Episode 1. The Sea Pig And The Sun: Alien Dreams
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Series Guide: List of All Episodes
Vi’s husband Wick has always been a good napper. He announces one, settles in, and a minute later he’s gone. Vi neither admires nor belittles the behavior — it’s just an aspect of how Wick is. But, okay, maybe his napping makes him seem lazy. Like a dog. Vi prefers to stay awake and keep an eye on things.
Wick and Vi are spending the first Sunday of September on Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz. It’s clear, bright, cool — and very windy. Wick is half an hour into his nap. As soon as they arrived, he made a shelter by opening their beach umbrella, laying it on its side, and wedging the umbrella’s edge into the sand, near a fire ring with the ashes of a burnt-out beach fire.
Vi walks down the beach to the lighthouse and back. The wind is strong enough that it’s the main thing she thinks about. Usually at the beach she thinks about the shapes of the waves, about where the pelicans are flying to, and about the possibility of sighting seals, dolphins, or whales. Also, she likes to recall the bygone days she spent on this beach with the kids when they were in high school. Damn the wind. There’s plenty of others on the beach, but everyone’s suffering. Sheltering themselves in various ways.
Vi sits down beside the inert Wick. As far as Vi is concerned, the umbrella isn’t a wind break, not with her sitting on her beach chair. Her hair whips at her eyes. Her book pages flutter savagely.
Meanwhile Wick seems to be having an intense dream. He’s twitching and muttering. A final gasp, and he’s back to placid stillness.
“Wick.” Silence. “Wake up, Wick. We have to move.” Silence. “Wick!”
He makes a low noise. Moves his arm. Wick is quick to nap, and quick to wake. Maybe quick isn’t the right word.
“I was in a dream,” mutters Wick. “One of them was touching me. And then I heard your voice. I thought it was part of the dream.”
“Fraid not,” says Vi. “I’m real. The wife. We have to move closer to the bluff. Or drive downtown.”
“Lie flat on the ground like me. Next to the umbrella. And put a towel over your head.”
“No.”
Grunting with every motion, Wick sits up. He’s rubbing his eyes.
“I dreamed I was in the seminar room on the top floor of UC Berkeley math building,” he says. “Where they have these classic math models on shelves, things made of balsa wood or glass or plaster or strings stretched between pins. Not exactly that room because it’s my dream. In the dream they have models too. But not the same ones at all. And I keep trying to understand what they’re talking about in the seminar.” Wick pauses, then presses on. “They weird thing is that I keep going back to this same dream.”
“Math seminar?” says Vi, fastening on that. She giggles. Wick’s thoughts amuse her. “Why not a wild party? Or flying in the clouds? Why not let your dreams be fun?”
Wick rises to his feet. He’s out of sorts. “The seminar would be more fun if I could understand it. The speaker — well, the speaker is non-human.” Wick snugs his straw hat down onto his head as far as it will go. Peers up and down the beach.
“What kind of non-human?”
“She’s a type of sea cucumber. A species called a sea pig. They usually live in deep water and they’re transparent? Bags with stubby legs, and a cluster of ten feeder legs on one end. This sea pig’s name is Waama and she has heads on the tips of her legs. The heads are telling riddles. All of them talking at once.”
“Riddles about what?” asks Vi, intrigued despite herself.
“Some of the riddles are from math. Like: Can you untangle Alexander’s Horned Sphere? Is physical space infinite? What’s the square root of minus one? Never mind. There were some children’s riddles too. Why is the Sun like a loaf of bread?”
“You used to tell that one to the kids,” says Vi. “It rises in the yeast, and it dies in the vest!” She pats her stomach the way Wick always does after he tells that joke. “You got that joke from your father, right?”
Wick nods. “Yes. In fact I saw Pop’s head on one of the sea pig’s arms just now, and Pop was the one asking that riddle. So is Pop the Sun, and my dream is a loaf of bread? Or I’m the son of the Sun and I bred the bread to make a psychic sandwich?” Wick shakes his head. “Probably I’m imagining the part about Pop. But the math is real.”
“You’re claiming that every time you nap you have this dream?” asks Vi, beginning to feel uneasy.
“It started last week. I didn’t want to tell you. I don’t think it’s really a dream. It’s more permanent than that. Like a standing wave in a steam, or a cavitating bubble in the water behind a motorboat propellor. With creatures meeting inside it. It’s not the physical creatures themselves; it’s holograms of them. The seminar room is a multimedia lounge, really. An telepathic immersive VR meeting place?”
“Go on,” says Vi.
“Okay, I told you about Waama’s mind being in there. She and the others in the seminar room call themselves emes. I’m friends with two of them. Qoph and Koral. They’re talking about visiting us. They act like a man and a woman. Koral flirts with me. I think she wants to have sex.”
“Getting creepy, Wick. Not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. I’ve been dreaming about this virtual seminar room for days and days. Doesn’t that prove that Waama and the other emes are real?”
“I say you had the stupid dream for the very first time just now. I say you’re imagining you had it before. A fake deja vu. A Wick glitch. Not a flirtation with non-humans. Come on now. Time to go.”
He haves a sigh and gives Vi a loose hug. “I’m glad you’re here. You’re probably right. Thank you for living with me.” He hoists his pack onto his back. Folds up the umbrella. “So — screw the beach? I think the fog is next. What are we even doing here. We go downtown? Check out the bookstore? Look for emes?”
“First let’s sit on the bluff,” says Vi. “And let’s not waste the day on you being all clever and crazy.” They start across the sand toward the stairs on the cliff.
“I was almost there,” mutters Wick after a bit, turning rebellious. “I only needed a little more nap.”
“Why do we even come to the beach if all you want to do is nap?”
“A beach nap has twice the value of a couch nap,” intones Wick, trying for a lighter tone. He raises his finger like a wag offering a quatrain. “I feast on ocean roar / Wise dreamer in the sand / The Sun beats through my skull / My canny brain grows tan.”
“It’s like napping is your religion,” says Vi. “A religion for dogs.”
“Oh yeah?” goes Wick. “Just wait till those emes bring me my special pod.”
Vi doesn’t bother to answer. It’s too ridiculous. They trudge along in companionable silence. They’re used to each other.
