Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
First, I was working for a friend I used to work for, Laura. She was a terrific boss, perhaps the best I ever had. Certainly in the top three.
I was injured in the dream and forced to wear a cast on my left arm. It struck me as an unusual cast but I can’t provide any details. Encumbering me, it was forcing me to do things in unusual ways.
Laura was at her desk, watching and talking. I suddenly had a brainstorm about how the cast I wore could be modified to make it easier to deal with the limitations it imposed. Laura began talking about it a split second after the idea came to me. We both started babbling about with growing excitement. Calling me to her desk, she said, “Take out the notebook from the inside pocket on the left side of my jacket.” I did, and handing her the small brown book. She opened it to a blank page and started writing.
With a dream shift, I was now in line. I needed a new vehicle. Five people were ahead of me. A female cashier was helping us. I saw a white Jaguar convertible with a red interior. It seated four. I decided, that’s what I’m buying.
The cashier told the first person in line, “We don’t have any small cars left.” Then she called out to the rest of us, “Is anyone in line interested in any car besides a small car.”
Raising my hand, I responded, “I am. I’m buying that white Jaguar.”
The purchase was done with dream speed. As part of my purchase, I was given a model of the car. They went off to get it ready for me to drive away. I went to a coffee shop and purchased a cup of coffee in a paper cup with a plastic lid.
A hard wind was blowing. I needed to set my coffee down but worried about the wind blowing it over, even though I was in an office. I opened a file drawer and set the coffee in there, thinking that the drawer will protect it from the wind. Then I set the little white Jaguar on top of it.
The wind immediately blew the little car off the coffee cup lid. I wasn’t surprised. I said, “That’s exactly how I expected that to go.”
Dream end.
Two lanes in each direction with a turning lane, Ashland Street is one of our little city’s busiest main streets. Besides connecting to the southern Interstate exit and entrance, it’s home to four shopping centers, a fire station, college dormitories, five gas stations, a Starbucks and another coffee shop, along with several other businesses, motels, and restaurants. Connecting to our main drag, Siskiyou Boulevard, which leads to downtown, Ashland Stret is divided by median stripes and cement dividers in numerous places.
The city has added white stanchions alongside the bicycle lanes on Ashland Street. Some call them bike lane delineators. A couple inches in diameter, they’re tubes which stand 36 inches high and help separate the bike lanes from motor vehicle lanes, making it safer for bike riders.
Questions have arisen from the people. Like, how are cars supposed to pull over to the curb to let emergency vehicles pass? Second question that everyone wonders is, how will the street sweeper handle the stanchions? There’s no clearcut answer for that, they say. As for pulling over for emergency vehicles, people insist that they can’t.
Except: I noticed that these stanchions or delineators are spring mounted. They bend over. I believe cars and street sweepers can go right over them. The question is, will drivers do that?
You know how it is with change. Some have a harder time with it.
We’re waiting to see what transpires next.
So, it’s a mini-rant on a subject tapped before. I don’t understand some drivers.
Followed a guy along city streets today. I don’t know if it’s germane but the Santa Cruz truck which he drove sported Oklahoma plates. Rental, student, visitor, new arrival who hasn’t registered their vehicle yet? Couldn’t say.
In the 35 MPH zone, they slipped along at 30-31. Okay, they’re cautious, I thought, Maybe looking for something.
The speed limit plummeted to 25 MPH. They cruised through, pulling away from me.
And that dichotomy is what manufactures my ire: why do they go below the speed limit in one area and above the speed limit in another. That’s so contradictory to me. It’s like, and I don’t know if this is what they think, “I’m just going to establish my own speed limit and adhere to it no matter what the local signs say.” Or maybe it’s something they picked up from their parents. Perhaps it’s an Oklahoma habit.
As I said, I don’t understand some drivers.
Watching events through one of the coffee shop windows, he saw a car suddenly appear out of nowhere and wheel into a parking lot. Where’d that come from, he wondered, studying the lines of traffic. Just a white BMW SUV. Not the newest model and not the largest one.
The driver and passenger emerged. Neither looked human. Holy shit, he thought, straightening, eyes widening. Both of them were tall, pale green and – naked? Squinting hard against the glaring sun, he focused as intensely as possible.
Yes, they were nakd. He looked around the coffee shop, hoping another witness to what he was seeing was noticing. But the rest of the shop denizens were into their laptops, phones, and books. None seemed to see the two tall, naked, green aliens walking away from a white BMW toward the bakery across the street.
Then both changed, becoming a middle-aged couple, he in khaki cargo shorts with a green polo shirt, she in a yellow sun dress showing naked brown legs, and sandals.
He’d seen enough, though. He knew what he’d observed and pounced on several conclusions. Aliens were arriving in spaceships that looked like cars.
It made perfect sense, explaining the recent spate of bad driving he’d noticed, the unusually heavy traffic, and why others’ political thinking so frequently seemed alien to his own.
It was a perfect storm of clarity, and only he knew it.
I’m covering two of my three end of world dreams from last night. First, these dreams had very dark settings. Most of the first one took place underground or at night.
Another aspect that fascinated me about the dreams was how it combined elements of my military career with my IBM employment. Trippy mind work going on there. And now, the dreams.
I was working for IBM and it wasn’t going well. Exhausted from working and trying to save our division, many of us were sleeping at work, going twenty-four hours to try to save it. But we’d run out of time and knew the division was going to be shut down. Worse, and more surreally, we realized that the world was ending. How and why it was ending, the dream never covered. But this was something I knew, and was continually in the back of my dream mind.
To start, I’d been sleeping on the floor in my work office. It’s totally dark. I have a few private possessions and clothing, and that’s it. Voices awaken me. I listen and recognize our division director dismally describing the situation: world ending, division ending, shutting down. We were hanging on to our jobs because it gave us some hope that something could be done to stop the end of the world. Now he’s saying, we failed.
