Rupert and the Dream Construction Zone

Rupert had walked straight into a wall, but instead of clumsily falling backwards or finding himself embarrassed, he was shocked to find he was now stuck to the wall. His face was sodden in a sticky adhesive that was fleshed in brick, and his arm was turned backwards uncomfortably. Perhaps this was what it was like for the flies his mother would trap with flypaper in the hot summers. Rupert pulled, yanked, and convulsed his adolescent body until his shoulder and arm became free. Looking back at the wall, he could see no glues or icky substances that had so strongly held him, but instead only the matte, porous brick. 

What an unusual dream this was becoming. It had had only started as walking home from school, on a typical day, with typical weather, and the typical people he would see. And then all of the sudden, he had walked straight into a wall that was not there before. Yesterday he had dreamed that the pretty blonde girl from math class, Brianna, had snuck him a kiss in the neighborhood park. That was a much better dream. She even held his hand.

With another yank, Rupert fell down to the sidewalk but it did not hurt. Looking back at the wall, he could see that it was freestanding. It was the very width of his small wingspan and was placed full-tilt across the sidewalk in such a way that it would prevent the unsuspecting pedestrian from continuing on their path. But this was easily resolved. He would step down onto the street and walk around the wall. It was hardly complicated.

But the moment Rupert stepped his blue Converse shoe onto the asphalt, the street became filled with speeding cars. Fearing for his safety his jumped backwards, back onto the sidewalk, shocked by the colorful amount of loud, honking, squealing, speeding, flashing, braking, and jolting traffic that consumed the neighborhood street. 

He would need to take a different approach. The wall was very high, even if it wasn’t too sticky to climb. It was adjacent to a building. There were too many cars to walk around the wall. Maybe this was more complicated. Or maybe it wasn’t. 

A door in the nearby building opened, and an elderly woman toddled out onto the sidewalk in a turquoise housedress to shake clean a doormat. She coughed at the dust and cat hair that swelled into the air. Without a second thought, Rupert darted into the doorway, startled the old woman, and ran down the hallway of what was an apartment building. Passing the point of the wall, Rupert shoved himself through another entrance further down. 

Outside the door was a sweltering desert. The blue sky was free of power lines and the usual suburban surroundings he was accustomed to on Market Street. A vulture circled over the cacti and then flew past him to his right. But it disappeared into the wide open of outer space, and directly into a swirling nebula. Rupert was astonished to be standing on the edge of the stars. This was becoming an especially interesting dream. And then the sound of a jackhammer broke the quiet of the desert and space.

To Rupert’s left were a number of caution signs, scaffolding, piles of plywood, cans of paint, brushes, ladders, drills, buckets, rope, cacti to plant, tumbleweeds to tumble, a dump truck of desert sand, and a small crane. There were no cars in the street, and the road ended into the desert. The desert became outer space. A man in an orange construction helmet was using a jackhammer to break apart the sidewalk. He was clearly installing the desert. The man had a long white beard, which was braided towards the bottom, and his tailcoat was embossed with pearlescent stars. His body shook from the vibration of the jackhammer. From the corner of his eye, he spied Rupert in the doorway of the apartment building. Surprised, the man stopped the jackhammer, dusted himself off, and approached the young boy.

“How—why—what are you doing here? How did you get around my wall?” he asked Rupert in a scolding manner. 

“But this is my dream,” said Rupert validly, “What are you doing in it?”

“That doesn’t matter! I design your dreams, and this is my construction zone that you are trespassing upon,” he said.

“How am I trespassing if it’s my dream?” Rupert had never considered anyone else would make his dreams aside from himself. He felt a little annoyed, and maybe a little intruded upon.

