I was on a one-day excursion to Japan with some friends. I wanted to get some film developed and downloaded before I left, so my friends took me to a tropical-appearing kiosk that was surrounded by a lake. At regular intervals around the kiosk area were short piers with small boats and jetskis in between. I wanted to ride one, and had an inkling that I had already rented one, but couldn’t find it.

As I was looking at the ice cream treats, my friend showed me that at the corner of the kiosk, they have a real-time PCR machine. You drop off your samples, and then come back later to pick up your results. For some reason, the samples I handed over took the form of American coins, with quarters as the controls. I took note of the place and how to get back, then we left for a night on the town, which didn’t actually take place in the dream. Instead, it skipped forward to my friends and I driving to the airport that night. I couldn’t help but think how short the trip was and how long the flight was going to be (which I thought would only be 6-7 hours for some reason). I didn’t want to leave just yet.

Suddenly, we got run off the road by a large truck. We pulled into a small area that had these giant, arching orange shells, kind of like hollowed out cantaloupe slices. In the car now were my family. As we got out of the car, the men from the truck surrounded and threatened us if we tried to leave. Somehow, this was all familiar to me, so I didn’t worry about it and just watched things happen. They started to unload a ton of crates and unpacking them. It was clearly an illegal shipment, but we couldn’t quite see the contents because they were stacking them outside of the orange shells. Oddly enough, we could smell it, and it was clearly formaldehyde. When the pile got big enough, I could see that it was bull heads, horns and everything, pale brown and pickled, no containers or anything.

The place became a store and we were headed to the back corner, which towered high with shelves full of melons and squash. The orange shells and bullheads were still there, sectioning off the store and blocking our path. It was still very familiar, like I had lived it before and known we would get out. So I chose this time to tell my parents about my new piercings: four S-shaped metal hooks that I had shoved through my lips at regular intervals. (I put them in right there). Oddly, they seemed okay with it. Somehow, the S-hooks had something to do with the four quarters I had used as controls earlier.

So now I was back at the kiosk looking at my results on Excel. Instead of the expected row of “1”s, I got a row of mostly “0.5”s. I couldn’t figure it out and thought the assay was wrong. I yelled at the kiosk clerk, but he didn’t know what happened. I looked at the machine and tried again. As I put my change in, the machine rung up as $1.50. So the readout had been short on mass because it took some of my samples/coins as payment instead. I spent a lot of time trying to fix the experiment, but everything became fuzzier and fuzzier.

In what was probably a separate dream, I was inside of a kind of bazaar, where there were stands selling all sorts of things. At the moment, I was in the breakfast section, and I walked around looking at each stall: some were really fancy, with decorations and bright lights spotlighting gourmet egg sandwiches and soups; other were mom and pop places with plates of scrambled eggs and sausages. I found one booth particularly intriguing, because it sold a soup using a very Chinese vegetable, whose English name I don’t even know. It’s broad and leafy, like Nappa Cabbage, but greener and thicker. Anyways, it wasn’t run by Chinese folk, and there weren’t any Chinese customers. In any case, I was really hungry, so I scooped out leaf after leaf and piled my bowl high. The soup it came in smelled great. But like all buffet dreams, I never got to eat it.

Instead, I was suddenly in another part of the shop, a much darker area. I had my S-piercings back on, which made me feel more at home in this tougher, more punk crowd. I was at a piercing booth, looking at other ones. I slowly removed the two middle piercings, which wouldn’t have hurt, except I kept trying to take them out through the thick end. Finally, I pulled them through and felt the bumps, which made it hard to talk. I couldn’t feel the other two piercings, so I figured I must have taken them out earlier. Though they had made me feel cool and rebellious, I was glad to have them out now.

As I left the store, which looked like a Walmart on the outside, I realized I was in a really bad part of town. As I walked up and down the aisles of the parking lot, I started panicking. I remembered I had forgotten to put “The Club” on my steering wheel, so now my car must have gotten stolen. I frantically walked everywhere, pushing the lock button on my keyless entry. In the last place I looked, I finally heard the click. But before I could get to my car, it was surrounded by men with guns. So it would get stolen after all!

I overheard someone talking to an “officer,” so I went over and asked the plainclothes man if he was a cop. I then told him about my car, and he brusquely responded that it was his men checking out a car that made suspicious noises… my locking it remotely!

I drove away from the parking lot, careful not to hit any of the numerous trucks, whose drivers looked tough and angry. Suddenly, mu dad was in the passenger seat and we were heading down a winding, snowy mountain path. We were chatting idly when two blonde girls appeared on the road ahead, lying on top of each other in full winter gear on a red blanket. I quickly swerved; the girls looked like they were dead. Unfortunately, the car got wrecked. With nowhere to go, we started talking to the girls, who were alive and stranded. My dad pulled out a large “emergency” flask of soup and tilted the nozzle over the embankment. I rushed to stop the soup from hitting the snow, but he said that’s how it works. It left behind a streak of powder in the flask. We poured water through it (though I didn’t see it happening despite never taking my eyes off it) and there was a cup of thin milky soup afterwards. Then I woke up.

posted by Larry at 3:39 PM