sanity is relative

I was Dominic Toretto from The Fast & The Furious universe. It was daylight, maybe heading for evening, very overcast and raining. Some Asian guy challenged me to a race. We picked a certain stretch of road that left from a freeway off-ramp and went into some smaller streets. He went first, it was supposed to be a timed run so I waited. He called in to the group of people now hanging out near my car when he was at the midway point, which he seemed to think was great progress and I knew he was slow.

When he finished I got the signal to go, and away I went. Someone else was keeping track of the time. The first corner on the offramp was insane, but I took it fast with drifting. I did a lot of drifting, and hit that area where the other guy had called in before very long at all. I knew I was way ahead, no problems at all, and then shit! Cops! I almost wondered if the other racer had gotten pissed already and called them on me.

With cops on my tail I shot through the underpass where a flare marking the race's end had been shoved aside. I wasn't about to leave the race unfinished and I'd definitely won, whatever was going on now. As the road straightened out I could see cops trying to cordon off the streets ahead. This left me with one option, a gravel parking lot I could see an entrance to on the right. I wasn't happy about being further boxed in, but it was the open choice at the moment and the lot was huge. Lots of cars. If I moved fast and the cops got overconfident... for one thing I'd be hard to find. Plus, it was suddenly the dead of night.

I'd lost my tail for a moment while pulling into the lot, but I knew the cops had a general idea of where I was. I looked for somewhere to park fairly deep in, wondering if I could get away with not being spotted indefinitely but nah... nor did I want to try this crap on foot. I found a space near a red race car whose make didn't matter to the dream for the moment. Now I could see the cars from the outside, as if from a movie camera perspective. The car Dom was in was orange and black, and I swear to Eris it looked like a cross between a Bugatti and a Prius. I have no idea what the dream actually thought it was.

As Dom bailed out of his car to go hotwire the red one, I became Chess, my original character created for the F&F universe and Dom's very gay boyfriend. I was now half-aware that this transition, as cool as it was, didn't fit the earlier plot, but already the dream was starting to accept that there had been a passenger with Dom the whole time, and that he'd won the race even with more weight in the car.

Dom had gotten the red car's doors unlocked somehow, and I hopped in the passenger side and asked him what sort of car this was, as it was unfamiliar to me. I asked if it was a Lamborghini, but that didn't quite seem right. He said, "It's a Corvette," and finished up hot-wiring the car, slamming the door and pulling the vehicle out of its spot. I was rather surprised at the answer, as the body kit seemed a far cry from a typical 'Vette. I made some comment about it having come a long way from the oldschool look. (And now that I think about it, the thing looked more like a Lamborghini crossed with a... you guessed it... Prius. I need to move somewhere where I can car-spot for real, dammit. The greater DC metro area is garbage for that.)

Now the trick was to get out of the lot without anyone recognizing Dom as the driver. I remember being worried about this momentarily, but we made it past the cops and drove off for freedom.

Then I woke up.

It's daytime and I'm on a road trip with my entire immediate family (parents and three siblings). At some point all the water in the car starts turning into foamy orange liquid like melted sherbert meets fizzing-out soda. We get out of the car and realize it's happening to all water sources around us (other people pulled over too). As we're wondering what the heck is going on, it's suddenly nighttime and UFOs appear and suddenly these white yeti-like creatures are appearing and killing people. (They looked like the typical yeti from World of Warcraft.)

As we're running away, I try to write in a small notebook what happened in case the US Government comes here and finds the place wiped out and can't figure out what happened before it's too late. (I remember some daylight while I was writing, but only for that part.) I have alot of trouble actually writing this properly (and actually think in the dream something about how it can be hard to read and write in a dream because the wrong part of the brain is in use) but eventually get it down after concentrating really hard.

The yeti are currently distracted killing others further behind us (I think one of my brothers got it at that point, the older one) and the rest of us find a lake. We jump in without a second thought and start swimming, thinking that if the yeti go off smell this will throw them off. The surface of the water has dark foamy residue from the water-transforming thing from earlier but it's still mostly real water.

