The Last Crystal Skull: A Dream I Can't Shake

The ARMY had called me back into duty after they realized my age. In my dream I was a year older. I was 48, almost 49, and I was in good shape. I'd been running, working out in the gym and at home, doing weight training, calisthenics, and lots of cardio. I was in really good shape.

They contacted me and told me they needed my help, and that it was most likely a one-way mission. No way back. I said, "What's going on?" They said, "Well, we need to know that you're willing to serve or die for your country again." I said yes. Then they gave me a breakdown of what was going on.

My job was to find a series of bombs that had been hidden as crystal skulls. Not clear, see-through crystal, but white crystal, black crystal, different-colored crystals. They were hiding bombs in them, and in some of them they were also hiding intelligence: military intelligence and other governmental intelligence from different ships. The skulls were being attached to bases. It was perfect. Easy to hide, easy to move out of the country, or travel between different sects of terrorists within the country.

Anyway, I had to hunt several of them down, and I did. There were a couple of others helping me: two women and three men. The three men did not succeed in their mission. They were killed, but between the three of them they found four skulls. One of the women assisted me in finding six of the skulls, and I found four skulls later on by myself. The two women didn't realize they were directly working for the Department of Defense, for the Army. They were thieves in a roundabout way. They thought they were getting paid by some corporation that was looking for rare crystals. It was kind of messed up, because they were on a live-or-die mission as well. Of the three men, one was a Marine and another was an Army soldier. They knew what this mission really meant, but they didn't make it.

So there was a mission. Almost the very last mission. The last skull. The two women were trying to get there with me. We were having to climb this rock face, this bluff, this rock wall. One of the women was getting greedy, and she jumped onto a ledge that had virtually no support. It was soft stone. I knew you couldn't climb there. I told her, "No, don't! You need to come over here, and I'll help you with the easier climb." She wouldn't listen. She fell to her death and was crushed by stone.

The other woman wasn't as greedy, and she was willing to help me get where we needed to go. It turned out this last mission hub had some people I knew from school who were part of this new terrorist organization. They were in it for the money. Some of these terrorists, foreign and domestic, all working together, had been promised grand, glorious money or lots of things. They were promised women. They were promised land and wealth. It was all a lie.

This last piece in the bluff that I was trying to sneak into, coming in from the top, was kind of like a bunker. It had an entrance through the top that I could get into. A ventilation entrance. The other woman helped me get down in there. When we got down in there, I realized this was a one-way-in, no-way-out type mission. It all had to be blown up. When she realized there was no getting out, she wanted to escape through the ventilation shaft we came in through. I gave her a few pieces of equipment to help her climb back up, and she was able to get up and go.

While I was down there, I realized who the people were that I knew. People from high school. It was weird. I tried to convince them. "Hey, what you're doing is wrong. And if I made it this far, someone else could make it farther." They didn't want to hear it. Instead, the two I knew from school who were helping this group tried to kill me. I ended up defending myself and killing both of them. Then some others they were working with came in, and I was able to shoot them and take them all out.

I thought, I can actually make it out of here. I'm the only one left. I can set these explosives, shut down this server room, and get out. So I set the timer on the bomb I had. It was pretty high-powered for as small as it was. I don't know for sure what it was, but it had a blast radius of 150 yards. I was told it had a three-minute countdown. I was told incorrectly. I had a 30-second countdown.

To help with GPS and figuring out who people were, I had these shades on. Kind of like glasses, or making sunglasses. They were PhotoRay, but they were also digital. They would help me identify faces, places, maps, buildings, contacts, other things like that. I also had a headset and a phone that the Army gave me. After I activated the bomb, the phone, through my headset (which also helped me hear extremely well, like super hearing aids or what hunters use in the field), began talking to me. It told me my service had been greatly appreciated. My family would receive full military benefits. I would receive full military honors as well as a promotion, and my family would receive the promotion benefits for that rank.

It began telling me to sit calm, just relax, and I wouldn't feel anything. It started telling me it was progressing with time. I guess it didn't register that I was running, because technically I was down inside this bunker inside a rock bluff that had been dug out. It was telling me I would start to feel a nice, calm warming sensation, and I was starting to feel that. It told me to keep my heart rate down and just relax, and I wouldn't feel any pain. Instead I was going to feel a kind of belonging, a final ride, before I went toward the afterlife and the spirit realm. In the spirit realm I would also be greatly rewarded and given a chance to come back down here on Earth after I visited a council of elders.

