The Phantasmanaut

We were parked at the job site, half of the work team outside, doing whatever it was they were doing. Another colleague sat in the pilot's seat.

"Wanna try driving this thing?" he asked.

Well, hell yeah.

So, in our mirrored helmets and silvery suits, we got the space pod aloft and flew around the surface of the moon.

You'd think the moon would be a cold and desolate place. Actually, it was busy. Real busy. Rows of shops clustered in the business centres, many of them coffeeshops or mamak restaurants with their bright unimaginative signboards, all packed with the supper crowd that spilled into the streets and the alleyways. Of course it was a supper crowd. It was always midnight on this side of the moon.

Which was when I realised something was really odd. I mean, here I was in my nifty space pod, dressed in my fabulous spacesuit, yet out there were a hundred or more people talking and laughing and eating their maggi mee goreng or roti pisang, and wearing nothing but their pasar-malam-purchased t-shirts (or singlets) and shorts. What about oxygen? Is it not way below freezing? No need protection from radiation meh?

Oops. Been dreaming way past my wake-up call again. Damn.

Strange how it was that I dreamed of being out there. Like, way out there. Was it all the travelling I've been doing? Could it be that some subconscious part of me misses site supervisory work? Maybe it's a premonition about our nation's first astronaut (hopefully the poster boy, of course) having to endure space without roti canai? Or Wingedman's frequent chatter about flight stimulation simulation?

Maybe it's a sign it's time to take a break and get away. Far, far away.