My kid sister starts talking about something random and wants to show off a song of some sort and starts yelling it really loudly. I keep trying to tell her to shut up, but can only do so by being louder than her. This attracts the attention of the yeti, who are now coming after us. I think they got my sister... and maybe my mom... and also now we're being chased by crocodiles that the noise drew in as well.

The water is clean now and it's daytime again and we're swimming like mad trying to follow currents in this river we entered at the end of the lake. (The currents go faster than the rest of the water.) I think my kid brother was lost somewhere during this part. That left my father and I, and the dream started really falling apart during some odd conversation while swimming about "being a man" (and yes, at the end, I was a man, sort of late-middle-age and balding? lol). The water turned into an odd series of flat wooden trays with numbers on them and... okay I can't even describe it really. FAIL.

Then I woke up.

I was a girl either of late teenage years or early twenties. I was in my room with my random dream-created friends of families not quite as rich as mine, but still rich. I called my best friend with my cell phone, a girl who's name I now forget, and I don't remember the conversation... I think we were going to all go pick her up for something though.

The next part I remember is riding shotgun in a car with the friends from my room, and we were talking about some other young guy who had ripped us off for money. After one of the others told snippets of her story, I said he'd scammed me for $750,000. The guy driving, who was a very good friend of mine, totally jaw-dropped. He knew I was rich (parents, specifically, extremely rich) but geez... I said the guy had managed to get me to look into buying three cars with him. I forget what the first one was, the second was a DeLorian that we got all souped up to look like the one from the Back to the Future movies, and the last one was a Dodge Viper. Somehow he'd managed to swindle me for all three cars and my father had sued him, which was on appeal (we'd lost the first time, I guess). And it wasn't like the money loss actually hurt my family, it was more a matter of pride trying to dole out justice on the jerk who'd scammed me.

We pulled up to a gas station and convenience store near a warehouse, and I don't remember exactly what happened next but it was almost time to go and I realized my buddies had managed to get themselves drunk. I had expected the one guy friend to drive further, but I told him to wait up and I'd drive. I wandered into the warehouse and asked if someone was there (I don't remember the name anymore). The employee I'd asked said he wasn't, but I knew better and said I'd go find him myself. So I walked into the back of the place behind certain stacks of product and found an older asian guy who was my friend, and the person I'd been seeking.

I asked him if he'd gotten "it" and apparently I'd been waiting on something he'd been trying to order for me or find. Yes, he had it, and he gave it to me. I remember the packaging was a box about the size of a PC computer game package (before they changed to the smaller boxes) but I don't remember what was in it now. I was ecstatic in the dream though, and asked him how much I owed him. I think he said $1,000, which I didn't mind paying but I griped at him playfully and said he'd probably gotten it for much less. He did admit in the end it was only like $17.99 and then I think he gave it to me for my birthday (which, dream-logic-magically, was now today).

I then said I'd give him $500 for his best bottle of scotch, a treat for something later (I was thinking of that very good guy friend who at this point was morphing into boyfriend). Asian-guy was looking at me skeptically for a moment and I added, "Not from your stash at home, I mean here." Ah, well that was different. Now I was majorly overpaying, as was my intention... but I knew it'd be good stuff regardless.

I don't remember anymore.

(I've forgotten a lot of this one... I should have gotten up and written it down... d'oh!)

( contains spoiler(s) for the movie Deja Vu )

(from a few days ago)

I dreamed I was with mother unit in a car driving along a freeway in Taiwan. We were talking about something, and I was looking at how the road had been designed. The area was very hilly so the freeway had been made in two sections, one for each direction of traffic, and most areas were raised on pillars. We passed a section on the other side that had a road crew all over it and at least half of the road had fallen in. I said something like, "That must be damage from that earthquake they had recently."

Then a huge earthquake hit and both sides of the freeway started breaking up everywhere. Mother unit drove faster because that was the only real option at this point, we were on a section raised above a lake. We thought we were gonna make it and then the road tore apart right in front of us and dropped off into the water. Next thing I know we're freefalling straight down towards the lake. I remember tugging my seatbelt a little tighter, and a feeling of adrenaline like being on a roller coaster.

