Let me explain why I’m hesitant to begin a story with a dream. Because when you show someone a large rock, as if it’s interesting, they begin to treat you like you might be socially inept or have mental difficulties – ask me how I know. But if you show them a diamond, they get excited, make noises, and suddenly want to know more. Even though the diamond comes from the rock, nobody cares about the rock.
So, this dream is not a large rock. This is the cave of a gem. Let’s go find the little bastard.
My dream took the form of a flat, brown, featureless plain. The sky was a dark, glowing red. There was nothing around, except for a lone rock flying by overhead every once in a while, cruising at a rather leisurely pace. It was almost relaxing.
But there was something else, in a way. Faces. Although I can’t describe them as really being there because, even in the dream, I knew they were in my head. Like, in my head while I was in my head, because obviously the dream is in my head, but some things in the dream, like the rocks, still appeared as though they were outside of ‘me.’
The faces were terrible. Bloodshot eyes, strained muscles of the neck, agony caught in throats, tears welling, skin contorted with hatred, pupils engorged on cruelty, color drained from fear, sneers twisting with disgust, all of them swirling around, facing me, through me. It was a dense fog of ceaselessly changing faces, and yet the flat desert remained empty. Except for the occasional nonchalant flying rock.
Among this ethereal swarm of faces I came to the realization that I was dreaming. Most lucid dreams boot me out immediately, like a train conductor having a bad day who has just noticed that I don’t have a ticket. But this one let me stay, like a train conductor who is done giving a crap. I was left to ponder the implications, symbolism, and other nonsense of said dream, from within itself. Here and there, another silent rock wistfully sailed on by.
I got bored. Like how you are now. It was all pretty obvious, for the most part. The world would appear to me as I was inside. These – ugh, I hate the word – emotions haunted me, so what I saw outside was a reflection of my inner self blah blah blah. Simple. Nothing to write home about.
The more I embraced this truth, the less I saw the sea of faces. But that was the extent of my power. I could keep the darkness at bay, but all that was left was emptiness. I could not create anything, much less see joy on a face. But there was a tiny shred of sensation, like the faintest ocean breeze – that the power to create, and to change, was out there, somewhere in the vast nothingness. For now, all I could do was nothing. I was ok with that. It was better than the alternative, better than the faces again.
I was there a long time.
The next morning I sprang out of bed ready to kick ass. Energy bristled from my pinky toes all the way up through my cerebellum. It was as though I had reached the cusp of a new level. The strength to make the horrible faces go away was not just within me, as it had always been, but within my grasp, as it had rarely been. And beyond that, who knew? Maybe I could finally begin to build something so I could see the happy faces again, like in the old memories. The good ones. There was a warmth in my chest, an outward pressure that could just burst out into the world. But not in a heart-attack-y sort of way, or anything like that.
It was a beautiful day to be alive. Then I drove my motorcycle into the side of a gas station.
Now, the feeling in my chest is not so great. I think I broke a rib.
I was over at my dad’s for dinner later and told him the news. None of my pain seemed like it needed hospitalization so I glossed over that part. He absentmindedly referred to it as my ‘first’ motorcycle accident because he had been in three. Being his progeny, maybe my stupidity made inherent sense to him. Maybe he could see that it had not yet run its course. Whether or not it’s true, the day I get back on the bike is definitely not today, because my upper body is functioning at very limited capacity at the moment.
Kind of like his heart. All of our conversations nowadays tend to drift back to the fact that he could have cardiac arrest at any second. The doctors have been vague. The technology and skills are all there in the hospital, to find the root cause and treat it. But each step needs a different specialist and Medicare needs enough evidence to approve each cost. So in the meantime they’ve given him some meds and told him to eat less salt and not to move very much. We had grilled porkchops. Unsalted. But we still lathered them in barbeque sauce because how could we not.
Could a little salt shaker really do him in? Would those porkchops be my last memory of him? He was there at my first memory. Sure, it was a terrible memory, and I can still hear his and my mother’s angry screams through imaginary walls sometimes when I can’t sleep, but still. It’s the good memories that pull harder on my heartstrings. It’ll be me in that hospital if I open those floodgates. We’re pissed at him for ignoring the symptoms for so long. He may have had a heart attack already and not known it. Or I guess it may have slipped his mind.