The designer looked down at a very large gold wristwatch, which many hands pointed to many different symbols. He shook his head and waved his hands back and forth, “I simply don’t have time for explanations! Any moment the entire Sioux nation will ride in from that direction, and if I don’t keep working, they will fall right into outer space and have a very nasty encounter with the inhabitants of quadrant five. And then I’ll be tied up in diplomacy for weeks until I can paint everybody back into their own dreams! Now young man, you can see that I’m very busy and the work I’m doing is very important. Now, go back through that door, and if you just happen to walk to the candy store within the next ten minutes, a certain young Brianna will just happen to be there.”

“Well, why not put up one of those sticky walls so that they can’t fall in? Wouldn’t that give you more time to work?”

The designer was about to scold Rupert again, when he paused with his mouth open. Then he crossed his arms, and stroked his beard, “I suppose I could do that…”

He peered at Rupert suspiciously and walked towards the dark and mystic scene of space. From the inside of his coat, he pulled a fine-tipped paintbrush and waved it like a magic wand. The bristles flashed and flickered, and the designer, with long strokes of his arms and lunges of his legs, created a cliff overlooking an endless canyon. It must have been a mile down from the edge. Rupert took a few steps backwards. 

“It’s not real, or should I say cognitive,” reassured the designer, “a harmless illusion. They themselves will save me the work of making a real by believing it is.”

“And then it would really be a dream,” said Rupert. He was beginning to see how this worked.

The designer was pleased, “precisely,” he replaced the brush back into his starry tailcoat, “You’re a very smart boy.”

“I have the best grades in reading and art in my class,” said Rupert confidently, “and I’m really good at video games.”

“I see,” said the designer, “So you have an extensive imagination and have attention deficit disorder?”

“You sound like my mom…”

“Have you ever considered a career in dreams?”

Rupert hadn’t, to be truthfully. He wasn’t aware that such a job existed until this moment. But he was inside a dream now! How could he even be sure it really did exist? He was sort of confused and really was beginning to think he should walk to the candy shop and see Brianna.

“It’s a great profession,” said the designer, “I’ve been doing it for hundreds of years and have yet to run out of ideas, spaceships, sand, monkeys, or paper cups. I must admit: I am awfully tired nowadays. And people don’t seem to dream big dreams any more. Only small things: new cabinetry, divorces, computer upgrades, and lottery tickets. Perhaps that’s still why I have so many monkeys in inventory. And people just don’t use paper cups anymore with this whole recycling deal...”

“Well, I did think it would be fun to be an artist. I guess it’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s very similar, yes, but it requires a little more strategy,” the designer knelt down onto a knee to see eye to eye with the boy, “I think you’d be very good at it. I’ve been looking a very long time for someone to replace me: someone who could get through brick walls. I’m tired, Rupert. But you’re young, and you are a natural born dreamer. But you could be the builder of dreams. You could be a designer like me. You could live every day in a gleam of art, music, emotion, and opportunity. You, Rupert, could spin the world on the tip of your finger like a basketball, and never worry that you will drop it. You could wear electricity like a pair of comfortable jeans, or have an entire warehouse of useless paper cups. You could feast on a thousand olives and never have a stomachache. On one day, you could live in a mountain with the peace and understanding of a brotherhood of monks, or on another you could dance on the musical staff and waltz with the minor chords. You could walk in the shadow of the stars or dig the craters that make them unique, with a shovel made for hands just your size. It would be your path to design and engineer: to plant, grow, fold, and trace over the inaccuracies of life; to patch the fine print of existence, and bring color where there is only grey. You could take a person who is lost and place them on a map where the longitude is their wants and the latitude is their needs. It is yours to change. You’ve always created, but this is different. To design dreams is to define the truth and nature of life,” said the designer, “and the pay is excellent: 401K, benefits, holidays, parking, you name it.”

“But what about my mom? What about my dad? My brothers? Brianna!! I’d never get to see them again!” 

“You wouldn’t have to be alone, you can bring whomever you like! What fun are dreams when you have no one to share them with?”

Rupert smiled, “When I could I start?”

“Silly young man,” said the designer. He took out the paintbrush from his coat and placed it into Rupert’s hand, “The job was yours to begin with.”