Remember that episode of Star Trek where Picard lived a whole lifetime on some planet which ended up doomed, he grew old(er) and had kids and did all sorts of things, all as this other guy on another world, and eventually he died, but then he woke up back in his own real life, and realized it had all been a dream, brought to him as a real experience, in order to preserve some small part of what that planet’s life had been like, before it vanished? And when he finally was convinced that this was again his real life, the dream world still seemed so real – the people he had met, the love he had developed for them – they were real, and he could never quite shake that.

I think sometimes I dream like that. Knowledge comes to me, and it is as if I have lived something before. Imagination could not bring me this surety.

I was pregnant. I had not been told, but I knew she was a girl, there was no doubt, how could I not know? I felt her weight inside me, felt her moving, felt how odd it was to have another person sharing my internal space. It was disconcerting, appalling, how my belly just kind of hung out there in space, where anything bad might happen. I could not keep my hands away from my belly, could not stop wanting to protect her.



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