"Author's" note: Ok so I'm taking another crack at this one. I've posted a story with the same name before and at first when I was writing this fanfic I kept it very close to the main material ,focusing on Scott as the pathfinder. But as I wrote on I became very bored with how the story was progressing, it felt hollow and bland. I found myself questioning my writing and whether I had it in me to even make an engaging story out of the materials Bioware gave me to work with. Well after a lot of thinking I found that I was right, I was not able to make one with the empty universe they gave me in Andromeda. So I'm hijacking that world and making it my own. While I am starting after the events of the game and on board the quarian ark, almost everything is gonna be to the left of canon, think grittier and less convenient. There will be more than one race, I repeat, there will be more than one race, like are you kidding me bioware? It ain't hard coming up with a race, I made two, It was easy. Well if I haven't lost you now for having the sheer audacity to create something like a couple of OC's and a few new races, please continue on and let me know what you think.
No one quite knows what causes dreams, it has been something of a debated topic throughout mankind's entire existence. Scientific reasons exist for them surely, they tend to appear during REM sleep, the time when your brain is most active, but what is the reason for this activity? Why can dreams happen even in the deepest of sleeps? Religious reasons exist, if you are one to indulge in such things, supernatural reasons do as well, but nothing can explain how one can get sucked into a dream and live lifetime's worth of memories in a twenty minute span of time. For that is all they are, twenty minute fantasies of an addled mind seeking to sort colors, wants, and forms, into deluded half-life experiences. When humanity discovered they were not alone in the galaxy the other races were quick to add their own hypotheses to the mix, the different cultures and backgrounds perverting the topic with their own biases. Then came the technological advances, namely cryogenic technology, the ability to freeze something, or someone, into a coma like sleep for months, years, decades, preserving the mind and body indefinitely. No one asked the question, would they dream?
The room was stiflingly dark, the various machines and cryo pods that lined the long corridor like room could only scarcely be seen in the dull crimson glow of the barely flickering emergency lights. A low humming permeates the room, the consistency of the sound only broken by the occasional high pitched chirp of a machine or the even less frequent low echoing groan of the near empty ships weight shifting metal against metal. Shadows dance among the pods at small flashing green lights pulsate, mimicking the rate of their occupants hearts. The musky air is soon disturbed, a clattering of footsteps perturbing the monotony the sounds of machines have given the estranged hall. Soon billowing shadowy figures shift between the pods, slowly, methodically, searching for something, or what was more likely the case, someone. Stopping, their apparent search at an end, the broader of the two shadows takes a hesitative step forward, shifting what could be made out to be it's head to the other. Glowing eyes fixed beneath a veiled helmet tilts almost imperceptibly in a nod to the other before turning back and waving an orange tinted holographic kiosk into existence. The figure that remained at a distance shifts nervously, hands wringing in worry as the methodical clacking of keys begin to echo against the walls, a synthesized feminine voice pipes up, drowning it away with worry and guilt layed thickly upon each of the words.
"Should we tell her of her beloved? Surely she should know."
The figure in front hesitates a moment, their fingers frozen in place in obvious contemplation before returning to their systematic typing. Shaking their head the figure gives out a strained response the same mechanical filter morphing the more masculine sounding tone.
"No, captain's orders. Do you really think a human engineer would work hard for a quarian crew that no longer held the one that she cares about?"
Ending their incessant ringing of hands the figure closes the distance between the two, their eyes seeming almost pleading behind the glass of their mask as they place a tentative hand on the others shoulder.
"Perhaps she would see it as his dream? To help his people live on after his own end?"
Hands finally coming to a complete halt the male quarian slowly shakes his head turning his attention to his companion. His now free arm gently gliding along the others arm and settling against the crook of their elbow, a gloved finger brushing small circles into the plating of their bicep. Glowing eyes shift slowly beneath the glass of his helmet in sorrow as a bitter response seeps almost unwittingly into the air.
"After we were the ones to pull the plug? Keelah se'lai! How can anyone forgive us? We are ending hundreds of lives just for the chance to make it out of dark space…..who could ever forgive this madness?"
Looking away the other quarian shifts their view to the countless other pods that run down the hall, taking note of the ones tainted by the signs of inactivity, there were far too many. It had been almost two years since they had been forcibly awakened from cryo, and thrown out of their high speed jump. Two years of dark space travel, running through supplies to fix the damage and setting themselves back on course. Two years worth of fuel and food that they had not calculated into their jump, it was easy to see that they were running out of time, they could all feel it.
"What will we tell her then?"
The question hung in the air for a sickening amount of time, the words weighing down the already morbid tension that permeated the room even after the echoes of the sentence had already long since died upon its walls.
"We will tell her what we told the other engineers and scientists, their loved ones depend on them and others like them to work hard to get us to our new home."
"And when she finds out the truth? When they all find out?"
"Hopefully by then we will be well away from here and if we aren't….."
"Keelah, save us all."
No, no one ever asked the big questions, what effects could dreams have on a stressed mind? Cryogenic sleep is a deep sleep and dreams so rarely happen, even if some did take place dreams in deep sleeps are often forgotten quickly. So why would they? No, of course they wouldn't just sit around and worry about what harm countless dreams scattered over the course of six hundred years could do to a mind. No, but perhaps they should of, for dreams aren't always fanciful fantasies filled with hopes and wants. Sometimes, things take a darker more perverse turn. Sometimes, they aren't dreams at all, but instead things of horror and sickly deeds dragged up by tortured minds in the dead of night. Just sometimes, they are the things of nightmares.
Note: SO that's the first chapter, yeah it's pretty short I get that, but I felt the break and switch to the main character's point of view kinda took away from the whole 'oooooh mystery and dreams BS' I got going on so I figured eh, screw it, end it here. I hesitate to call this a chapter to be honest, more of a sneak peak into what I got planned. Hopefully, the next chapter will be completed soon since I do have most of it written and the rest planned. Let me know what ya think, thanks for readin'.