Free Traumphysik by Monica Byrne

 
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    I suppose that, after a brilliant coed graduates from MIT and volunteers for the war effort, the only place the Navy can bear to send her is a nameless atoll in the Pacific.
    They’re lucky it suits me.
    I’ve been assured my job is tremendously important. I believe them. I know it is. I maintain a generator that powers a signal light that is visible up to thirty thousand feet, vertically. Our planes fly much lower than that, of course, but I mention the strength of its output because it’s a bragging point.
    I maintain the signal. I am the landmark, the light in the dark.
    This atoll is approximately an acre in size. The Japanese don’t have a name for it. We don’t have a name for it. So I am trying to think of a suitable name for it. Something to do with my name. Lucy, Lucia, Lucid, Lucifer. I’m not sure the US military would take kindly to the last one. Oh, too late, it’s done, then. The name of the atoll will be Lucifer. It means ‘light-bearer,’ so it’s very appropriate. It’s a reclamation of the name: not the Judeo-Christian bogeyman, but the light of science and reason.
    Actually, my current situation—isolated, with limited responsibility and an overabundance of free time—is an ideal situation in which to run my dream experiments. I’ve brought with me Professor Gaertner’s text on lucid dreaming. The first step toward lucid dreaming, he posits, is hyperawareness of phenomena in the waking state. For example, I must count the fingers on my left hand several times a day. The reasoning being that, when I do the same thing out of habit within my dream and come up with a nonstandard result (three fingers, or nine), I will know that I’m dreaming.
    And when I achieve this state, and keep it stable, I can begin my experiments.
    *   *   *
    Last night I had a breakthrough. While still dreaming, I opened my eyes and held my left hand in front of my face and counted five fingers; however, each of the fingers appeared cracked and roasted, like pork on a spit. But I was not alarmed. I simply recognized that this was a nonstandard result, and therefore that I must be lucid dreaming. I sat up on my mat. I managed to touch my right hand with my left index finger before my excitement woke me up. I considered it excellent progress.
    I’m supposed to walk two brisk laps around the atoll every morning and log it in the station log, to assure the Navy I am keeping myself fit and alert and occupied. I did when I first arrived. But now I just wander at will.
    In my notebook, I’m keeping a record of the tides. I’ve also begun to classify all the species here, like Darwin on Galapagos, except on a far more humble scale. For example, there are geckos, gnats, crabs, and little pigs. Albatrosses come and go. I’ve seen at least one frigate bird from a distance. I make note of the markings on their bodies and their habits of locomotion. I’ve developed a rudimentary classification matrix for the entire ecosystem, including the seagrasses that grow like so much hair between my shack and the sea, based on what will probably prove to be meaningless characteristics. But I have to occupy my time somehow. I have a newfound appreciation for history’s naturalists who made it their life’s work. Linnaeus, I hardly knew ye.
    When I was finished cataloging everything, I did something I now regret. I carried one of the little pigs—a female, who was quite docile, and seemed happy to go for a ride—into the surf. I wanted to see if it could swim. I thought it must be able to swim, the species being so proximate to water, even though its ancestors were likely ship-borne vermin.
    So I carried it down into the surf until I was knee-deep. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have gone so far out. I let it down into the water. At that moment, a wave of unusual force slapped my midsection and I fell into the water. I lost sight of