(The title is a joking reference to the previous dream.)
This dream started as some weird sort of video game that was a combination of Riddick, LEGOS, and World of Warcarft. It eventually evolved into a fairly modern-day space drama that had nothing to do with any of that.
The initial bits of the setup are vague now, but there was a space flight to Jupiter and it seems like most of the crew died due to something beyond our control. The survivors were myself (a female astronaut), a guy who was probably the captain (let's call him Bob, he was played by
Ed Harris), and Brian, another astronaut. Brian had some kind of form or paper inside a file cabinet or box on the ship that will come in later.
Once the mission was complete, even though it had gone so badly, there was an odd continuation from the game mentioned at the beginning of the dream, in that this tutorial computer voice or entity from that game said it was now time for an ethics test. The final test. Apparently everything else that had happened had also been a twisted test of some sort.
Suddenly the three of us are floating out in space, just beyond Earth's orbit. We're all wearing space suits but they're a kind that we know won't last all that long if nobody comes to get us (air supply issues and naturally if we get caught in Earth's gravitational field or some other planet's, we're toast). Our slow floating trajectory is taking us away from Earth, however, and we're wondering what on earth this test could be while frustrated at the helplessness of the situation.
We come across some floating space debris slowly going the other way, and realize that some of it is from the failed Jupiter mission. I try to hold on to some of it with my arms, legs, and feet and manage to end up with a few things floating along with us (so I don't have to hold onto them anymore, just sorta pay attention here and there to be sure the stuff is still with us). There's a cardboard box and a black metal box or chest of some sort, but dream logic doesn't always hold and at random the containers change without my noticing anything's wrong. Besides, at this point we randomly don't have space suits on at all, but it doesn't affect the dream's plot.
In the cardboard box is another space suit, although at times it looks like an orange down-feather-filled sleeping bag (like one my parents have). I hang onto it thinking there's probably something important to do with it, and keep looking through the box. Brian's file is brought up again, and Bob tells him to go ahead and take it as if it's some big kind of deal (the paper happens to be in the bottom of the cardboard box, inside a file folder... and by this point we don't have space suits on until next mentioned). I get the paper out and hand it to him, and he holds onto it like it's the thing he'd like to die with. We all kinda figure we're probably toast out here anyways.
I find one of my (real-life current and long-time) comforters in the box, and all of a sudden I just start crying. I hug the thing, it's like it's the dearest thing to the world to me right now, and so surreal to have it out here in space with me (yay, I found my thing to die with? lol). The guys sort of pick up on the vibe, but I think all they did was try to comfort me. I'm not sure what I did with the blanket but before long it wasn't there and I'd forgotten about it.
I was talking to Brian and found a handkerchief in my pocket. It had a vintage red and white floral pattern on it. For some reason it ended up in Brian's hand (did I give it to him? sort of let it go and it floated past him? I forget). Now I had gloves that sort of matched the handkerchief, but they were on my feet, and my feet looked like hands and I could even flex the fingers properly. Then my attention was taken away from that (and as far as I can tell, the hand-feet and gloves disappeared from the dream) as Brian asked if he could keep the handkerchief. I said sure. Then I said I hoped I hadn't used it lately, and could remember the feel of it before I'd let it go, and I knew I had, so I said so. But I said he could run it through the wash next time he did clothes and it'd be fine. Then I made a joke about, "Unless you never want to wash it again!" in that sort of voice like a starstruck fan who's had a body part signed by someone famous. (Brian no longer had the file mentioned earlier.)
Well, we'd figured out that the suit we'd found in the box was special. We figured the testing people were tracking it (or monitoring us some other way), and whoever ended up wearing it would be saved, while the other two would die (there was dim hope that if we all passed the test they'd rescue us all... but at this point the plot was so twisted, we weren't honestly sure). The suit was also a higher grade suit that would hold up longer in a falling-towards-a-planet sort of situation. Of course, it still wouldn't save a person from a head-long crash into unforgiving ground, but who's counting. We knew we should probably be debating who went in the suit (if anyone, as we sorta wanted to give the testers the finger)... but we weren't really talking about it.
But then I said to Bob, utterly serious, "Well, at this point I don't think I can live without Brian, and Brian can't live without me, so we default to you." I wondered if I should have double-checked this with Brian but I had a feeling... and although he hadn't been looking at me when I said this, after a few moments our eyes met and I was right. Yay random falling in love in space within a few moments! Anyways, Bob seemed to realize this was true and agreed with the decision. I helped him get into the special suit (yes, dream logic failing, but just wait till how badly...) which at this point looked like the sleeping bag version. I helped zip it up past his head, which was just about as far as it went. And yes, it was open at the top like a sleeping bag would be, but the edges were together (not like it'd make any difference).
Now Brian and I were wearing the (real) space suits we'd started out in. Brian had moved to hold me in his arms, and I asked Bob, "Want a push?" I think we'd figured out that the testers would assume the winner of the special suit would separate from the other two. So yeah, Bob knew this was the way it had to go. I gave the special suit (which was now some weird metal casing that makes no sense at all) a nudge with my foot, and because physics demands that we also change trajectory in outer space, we started floating slowly away from Bob as well. (Whoah, dream logic didn't fail in that respect! lol)
So Brian and I are floating along in outer space, bulky-suited arms around each other, with the bubbles of our space suit helmets resting gently together...
Then I woke up.