[ WP ] One thousand years seemed a lot longer this time .

Sue ran a finger from her ankle to her knee, and stretched her back. One thousand years seemed like a lot longer this time. 
 
 Swinging her legs to the floor, she remembers, fleetingly, a sea of dreams. Dreams and dreams and dreams. She ’ s seen the bottom of herself, and now she ’ s forgetting. Naturally. Sue stands, unsteadily, and reaches for a wall of a closet-sized room she ’ s inhabited all along. She vomits. 
 
 Sometimes, at a bar back in the colony, someone will appreciate her job. Grim people, working their own grim jobs. Outpost trade. They know that the folks who gather shit, shit like Pepper, go to hell to do it. They know there ’ s a reason they quarantine you for two years, waking years, when you get back. 
 
 Sue pulled herself upright. What was that part. She was scrawling her name, etching it into a postcard, breaking into and destroying a mountain-scattered landscape. That had really meant something, that was key. Now, just another image, its emotion strange and unconnected. 
 
 The hopes. The hopes are what really get to you, once you get lucid. People try not to, but you do. One thousand fucking years. Some of the best, some of the ones who really survive, they manage to avoid lucidity as much as possible. Avoid enlightenment, that is the prerogative. Step in occasionally, but only to step into your own way. Deceive yourself, avoid the dream, enjoy they ignorance. Or go mad. Sue is one of the best. Or she was. There was a chasm of screaming this time, screaming on level after level of dream, a screaming the aural equivalent of mirrors facing each other. It ’ s an underappreciated fact that the repressed is for our benefit.
