(place) by ModernAngel Mon Oct 23 2000 at 14:39:49
  • On the road. I am asked to set the delivery van on fire, since we have no faith the driver will ever get around to moving it. I raid it for cash and useful stuff, but Gordon calls off the exercise before I can start smashing and igniting.
  • The plastic card factory, much like the 8/7/00 dream. At first I am just visiting, but my successor is nowhere to be found, so I try to chip in in the computer room. I make a dramatic display of falling asleep at my desk, "waking" disoriented as I fall off the chair in the back of the classroom, and now the factory staff are interspersed with high-school chums like Frank and Joe Z. I have an urgent responsibility, but no leadership. I run into Melinda and her clique by the lockers, and we all wander through the cafeteria to the dorms.
  • The boys are watching sports or maybe Baywatch, and the girls chat and bustle. From the corner of my eye, what looks suspiciously like the leg of the black-and-yellow-striped tarantula probes delicately, questioningly from a stack of magazines on a footrest. No, it's a snake, and it makes a beeline for the left back pocket of my jeans. In panic, I grab it by the tail and attempt to stun or kill it by whipping its head against the footstool. The recurring dream theme of ineffectual offense kicks in, and it flops weakly. I can't kill it, and dread mounts that I am angering it - this being Seattle, Oregon or northern California, it must be venomous, sooner or later it will bite me. It's no bigger than a pencil, I throw it away from me and it heads right back for me. It must sense my heat. The carpet confounds my efforts to stomp it under my boot, and I wake gasping.
    • I like it!