Last night’s featured dream included me as a young man. I put myself in my early twenties, with thick brown hair, my brown military ‘stach, tight skin, and a fit physique. Wasn’t in the military, but looked like me when I was in the military.

However, I wasn’t using my real life name. Instead of Michael, I was Richard when I was male, but also knew my name as Adley when I was female. I never was female in the dream, but I knew that as my female name, because I sometimes became a female.

I didn’t know anyone else’s name in the dream.

It began, strangely, with an awakening. I’d been busy with some undefined matters when recent memories were unearthed. From them, I realized that I’d been part of a project. In this project were twelve people who had special powers to change things. That included changing reality by modifying the past, present, and future. We collaborated in various ways as a team of twelve.

The twelve were male and female, insofar as I knew, and all young people into their mid-twenties. We didn’t all usually work at the same place and time, though.

We did wear a sort of uniforms, black pants with a square green tunic. I don’t think I knew the others’ names because the project didn’t want us to develop relationships.

The Project’s goal was to fix things that had gone wrong with the world. When I was part of it, we’d restored water to drought areas, and used our powers to collect trash from the sea and destroy it. To do this effectively, we’d be located in separate locations. This was based on the project’s calculations of how to best accomplish our goals. Everything was sharply compartmentalized.

From my new memories, I understood that the twelve had been reduced to seven. I’d been part of the seven. That was done because the released five didn’t work with us. Their ideas about how to fix the world didn’t match with the rest of us.

Then I learned that I’d been cut, along with all but one. After we’d been cut, access to our memories about the project were curtailed. Apparently, those memories were now restored because there was a problem with the project.

When everyone was cut, a three-year-old toddler was retained. This child had a remarkable ability to remake the world. More powerful than the rest of us powers, project management had concluded that one power was easier to guide, especially since this was a child.

I’d never known there was a child on the project. I usually worked alone, so I was immensely surprised.

Unfortunately, as the child’s powers exponentially grew, the toddler became willful, and, well, evil and destructive. They were doing whatever they wanted; the course the child followed would soon destroy the world. Stopping him was why I and five more were brought back.

We were watching this curly-haired white child as I remembered this information.

Realizing what was happening, I pulled a handgun. As the others gaped, without hesitating, I shot the child.

My peers were horrified. A woman said, “You shot him. You shot a child. Why do you even have a gun?”

“For things like this,” I retorted. “But it didn’t do much. Look.”

All six of us with powers were watching. In the men’s clothing section of a carpetted department store, the power child, shot through the chest, was staggering around between clothing racks filled with dark suits, but not bleeding. I was shocked and sickened.

“We can’t kill him,” another power said.

That confirmed what I’d guessed. I’d read the project manual. Killing us, the powers, if necessary was listed in one section, if that’s what it took if something went wrong. I believed that the project had already attempted to kill the child before they brought the rest of us back.

I suggested to the other five powers that I grapple with the child, power to power. Two others with powers mocked and criticized the idea. One, a male, said, “You can’t. Your powers aren’t not as strong as him.”

“I agree,” I answered, “my powers aren’t as strong, but they’re pretty good. Plus, I’m older than him, with more experience, and I think I’m smarter than him.”

“Still,” another power, a female said, “you can’t beat him.”

Impatiently I shook my head, irritated that they didn’t grasp what I was thinking. “I don’t want to beat him. I just want to stall and distract him so that the project and the rest of you can figure out how to stop him.”

“I’ll help you,” another male power said. “Two must be better than one.”

I agreed. At that point, the child charged us. With a hand wave, he brought the building smashing down.

Instantly countering, I restored the building and flipped the child upside down. I knew the child always worked through other things. Directly working him instead of things around him, would delay and distract him, in my reasoning.

Grasping what I was doing, the power helping me spun the child and wrapped in layers of clothing. Soon he was the center of a ball of shirts, pants, and suits.

Unfortunately, that’s where the dream ended.

Awakening, I thought a great deal about the dream. While flattering to be cast as someone with power to change the world, I thought it a manifestation of wishful thinking, given the course of recent world events and our inability to take decisive action on global problems. The child represents those who would destroy the world without concern for themself or anyone in the world.