Bacon Life

“Another flying dream, Ted?” Josie said, looking at him with mild pity.

Ted had a cape in one hand, a jar of cotton balls in another and a small electric fan under his arm. He slung the cape over his shoulder and shrugged. “Eh, I don’t mind it too much. It’s kind of a kick looking at the joy on their face as they fly through the “sky”.

“Or the pure terror, I mean, that can be kind of funny, too” Nash said. “My last flyer was also a screamer”

“There must be some way to make it… I don’t know. More interesting? More… meaningful? Let me see your brief” Bea held out her hand

“Ok, first of all” Bea got up and yanked the cape from Ted’s shoulder “no capes” She pointed at the briefing.

“Oh, well, yeah, ok there’s that” he mumbled. “But I mean this cape is rather… scarfy?”

“What about this meat thing? That looks like it could be cool” Bea said as Josie and Bharat walked in just then, both of their ears perking up at that last sentence. “Meat thing?” Josie asked.

Ted winced and read from the brief: “A blink and you’ll miss it meat reference. But It’s not even mandatory, just” he makes exaggerated air quotes “appreciated. Whatever that even means.”

Bea steps up “It means, stretch goals! It means it gives you an excuse to almost go off brief. To make a flying dream…”

“It’s really more of a hover with a ribbon” Ted interrupted

Bea doesn’t even notice “… a lot more interesting. So, who’s got a meat reference? I’ll go first: a passing flight of sausage birds!”

Josie giggled. “Ok, um…one cloud made of mortadella”

Bharat joined in “What about if suddenly The Dreamer realizes that everything below is made of bacon? Including The Dreamer, but just for like 3 seconds.”

Bea and Josie looked impressed, Ted just looked uncertain. “How am I going to pull that off, and like, why would I?”

“Duh, for the lols, obvi” Josie said, flopping down into a chair around the table

“No, Josie” Bea corrected “it’s to elevate the dream experience and maybe even create a core memory” She got excited “this is your chance to make a lasting impression, you could change their entire relationship to themselves and the world around them!”

“With…3 seconds of bacon?” Ted wasn’t buying it

“With 3 seconds of bacon MAGIC” Bea corrected. “Seeing that everything, even and especially the self, is made of bacon and that it’s all connected? Deep stuff, right there. Maybe even award winning.”

Ted looked up “Wait. Award winning what? What award?”

Josie stood up, arm making a glamourous sweeping motion as she said “The Dreamies” in an awestruck voice, eyes looking at something beautiful, far away. Suddenly her face went back to her normal semi-sneer, and she fell back into her seat. “But Basic never wins anything, it’s all Prophetic or Abstract Surrealism sweeping it. Which is bullshit because most of those dreams are award bait anyway. Like, they game the briefs so that they can make these insane statements.”

Bharat rolled his eyes ever so slightly “That’s not entirely true. Occasionally a night terror or Lucid situation gets something.”

“Yeah, but with Lucid you need to really watch the rights because that can get tricky, which is why they get passed over a lot, too.” Nash added, looking up from her shoebox diorama, and then immediately going right back to it.

Bea nodded, moving over to Ted. “Right but this thing here” she pointed to the brief “this ‘meat moment’ could really get their attention! Think of it: Basic Dream Division doing a little art moment that really makes everyone think ‘oh hey, not that basic’ am I right?”

“Ok, all right” Ted was getting into it. “So, like… bacon life. Then back to real world and The Dreamer is going to be like wait…did I even see that? Is everything bacon? Am…am I bacon, too? And then slap bang back to normal. Yeah, I can see how that could be a thing. Memorable, but not like… scary or foreboding”

“Oh absolutely, you need to walk that line carefully. We can’t get into any of that. Just a normal dream experience but…” Bea winked “slightly elevated”

“Bacon life. Bacon life. Bacon life!” the chant started going up from the others until Ted joined in “BACON LIFE! I’m going to do it!”

“Yay! That’s the spirit” Bea took a post it and wrote Everything is bacon, even you on it and handed it over to Ted. “Go get ‘em! And do not forget to grab a ribbon from props”

Ted grabbed the post it note and headed out the door. As soon as it closed, Josie looked at the others

“He’s going to fuck it up, right?”

“No, he might actually pull it off, don’t be so negative” Bea replied with a shrug “although, yeah, I mean there is a good chance he’s going to fuck it up.”

The printer started up, Bea walked over to it “I kind of want to do something to get a Dreamy now, too” she said, tearing off the brief

She looked at it, sighed. “yeah, this might not be the one” and headed out the door to props, grabbing a pen off the table as she left.

---

“I flew too close to the sun” Ted sighed

“Well, technically you hovered too close to the sun?” Josie tried to cheer him up. “Honestly, it’s not that bad.”

Bea walked in, a form in triplicate under her arm that she tossed directly into the bin upon entering. “oh hey!” she said, brightening when she saw Ted “Bacon Life! How did it go?”

“Welllllllll. It was… I mean it was probably memorable at least? I guess I should pull a retention rate on it and see. But it was honestly a little…well a little long. I don’t think the Dreamies are going to be knocking down our door on this one” Ted said looking down and fiddling with a red ribbon tied around his wrist.

“Ok, what happened” Bea sat down, all ears.

“So the hovering thing was fine, and The Dreamer seemed to really understand the ribbon almost intuitively, like left makes you hover a little to the left, right and you hover a bit more right… easy peasy. After a few minutes of that, and they were comfy and content, I was like ok, time for the bacon bit. I held up the sign and on cue” Ted snapped his fingers “it was all bacon, the world, the dreamer, all of it”

Bea was smiling, nodding along “omg, sounds perfect! Cinematic, even!”

Ted looked back at her, seriously. “It was, it really was. And that was why I chose exactly that second for the invisible choir. Like, really sell it, you know?”

“Yes! Perfect timing, right? The drama, the glory, the bacony goodness of life, the universe and everything!” Bea was fully onboard, but wondering why the glum look.

“Yeah, that was the plan, but the chorus humming in dissaproval kind of…  well it actually kind of took The Dreamer out of the momenet and I think they thought that the choir was like, signalling that Bacon Life was not Best Life, that it was more like…”

“the sizzle went fizzle” Nash intteruped.

“Yeah, basically” Ted nodded. “It was like all of the sudden there was this kind of ‘wait, we’re all just meat and my bacon is like not any different than the bacon I had for breakfast”

“Which, honestly, I mean, true. So that doesn’t seem to be a huge problem, right? I mean, memorable, meaningful, maybe even like a life changing dream?” Josie tried, helpfully.

“Well, yeah, but no because then suddenly The Dreamer was like ‘fuck hovering, I am just going to go to town on this all’ and started to eat their own arm.”

“Ewwwwwwwww” everyone in the break room recoiled in utter grossness.

“Yeah, exactly, so I shut it all down before it got too dark” Ted got up and shrugged. “So yeah, maybe they’ll remember it, or bits of it”

“Bacon bits of it” Josie added not looking up from her magazine.