I had already started running toward an entrance, because there were markers on the walls and the floor showing how to get out of this facility. As I'm getting toward the door, the phone is telling me I have mere seconds, and my body would not feel any pain. That I was going to feel relief. That I was finally going to be released from this hell of a world. I had nothing to fear. It was going to be a good, great thing. Something wonderful. I would finally be happy. I would finally have felt the fulfillment I had long desired.

I don't know how they could have programmed this phone to know that I long desired some kind of fulfillment. Maybe they're spying on me, or thought they knew something about me that maybe just wasn't true. It was just really weird.

Anyway, there was this puppy. I guess the terrorists used dogs for something. Tests for gas, sniffing things out, or just to look normal. Most of the time these terrorists had dogs, trying to look like a normal local civilian or immigrant, just a normal person walking their dog. But there was this little kind of Chihuahua, a teacup, and he was solid white. I just couldn't stand to see him not make it, so I picked him up, got out that hatch, and took off running.

I ran, and while I was running this phone was telling me to calm down, relax, everything was going to be okay, that my time was up, and again to lower my heart rate. All I could do was say back to it, "Shut up! You don't control my life. You can just shut that up. I'm getting out of here. If I don't make it, oh well. You already offered me a rank and honors. It's already right here, recorded. If I do make it, somebody is going to answer for this."

I'm running and I'm running, and I start to feel more of the warming sensation. This bomb was like it was energizing the area around me, pushing this kind of force of energy out. It really was giving me a warming sensation, but it made my body feel better than it's ever felt before. I had a sudden burst of energy. The warming feeling was inside even my organs. My brain was feeling that way. It kind of felt like when you get iodine put into your IV at the hospital, which I've had once when I was in the Army. Interesting. But this was like that, except you could feel it inside and out, not just in your blood.

I was running like crazy. I guess the Army didn't expect me to be in as good a shape as I actually was for almost 49 years old. Then I start to see kind of a glow all around me, on the ground in front of me, and I just start running harder. There's a fence ahead of me, kind of a barbed-wire fence. I run and I jump that barbed-wire fence. I believe it had five strands. I almost don't make the jump. I almost stumble it. But I make it, get my feet under me, and I'm still holding that little dog, and I keep on running.

Then there's a super bright flash behind me, and everything in front of me lights up bright, and I escaped. I turned around, looked back, and that bluff had disintegrated. Massively. Everything. It was like a powder all around me. It turned that stone into a powder. There were a few large chunks flying around here and there, but nothing that came my direction was dangerous. It sent powder my way. All around, the grass was burned, incinerated. Trees incinerated. All vegetation gone. It was wild. Like some kind of big giant energy bomb that turned a large portion of the rock into dust and incinerated all the vegetation. Just wild.

Shortly after that, a Blackhawk came flying down. A contact got out of the helo and said, "I knew you'd make it. I always had faith in you, soldier. Come on, let's go get you a good dinner and some rest. You deserved it."

I get into the Blackhawk, and the President is on a live video feed congratulating me on my mission. He also said he knew I would make it, and he was glad I did. He says, "You got your promotion. Plus two." And I'm like, "Whoa, what? There's nothing higher than E-9." And he says, "You're going gold, soldier." And I'm like, "What?" They gave me a spot promotion right there. Then he said, "You know what? Actually, let's just make you a captain." I'm like, "Whoa, that's way more than just two promotions. I mean, wow." I was stunned.

He said, "We had to have a backup protocol in case you couldn't get out of there or get the job done. But I'm glad you did, and I had faith that you would. You did a very good job, soldier. Go enjoy your meal, get some rest, and I will see you in two days."

They took me down to the base at Fort Sill. I was given a real good meal: steak dinner, some lobster in it. It's like they know exactly what I like. Had some oyster stew. I just pigged out. Then they had this special room for me to sleep. I was worn out, and I slept.

Then I woke up here in my bed. That was a crazy doggone dream, but so fun, and it made me feel relevant again, like I'm not a waste to current society.

Originally published on Medium: medium.com/@cudachilders