Weird Dream is Weird
Had an odd but interesting dream last night. No clue why- nothing I can think of in my waking life has any remotely similar themes that I can recall. What the Hell they putting in bananas these days (and if you can identify the source of that quote, I love you forever)?
Anyway, to the best of my recollection it went something like this:
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The first part of the dream that I can recall (I think there was something before this part, but I don't remember details) involved me leading a group of moreaus- anthropomorphic humanoids, part human, part animal- cross-country. I don't remember exactly who they all were, only that there were about a half-dozen of them. The only ones I remember for sure was a small hamster guy, kind of like Alvin Seville, who was the comedy relief, and a teenage bunny-girl. They were the products of a mad scientist's experiments, but they escaped somehow and I was trying to lead them to someplace safe where they could hide out. There was another mad scientist-type called the Austarch who was looking for us in order to reverse-engineer the moreaus (which would probably kill them, needless to say). It was very important that they stay out of his hands.
At this point I should mention that I was a man named 'Jim' in this dream, and when talking to the moreaus about him, I referred to the Austarch as, "Marion".
We came upon a small, very European-looking town, kind of the way English towns are depicted in movies like Bedknobs and Broomsticks: peaceful, welcoming, cozy, perhaps just slightly antiquated and worn-looking. It was a coastal town, and I only had to sneak the moreaus through this town and there was an entire, huge forest to hide in. I had the moreaus hide in an old shop that was closed and boarded up, and I scouted around for a safe way out of town. I found a wide alley behind some shops near a boat slip, and I thought that it was safe. No windows or doors opening onto it, and I could actually see the forest at the far end. But I also found a message spray-painted on the pavement at the entry: "Watch out, you ignorant fools!" I figured out that the moreaus were the ignorant fools, and that 'watch out' was very significant. Looking around, I found a small remote camera and a recording device hidden on one wall of the alley. I tore them both off and threw them into the water at the end of the boat slip.
Fast-forward a bit. Apparently that didn't work, although there seems to be a gap in the storyline. Maybe the devices were remotely monitored, so destroying them alerted the bad guys. Maybe we slipped up some other way. Regardless, the dream picks up again in a large industrial workroom of sorts. I am sitting on a stool by a man who is apparently the Austrach's assistant, and we are going through a box of small, plastic models and cataloging them. I am not tied up or anything, but my dream self also knows I am not free to leave. All the models are of bridges, sign structures, tollbooths- typical stuff you see in a city. All of them are mockups made by the Austarch, and they are all horribly ugly- sharp, harsh, coldly industrial things that are pure function- there is no beauty or soul to them. As we work I am making comments about the models and their lack of beauty and appeal, and I keep referring to the Austarch somewhat snarkily as, "my old friendenemy". The Austarch himself is sitting at a nearby table talking to someone over an old-fashioned radio set and pretty much ignoring me. He barely resembles a human: his face has a dead, cadaverous look to it, like it has been burned badly, like Freddy Krueger's face. He has developed a long, tapering muzzle with disturbingly human teeth at the end, kind of like a sheep's skull. His eyes are pale and milky, on two long stalks like a snail's that seem to wave about involuntarily. And he is unusually tall- a full head taller than me, and dressed in a long lab coat and gloves, and wearing a large, wide-brimmed hat like he is trying to hide his appearance as much as possible. I had a hunch that his appearance was a result of an experiment gone wrong- either something failed catastrophically, or he used himself as a test subject. I can overhear him saying something like, "General, I have calculated the exact needs of your units to a bullet. If your men are lacking they must be doing something wrong, and I have no pity for them. I want Sharpston recaptured by tomorrow. I don't care if it takes your last man. No more excuses". This made sense to me: I knew that the Austarch was waging a nasty war against several other countries at the time.
Turning back to the box, the next model I picked up was totally different than the others. It was a bus shelter, and it was rounded, comfortable-looking, and painted bright colors, not all bare steel and sheet metal like the others. I held it up and said something to the effects of how much I liked the design, and why I thought it was so nice. Then I asked, "Marion- why did you stop designing things like this?" He looked over and seemed angry for a moment, then stood up and walked across the room to a pair of heavy vault-type doors. He only replied to his assistant, "I wish to be alone. Hold all my calls". But I jumped up and followed him to the door, catching it just as it was about to close. I told the Austarch that I just wanted to check on my friends, and he grudgingly let me in, but only after pulling a nasty, spiked truncheon off a table behind his back and threatening to beat my head in if I tried anything. I jokingly replied, "Yeah, yeah, Marion. I saw you pick that up. You can't put nothing over on me, I got eyes in the back of my head, son!" Somehow I believed that I wasn't as helpless as he thought I was, and I didn't think he would actually harm me, despite his threats and horrific appearance. Inside the door was a living room of sorts, and he sat down on a couch, picked up a deck of cards, and started shuffling them. I sat down across from the Austarch and he dealt me a hand of cards without saying a word. We had hardly played a hand when he suddenly asked, "Remember that game we played as children? What was it...duck, duck, goose? Why was the person who chased called the goose, do you suppose?" I replied that maybe it had something to do with the nature of geese and ducks: ducks are docile and pretty gentle, but geese are mean and territorial. He put the cards down and seemed to lose interest, so I told him I was going to check on the moreaus. I went into the other room, a large laboratory-type room where all my moreau friends were in cages. They all seemed to be doing okay except for the bunnygirl: she was a nervous wreck, and she told me that she was so terrified that she couldn't even sleep. Apparently one of the Austarch's lab assistants told her they were all going to be vivisected, and went into gory detail about it just to be cruel. She said she would rather die than spend another week there. I reassured them all that I was 'working on it', petted the bunnygirl's cheek as best as I could through the bars, and went back to the big workroom.
The assistant was still cataloging the models, but the Austarch had carried the model I liked to the window and set it on the windowsill. I walked up to the window, picked up the model, and held it up to compare it to the bus shelter below. This city looked a lot different from the town we were captured in: it looked more like the dirty, ugly, bleak manufacturing areas of Industrial Revolution-era London or New York. The bus shelter below was just as ugly and harsh as the other models and the rest of the city, and the people on the streets below were dressed like Soviet-era Russian peasants. I said, "You know, Marion...I don't think you set out to make things like this. I think you just forgot that you had options." He took the model from me, looked at it with his weird tentacle-eyes, and replied, "I can see now how every decision I've made has led me right to this point. Jim, I have lived my life into a corner". He was quiet for a moment, then he said, "You and your friends are free to go. No one will harm you". I just nodded quietly, like I wasn't surprised, and said, "I do have to make sure my friends are safe. But you will see me again. Seems to me like you need friends far more than you need more enemies. We're both smart men. We can figure out how to fix all this".
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That's it. No more microwave enchiladas with chili sauce for dinner!