We hit the water and survived relatively unhurt, but now the car was filling with water. Mother unit was freaking out but I told her we were okay and to calm down, and then to open the door and get out of the car. We pushed the doors open and swam out; the car filled with water and sank. It didn't sink very far though, because the lake apparently wasn't very deep. I realized I had no shoes on, and I sensed rusty cans and stuff on the lake bottom. The water was a very murky brown. I swam back into the car to put my shoes on and then headed for shore where some rescue people were pulling victims out of the water.

Then I woke up.

I was a female character of some sort in the universe of the movie The Specialist (starring Sylvester Stallone). I don't remember what his name was in the dream but in the movie it's Ray so let's go with that. Ray was elsewhere, and I think I was sort of an FBI agent who'd gotten romantically involved with him. Where I was at the start of the dream though had to do with a large explosive device. An evil character, an older male, was trying to set the thing off but I fought him and killed him, also managing to permanently disable the bomb.

I took a helicopter to the site where I thought Ray might be, it was somehow related to the bomb I'd just taken care of. As the helicopter approached, I realized an entire freeway had been blockaded because the local law enforcement knew about a second explosive device under the freeway. They didn't know I'd killed the mastermind yet.

I got off the helicopter once it landed on the road and went down below it, where the excitement seemed to be. Ray was there examining what looked like grey plastic explosive wedged under the road's support system. I guess the idea was that enough traffic passing over the thing would set it off. So it was still something of a danger even with the larger explosive taken care of.

Ray was trying to make it sound like he had a solution, but I knew he was BSing the cops and other feds standing around watching him like a hawk. He was, after all, wanted for other criminal reasons, but they needed his help with this situation. There were several spots where this plastic explosive had been set, and Ray moved to the next one with me following. I told the others I had this handled, and where did he have to run to anyways? They let me follow him and stayed back.

Below the next device was a manhole cover. He took the cover off and it was obvious he had no intention of sticking around to help the feds, he had his moment to escape now. I followed him, I'd had it with my job and would rather excape the whole mess with Ray. A ladder down the hole took us to what looked like an abandoned subway, and there was a getaway car set up on the tracks. We got in fast and raced away. Apparently someone did something stupid up on the road because the entire thing went up in a huge explosion, which apparently busted a water main in the subway system and so it took everything we had to keep ahead of the water in the tunnels. We escaped and drove off.

Then the dream replayed with less-than-happy-ending results several times... and morphed into another dream that was just plain stupid.

Eventually I woke up.

(Possibly inspired by reading The Art Of The Matrix and a short conversation with my kid sister about stealing cars.)

I don't remember if I saw the actual invasion or if I just heard/knew about it happening. An alien race of high technology was taking over our planet. They were enslaving millions, killing those who would not surrender (and killing lots anyways). A few of us managed to hide, but we knew they were coming. There were two groups, I (as myself) was in the first group with my real-life mother and sister, and the group seemed to consist mostly of women and children. The second group was all men. We did not know at this point if the second group had survived. I figured if we waited around we'd get killed.

So I spoke to the people gathered around that we had to go to the source if we were going to have a remote chance in hell to fight the aliens. It was blatantly obvious that aliens existed, so that meant that our government really did have a crashed alien ship in their possession (viva la conspiracy theories!) and they were probably researching and even using the technology from it already. I told the people around me we were going to Area 51. (For some reason I thought it was in Arizona throughout the dream, though that doesn't make sense upon waking... but I guess the dream logic figured that was close enough. Plus, my group was located somewhere near Washington D.C. so Arizona was just as far away as New Mexico considering at the moment all we had was our feet to travel with.)

I looked out of the warehouse we were hiding in, and there was a car in the dusty parking lot, baking under the hot sun. I ran to it and found the keys in the ignition. It started and someone said it was wrong to steal and I said it was our only chance. The owner might be dead anyways. So everyone else piled in (there might have been two cars, I forget) and we drove off. It seems like we had to switch vehicles at some point when we ran out of gas, and it took us longer to find cars with keys. I remember thinking that if the human resistance lasted long enough, someone should set up usable car hubs for people fleeing but especially for resistance group members to move around the country. Take a car, drive it to the next hub, get a new one.

