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Oct. 3rd, 2008 12:05 amIt takes twenty minutes to move from merely napping to the start of a proper sleep cycle. Anything before that is just idling, so to speak. After the twenty-minute mark the brain and body rhythms kick in that lead inevitably into dream and out of it. From there they ebb and flow, three to three-and-a-half hours at a time, until light or sound or other chemical signal sends the sleeper awake.
There are ways of altering the cycle: medicines, meditation, environmental conditions, fatigue beyond the common run. All of them jar the inevitable turns of the body, and tend to knock the dream-cycle out of whack far enough that the sleeper holds no lasting memory upon awakening. As such, they're not healthy. Useful in the short term, maybe, but not healthy.
Gordon's aware of this. He just wishes they were reliable. He's had the nightmares so often since Black Mesa that he's starting to envy Tomas Izquierdo. For a long time he kept them at bay by walking himself to the point of utter exhaustion every night, so that when he slept he'd drop too deep to dream, but that's not an option now. When he's awake he's got to keep watch for Charlie and Valerie and Alyx, and stand guard over Barney. There's no time for walking the lake. And when he finally gets to drop off on the couch... well, that's when they start coming.
Sometimes they're familiar. The clench of terror low in the abdomen as he leaps from walkway to pipe, his Geiger counter screaming in anguish as he fails by inches every time- that's an old friend by now. So's the arena of open sand and high stone walls, whether it erupts in antlions from below or the thup-thup-thup of an Apache's rotors from above. There's one nightmare in particular that's nothing but mournful whale sounds as a guard whispers, Be quiet! This thing hears us!, coupled with the sure and certain knowledge that his foot is already on its way down and will inevitably strike the metal floor with enough noise to draw the tentacle thing's wrath. And there's the green glass dream; that one keeps coming back, even if half the time it's just the tink! of his foot against fused sand or the sight of the guard's shadow burned into nearby stone.
But there are others now. The trip home saw to that.
The one where the dune buggy runs out of fuel and the nearest thumper's four hundred yards away, and all he's got is his crowbar as the sandy soil along the sides of the road starts to shake and erupt.
The one where Combine soldiers run past him on both sides, ignoring him completely, as the antlion bull bellows and he realizes he's out of ammo and the gravity gun won't work.
The one where he's got to get across the remains of a three-story building to the spot where Barney's crouching next to a pillar of brick, only there's no walls left and the whole place is lighting up with the tiny blue sparks of Combine sniper sights.
The one where (and oh, this one is common, this one is almost as bad as the green glass dream) the door flies open, and it's Alyx, only when she lunges at him to press her head against his chest and wrap her arms around him, her whole body turns to ash and starts to blow away as he watches.
Them and uncounted others. They're all there. If he could push them away somehow he'd do it in an instant. Now and again he has a sleep cycle where they don't disturb him, but they're few and far between. The most he can do, he supposes, is adapt to them. Learn to calm himself down before sleep; learn to push them away after, come awake as quickly as he can, put them aside. He's getting better at that- practice does, after all, make perfect- but there's one he's never, never, ever going to be able to adapt to.
It starts when he rolls over in bed and cracks open one eye enough to read May 15, 2001 on the calendar. And always- every single time- it always ends twenty-four dream hours later, in Sector C Test Labs' C/33a Test Chamber, with Dr. Sark's words ringing in his ears:
"Soon, Gordon."
There are ways of altering the cycle: medicines, meditation, environmental conditions, fatigue beyond the common run. All of them jar the inevitable turns of the body, and tend to knock the dream-cycle out of whack far enough that the sleeper holds no lasting memory upon awakening. As such, they're not healthy. Useful in the short term, maybe, but not healthy.
Gordon's aware of this. He just wishes they were reliable. He's had the nightmares so often since Black Mesa that he's starting to envy Tomas Izquierdo. For a long time he kept them at bay by walking himself to the point of utter exhaustion every night, so that when he slept he'd drop too deep to dream, but that's not an option now. When he's awake he's got to keep watch for Charlie and Valerie and Alyx, and stand guard over Barney. There's no time for walking the lake. And when he finally gets to drop off on the couch... well, that's when they start coming.
Sometimes they're familiar. The clench of terror low in the abdomen as he leaps from walkway to pipe, his Geiger counter screaming in anguish as he fails by inches every time- that's an old friend by now. So's the arena of open sand and high stone walls, whether it erupts in antlions from below or the thup-thup-thup of an Apache's rotors from above. There's one nightmare in particular that's nothing but mournful whale sounds as a guard whispers, Be quiet! This thing hears us!, coupled with the sure and certain knowledge that his foot is already on its way down and will inevitably strike the metal floor with enough noise to draw the tentacle thing's wrath. And there's the green glass dream; that one keeps coming back, even if half the time it's just the tink! of his foot against fused sand or the sight of the guard's shadow burned into nearby stone.
But there are others now. The trip home saw to that.
The one where the dune buggy runs out of fuel and the nearest thumper's four hundred yards away, and all he's got is his crowbar as the sandy soil along the sides of the road starts to shake and erupt.
The one where Combine soldiers run past him on both sides, ignoring him completely, as the antlion bull bellows and he realizes he's out of ammo and the gravity gun won't work.
The one where he's got to get across the remains of a three-story building to the spot where Barney's crouching next to a pillar of brick, only there's no walls left and the whole place is lighting up with the tiny blue sparks of Combine sniper sights.
The one where (and oh, this one is common, this one is almost as bad as the green glass dream) the door flies open, and it's Alyx, only when she lunges at him to press her head against his chest and wrap her arms around him, her whole body turns to ash and starts to blow away as he watches.
Them and uncounted others. They're all there. If he could push them away somehow he'd do it in an instant. Now and again he has a sleep cycle where they don't disturb him, but they're few and far between. The most he can do, he supposes, is adapt to them. Learn to calm himself down before sleep; learn to push them away after, come awake as quickly as he can, put them aside. He's getting better at that- practice does, after all, make perfect- but there's one he's never, never, ever going to be able to adapt to.
It starts when he rolls over in bed and cracks open one eye enough to read May 15, 2001 on the calendar. And always- every single time- it always ends twenty-four dream hours later, in Sector C Test Labs' C/33a Test Chamber, with Dr. Sark's words ringing in his ears:
"Soon, Gordon."
