Note; This is based on an entry for the past month's "meet your doppleganger" theme.
The link can be seen here;
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=3281685#post3281685
The following is a continuation of that same meeting. I do note that the following does take place on Barbary, which is/was a colony of the Cardassian Union, hence the references of the "late war" and construction cranes. Frau is the German formal address of a married woman and Fraulien is a German formal address of an unmarried woman.
---
The second time was in a bar. The bar had been closed. It had turned morning. The haze hung on the far off hills. It was the thick haze – the type of haze that glued itself to the lungs and made air a distant faraway dream. In this Lenny appeared. It was the second dream.
Lenny walked those streets. It came from reality – that smell of acid on what little air that ran freely. The buildings all had a sense of the frontier. The cranes jutted out and people with binders walked everywhere. The majority wore hard hats, differing in color, and various small decorations. They came from Cathay, the Far Southeastern Asian-Pacific colony of King Phillip, and some of her kind. She moved past two people chattering – all age smacked, glasses conquered, and unrelated issues about the whole town. Lenny concentrated on her walk, the fedora clearly not working in this heat.
Lenny could see her face in a passing store window selling weapons. The whole clutter smacked of the Late War, the cast offs, and the two men making the point emphatically. Lenny walked to the nearby buildings that had no crowds of construction. They loomed over the ones half done in that desert and the glow of the sun in the haze that ate up the hills.
Lenny had a trench-coat that did not work. She took that off. She wore one of drab tunics that gave some relief due to the material it had been crafted out of. It had a ‘v’ neck to it and there was a dullness to who she was that she couldn’t get off. The dream felt more like reality with her visage in the glass window and she walked towards that stone building. This had its purpose to stand against the acidic wind shown through its frets and rough outside texture.
Lenny Askari walked the streets. The biggest challenge came in the form of a dame looking around bewildered by her surroundings. She had a dress that didn’t match – a bright thing that brought the eyes to her. She might have come right from the beach, where one brief movement, and there would be the ocean. Out of a strange certain type of kindness Lenny turned to help the dame, perhaps to do something, she changed her path.
Her twin looked up from the map she held in her hand. The hair had been bound in the back. The map was a bit faded and didn’t quite fit the hot landscape. Lenny swatted at a bug that had wandered around.
“I suppose this is your dream then Lenny?” she asked. There was the slight sound of crickets nearby and a clock nearby dictated the time. “I would rather be on Pacifica than here.”
“It’s more of a nightmare than anything else – but yes, Charlotte it is. You don’t have a nickname that I could call you by? Herr Hasley called me Fraulien. It’s the rot of Barbary I’m told” Lenny babbled away. She tugged at her tunic. It clearly did not alleviate the heat even with the two standing underneath a tin roof of a smaller building on the street. Somehow the haze had lifted to some light degree.
“You could call me Lottie – almost everyone calls me that.” Charlotte replied. A slight breeze roamed around and behind Charlotte, Lenny could see that the alleyway led to somewhere better. The sand of a beach took over the harsh stone floor of the city and a bank of flat sea grape bushes could be seen. “Is all of Barbary like this?”
There was the last sound of a cricket choir vanishing. The cars nearby had yet to be started. Lenny could almost hear the fleet of trucks carrying the large small metal brackets to create scaffolding and the white plastic covering to be objects in the day. There is the hum of the air purification machines and the understated stillness that lurked in every conversation. Lenny didn’t see any hard hats nearby.
“I once saw Eli. He rose up to Commander from Ensign and all he could talk about over gin was Pacifica. We left a man on the buoy – I don’t remember his name. Eli could only talk about drowning. Yes it is like this Frau Charlotte. Is it better there?” Lenny comes tumbling out. She flips the hat back on. The fedora fits her in this odd weather. There is a bit of tumbleweed that goes through the city in a revived air.
Charlotte brushed a strand of hair from her neck. She wore a plaid shirt with purple underneath. Lenny could almost feel that insect going on by. It never came back. Charlotte was going to say something and then everything became distant. It all became distant with the roar of the ocean, the loss of space, and everything going on by, no escape, the sound of someone swimming just to keep up.
……………She woke up to see paperwork on her desk. The paper had stuck to her forearm and the lamp had not burned through the dry wall. She could only see the trail of lights along the road in the dark alley and the outline of the mission. It had not been acidic for some time, with the lack of wind being the consistent thing. Pictures hung from the walls that yelled of the Good that Men Do, and she was still in the mission.
She left the office. The one thing that she did find was a small missive from Herr Hasley. It was in an envelope that she had not gotten to for some time. She walked through the empty rooms, turning each light as she went, bringing it against the velvet darkness of the late night, and the early morning. The words came on paper.
There would be sleep.
