Morning brought dread for Ivan. Around 3 in the morning he began having nightmares about things that never happened to him. They all happened to America.
It was a normal day and nothing seemed out of the ordinary beside a twinge here or there in Ivan's head that something wasn't exactly right. But everyone on the streets seemed ordinary enough as did the weather and the overall structure of the day.
But Ivan still couldn't shake the feeling. He was walking along the streets of the city, humming his national anthem. If Ivan had any control over what he was doing he wouldn't be doing so. But, as it seemed, he had absolutely no control over what was happening. This was a memory so it was impossible to change it.
Passing pedestrians on the street, Ivan stopped by an old run-down apartment building to rest and just people-watch. It was interesting to see the variety of cultures America held. It really was a "mixing pot" of a country.
Suddenly Ivan heard a shrill scream. People around him stopped where they were and looked around, wondering where it had come from. Ivan looked up to see a plane flying low to the ground.
Too low.
It smashed into one of the tall buildings to the east of where Ivan was standing. It was one of the world trade buildings. Ivan involuntarily screamed as well as it fell, smashing to pieces. He ran toward the site and, as much as Russia knew it was unsafe, he would've done the same if something like this were happening in his country.
He eventually hit a wall of ash, soot and dirt, and visibility went down to single digits. He arrived just as the second tower began to collapse. Firefighters were already at the scene, trying to do what the could to save whoever they found. Ivan watched as people in the second tower held hands and jumped, wanting rather to die quickly than be buried under tons of cement.
Tears ran down Ivan's face as all he could do was watch hopelessly as "his" people fell and were crushed to their death. Bodies were being dragged from the wreckage, not all of them alive. Ivan's emotions turned from dread to fury and he cried out his anger and vowed revenge for the death of "his" people.
...
Ivan woke up screaming. He stayed still in bed for a few minutes after he awoke. 9/11. A horrible day in American history. He remembered how Russia had made a massive sculpture of a teardrop in an archway for America, commemorating the event.
But he never knew how bad it actually had been. What struck him as really odd about this dream, however, wasn't the fact that it was a memory he as Russia never had. It was the emotion he'd felt.
It seemed to him that he had become the United States of America himself.
