...according to my dream.

I was Richard Nixon. A young, athletic Richard Nixon. We're talking Whittier, football-playing Nixon:


But I was in the White House. Being a president is difficult, even in a dream, and I had a lot of things on my mind. Domestic affairs, foreign affairs, certain troubling whisperings about the unethical actions of certain members of my staff, and even a wild rumor about how some madperson was planning to kidnap me.

I was pacing among the columns of the Jefferson Memorial, trying to clear my cluttered head, when I saw them. By their very movements they seemed suspicious. I followed them down the colonnade, hoping that they would lead me to some answers about the burgeoning Watergate scandal.

I followed them down underground into an expansive white room. The floor was covered in blocks of white marble in various shapes and lengths with each block no more than calf-height. They made their way over the obstacles, black marks on the otherwise spotless white room. The ceiling stretched away above us, and I felt quite exposed. They didn't look back. They made their way to a large pit in the corner of the giant room. I followed them down into the pit. Thick white ropes, chain netting, and platforms allowed me to make my way into the pit. I reflected on how lucky it was that I was still young and agile, or I might not have been able to follow them down this path. Finally I reached the bottom. My quarries were out of sight. The pit was about the size of a swimming pool in planform, being extended much deeper in the third dimension. There was no outlet. I found an opening in the wall, the size and shape of a pipe, about a hand's width in diameter. It extended back into the wall, lit somewhere near the other end.

There was no outlet. There was no way back the way I had come. There were no people here.



I was trapped.



Those wild rumors, about someone trying to kidnap me... they were true.


Three years passed. Slowly. I had no furniture. I had no bed. I had nothing to write on and nothing to read. Every day just enough food to sustain me came through the pipe-opening in the wall. The only thing I could do was think. Think, every day and every night in that white ever-lit prison, sterile and silent.

Then one day, they released me. They never revealed why they had kidnapped me or who they were. They had never threatened me or issued me any demands. No one had ever even approached or talked to me. Just nothing for three years, followed by a door opening and an unseen someone taking me and leaving me on the streets of Washington, D.C.

In the book that I subsequently wrote about my experiences, I regretted most not having a pen and a piece of paper on which I could write my thoughts. I referenced the house arrest of the famous scientist Tsien Hsue-shen who developed a large part of ballistic missile theory while in seclusion. Not that I could have developed ballistic missile theory, I admitted, especially without any notes or references, but it would have made the task of keeping insanity at bay immeasurably easier. Writing the book had helped me finally come to terms with the years of my imprisonment and to let go of the anger that had consumed me in the those first months against my still unknown captors.


Then, one day, I was walking down the street with my friend Bronwen when she revealed that it was she who had kept me imprisoned. SHE HAD KEPT ME IMPRISONED. I grabbed her forcibly and threw her to the sidewalk. I shook her by the shoulders and screamed, "WHY?!" "WHY?!!?" "YOU STOLE MY LIFE! YOU TOOK AWAY THREE YEARS OF MY LIFE!" I was so angry I thought I would accidentally crush her delicate body just by the force of my anger. WHY BRONWEN? WHY DID YOU TAKE AWAY MY LIFE?

She had no answer.


I woke up. I didn't know where I was. How many years had passed while I was asleep? Surely more than ten, but the clock said it had been no more than a single night. I took a shower. I walked to the conference center. I sat through several talks. I tried to listen. But my cool, white, marble prison still felt a hundred times more real than my life.

That must have been a long dream...
» randomjunk on 2010-03-04 12:24:57

I NEED TO KNOW THE END TO THIS STORY/DREAM SAGA.
» Mockiller on 2010-03-06 02:06:58

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