The next thing I knew I was suddenly a member of the second group, a random white male character. This was the all-guy group, and we were on foot. We knew the aliens were not far behind and tracking us somehow. It was somewhat snowy and we put logs and big sticks across our path at random points. It seems like we knew the aliens had trouble getting past these (or some metal-like alien-made machine did) so at first it was worth it. We heard the aliens making annoyed sounds at our previous roadblock (we were on a path though, not a road). This caused some satisfaction in our group but I figured they were too close for comfort now and we had better just run.

I told the guys to be careful so they didn't fall, to run steady and not too fast. I was in the lead and made my way over some wet, potentially slippery rocks, and beyond. I remember thinking we were trying to catch up to the first group, and I remember something about the first group trying to figure out how to leave behind some sign of where they were going without giving the whole thing away to the aliens.

Then I saw a black guy in a car (seen from like a camera angle or perhaps from the perspective of one of the second group members). He'd stolen the car and it seems like he was a key resistance leader, maybe even the top guy. He looked like Samuel L. Jackson but a little younger. He was pulling up to a corner to turn left.

Then I was him. I don't think I was going anywhere specific, probably just on the run. I was driving casually and this seemed to be fairly normal, other people were driving along like there wasn't some huge alien invasion going on. I saw up ahead a bunch of cars driving closely together, and too slow. I felt like it was a trap, they wanted me to pass and the aliens must know where I was. There was a dirt road up ahead on the right and I took that instead (still driving somewhat casually). As I took the turn I noticed a huge semitruck come up into opposing traffic in the space I would have been in if I'd tried to pass the cars. As if in a movie, I heard the aliens or some people working for them (or the aliens could shapeshift to look human) saying over the radio "He didn't take it."

Now I was driving down the dirt road with an open field on the right and a dead-looking corn field on the left. I knew I was in potential danger but figured the aliens hadn't planned on me going this way, so I had some time. But then up ahead I saw an ambulance, two cars right behind it, and another ambulance following right behind the lot. Damn radios, they were able to move fast because of the communication. I think they might have been hoping that I'd think they were real ambulances and pull over to clear the road. I was definitely not stopping for that. They pulled into my lane, heading straight for me, and as I slowed down they stopped completely. I could see a big (red?) pickup truck coming up behind them fast, essentially blocking the opposing lane of traffic and there wasn't any more room to drive past the cars and ambulances.

A woman who might not actually know what's going on at this moment was now beside the closest ambulance. There was a big, somewhat-evil looking man near her. The pickup almost hit the woman but the man pulled her out of the way at the last second. I'm not sure what happened to the pickup after that (although it's angle would have put it in the field to the right).

Meanwhile, the road was thoroughly blocked now by even more vehicles. Well, I wasn't going down here. I opened the car door and bailed into the cornfield. The corn stalks didn't even have much in the way of corn on them, and they were tall, dried up spindly things that didn't give much cover unless I had a lot of distance between me and my attackers. The aliens chased me, except they were human looking or humans in league with them. I have a feeling some of them were actual aliens, some were converted humans (mind control?) and some just hired people, maybe even innocent and thinking they were working for honest humans, not aliens.

Several times various people got close and each time I sprayed bullets their way (yay for instant dream uzi's... maybe I got one off a soldier, some of the people chasing me appeared to be in the National Guard). I realized too many of my pursuers were too close and I dove to the ground trying to hide. Some part of me knew that the cover here was too scant but I thought as hard as I could "they can't see me" and it worked. I was able to move ahead slowly, barely crawling along.

Ahead were two people arguing about trying to find me. One was a white woman, she had a uniform on and seemed to be in charge. The other was a black woman, a hireling of some sort, maybe a mercenary type, and she was saying that I'd "just... vanished." The black woman was scared. She thought I might be some sort of legendary evil spirit or something. She said "Naga" like she was even afraid of saying the word. She refused to keep searching even though the woman threatened her, and walked off. (Maybe the white woman killed her for such insubordination, maybe the black lady managed her own vanishing act, I don't know.)

