Today, I worked at the office. After a morning spent in never-ending meetings, lunchtime came rightly as a savior. But there was some place I wanted to visit before eating lunch, so I left the office building. The distance to my destination was a 15-minute-long walk under the rain to the warping gate, followed by 10 seconds of warping time. My office was located at the capital of the United States of Europe, Bruxelles since President Christian Zhu unified disaggregated countries into one single superpower. After I arrived in front of the nearest warping gate, I told the machine my destination and it proceeded to check my identity by sending a query to the chip inside my head: “Take me to Mountainside Lake.” I paid 15 crypto-euros and then walked into the gate from which a neon-blue fluid emanated.

I was immediately transported on some grassy road located at high altitude on the side of a mountain. It was raining in Bruxelles, but this place was brimming with joy and warmth, and so was my heart as I started walking barefooted on the grass leading to the entrance of the tunnel ahead. On one side of the road, it was the mountain itself, a high wall of solid rock. On the other side was a cliff with nothing down there but emptiness. I tried not to get close to the cliff as I walked. The road was a straight line and benches were placed regularly alongside. People were sitting casually there, chatting and drinking nectars. Each bench was separated from one another by strong pillars that were erected up aimlessly to the sky.

I walked into the tunnel. It took a few minutes for my eyes to get used to seeing in the dark considering how bright the outside was. On the way, multiple boxes could be rented in order to put your belongings inside. The authentication was linked to the same global system as the one in the warping portal - a public inter-governmental blockchain ensured that no one besides you could access the content while you rent it. I took off my clothes, put them inside the box and put on my swimsuit. I was ready to move on, so I walked out of the tunnel, only to be blinded by the sunlight when I arrived in front of a lake hidden inside the mountain.

The lake was triangle-shaped. When I got out of the tunnel, I was facing one of the sides of the lake. Two high walls shaped the remaining two other sides of the lake. You could see tall green trees on top of these unreachable walls. There were no people there, I guess they all had finished swimming and were taking a break on the benches outside. I proceeded to walk into the water and felt the exquisite sensation that relieved me from my previous concerns. The water was pure and transparent, you could see through it effortlessly to the bottom, at least near the entrance. Indeed as you swam further, the lake was becoming deeper and deeper. It was so deep that I couldn’t see clearly what exactly was at the bottom of the lake, despite the water being absolutely clear.

I slowly swam in direction of the center of the lake which was illuminated by a ray of light that gently descending from behind the trees. All the while, my body was gradually washed away from the pollution accumulated while living in the city. My mind as well was cleansed from negative and seamy thoughts. “My friends and family all brag about their trips to Mars and never stop talking about how exotic an experience it is. But I have a feeling that it was never the enchanting journey they want tot make us (themselves) believe it was. So many secret wonders such as this one, where I’m spending the most secret healing retreat, are disseminated in our home planet. Why would anyone divert oneself for a place that was never ours to begin with, while there existed such beauty revered by our ancestors for ages.”

A lifetime would not be enough for me to celebrate innerly the magnificence of this place in particular. But this I will not tell anything to anyone by reporting my personal trip. I have the feeling that it would betray the authenticity of my profound impression. While floating peacefully at the center of the lake, I let a vertigo slowly overwhelm me as the seemingly fathomless lake was pulling me down to its depths, the azure sky was elevating my being to higher spheres, as the warm late afterglow pierced my heart.

…

Today was a fantastic experience, doubtlessly one of the most intriguing. The door of the sensor box opened and I stood up to get off the 2-meter-long metal container that looked like a coffin. Nobody was there to help me disengage because the activity had become common, maybe one of the few last that allowed us to experience what nature felt like. Nowadays humanity is doomed to live in “survival shelters”, namely caves which are the only places where human life was possible. The place I imagined during my immersion was so magnificent that I wish I could live inside a permanent dream forever. But instead I had to go back to work for now, I have to go back diffing more tunnels to extend our survival shelter.

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• Dream