In my science fiction short story, My Sight, I orginally got my idea from a dream my friend had. I developed it from there. But to me, dreams try to communicate with us, either to warn us of something that may happen or something that has happened and it's our subconscious way of trying to deal with it. And of course, we can't always tell what our dreams mean because they can be metaphors for something important.

In my mother's part of the family, there's a trait that goes to each generation, usually to the females since I hear nothing from the men about this. Ever so often, usually about once a month or so at least, I have a dream of something that will happen--exactly as I dreamt it. I, personally, would rather not have this "gift". Knowing what will happen in the near future is good when nothing terrible happens, but if I had my choice whether to know or not, I'd rather not know like everybody else.

Anyway, this story has a lot of metaphors. For example, her life is perfect. And in heaven, that's how I believe it to be. Each person has their own idea of perfection, and Celeste's idea of it is to be the great scientist she always wanted to be, including the perfect living (complete with cute purple fuzzy slippers!).

The name Celeste means "heavenly" for those who didn't know, which I thought would be an ironic twist. And who knows if that was her name in the last life she had? That's something I left hanging. She had other lives too.. a woman in Egypt, a young native American boy, and even a Grand Duchess of Russia; Olga, the oldest of the Romanov children. I suppose it was my Russian history obsession that inspired me to write about it.

I also threw in the true fates of her lab team. Thomas died in a war, one of Kevin's jokes when a little too far, and Drew over dosed.

There are other things in the story of course that should be recognizable. :)