I couldn't keep hiding forever and on a mad dash they spotted me and shot me with some sort of tranquilizer. As I fell I rolled into a clearing in the cornfield. I fought the drug in order to stay conscious, but I didn't move. I lay still with my eyes closed so they wouldn't know I was still awake. I was lying on my chest and felt horribly heavy from the drug but I figured if I had one chance now, it was to keep hold of reality. Maybe I could find the right moment to run... if I could still run...

The bad guys came and one of them held me down with his knee in my back while the others surrounded me with guns pointed down at me. Someone came up and lifted my head a little. I felt fingers opening my left eyelid and I saw a nurse (a very stereotypical, outdated looking nurse, who was probably a shapeshifted alien who'd watched a little too much 1940's earth television). She used the little finger on her left hand to poke lightly at my eyeball. I remember being worried about her fingernail. I moved my eye only a little but still thought she might notice I was awake. But she seemed satisfied after a few pokes and let go of my eye. Just as I was thinking I'd succeeded in keeping at least one small advantage I felt a prick somewhere in my back and a very powerful dose of some drug sent me to unconsciousness.

I was instantly dreaming, I knew it, but it was unlike any other dream I'd ever had. The world was in shades of black and white, and even the sound in the air around me seemed foreign. I was breathing and could hear it like a controlled rush as I stared out what must have been some sort of helmet. I was looking at the corn field, the clearing I'd fallen into, but the scene had been surreally transformed into perfect right angles. The corn was no longer a mass of spindly stalks but featureless flat hedge-looking things. I was standing in the clearing, and it made a hallway between these odd flat wall-hedges that stretched out in front of me, before it ended in a T junction that led to thinner passages to the left and right. I felt rather than saw tubes coming from my helmet into my suit (some sort of space suit?) The helmet must have been large, because all I could see was the glass/clear protective surface before me that curved the secenery at the very edges of my vision. I realized that I was an alien now, a real alien, somehow connected to it, but I honestly felt like I was the alien. The end result was frighteningly realistic, but in effect redefining "real" because I wasn't human anymore.

There was nobody in the clearing ahead of me. I turned and saw someone behind me... it was the old me! The me I had been before this terrible dream. He was just standing there with an odd, somewhat stupid smile on his face. I felt such an intense and complete hatred for this man that I immediately reached out and grabbed the human face and head in my hands. (The alien hands were suited up almost like a typical astronaut in a space suit, only less bulky, and the gloved fingers and hands were human shaped.) I squeezed the man's head and crushed it, killing him. I dropped the body and turned back the way I'd originally been facing. I walked to the end of the corridor, all the time hearing the terrible breathing... my breathing...

There was bright light above me and I looked up, raising my arms in the glare and feeling a strange mix of familiarity and total exaltation. I felt my body being sucked up into the transporter of the alien vessel not far above me, like I became a digital painting that streaked upwards, first from my fingers and helmet and continuing quickly down until I was completely transferred to the receiving pod inside the ship.

The next thing I remember is a great, dark space, like the interior of a huge ship. A sinking feeling that I'd been asleep all this time and woken up who-knows-where under complete alien control told me that I was myself again... at least. But I wasn't sure how I was seeing what was before my eyes. It was like the ship I was in was transparent or at least the bulk of it seemed to be to my right and a little above me. Ahead of the alien ship was a pulsing beam of light that flexed a little like a frequency wave turned 3D. The ship was travelling along the light beam like it was a travel route; it disappeared into the front of the ship somewhere and I'm not sure if it continued out the back of the ship... it may not have.

The ship was going slowly and the whole time I could hear a loud, metallic, and vaguely deep voice saying over and over, "You are here. You are here. You are here." This vision didn't last long, as I moved almost involuntarily, trying to figure out if I could move at all, or where I was in all this. I felt sheets, the solidness of a bed below me, a very human feeling after such an alien experience. I was sure I'd seen the previous scenes, but had I been asleep and only just now woken? Had I been able to unwittingly access some sort of alien viewing system with my mind? Had I connected telepathically with the alien who I'd envisioned... killing me in the corn field? Had my death only been some wish or delusion on the part of the alien? I was obviously still alive... and in a bed somewhere... in alien custody, right?

