Half way across the world, he sat up suddenly in bed. His head was ringing and his heart was racing. He looked around the room for anything that might have startled him awake, and coming up with nothing. The clock read 3:23 am.
Just to ease his nerves, he crawled out of bed and headed to check the security panel in the hall just outside his bed room. It showed no alerts, no alarms, not even the low battery signal which might have chirped to wake him up.
No, the only explanation would be that his dream woke him. That was something he’d never experienced before. He’d never had a dream vivid enough to get him worked up to the point of being awoken.
He climbed back into bed and tried to remember her. Because the dream had centered on a woman, a young woman, maybe a couple of years younger than he was. She had an accent, American of some nature. She was alone. And she was terrified. And as best as he could tell or remember, the only thing that was scaring her was her own mind.
He couldn’t reach her. In the dream, he remember thinking that he had to go to her, or if he couldn’t get there, then he had to call someone to help her. But he couldn’t. He felt like he should know who to call, but couldn’t reach out. He wanted to hold her close and remind her that things would get better, even if he had to make them better with his own sweat and blood. It couldn’t possibly be as bad as it seemed.
But awake, he knew he didn’t know her. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had spoken to an American. He couldn’t have helped her even if he wanted to, but he still felt like he’d somehow failed her.
Arthur rolled over and tried to shake the feeling, hoping that it was a onetime dream. His father had warned him that with age came changes to his psychic abilities, but he’d never mentioned dreams before. This woman, whoever she was, had to be a fluke. Or so he hoped.
"Yeah. But So What? Everybody's Weird." 