His comments stir me into a restless fit. I pace, trying to brainstorm about what we can do. Crazy ideas emerge but nothing sensible. I want to go talk to him about it, so I dress and head out, tracking him down.
The office area is built on a rock-strewn coastline. I clamber over rocks to find the director. He vaguely knows me. I throw out some ideas and he thanks me but tells me, they’ve already shot down those ideas because we don’t have the resources. It’s all dark doom and gloom.
I wander into another section and find an unused office. Turns out, the IBM offices are built on top of an old military base. The office used to be a missile control center. Finding a key, I put it into a dusty receptacle and turn it.
From elsewhere, I hear alarmed chatter that there are lights on: a missile is firing. I’m horrified to discover that I’ve turned a key to launch a nuclear missile. I’m also shocked; apparently, this one was overlooked when the nukes were removed. I frantically attempt to turn back the key but fail. Finding the director and other people, I try to reassure them that the nuke won’t detonate because it wasn’t armed, but I’m not sure. I’m pretty certain that high explosive are in the warhead and will detonate. I speculate that could cause the nuke to go off.
I run out to watch it. The missile launches into the dark sky. Huge ocean waves are crashing into the buildings, tearing them down. Shouting warnings to others, I climb the slippery rocks and escape.
Time slips past. I’m now surviving with three other men in the remaining office complex. We walk around setting small fires to keep warm and looking for food. We’ve found a cache, so we’re not too worried. I’ve also found a radio and keep tuning it, attempting to pick up radio stations and get some news. I worry about some of the fires they’ve set because they’ve put them under wall calendars and posters, which are catching fire.
“So?” Others ask. “What’s going to happen? We’ll burn down the building? It’s the end of the world.” Although I understand what they’re saying, I’m thinking that they have a bad attitude about surviving.
We drift out of the building to find other survivors. We end up in an underground tunnel in a yellow taxi. I’m driving. The tunnel is dully lit with dim yellow lights. To proceed further, we need to stop at a toll gate. There are three lines. Two lines are hugely backed up. The third has no one waiting. We pull up to the gate for the third ine. I get out to talk to the gate attendant, a short, swarthy guy, and ask him, “Can we use this gate? We don’t have any money — “
He interrupts me by showing me a finger, wait. As this happens, a blond woman in a green skirt comes up and reminds the gate attendant that the gate we’re at is to only be used by VIPs and emergency personnel. She leaves and he turns to me and says, “Now you can.” I understand him to mean we can use it because she’s gone. I thank him and asks, “But how much does it cost?” He replies, “No charge.”
I awaken and think all that through. Falling back asleep, I have another dream about the end of the world. It’s burning, and I know it’s ending.
Another dream begins, and I’m with the other three men again. We’re just leaving the toll gate and enter a building. In there, we find some other people and plentiful supplies, including alcohol. We basically decide to drink and get drunk. Why not? The world is ending.
We’re sitting around drinking and hear the outer door open. Investigating, we find four woman entering. They tell us they were looking for someone to party with since the world is ending. We tell them that we have alcohol and invite them to join us. They agree, and men and women pair off.
My companion is a short, chubby woman. She and I begin making out but she becomes morose about the of the world and starts crying. I try consoling her with hugs and some positive statements but she goes on about how so many people are gone and it’ll all be over soon, which is why she and her friends were looking for someone to party with. She and I go back to the main room, where the others are also arriving. All have had the same situation, that the women are sad and crying. They live.
Dream end. I awoke and realized with surprise that it was part of the first dream because of the background situation, my companions, and the setting.
A sense of community often ends at the parking lot. Signs warn who may share their parking lot. Even on weekends and holidays when businesses and institutions are closed, they warn, “Parking Reserved for Customers”, or the like, threatening scofflaws with towing and fines.
Otherwise, it’s thanks for visiting and enjoy your day.
This was a dream where green dominated. I mean, it seemed like it was being viewed through night vision goggles and turning it all green.
So I was supposed to be taking some position of power. But on my way to accept it, I discovered a nefarious plot to replace me as soon as I accepted it. Following some dream plotting that I don’t understand, the position was vacant. I’d been selected to fill it. But once I filled it, I could be removed and another put into place. Apparently that involved a prophecy. I understood it all when I was in the dream but the plot evades me now that I’m awake.
Essentially, I discovered the plot early. What shocked me was that one of my sisters was involved in it. I vowed not to take the office because once I did and she removed me, she was installing a tyrant. That, I felt, wouldn’t be good for the world. So, added by others, I set off on a series of escape and evasion adventures. Many times, sis’s forces would have me partially surrounded. I’d feigned going in one direction and gallop in another, or I’d dress someone to look like me and then sneak out while the decoy distracted sis’s forces. This happened about a dozen times with variations in location and settings.
During this, sis would often be in a heavy fur coat, sometimes white but it would be black once in a while. She was being driven around in an old black Rolls Royce.
Meanwhile, I was mostly on foot. The settings were usually woods or fields with fences, and felt like a maze, but I discovered or created shortcuts, sometimes tunneling, and sometimes scaling walls to escape. People, mostly strangers, were usually helping me.
Besides all of that, my sister would sometimes call out to me to surrender. She would insist that I was misunderstanding. I’d shout back to her about how disappointed I was by what she was doing, and frequently mocked her inability to capture me. I also pointed out that even if she captured me, I would never accept the office, so she may as well give up.
In the end, I found myself on the crest of a green ridge, part of a mountain range, standing, looking down and back. Below was my sister’s Rolls and her forces, looking lost about where I was.
Michael Seidel, writer 