On my way back, I sneezed and it hit me like a bowling ball to the chest. I nearly swerved off the highway. Back home I found a call from my girlfriend. A relaxing conversation, and a breath of relief, would be the best way to end this day.
The next thing I know, we’re both crying. This hurts because I’m not good at crying. I don’t practice often, and my fucking rib.
She said she didn’t know what I wanted, and she was worried that it might turn out to not be the same thing that she wanted. She didn’t want me to become resentful later in life, for following her instead of following what I wanted to do. I understood, and I agreed, because she was right. The problem was, I didn’t exactly know what I wanted. Or rather, some part of me knew, but that part of me was being real dodgy and hard to get a hold of, for the past six years or so. The parts of me that I couldn’t seem to avoid were fixated on hearts. She didn’t know how much longer she could wait without knowing. I told her it would take me some time to give her a real answer.
The shock of the motorcycle incident had worn off. The shock from my father’s health crisis had permanently seeped in. And the shock from my girlfriend’s ultimatum was just setting in.
I felt like a million bucks.
So I did what I always do when I don’t know what the hell to do. I flipped open my notebook, clicked the pen, and stared at the blank lines and empty walls.
After several hours of that, like any normal person, I dusted off my old copy of The Art of Motion – The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau. The diagrams of the muscular tuna, the growth stages of the elusive barnacle, the tales of the wily sea cucumber, what is there not to like? Jacques can really spin the old yarn.
Then I got to one of the dolphin pages. It said that dolphins traveled at paradoxically high speeds through the water. It’s called Gray’s paradox. Gray said that the muscles of the dolphin could not propel it as fast as it moved. He attributed the speed to a unique, anti-drag characteristic of their skin. Their multi-layered, pressure sensitive skin could react to eddies forming, and either depress or push outwards to counter the imbalances of the boundary layer. He conjectured that it was this active hydrodynamic feature that could bring the flow around the moving dolphin to a near-perfect laminar state. In other words, frictionless skin.
Bingo. My mind jumped to the Mclaren Speedtail, obviously. As I’m sure you know, this vehicle has flexible carbon fiber ailerons in the rear. These parts can bend and move when controlled by actuators from the inside, like an active wing that isn’t a separate piece from the body, it is the body. Although, don’t wait around for the next generation Corolla to have flexible, actuated carbon fiber body elements. The Speedtail costs a few million dollars.
Nevertheless, ignoring all budget concerns, one could apply this idea to the entire body of the car. Like the Mythbusters golf ball car, except with actively moving surfaces. Since aerodynamics and hydrodynamics are sides of the same coin, one could achieve the dolphin skin effect on a vehicle, allowing it to possibly slip through the air at paradoxically high speeds.
The story was writing itself in my head. I could see the lines appearing in my notebook. The future of cars isn’t about what we use to get the things going, it’s about how they interact with the air. The highest levels of racing have become speed-chess games of drag, downforce, and coefficients of friction.
This could be a good one. It rolled off the proverbial tarmac. I would finish this one up in no time, send it to Road & Track, and knock their tires off. They’d publish it and offer me a job on the spot. Their views would skyrocket. It would blend casual footwork with a prophetic science haymaker and a quick, poignant jab. Even people to whom cars were not much different than laundry machines would read the article anyway, and it would make their day, maybe even change their lives. McLaren would send me a free 765LT Spider, with a warranty for when the expensive con rods inevitably go through the expensive engine block.
My prehistoric, volcanic earth was flooding with oceans, life was beginning. All I needed was a few shreds of solid research to polish off this raw gem I had unearthed. So I typed in Gray’s paradox into the search bar.
‘Gray’s paradox solved’
‘Gray’s paradox false’
‘Gray’s paradox a myth’
…
Turns out dolphins are just stronger than we thought. The slimy bastards.
But I mean, besides all that, everything is fine. It’s fine.
Except I still don’t know WHAT THE HELL WAS UP WITH THOSE FLYING ROCKS