Then I realized I was awake, truly awake, and this had all been just a dream.

( dream symbol analysis and thoughts )

My (real) parents were on a car trip, but it was like we all in the Great Depression era. We even had a car from then, one of those mobster looking things (the hit-man car that the modern PT Cruiser is modelled after). We stopped at a place to stay for the night, and I remember it being cold outside but still daylight. Inside the hotel was a line, a very long line. Everyone was sorta hunkered down along a hallway, with a blanket around them if they were lucky enough to have one. Then this lady who musta been the manager/owner scurried by, saying to herself quite audibly, "At least I have the alimony payment" over and over. I think she said something before that too, as she came in, like, "I can't do this I can't deal with this anymore."

I turned to Dad, who was crammed in an alcove behind me with other people, and I said, "That's not smart, she shouldn't talk like she's got money around a bunch of strangers, she's putting herself in danger. I guess she could have meant that she'd just successfully made an alimony payment, but the odds are entirely greater that she's the one with the cash." Dad said something in agreement.

I decided to follow her, worried she was gonna get in trouble. I managed to stop her outside the hotel, and asked if there was something I could do to help. At this point I was morphing into a sort of freelance detective character (still female, still kinda with my real personality). The lady said that the hotel's reputation was on the line, that someone had stolen a diamond necklace from one of the tenants. I asked who'd been in and out of the place lately, and the lady said there was one black kid named Scamp who hung around a lot (at least I think that's his name... something like that... Scat? Scraps? not sure).

Suddenly I knew he'd done it, call it gut feeling or whatever. I just had to find him and see what he'd done with it. I told the lady not to worry, that I'd take care of this, and asked if the tenant had reported the theft to the police yet. The lady said no, and I said "good" because Scamp would be less likely to be nervous if the cops weren't crawling all over the town looking for a thief.

I had no car and no driver's license, so I walked. I checked my pocket for coins and realized that in Great Depression standards I had a small fortune in coins in my pocket, even though it was just a little bit of change by today's standards. I knew I could use a taxi for a penny to get anywhere in town, and for two pennies I was certain any cabby would drive me all over for however long it took. I walked past my Dad who was bicycling down the main street for some reason (like he belonged in this town?) and then I got a taxi.

I stopped at a jewelry store and asked if anyone had sold or tried to sell a diamond necklace here recently. "No." Had anyone seen Scamp around? "Yes, he's over at the laundromat a lot." So I went there and saw him across this big room of washers and dryers. He was talking to himself, working out his own code of holes in the wall, and by pressing the right one he openned a secret compartment in the wall. He hid something in a small box that came out of it (like a CD player ejecting it's tray, but the box came out completely) and then closed it again.

I went up to him, pretending I hadn't seen the secrets (there were three compartments total). First I talked to him, making him trust me and feel safe with me. Then I convinced him to give up the goods, and I openned the third compartment (I knew which one probably had jewelry from watching earlier). I asked him if one necklace was the diamond one missing from the hotel, but I had guessed wrong and he pointed out the correct one. It was a diamond set in a open heart shape made of gold, and the chain was gold too. I put that necklace in my right front pocket of my shirt so I wouldn't get it mixed up again. I said I'd help him return the rest of the stolen jewelry too. One of the other compartments had stuff that was actually his, just little odds and ends like pieces of ribbon. He started to tell me about his sister. He said, "You know my sister's depressed, right?" She was poor too, and spent all her time in her room. She seemed to be getting sicker and sicker. Everone expected her to just sorta pine away and die, like there was no way to help her.

