Edward woke up in his bed, one more day he thought. He was just lying there feeling tired, sooo tired. It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough sleep or that he was physically exhausted. No, that was something else entirely. He was feeling stuck in a loop, one more boring day, doing exactly the same thing while his life was slowly passing away. And all of that for what, for earning barely enough money to live decently while the whole world was turning into hell bit by bit?

No, Edward had enough of that life; it was just that he didn’t know what to do. Sure he could just say fuck it and leave everything with the small amount of money he had, not like anybody would care much. But how long will it last before he ran out and left with nothing? Six months? One year? He didn’t feel like throwing his life away for such a small amount of time.

Hence Edward was here, stuck in a life he didn’t like while not having the means to leave it. He stood up resigned, he still had to go to work, like it or not. He was working in an assembly line production work in the food business. He had only one task to do again and again, and … again.

He would have much preferred to at least be able to work on something from the start to the end and do a complete product on his own. At least it would have been more interesting.

Of course, he understood that it benefited the company, dividing the work into tasks optimized the production, and also means you could employ unskilled workers that you could pay less…His company never really cared about employees, its motto was don’t make waves, and business as usual.

The only thing making him feel truly alive was when he was boxing. He could at least afford that on weekends. The rush of adrenaline when the fight started. The feeling of power coming from the way he was able to move. The sweet exhaustion after a good fight. He loved all of it.

There was something peculiar about physical tiredness, it was more about the pleasure of something well done instead of the exhaustion he was feeling every time he had to get up for work.

He could have tried to become a professional boxer, but boxing, like lots of sports only brought money when you were standing at the top. Edward knew he was good, but there were plenty of “good” guys. Standing at the top was another thing entirely. Moreover, he had heard too many stories of professionals having to retire after taking too many hits to the head. It happened so often that it received its own name, the boxer syndrome. The brain was a fragile organ and not something you could mess with.

He took a quick breakfast, took a shower, got dressed, and got ready to go.

“It’s just another day, you can do it.” He told himself.

He took his car and went to work as usual. At least the advantage of having boring repetitive work was that he had a lot of time to daydream. He usually remembered some parts of his dreams at night.

Most of the time the dreams he had were just some senseless stuff without much meaning behind it. He had dreams about his previous school life, about his family, about stories he was reading or some series he was watching, or all of that at the same time. As usual, a dream could start at one place and move to another time and situation as if it were perfectly normal.

But lately, he had dreams that felt more real somehow. He was almost feeling awake in those dreams, just like that time he dreamed about a friend and told him that he was dreaming and that he was in his dream. He woke up just after telling him that. The thought made a faint smile appear on his face.

Still, those dreams were peculiar in the sense that it was almost the same dream every night. He hoped that it wouldn’t stay that way, he already felt stuck in a loop while he was awake, and he didn’t feel like being stuck in another loop in his dreams.

Maybe that was all there was to it, his dreams repeating his feeling of being stuck, and following the same pattern again and again.

Each time he stood on a floating island in what looked like space, just a dark empty void and some shimmering stars faintly visible in the distance.

From the island, there was only one path meandering forward, at the end of this path something was looking like a door.

He never managed to reach it until now.

He would try again tonight if he had the same dream. After all, it was his dream and he was feeling sick of experiencing always the same thing, he wanted something new.

He spent his working day on automatic mode, without really paying attention to it. By now his body had already memorized what he had to do. Take the incoming food parcel, add the ingredients as shown on the screen send it to the next worker, and repeat.

That was the irony of new technologies, it was supposed to make you freer, enabling you to talk to close ones from across the globe, and liberating time by doing tasks instead of you. And yet his company used it just to check on the workers.

How much time do you take per food parcel, and how many parcels do you do during the day. And if you fell too much behind the objectives the manager would come to warn you, in front of the whole team...

But if the team managed to reach the objectives often enough, the manager would just raise them. After all, he was the one who was getting most of the bonuses if the team outperform itself. So it was in his best interest if the working team could work faster.

When his day was finally over Edward came back home. He ate his dinner, watched a new episode of Games of Throne, and went to sleep.

Edward opened his eyes, there he was again, standing on the floating island in the middle of nowhere. He knew it was his dream yet he felt awake, even more so than usual. He was alone with the stars as the only witness. He took the time to look around, there was nothing of particular interest on the island, it was quite small roughly ten meters in diameter. The only way forward was the meandering path towards the door.

He could see the gate more clearly now, it was three meters tall, a double door of bright azure color. Feeling anticipation Edward walked forward step by step, he stopped just in front of it.

“I’m finally able to reach the door, it’s time to see what’s on the other side” he whispered.

He pushed the door open and walked through, it felt as if passing through a waterfall, there was a feeling of slight resistance. The moment he passed through the threshold he realized with absolute certainty that it wasn’t a dream.

He stopped in his tracks with wide eyes.

On the other side of the door, he was situated in a lush forest. It wasn’t the kind of well-maintained forest he was used to. There was no path, just trees everywhere, and they didn’t look young either. Edward was no specialist but he could tell those trees were several decades maybe even a century old, they were reaching a height of thirty meters.

He looked up and saw two moons in the sky, it was still night although the dawn would come soon, he could already see the first rays of the sun. He could feel the cold refreshing air on his skin.

He turned back to look at the door where he came from. It was gone, there was just a faint glow starting to dissipate where it once stood.

Edward stood still from the shock.

He stayed immobile for a few seconds before exploding into a laugh.

“Well, I wanted something new, seems like I got it,” he said with a smirk.