There would be sleep in the night with no wind.
The link can be seen here;
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=3281685#post3281685
The following is a continuation of that same meeting. I do note that the following does take place on Barbary, which is/was a colony of the Cardassian Union, hence the references of the "late war" and construction cranes. Frau is the German formal address of a married woman and Fraulien is a German formal address of an unmarried woman.
---
The second time was in a bar. The bar had been closed. It had turned morning. The haze hung on the far off hills. It was the thick haze – the type of haze that glued itself to the lungs and made air a distant faraway dream. In this Lenny appeared. It was the second dream.
Lenny walked those streets. It came from reality – that smell of acid on what little air that ran freely. The buildings all had a sense of the frontier. The cranes jutted out and people with binders walked everywhere. The majority wore hard hats, differing in color, and various small decorations. They came from Cathay, the Far Southeastern Asian-Pacific colony of King Phillip, and some of her kind. She moved past two people chattering – all age smacked, glasses conquered, and unrelated issues about the whole town. Lenny concentrated on her walk, the fedora clearly not working in this heat.
Lenny could see her face in a passing store window selling weapons. The whole clutter smacked of the Late War, the cast offs, and the two men making the point emphatically. Lenny walked to the nearby buildings that had no crowds of construction. They loomed over the ones half done in that desert and the glow of the sun in the haze that ate up the hills.
Lenny had a trench-coat that did not work. She took that off. She wore one of drab tunics that gave some relief due to the material it had been crafted out of. It had a ‘v’ neck to it and there was a dullness to who she was that she couldn’t get off. The dream felt more like reality with her visage in the glass window and she walked towards that stone building. This had its purpose to stand against the acidic wind shown through its frets and rough outside texture.
Lenny Askari walked the streets. The biggest challenge came in the form of a dame looking around bewildered by her surroundings. She had a dress that didn’t match – a bright thing that brought the eyes to her. She might have come right from the beach, where one brief movement, and there would be the ocean. Out of a strange certain type of kindness Lenny turned to help the dame, perhaps to do something, she changed her path.
Her twin looked up from the map she held in her hand. The hair had been bound in the back. The map was a bit faded and didn’t quite fit the hot landscape. Lenny swatted at a bug that had wandered around.
“I suppose this is your dream then Lenny?” she asked. There was the slight sound of crickets nearby and a clock nearby dictated the time. “I would rather be on Pacifica than here.”
“It’s more of a nightmare than anything else – but yes, Charlotte it is. You don’t have a nickname that I could call you by? Herr Hasley called me Fraulien. It’s the rot of Barbary I’m told” Lenny babbled away. She tugged at her tunic. It clearly did not alleviate the heat even with the two standing underneath a tin roof of a smaller building on the street. Somehow the haze had lifted to some light degree.
“You could call me Lottie – almost everyone calls me that.” Charlotte replied. A slight breeze roamed around and behind Charlotte, Lenny could see that the alleyway led to somewhere better. The sand of a beach took over the harsh stone floor of the city and a bank of flat sea grape bushes could be seen. “Is all of Barbary like this?”
There was the last sound of a cricket choir vanishing. The cars nearby had yet to be started. Lenny could almost hear the fleet of trucks carrying the large small metal brackets to create scaffolding and the white plastic covering to be objects in the day. There is the hum of the air purification machines and the understated stillness that lurked in every conversation. Lenny didn’t see any hard hats nearby.
“I once saw Eli. He rose up to Commander from Ensign and all he could talk about over gin was Pacifica. We left a man on the buoy – I don’t remember his name. Eli could only talk about drowning. Yes it is like this Frau Charlotte. Is it better there?” Lenny comes tumbling out. She flips the hat back on. The fedora fits her in this odd weather. There is a bit of tumbleweed that goes through the city in a revived air.
Charlotte brushed a strand of hair from her neck. She wore a plaid shirt with purple underneath. Lenny could almost feel that insect going on by. It never came back. Charlotte was going to say something and then everything became distant. It all became distant with the roar of the ocean, the loss of space, and everything going on by, no escape, the sound of someone swimming just to keep up.
……………She woke up to see paperwork on her desk. The paper had stuck to her forearm and the lamp had not burned through the dry wall. She could only see the trail of lights along the road in the dark alley and the outline of the mission. It had not been acidic for some time, with the lack of wind being the consistent thing. Pictures hung from the walls that yelled of the Good that Men Do, and she was still in the mission.
She left the office. The one thing that she did find was a small missive from Herr Hasley. It was in an envelope that she had not gotten to for some time. She walked through the empty rooms, turning each light as she went, bringing it against the velvet darkness of the late night, and the early morning. The words came on paper.
There would be sleep.
There would be sleep in the night with no wind.
