Edward woke up in his bed, his eyes staring at the ceiling, one more day he thought. He was just lying there feeling tired, sooo tired. It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough sleep or that he was physically exhausted. No, that was something else entirely. It wasn’t the exhaustion one felt after a good run, but rather weariness. He was feeling stuck in a loop, days blending into one another as if they were all the same. One more boring day after the other doing exactly the same thing while his life was slowly passing away. And all of that for what? For earning barely enough money to live decently while the whole world was turning into hell bit by bit?

No, Edward had enough of that life, he was done with it. It was just that he didn’t know what to do. Sure, he could just say fuck it and leave everything behind, travelling somewhere with the small amount of money he had. It wasn’t like anybody would care much if he simply disappeared. But how long would it last before his money ran out and he ended with nothing? Six months? One year? He didn’t feel like throwing his life away for such a small amount of time.

Hence Edward was here, stuck in a life he didn’t like while not having the means to leave it. He stood up resigned, he still had to go to work, like it or not. He was working in an assembly line production in food business. He had only one task to do again and again, and … again.

He would have much preferred to at least be able to work on something from start to end and do a complete product on his own. At least it would have been more interesting, but the company wouldn’t have it that way.

Of course, Edward understood that it benefited the company, dividing work into tasks optimized the production, and also meant you could employ unskilled workers that you could pay less…His company never really cared about employees, its motto was don’t make waves, and business as usual.

The only thing making him feel truly alive was his free time on week-ends when he was boxing. He could at least afford that. The rush of adrenaline when the fight started. The feeling of power coming from the way he was able to move. The confidence he earned, practicing and knowing he was good at it. The sweet exhaustion after a good fight. He loved it all.

There was something peculiar about physical tiredness, it was more about the pleasure of something well done instead of the exhaustion he was feeling every time he had to get up for work.

He could have tried to become a professional boxer, but boxing, like lots of sports only brought money when you were standing at the top. Edward knew he was good, but there were plenty of “good” guys. Standing at the top was another thing entirely. Moreover, he had heard too many stories of professionals having to retire after taking too many hits to the head. It happened so often that the trauma received the name of the sport, the boxer syndrome. The brain was a fragile organ and not something you could mess with. Take too many hits and it would stop working as it should. Tremors, mood swings, depression, memories problem. Not only would it stop your career but it would also mess with the rest of your life.

Edward interrupted his train of thoughts before it became too dark. He took a quick breakfast, a shower, got dressed, and he was ready to go.

“It’s just another day, you can do it.” He told himself out loud.

He took his car and went to work as usual. At least the advantage of having boring repetitive work was that he had a lot of time to daydream. He usually remembered some parts of his dreams at night.

Most of the time the dreams he had were just some senseless stuff without much meaning behind it. He had dreams about his previous school life, about his family, about stories he was reading or some series he was watching, or all of that at the same time. As usual, dreams tended to shift, starting at one place and moving to another time and situation without transition as if it were perfectly normal.

But lately, he had dreams that felt more real somehow. He was almost feeling awake in those dreams, just like that time he lucid dreamed. At that time, he had been talking with a friend before realizing in a bout of consciousness that he was actually dreaming, and he couldn’t help telling his friend that he was in his dream. He woke up the moment after, feeling too shock and surprised to stay asleep. The reminiscent thought made a faint smile appear on his face.

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Still, the dreams he currently had were peculiar in the sense that it was almost the same dream every night. He hoped that it wouldn’t stay that way, he already felt stuck in a loop while he was awake, and he didn’t feel like being stuck in another loop in his dreams. He was yearning for change.

Maybe that was all there was to it, he told himself. His dreams repeating his feeling of being stuck, and following the same pattern again and again. That would suck so much.

Each night while dreaming he realized he stood on a floating island in what looked like space, just a dark empty void and some shimmering stars faintly visible in the distance. The island was nothing but barren earth and the occasional rocks. However, leaving the island was a single path meandering forward. At the end of this path he could glimpse something that was looking like a door.

He never managed to reach it until now.

He would try once more tonight if he his dream happened again, which he was pretty confident would happen. He wouldn’t stop until he reached that door. He was feeling sick of experiencing always the same thing, and had enough of what posed as his life. Maybe he couldn’t do much to change his actual life, but he refused to back down even in his dreams.

*****

Edward spent his working day on automatic mode, without really paying attention to it. By now his body had already memorized what he had to do, and he didn’t need to think about it, his muscles memory enough to accomplish the simple tasks entrusted to him. Take the incoming parcel, add the ingredients as shown on the screen, send it to the next worker, and repeat.

That was the irony of new technologies, it was supposed to make you freer, enabling you to talk to close ones from across the globe, and liberating time by doing boring tasks instead of you. And yet his company used it just to check on its workers, alleviating them to just cogs in a machine instead of uplifting them.

How much time you take per food parcel, how many parcels you do per day, how long is your lunch break... And if you fell too much behind the objectives the manager would come to warn you, in front of the whole team...

But if the team managed to reach the objectives often enough, the manager would just raise them. After all, he was the one who was getting most of the bonuses if the team outperform itself. So, it was in his best interest if the working team could work faster, he didn’t care much if a quarter of the workers ended in a burn out after a few years.

*****

When his day was finally over Edward came back home. He ate his dinner, watched a new episode of a passable series, and went to sleep.

Edward opened his eyes. There he was again, standing on the floating island in the middle of nowhere. He knew it was a dream yet he felt awake, even more so than usual. He was alone with the stars as the only witness in the distance. He took the time to look around, there was nothing of particular interest on the island, it was quite small, roughly ten meters in diameter. The only way forward was the meandering path towards the door.

He could see the gate at the end of the path more clearly this time. It was an impressive double door three meters tall and of a bright azure color. Faints patterns were covering its surface. Feeling anticipation Edward walked forward step by step, expecting to wake up at any time. However, to his surprise it didn’t happen and he stopped in front of the gate, a shiver of excitement crossing through his body as his expectations rose up.

“I’m finally able to reach it. It’s time to see what’s on the other side” he whispered to himself.

He pushed the door wings open and walked through. It felt as if passing through a waterfall, there was a feeling of slight resistance then nothing. The moment he passed through the threshold he realized with absolute certainty that it wasn’t a dream.

He stopped in his tracks with wide eyes.

On the other side of the door, he stood in the middle of a lush forest. It wasn’t the kind of well-maintained forest he was used to. There were no paths, just trees everywhere, and they didn’t look young either. Edward was no specialist but he could tell those trees were several decades, maybe even a century old, even the smallest of them was reaching at least thirty meters of height.

He looked up and saw two moons in the sky. It was still night time although the dawn would come soon, he could already see the first rays of the sun. He could feel the cold refreshing air on his skin. He never had the sense of touch in his dreams before.

He turned back to look at the door where he came from. It was gone, there was just a faint glow starting to dissipate where it once stood.

Edward stood still from the shock.

He stayed immobile for a few seconds before exploding into a crazed laugh.

“Well, I wanted something new, seems like I got it,” he said with a smirk.