ventilator – the tent
I woke up in a tent that had a number of other people in it. The tent was a tall, circular, tent, that was stronger and more permanent than a traditional camping tent (it was similar to the tent pictured here; while I never saw the outside of the tent, in my mind it looked like this).
All of us were in an arctic area – I think it was somewhere in Alaska. The area that we were in was remote, and it was the middle of the night. We were there to test new camping and survival equipment like the tent. The other people in the tent were arguing with one another and, although they were calm in their argument, there was a sense of desperation. While this argument and conversation was going on, I could hear the howl of wolves in the background.
The argument was about what we should do next – whether we should stay in the tent, or whether we should take action and strike out on our own to look for help and civilization. All of us in the tent were stuck. We didn’t have enough supplies with us and wolves that we could hear around us were a danger to us. Because we were in a remote area (in the middle of the tundra), there wasn’t much of a possibility that someone would come looking for us, or that someone would find us. The area that we were in was on a wide open plain that was covered with snow.
Inside the tent, we were all laid out in a circle along the walls of the tent. It was dark in the tent, but there was light – I don’t remember if it was from a fire that was in the center of the tent, or if it was from lights that we had. I was lying down on something which was more like a bench than a cot and which ran along the wall of the tent. I’m not exactly sure, but I think the bench was made of metal.
The whole time that I was awake, I was listening to the argument that the different people in the tent were having. I can’t remember any specifics of what was said, or who said what (or even who was there with me; however, I do remember that one of the people that I work with was there), but I grew increasingly frustrated as I heard them talking – I wanted to share what my thoughts were (which I’m not exactly sure what they were at this point – I think it was along the lines of striking out and no longer staying where we were), but I, for some reason, was unable to talk or otherwise respond to what people were saying. While I wasn’t connected to any machinery, and was apparently healthy, in this hallucination, a little bit of reality had snuck in – because I was on the ventilator I was completely unable to communicate, and that reality, and those feelings of frustration, had crept into another hallucination.
