Alien Encounter

In my dream, I was wearing an old astronaut pressure suit from the 20th century Gemini program.

I was floating weightless through a twisted mass of silver pipes that stretched above and below, eventually merging into darkness.

I was inside some kind of enormous spaceship, something alien. Ahead of me, a red glow scattered through the spaghetti coils of shiny pipes.

I drifted easily, pulling myself forward, closer to the light. Time and distance had no meaning. On I floated.

The shiny tubes grew sparse, and I emerged at their edge. I was on the inside edge of a massive curving doughnut of silver, the top and bottom arcing and joining hundreds of kilometers away.

To my left and right, the wall of silver tubes curved and disappeared into infinity.

A speck of slowly pulsing red light drifted in the vast emptiness, moving like a mote of dust in a sunbeam. Each time it pulsed, I could feel a low hum through my entire body.

It was amazing. 

I had always thought an alien encounter would be strange, but this was strange times ten. I watched the distant red dot, and I was content.

///

The doctor patted my shoulder and said, "Your eye surgery went just fine. We lasered the lens just enough to correct your vision back to 20/20."