THAT DAY

Sick again. Cold or the flu starting up. I seem to get way more flu-like infections than my friends. What's with that?

THAT NIGHT

I'm on a sailing ship in an L. Sprague de Camp fantasy novel (I think "His plots always get his characters stuck on a ship somehow"). I think we're in the Caribbean. Our convoy has just two ships, one iron, one wooden. On board are me (a tall blonde girl tonight), my friend Lucinda the Good Witch (a real-life witch I have a crush on), and some men from the 1940s, warm but simple by my standards--full of weird mental walls, stuff they take for granted.

The captain's written as a "colorful" old man. Hmm. I find him a grouchy old creep.

An atoll. He yells "Heave ANCHOR!" We swim to shore--just a hundred yards of clear gentle lagoon--and emerge on a golden beach. Beautiful isle! Three of us lug a barrel, hunting fresh water. But we always listen for a cry from the lookout. There's a notorious pirate who haunts these parts.

"Pirate Ho!" The lookout spots the black ship an hour off; our water-squad rushes back with a full barrel. But the rest of the crew wastes that hour! No one hides, no one breaks out the guns--no guns, apparently.

The Pirate Crew bristles with guns. They easily board and capture us.

I slip into the bathroom (yep, there's a bathroom) and lock the door. But the bolt won't engage! Pirates searching the ship start turning the knob. I wedge it shut with my my body! They assume it's locked. Go round to try the outside door, but that one I did lock successfully. The Pirate King says "Come out or I'll start firing shots through the door." I realize I might hide in the heavy, antique metal bathtub; unlikely to let bullets through.

But if I'm in the tub, I can't wedge the door shut! So the only way I'll escape is if they fire a long time and I don't come out AND they decide I'm dead without checking. I have nothing to fake blood with, can't pretend to be dead if they do inspect.

Unless they're idiots, my position's hopeless!

So I go out the back door and walk round to the mess, where they're all gathered. I make an impressive entrance: a tall blonde giantess--for compared to these pirate folk from centuries ago, we moderns are big.

We even have all our teeth.

The captain says "Eh, you lot are gettin' cleverer. Mebbe we sailt too far from our 'ome year."

I say "Aye, and you shouldn't. Raid the deep future, you'll make enemies you can't understand and can't rule. Stay in the Caribbean and the Pirate Age, where folk know the game--and YOU know the risks. Futurians won't play."

But will he listen? I'm bluffing. I'm in his power. Just another prisoner.

Just another blonde giant who's warning him. With impossible, perfect teeth. From the future.

Maybe he will. I would.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Crush on Lucinda: true. Not doing anything about it, and won't--she's not single, & I'm visibly, chronically ill.
• I'm a tall healthy strong blonde girl with great teeth: I AM tall but ill, weak, male, dark-haired, with crooked teeth. The dream echoes Ursula Le Guin's story April in Paris--medieval poet François Villon falls for a time-traveling archeologist who is an unearthly beauty; why, she has all her teeth! We do forget that a full set was uncanny, back in the day.
• Female not male: in my dreams such shifts seem to flag urgent messages--of any kind, not just on sex/gender. I'm usually happier and more confident when female. So I have some gender dysphoria. But it's more about health & beauty than gender per se, and the dream brings that out--the pirates, scrawny scarred & ugly, normal for the 17th Century, are like me now. So tired of being ill!
• Unprepared despite advance warning of pirates: Sensed all week I'd caught a virus; did little about it.
• Time-traveling pirates: well, diseases are. They board one 'vessel', hop to another... for centuries. But maybe I can do better than just endure illness--here in our fabulous future. The dream's prompting me to fight back.

2017 NOTES

I didn't know how to act on the dream at first, other than to seek doctors and therapists. No help. I was sick all through the 80s.

Then I started ignoring doctors--charted my daily health, used trial and error. Turned out strong antibiotic herbs helped. I had some chronic infection that had made me violently sensitive to gluten. With herbs and strict diet, I now stay energetic and painfree.

All it took was dumping 20th Century healthcare.

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