I dreamed that I was arrested for being a homeless person, living in the sewers of a futuristic city.
There were no prisons in the future, so I was conscripted into the army. Since there were also very few military conflicts in the future, most of the personnel were assigned to city cleaning duty. I was assigned to live with my military unit in some barracks in the sewers. So my housing in the military was not much different from when I was homeless.
Our duties to clean the city included both emergency cleaning (such as when litter was detected) and scheduled cleaning (such as sweeping streets and cleaning windows). As part of our uniform, we wore devices on our left forearms which were like a curved tablet. It displayed a map of the city and sewer system and it was connected to scanners that would send alerts to show us where to go to clean up trash.
Once we were situated in our new sewer barracks, we were given training on how to perform our duties. When a litter alert was sent, we were required to clean it up within a certain time frame or we would be punished. When an alert would show up on our scanner screen, we would need to get dressed in our large white over-clothes (kind of like a fireman's protective suit), and then report for duty in the correct spot to clean the litter. Usually the target location was just underneath the manhole cover that was closest to the litter. For our training, our sergeant would send us test alerts when we weren't expecting them and then she would check our response times. If our entire team was not assembled under the manhole cover quickly enough then we would all be punished.
On our first day of litter alert training, I had put on my white suit and was hurrying to the correct sewer location, when I spotted a small stone figurine on the ground. It was only about 3" tall and appeared to be in the shape of a person, but it was pretty primitive looking. I was worried that if I stopped to pick it up that I would be late. But it looked neat and I figured that it wouldn't take long so I stooped down and grabbed it while I ran. I stuck it in my pocket.
My team sprinted down the sewer tunnel and took our places under the manhole cover. Our training sergeant was there with a stopwatch and when the last of us got into position she clicked the stopwatch button to stop the timer. She looked disappointed that we had made it on time and she wouldn't be able to punish us.
The next training we received was window washing. For this task we got to come out of the sewers. The city was futuristic. The buildings were all tall skyscrapers. There was a small man-made lake in the middle of the buildings that was surrounded by nice walkways with glass railings, and the lake had a fountain in the center.
We were taken up to a walkway that was high in the air and lead between two buildings. Jen was our trainer for this task. She gave us spray bottles and squeegees. She explained that there were tiny ledges about 4 inches wide that went around the buildings that we would go out on to wash the windows. There were no safety ropes or anything. Jen then walked out onto one of the small ledges and all the rest of the trainees followed her. Neither she nor any of the other trainees seemed the least bit concerned about falling to their deaths but I was terrified. I dropped where I stood on the walkway and clung to the pavement with all my strength. I thought that if I didn't that somehow the walkway would tilt me toward the ledge and I would slide off the walkway, onto the ledge, and then fall to my death. I stayed in that position but as I glanced over towards the windows and ledge I could see Jen showing the other cleaners the proper method to clean the windows. They were all now precariously balanced on the ledge and some of them were leaning over to get a better view Jen's instruction. Still none of them seemed worried at all about the possibility of falling.
Suddenly we all heard a loud commotion coming from far down below us at street level. I looked on my arm scanner and I could see lots of gunfire showing up on my screen. The plasma blasts from the guns that the military used registered somehow on the device. But there was no visible enemy on the screen.
We made our way down to the ground and could see armed soldiers running around on the pathways around the lake. Our training sergeant explained to us that a dinosaur was attacking the city but it was moving around through the sewers so nobody could track its movement. That is also why it did not show up on our scanners.
Our sergeant ordered us to help fight the dinosaur. I reminded her that we did not have any weapons but she did not seem concerned. I was able to find a plasma gun near the body of a fallen soldier and I picked it up. I watched the plasma blasts that showed up on my scanner screen and I could see that the dinosaur and soldiers were currently in the sewer tunnels under the lake nearby. The dinosaur soon burst up out of the water and started rampaging around on the streets and walkways. I and the other armed soldiers fired our plasma guns at it over and over but the dinosaur seemed unaffected. Then the fighting came very near me and I was struck by the dinosaur's tail and knocked unconscious.
I woke up in a hospital. I was miraculously unhurt. When the military commanders saw that I was awake, they ordered me to go back out and fight the dinosaur again. I looked around my hospital room but my plasma gun was not there. I asked if I could have a new gun and they said, "No".
As I left the hospital and was walking back toward the lake, I vaguely remembered that the last thing I did after being struck by the dinosaur tail was to break my plasma gun into three parts and to hide the parts in the bushes and flowers around the lake. I reasoned that I had done this to send myself a message. It occurred to me that I had probably discovered the secret to defeating the dinosaur before being knocked out and I was trying to give myself a hint to remember what it was.
I decided that since I hid the gun that maybe that was to tell me that fighting the dinosaur was not the answer. It then occurred to me that maybe the dinosaur was really just a peaceful creature that was looking for something. Perhaps it had only become violent because it had been attacked. The answer of what it was looking for must be the small stone figurine in my pocket. I decided that the dinosaur was really just looking for its lost magical totem and if I could give the small statue back to it, the dinosaur would leave peacefully.
I explained my plan to the military commander I was with. I told him that I would stand out on a walkway near the lake and give the statue back to the dinosaur but that it was vitally important for all of the soldiers to not shoot at the dinosaur to anger it or the plan would be ruined. He agreed to try my plan and gave the order for all the soldiers to stand back and not fire on the dinosaur.
I stood alone on the walkway by the lake. I could see the soldiers around the lake with their rifles pointing towards where they expected the dinosaur to come out of the water. I took the small figurine out of my pocket and looked at it. It seemed strange that so much destruction had been caused by such a small thing.
Suddenly I heard shouting and I could start to make out the dinosaur coming towards the surface of the water. I started to worry. What if the dinosaur was still angry? Even if we didn't shoot at it, it could still be really upset and just eat me. We had no way of telling the dinosaur that we were now trying to be peaceful. The dinosaur's head started coming coming up out of the lake.
And what about all those nervous soldiers? Had the command really been given to all of them to stand down? What if one of them had been missed? And would all of them obey? Even if the dinosaur was now peaceful, if even just one soldier panicked and fired a shot, that would anger the dinosaur again and it would just eat me! The dinosaur was almost entirely out of the water now and it was heading straight toward me.
And what if my idea was wrong? What if the dinosaur didn't want the statue? What if it was really just a rampaging dinosaur? Why in the world am I standing here? Am I going to really try to hand the figurine to the dinosaur? Should I just drop the figurine on the ground and pretend that I am dead? Would it leave me alone or just step on me or eat me anyway?
I started to panic! The dinosaur was getting closer and closer. I didn't know what to do and I was starting to second guess pretty much everything that I had thought about my plan. My mind was jumping back and forth between the nervous soldiers, the approaching dinosaur, and the thought of throwing the statue and then flopping on the ground to feign death.
At this point my panicked brain pulled the ejection handle and woke me up. I will never know if my plan would have worked or not.
Dreamed around Oct 2020
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