I wonder whether I sent her with the noble intention of saving her life from that supposed apocalypse, or I shudder to think that I sent her to free myself from the captivity of the shuttle, knowing the end would not come
Simply Cordial,
James Westerfield-Space cowboy
Copyright 2014
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