I was on an airplane with two friends. They were Asian, college age, and don’t exist in real life. Both of them were playing an electronic game on their watches, a 3D flying/shooting game that was overlaid on reality: I could see their fighter planes in crude 80’s-style vector graphics zooming up and down the aisle. One of them offered me his watch to play for a while, and it enlarged into remote control-size. Control consisted mainly of a single flexible switch that would cause the plane to turn and a two-state button that fired the guns. I didn’t bother to learn what the other dozen or so controls did. As the fighter plane turned, so would I, taking me with it. It took only a few seconds to get the hang of it. Our green fighter chased a pink enemy one, which flew directly over the second friend. I shot at it, using lightning-style guns. I couldn’t see the planes anymore, so it looked like I was just shooting the friend Star Wars-style.

Eventually, I got bored and started playing with my iPod. Except in this dream world, it was a large black computer keyboard, with a tiny LCD screen in the top right corner. I showed it to one of my friends, who was unimpressed with the klunky interface. I tried starting up some programs or music, but the second part of my dream started. This part I don’t remember very well. I was on a trip and in a youth hostel, and all I remember is that my stuff was strewn across one of the rooms.

Suddenly, I was at my high school reunion, an outdoor picnic affair. While the grills were starting up, people started to drift off into groups; into the same cliques they were in fifteen years ago. Despite wanting to break some of those old barriers down, I couldn’t bring myself to barge in on any of them; and, in any case, they looked like they were having a good time reminiscing. I wandered off to a set of picnic tables where the keg was. There, I found some greasy, unwashed types who would probably have been the hard-core dungeons and dragons players in high school (unlike my real life high school friends, who were only occasional dungeons an dragons players). I grabbed a beer in a big glass stein, but for some reason it had a layer of sawdust on top. I spent a few minutes trying to brush it off of the ice, but when I had gotten all I could, I couldn’t actually force myself to drink any of it.

Continuing from the high school theme, I was back in the gym locker rooms and heading out to the hallways. Once in the halls, I couldn’t find my way out (yesterday in real life, I had gotten lost in the halls of Brigham and Women’s Hospital with no non-emergency exits in sight). I kept going up and down the same areas. When I got back to where I started, I noticed this time that there were sheets evenly spaced on the floor. I instantly knew that this was a make-shift gross anatomy class, and sure enough, the sheets contained bodies in various states of dissection; most, however, appeared to be nothing more than a pair of legs. I literally flew up and down the halls, trying to avoid looking directly at any sheet. I soon realized that this was a dream, and I closed my eyes tightly, wishing that when I opened them I would be somewhere else.

It worked! I was in a long hallway with blue carpeting and large windows. Sunlight streamed in and I felt such relief. I flew pleasantly to the end of the hallway, where it connected to a mall. In an open bar area, I found Merry and sat down at a round wooden table, carrying a bowl containing a brazil nut, three hazelnuts, and two marbles. I had a large knife in my hand and started playing pool on the tabletop, using the knife as a cue and the marbles and nuts as balls. Merry declined playing and instead ate a couple of the hazelnuts. For some reason, the remaining brazil nut and hazelnut represented the King and Duke from Huckleberry Finn (which I had recently started re-reading in real life). So I put those back in the bowl. Then I woke up.

posted by Larry at 10:02 AM