The end…it was so tangible I could grasp it in my hands. I just never expected it to be so bright…
The dream started out the same way the last three months: I wake up, lying on the floor of the interior of the Defiant, having been unconscious for some unknown reason. The ship looks like it had been to hell and back; wires dangling, hissing and crackling with electricity, generators engulfed in smoke and inoperable, but on top of the mess there was a stupefying sight at the cockpit window: sunlight.
Whoa, back up.
Sunlight? In the real world?
Now I knew I must've been dreaming.
Nevertheless, I left the ship through an already open loading bay and stepped out onto the cold, rocky surface that was once Earth and I walked out into the sunlight and let it wash over my skin. I covered my eyes from the glare. While in the Matrix, there wasn't a day that went by when we didn't get sunlight, but this…this was real. This was relaxing, inviting, and it was all happening for some inexplicable reason, which I would soon find my answer to.
In the distance, I made out a figure, standing at the edge of the plateau, which the Defiant must have crash-landed on. As I neared, the figure took on a feminine shape, bearing Zion-woven fatigues similar to what I was wearing. She was a brunette, whose hair extended past her shoulders and a short distance down her back. For a second it looked like Venus, but for one, her hair was black, and she wouldn't have let me sneak up on her this easily. No, this had to be another, and it seemed as I got closer the sunlight betrayed me, shielding her face from my view.
And just like that, the dream ended.
The subconscious can be a bitch, sometimes.