I drive across a long bridge in the fog. I am driving Oona. It is late at night. Danielle and Diana are in the car, and we are looking for a pub whose name I knew in the dream, but forget now. It turns out the pub is closed, but it is in fact one of three pubs, labeled A, B, and C, in a large, flat-roofed complex with yellow walls. None of the pubs are open, but various doors to the complex are sitting open, and inside there are long hallways and large comfortable rooms furnished with well-worn armchairs. A number of fat, middle-aged, perfectly normal-looking women are sitting in them. They don’t look happy to see us, and they aren’t very helpful. We go outside, and go back across the bridge.
On the other side of the bridge the road crosses a broad field with pine forest on either side. There is a gas station or something like that, at which there are a fair number of people. I am no longer in the car. My sisters are no longer there. I have no memory of a transition. Now I am milling about among the people by the side of the road. There is a policeman, and two men with guns. I have guns as well, two of them, both pistols. Both seem to be copper-plated and are rather light. They feel fake, but they look real. The policeman has caught the two men with guns. I happen to be right next to them. Everyone else leaves, and I wonder if he knows I have guns as well. I have them in my pockets. The two gunmen run away. The policeman chases them. For a while, I am tempted to shoot the policeman to save them. I try running after him, but as usual in dreams I can only walk, with long, slow strides. For some reason I am pretty sure my guns would not fire anyway. The two gunmen escape, or get shot. In the confusion, I throw the larger of my guns away into the grass. The policeman comes back, and begins telling me about the weapons these men were carrying.
Then he shows me my gun, which he found on the ground. I take it from him and begin breaking it down smoothly and quickly, knowing exactly how to remove each piece. He asks me how I know how to do that. I tell him I was in the army, stationed in Europe.
I am alone, walking across the field. I notice there is a gravel path going across it, towards some houses. The ground falls away sharply at the edge of the field, at a very abrupt angle, which makes it appear man-made.
I am in the lobby of my dad’s work. It is unclear how I got there. I have no idea how I would go about leaving the building, if I wanted to. I remember having just seen my dad, and understanding that he has something to do, and I must wait an unspecified amount of time for him to finish. Various important-looking, business-attired people are walking around. I feel awkward just standing around, so I go up an escalator. The walls everywhere are a papery yellow. People continue to walk past me. Some of them are just kids, 11 or so, others are my age, and there are various other people between my age and my dad’s age. Everyone, however, is wearing either a business suit, or a white lab coat. I am peripherally aware that this is not actually my dad’s work. I wait for an elevator, which is down the hall to the right of the escalator. There are a few other people waiting as well. The elevator’s doors come open, and an almost comical quantity of lab-coated people come out. The effect is sort of like the thing where 50 clowns cram themselves into one volkswagen beetle, except they come out at a much faster rate. All of them have the exact same shade of blonde hair. Many have beards. Some of the women have braided hair. Their features are all similar, but they all look different. My eye is caught by one very pretty girl about my age, with small, short, sort of punky-looking braids curling about her ears and temples. I think “They must be Germans”. They all walk off down the hall to the left. I get into the elevator with three other guys, all my age or younger. One of them wears a suit with white knickers instead of slacks. The others are both wearing the vague, detail-less business suit that everyone else seems to have. I say to them “Who were those people?” They look at me indifferently. I say “They must have been Germans”. I sit down on a bench.
The elevator begins going up. It is an inordinately long elevator ride. The walls of the elevator are black, so black that I am not sure they are even there. Certainly at no point do I touch the walls. Also, I notice that there is a huge tree growing out of the center of the elevator. The trunk is very broad, pale brown in color, and incredibly smooth. The kid with the knickers is sitting in a wheeled swivel chair next to the tree trunk. I walk close to him and look up the tree trunk. I can’t see the end of it. It just keeps going up, branching off at wide intervals. Above it I can see the night sky. There are stars and clouds. There are also a great number of lights flashing, moving across the sky in organized double-lines, as if they were the lights of spaceships on a space-highway. But I am aware that they aren’t really spaceships. I ask “What are those lights?” and one of them answers “Some kind of information system.” Something like the internet. The kid in the swivel chair pushes me away, so I move around him, and keep looking up.
Finally the elevator stops, and we get off. Same yellow walls. I am not sure I am on the right floor. But I turn around, and I recognize the hallway leading to the research center where my project is kept. I go in. There are various plants in pots, and some terraria, on long low wooden tables. I walk to the back of the room, past a variety of people. These people are dressed casually, but there is the same variety in age. I wade through the plants to the back of the room, where there are drawers labeled with people’s names. I follow these back towards the entrance of the room, looking for my name. I can’t remember what my project was — at first I think it is a boat of some kind, and then a water pump. I decide it is neither of those things, but can’t quite remember what it is. I look at every name tag, and mine isn’t there. Then I remember that the class I made this project for ended a while ago,and in fact I never got my grade. So I give up, and leave the research room.
I realize I am no longer wearing my black and white sneakers. I have white socks on. I had them on earlier, and I can’t remember if I took them off downstairs in the lobby, or at the reception desk, or in the elevator, or in the research room. I find my sneakers, but I have no memory of their location. I put them back on, and go down to the lobby.
That’s all.
