I went in to work, which was this long steel room lined with computers. There was a long thin row of desks to left center, with both sides being used and a computer at almost every desk. I sat down at mine, which was in the right corner of the room and facing the wall with the door. I started surfing the web, looking at useless sites and wasting time. Right in the middle of it, two uniformed army officers came in, a guy and a girl. Both were young looking, maybe in their late 20s, but were highly decorated with medals. They asked me what I was doing, commenting that it did’t look very productive. I said, "Oh, I’m working in another window, I just stopped momentarily to look something up." So they asked me to show them what I was working on in the other window. It was actually someone else’s work running in the background, something I was unfamiliar with: a bunch of swirling patterns, brightly colored. After a short pause, I admitted that I had no idea.

Both of them said ,”What?” and started to crack up.

I said, “Wait a minute, why are you laughing at me?" They said they were going to report me. During all this time, I was hemming and hawing, trying to cover for myself.

So I finally said, “Ok look, I made a mistake and…” But they cut me off, calling me an idiot and giggling.

The guy said, mockingly, “Oh really, now you realize it? Hah.”

I said, “Hey I’m admitting it… look, I have an excellent track record…” Again they cut me off with derisive laughter. It was getting really annoying. “… and I just made this one mistake. Don’t report me.” They just brushed me off.

I said, “I know you’re both highly decorated, but you must have made mistakes in the past too?” They stood up, still laughing, and said they were going straight to my boss.

After they left, the rest of the room crowded over, about 30 people (none of whom I know in real life). One woman in particular asked me what happened, and I started to say what a bunch of assholes they were. But no one paid attention to me, instead looking off to the left. After a few abortive attempts of mine to keep talking about it, everyone just took off, leaving me standing in an almost empty room. I walked over to the last person, who was a thin black woman sitting on the opposite side of the center row of desks. She had unbuttoned most of her shirt, which was distracting (on purpose, as you’ll see).

She said, “Hey Lawrence, didn’t those two seem like actors?”

To which I replied “I was acting too (trying to get out of it). If those were actors then I’m an actor too.” We repeated the lines again, as though she was trying to get a point across.

Finally she said “Wouldn’t it be crazy if I called a couple actors and asked them to make fun of you?”

I said, “No way, that’s way too elaborate a prank.” I found another coworker, a middle-aged chubby lady, in the hallway, and she asked if I remembered coming over to her place the night before for dinner. I said no. Then I woke up.

The new dream started up with me on the couch watching TV with Merry. I was telling her about what happened, and she had this guilty look on her face.

Finally she said, “Larry, I was in on it. Don’t get mad at me!” I said that there was no way that could be true, and that they definitely weren’t actors. Merry then hit play on the VCR, and the entire thing had been recorded. It showed all my coworkers preparing for the prank, initially milling about the office putting things in place that would subliminally imprint themselves on me. The voiceover said that they were going to influence my dream both before and during and make the whole thing play out. It cut to views of all of my coworkers going to sleep in the office, in special compartments built into the center row of desks. At the top of the rows were a long series of fake bookshelves filled with fake books and computer equipment. It showed them climbing in and shutting them, making them look seamless. The idea was that by sleeping in the same room as me eventually, they could play their parts in my dream. So it showed me walking in looking very tired, almost drunk, and sitting down at my desk. On the way in were the two actors in their uniforms, placed so that their image would imprint on my dream. The video then cut to the day before, where I had gone over to the middle-aged coworker’s apartment for dinner. It showed the two of us, sitting at opposite ends of her dilapidated couch, eating salad and watching TV. It then showed me getting sick from drugs they had put in my food, along with strong alcohol they had given me. (I’m still watching all this on TV, not being there). From an overhead angle, it showed me running into the bedroom and puking on the floor.

Merry said, “Ewww!” But then the puke just looked like a couple big leaves of lettuce, and she said, “Oh, that’s not so bad." The tape continued on, but I realized that “I” had very light, longish hair.

So I said, “Wait, that’s not even me! Rewind the tape. I don’t even have a sweater like that any more.” (It was puke-green argyle). Merry rewound it, but this time around the color shifted so that it looked exactly like me, and a more reasonably-colored sweater. I figured the VCR cassette was just bad. It then showed me stumbling out the door to the elevator. It cut to me back at work, and just about to fall asleep. At that point I couldn’t understand whether they were going to just act it out right in front of me, or whether they were still going for influencing my dream. But then I woke up.

posted by Larry at 10:51 AM