Chapter Text
He wakes up with tears on his cheeks.
It's rare that Ryland dreams, but when he does they always feel so vivid, even if the details get fuzzy.
He still remembers what he was dreaming about in that foggy, strange, makes sense but doesn't sort of way most people remember dreams when they just wake up.
He can't help but laugh to himself.
How could a dream about an alien space rock make him so emotional?
He rolls over and puts on his glasses and starts getting ready for the day ahead. Its almost midterms and he wants to come up with a fun game for each unit they're going to review.
He doesn't think anything more about the dream.
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It's only a week later when he wakes up screaming and terrified.
It was the worst nightmare he'd had since the ones after his parents died in a car wreck while he was in grad school. He'd spent weeks dreaming of screeching tires and pained screams. He woke from each one feeling grief and loneliness and survivors guilt.
This dream smells like dirt on his face and tastes like betrayal.
He gets up from his bed when a neighbor knocks on his door to check on him. He apologizes, reassuring them that he's alright, and then puts on a pot of coffee.
Its 4am, he needs to be up in 2 hours and he's not going to sleep after that. He has a bunch of exams to grade anyways.
By the time he's grabbing his raincoat, he's a lot less shaken and when he's tossing a little hacky sack earth around his classroom he doesn't think about it at all.
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The third time he wakes up feeling melancholic but light in his chest.
He rolls out of bed and finds himself going about his morning routine humming Sign of the Times by Harry styles and wonders why his brain would fixate on that song enough to dream about it.
He's not mad though. Its not a bad song at all.
Its a Saturday, so he picks out a cheesy tee-shirt and a sweater to wear and heads for his living room.
He doesn't think about it when he gets lost in a YouTube documentary covering the entire history of an animated series one of his students was rambling about this week.
Sue him. It sounded interesting. (It was.)
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The next time he dreams, he wakes up thinking of numbers.
25.984
He knows he dreamed. He thinks it was a pretty boring one. Something about sitting in a big room watching a PowerPoint? This dream didn’t have too many strong emotions tied to it and the actual details of his dreams end up quite fuzzy.
He gets ready for the day and heads to his favorite diner down the street for breakfast.
While he eats his eggs he checks his email and he finds one from an old academic group he used to subscribe to. They're talking about a strange line of light going from the sun to Venus.
It has emits light at a 25.984 micron wavelength.
Weird.
That's a coincidence...
Surely it doesn't mean anything though.
He closes the email and heads to work.
Surely there are better minds that him to figure this problem out.
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While NASA sends probes and the news is talking about the sun dimming, he keeps dreaming.
He dreams of living on a boat. He dreams of being on a space ship. He dreams of being in a lab filled with argon for three days and killing a dot by poking it with a stick.
He dreams of people. Of world leaders and astronauts and some guy in a suit named Carl. He dreams about faces he's never known that he can’t quite remember when he wakes up.
He wakes up filled with anxiety, stressed, talking about made-up some scientific phenomenon called astrophage and taumoeba. (Stupid names by the way. Star eater and amoeba from tau??? He guesses he can't blame his brain but surely brilliant scientists would come up with something more creative?)
More than once, he dreams of living in a dome on a different planet with his space pal, Rocky. He even has dreams about teaching a classroom full of little pebble aliens like his middle-schoolers.
Its weird.
Ryland doesn't dream often.
Most of the dreams aren’t bad ones, but its weird that he’s started dreaming every night out of nowhere.
Ryland is nothing if not a scientist though, so he does what any data driven person would do: He buys a notebook.
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He wakes up feeling something just two steps shy of love in his chest.
As a part of his new morning routine, Ryland rolls over and picks up his notebook and writes what of the dream he remembers.
A strong looking woman stares out at the sea.
“You think you’re gonna pull it off?” his dream self asks.
“God willing.” The woman replies.
“You believe in God?”
“It beats the alternative.”
The corners of her eyes soften into something more human than the dictator the world’s come to know her as.
Maybe he’s just lonely??
Is that why his brain is manifesting these dreams??
He’s never done well in relationships. He’d like to be close to someone, but he never seems to feel anything as deep as whatever the person he’s dating is feeling. He has no partner and no kids, but when he reflects on his life, he’d say he’s generally pretty happy.
Weird.
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He spends weeks with his little notebook and can’t quite figure out what strange phenomenon is happening in his brain to cause his dreams. He spends time deep diving into psychology and neurology and the study of sleep. He even explores psuedoscientific explanations. Religious and spiritual dreams are generally believed to be symbolic, but none of his dreams are symbolic in nature.
He also starts remembering odd details of his dreams during the day, so he starts carrying his notebook with him in his coat pocket.
Which is why he’s flicking through his notebook after school one day when a European woman walks through his classroom door and he’s hit with the strangest sense of deja vu.
“Dr. Ryland Grace?”
A strong looking woman stares out at the sea.
“My name is Eva Stratt. I’m with the Petrova Taskforce. I’d like to talk to you about a scientific paper you wrote.”