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If you die in your dreams, do you die in real life?
Ryan Covington's recurring dream consists of a series of bizarre images, but each night it ends the same way...with his own death. Is it possible his dream is trying to tell him something? Maybe a visit from Sanjog Iyer will help clear things up.
Asleep in his apartment, Ryan Covington is visited in his dreams by Sanjog Iyer. The two discuss the connection between dreams and reality, Ryan asking Sanjog if he has the answers to the questions that his recurring dreams present. Sanjog suddenly disappears and a large castle appears in his place. Ryan reluctantly enters and immediately hears a disembodied voice calling his name. He heads upstairs, the voice getting quieter the higher he climbs, and he sees large stained-glass windows depicting various events in his life--his birth, a game of baseball, him making love with his girlfriend, a car crash, and his girlfriend's funeral. The window changes to a mirror and Ryan's reflection smirks as it reaches out to Ryan, pulling him through the window and causing him to fall to what is normally his instantaneous death. However, in this dream, he survives, believes that Freud was an idiot. Sanjog Iyer appears and tells him that dreams are not the focal point of our existence, and that what happens in dreams should remain there. Once more questioning the connection between dreams and reality, Ryan awakens with a stir and draws the curtains back in his apartment, remembering Sanjog's final words in the dream--"Focus on what matters most... the life you still have."
In Robert Atkins's original art, the first panel of page four showed Ryan Covington looking at a small child in the reflection. However, the child was removed during the coloring process. It should be noted that in the original dream submission at activatingevolution.org, Ryan follows the cries of a child into the castle. When Ryan finally sees the child in the mirror and goes to pick him up, the child disappears and another figure appears. In the graphic novel version of the dream, Ryan does not follow the cries of a child, but rather the voice of somebody calling his name. Robert Atkins said that "there [was] supossed to be a baby in the background playing with a chess set. I didnt know what it meant in the script...and thought it was a little creepy. But in the final version they took it out. It helps streamline the story there I think." (9th Wonders.com)