Linara pushed a few buttons and the reassuring sound of the kitchenod made clear that her dinner was being processed as desired. She was pleased with her choice. It would make for a wonderful night. She dabbed a hint of purple into the turquoise dish, that would do the trick, she was sure of it.

Her teacher had always said that she had a gift, that she would intuitively just know what ingredients to combine for the perfect dream.

She woke up. It was dark. It shouldn’t be dark. She shouldn’t be awake when it was dark. Something was wrong. Her heartrate went up. She started to sweat. A calm voice whispered: “Do not worry Linara, everything is fine, I will take care of you. Continue. Breathe in and out. Breathe in and out. That’s right, you are doing very well. Breathe…”

The sun was dancing on the ceiling, reflecting the soft waves from the pond outside the window. Linara had slept wonderfully. She felt so relaxed and refreshed.
The first dream went as planned, great. The second was probably a bit longer than expected but still on topic. The third one was, the third one was, the third? Hm, what was the third dream? How could she forget? The third one was always the clearest, the most important one, the one where the solutions were revealed. How could this happen? Linara felt her heart beating in her chest.

That has never happened before. How could it? She was perfect. Always. The dinner had been perfectly orchestrated, with a pinch of purple, a stroke of genius, and now? She couldn’t remember??

In two hours, she would be standing in front of 300.000 delegates from 19.000 colonies to answer the question. They had been waiting for 14 months for this answer. Sure, it wasn’t an important question like the last one, but still she had been carefully selected for this particular question. She was the best candidate to answer this question and now what? A disaster! She panicked and said to herself don’t panic; it didn’t help. She frantically searched her memory, the answer, the answer, where was the answer?

Linara yawned and stretched. She had slept wonderfully. She felt so relaxed and refreshed. She took a deep breath and pushed the red button on her Allboard to start recording her answer. Panic. What a simple answer it was this time. Almost poetic. Panic. She giggled. In Dreamschool all the answers had been so complicated, but in real life things were much simpler. Panic? Who’d have thought.

Story by Arusha de Rheydt
Image by Arusha de Rheydt

Source images by
Woman photo by Cookie Studio on freepik
Warrior photo by Chander Mohan on Unsplash