Dearest Rachel –
Well; that was a real pippin of a dream, to borrow a phrase from your beloved Jo Grant. I suspect that my mind, knowing that I was going to be meeting up with Lars today, knew I would be hard-pressed for topics to write you about (since I’ve told you most of the details regarding this past weekend, and I don’t have much in the way of real life or even progress n various projects to tell you about at the moment), decided to work overtime to come up with something in the middle of the night for me to relate to you. The trouble is trying to get it all down coherently (and slightly modified, for reasons I’ll try to explain) before it dissolves, now that I’m awake.
But boy, was this a doozy. From what I could tell, it combined elements of fantasy, by way of Lord of the Rings (which I’ve still never read, but whatever for the moment) Dungeons & Dragons, and isekai anime (hey, I can’t help overhearing the stuff the boys are watching) with real-world sports and politics that I’ve been keeping up with, albeit with varying levels of interest and understanding. It’s that political bit which is tricky, as I can’t exactly specify the players in this story; I know who’s who, from what I saw, but if someone reading over your shoulder thinks I’m describing “their” team as the “bad guys,” that could mean real-life trouble. Which says something about the state of discourse in the real world, especially on days like this; I can speak my mind with Lars as we walk in the woods, but he’s often cautioning me if I continue to do so in public (much as I find myself admonishing Daniel about such things in other circumstances).
But anyway, on with the description; I’ve spent too much time on the build-up in the first place, and my memory of the specifics are already starting to slip away like sand in an hourglass. Basically, the world I was in seemed to be one in which multiple of the standard humanoid races shared – I hesitate to use to word “coexisted,” since even that word has been freighted with meaning, thanks to an all-too-familiar bumper sticker – humans, elves, orcs and dwarfs. Maybe halflings as well, but the shorter races didn’t seem to make much of an appearance in the dream itself; this mostly involved the first three groups.
In any event, the world was, geographically, much like our own, as opposed to that of, say, Middle Earth or any fantasy anime – or at least, enough like ours that I could recognize it as such, which makes it that much easier for me to explain where things were happening. For instance, I could say that I hailed from America, and that what was taking place was doing so in Australia (and beginning to work its way into Asia by way of the Indonesian archipelago), and you’d understand easily.
How it was doing so was where things get messy, and harder to explain. The best I could tell you was that the elves and orcs had formed an alliance (which even in the dream struck me as next to impossible; by all laws of fiction, these two races have always been depicted as diametric opposites, in terms of alignment, temperament and appearance) and were making war on the human race. But they weren’t fighting outright wars and battles, no; they were barnstorming the country playing sport and entertaining their soon-to-be victims. I would call it football, but that means different things to different people, even (especially?) on this continent; then again, the ambiguity might work in favor of the story, since it didn’t matter as much. The real point of their nationwide (and, as the sort gained popularity throughout the world through mass media, global) agenda was that, while they played the sport, the fanbase of fellow orcs and elves would scope out the human territory for guerilla action, like spies. At some point subsequent to a game, there might be an attack on the host city, devastating it.
In this story, I was a sports beat reporter embedded with this team (and I guess that I passed sufficiently well for elvish that I was accepted among the players or something). My assignment was to focus on the sporting aspect of the whole thing, as humans in America weren’t concerned with a bunch of skirmishes in Australia or points north; they had their own troubles, after all, and sport was meant as a form of escapism, much like in the real world, now that I think about it. Kind of weird that they would be remotely interested in a game being played Down Under, but whatever. Every dream has to have that one bit of logic that isn’t, upon further consideration.
As much as I tried to stick to my assignment, I couldn’t help but notice the warfare that seemed to accompany the team and its fanbase. The fact that the players – and the surrounding combatants – seemed willing to take me into their confidence, due to my appearance (and deliberately opaque political stance) as “one of them,” didn’t help; it allowed me to gather information, sure, but I didn’t know what to do with it. There was a clear sense of “today Australia, tomorrow the world” to what they were doing, and it felt like this needed to be nipped in the bud at some point, although I felt I was in no position to do so.
And for a while, I didn’t think I would need to; I assumed that the alliance between elf and orc would collapse, since each race represented everything the other despised. Sooner or later, they would fall upon each other and destroy themselves. But that didn’t happen, except on the playing field itself. Elves and orcs played against each other, strength against strength, on the pitch, and while they appeared to be fierce rivals in the arena, they appeared to be building up a mutual camaraderie as they honed and sharpened their skills (and strategies) to be used against their real enemies; humanity. I couldn’t say how genuine this was, but as they started making their way north into Indonesia and Asia proper, it was clear to me that they meant Serious Business.
But how to warn those I reported to in the Americas? And who, over there, would consider this important enough to worry about? It was true that the oceans surrounding us weren’t the impenetrable moat that they had been in centuries past, but as barriers went, they were still considerably more trouble than they were worth to attack directly, so they would be safe until the entire Eastern Hemisphere had fallen. The thing was, by that point, the enemy that would attack would be so large, and so battle-hardened, as to be overwhelming when they did arrive on our shores.
Meanwhile, if I did try to warn my compatriots, not only would they (and more importantly, my bosses) not be willing to listen, but I would blow my cover as a simple sports reporter embedded with the team. So for the duration of the dream, I found myself keeping quiet on the true matter of what was going on, trying at the very least to follow the money uphill from the teams, to ascertain who might be bankrolling them and their apparent efforts at conquest through sport and entertainment. It was distressing to watch, to say the least, and it didn’t help that I couldn’t seem to figure out who the money men were.
Although… that was the one thing I could tell; they were money men, evidently willing to engineer their own demise for the sake of wealth. Which didn’t make sense to me; if the elves and orcs succeeded in their quest for domination, what would that wealth be worth, especially coming from a hated human? Did they think they could control vast armies of races that hated them forever? That struck me as a dangerous game in and of itself, but maybe it just felt like that to me from my position in the virtual trenches; up in the skyboxes and corner offices, they considered themselves unidentifiable and untouchable. And they might very well have been right.
Now, I’ve no idea how well this maps onto our real world; this was a dream, after all, and I’ve no desire to flesh this out any further than this, even though I recognize the players better than I’ve explained to you. Since this world keeps on with its own distractions, I don’t know how the story ends – and I’m not sure I want to be here should the final conflict come to pass, assuming it does. It might be satisfying to see the swells behind it all get their comeuppance, but let’s face it; that rarely happens in the real world. Consider it little more than a dream, much as you likely see what I keep referring to as “the real world” to be at this point. It has essentially passed away as far as you’re concerned, and it will for me some day as well. Perhaps that’s the best ending I can hope for, and hope it comes soon.
For now, though, I’d appreciate it if you’d continue to keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I dare say I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 