I went to visit the sister and saw her room was awfully decorated in puke green and a color I like to call "grandma orange." I guess she liked green and orange together, but I knew just the decor alone had to be making her depression worse. I found a pillow that had a pattern of orange flowers on green leaves, and I said, "How would you like to see your room completely made over in this green" and I pointed to an almost lime-green, "and this orange" and I pointed to a matching neon orange. (Very Target/Ikea-like, or fairly typical "Bed In A Bag" bedding color options.) I was already thinking of patterns for the bedding and accessories. The girl seemed interested, and I knew this makeover would be a huge breath of fresh air for her. Plus, we'd be getting her all new clothes and a hair makeover too. This was starting to feel like one of those extreme makeover shows, and the Great Depression era was fading into modern times.

And then that's exactly what it was. I was the host of a makeover show, and I'd become a black lady. I was standing on the porch of the house the following morning talking to the girl's mother and aunt or someone like that (they were all black too, of course, since Scamp was black in the first place and this was his family). The women were sitting around on the patio furniture. I said, "Now, we've got a lot to do, lots of shopping to get done, so I better get started." And I was going to go in and get the girl.

Then I woke up.

It was night time and I was myself, standing in a park by some rocks that my friends were digging around in. I don't know who the people were supposed to be in the dream beyond friends or aquaintances, but we had found the location to some sort of treasure and they were digging for it. Just as some other people approached, I found what I knew was the treasure, it was a bunch of small dirty rocks and I quickly stuck them in my pockets.

The people approaching us were going to take the treasure away from me, I somehow knew this. I also knew that they had some sort of other treasure (it seems like I visualized a weird system of small metal cubes that the rocks could be put into), and that they could use their treasure to figure out some hidden message or clue in my treasure. So I started yelling at the top of my lungs that the bad guys were part of some gang (I yelled a specific name in my dream but don't remember it now). And we were in the territory of another gang and they'd be really unhappy to find out that these other people were on their turf. Mind you, the bad guys weren't really in the rival gang, I just made that up.

They were hesitating so I walked out of the park and into a parking lot, and stopped yelling as I came up to my car. It was a very sporty car, and it was either blue or green. I had a remote to unlock it and got in quickly because one of the bad guys had actually followed me that far. He was trying to get into the car with me but I sped off and left him rolling across the pavement cursing at me.

The design of the car changed from a super sporty thing to a very futuristic concept car type of thing. It was a one-seater now, and I sort of reclined in it, my right foot going into a recess on one side that had the gas pedal, and my left foot in a matching recess on the other side that had the break pedal. There was no gearshift and I have a feeling it was using some type of new technology, not a normal automatic transmission. And the car was really fast. The steering wheel was really cool, it was kind of like a slightly flattened half sphere with two smoothed out holes in each side. If you wanted to spin the steering wheel really quicky, you could use one of those holes and put your finger in it and rotate the whole wheel very quickly because there was almost no friction in the whole system. And the way you got into and out of the car was to pull down this clear rounded glass windshield thing over yourself that went down to where your feet was and attached to the back of the car behind your seat. And the way the gas and break pedals worked, you could really slide around a corner fast. And I was an excellent driver, racing along the nighttime streets.

And now I was Vin Diesel. I might have been something similar to his character in the movie XXX, but I'm not sure. Either way, one of the bad guys was managing to catch up to me in another car, even though I was able to take my interesting little vehicle onto sidewalks and stuff. I ended up driving the thing into a store, it fit through the doorway. There was a cop in the store but he didn't try to stop me, I think he knew I was a good guy (so I guess I was some sort of good guy at this point in the dream plot). As I was going out the back door of the store, the car changed into a motorcycle. And there were two back doors in the store, one set right after the other (no it didn't make a whole lot of sense), and they were supposed to open automatically but seemed to be having trouble recognizing that I wanted to go through them. I waved my arm to set off the motion detectors and was able to get out of there even though I basically had to hold the doors open so I didn't scratch the bike.

I found myself on a sideroad by the main drag and for some reason I couldn't get much speed. I realized I was almost out of gas. Conveniently, there was a gas station right near me so I pulled in. I had some sort of card that would let me get free gas forever (or for as long as I worked for whatever good-guy organization I was working for, thinking the feds). I was filling up the tank using this odd little hose thing and someone else was filling up their car. I think we talked about something, maybe the bike.

Then I woke up.


( dream symbol analysis and thoughts )