Had a dream last night. As per usual a lot of the details are lost to me now, but when I woke up at 5:30 after having had the dream I made as conscious an effort as I could to remember as much of it as possible.
Like many dreams, it played out a bit like a game. I was a small child, near a public swimming pool in a neighborhood that had plenty of other small children in it just milling around. I got control of a school bus-type-thing, and all the other children started following me around and interacting with the world that I was driving past. There were a couple other kids who were my friends who were riding with me, I recall two girls and a boy.
As they followed, the other children started to grow older (as did we). The boys built little cars to tool around in, the girls grouped together on wagon/bus things, and a few assorted kids made little airplanes that they'd run around with while making zooming and wooshing noises.
As the ride continued, the level of technology increased. The children grew older, the kids started developing actually self-propelled vehicles, and the world around us started to change as well, mimicking their technological advancements.
Then, something happened... Some time around the early/mid teens, the one girl who'd been riding with me in the bus started voicing her dissatisfaction with what we were doing. Started arguing continually with the rest of us. Saying we weren't paying enough attention to the kids or something (I really do regret having lost as much of this dream as I have).
There was a split. She took off, and a number of the kids followed her to pursue her agenda. We just kept on going, the number of kids/teens following us steadily growing and our influence spreading to the world around. I distinctly remember one point when we were at a castle in Germany, and the kids had finally perfected the technology of flight. I took a spin in the plane they'd put together, and life was pretty sweet.
Things started getting dark after that. The other girl showed up again with her own following. Arguments broke out. Our followers (who were at this point adults) starting turning their technological advancement towards war. Weapons started appearing, the vehicles they'd been building and upgrading were re-purposed for combat. Full-out war broke out.
It continued like this for a while, with both our forces putting everything they had into it and with severe casualties on both sides. The "kids" were out of our control. It just kept going, a long era of fear and death, until our little friend group from the bus decided that it had to end.
We started researching, and apparently (grr, details) figured out a way of doing it. We somehow managed to get hold of the rebel girl, and the four of us drove the bus back to the old neighborhood. Our forces were driving along in jeeps and humvees, crashing into and firing wildly at the rebel forces that were following the girl in their own cars.
Eventually, we made it back to the neighborhood, and got everyone out of their vehicles. We were back at the old swimming pool. Everyone jumped in (it was more of a wading pool, really).
Once they jumped into the water, things changed. The weapons, armor, equipment and everything disappeared. Everyone changed back into young kids and started playing with each other in the water.
Everyone, that is, except for us. The 4 who had ridden in the bus. We were still adults, and the kids acted like we weren't even there. Furthermore, only the ones who had jumped into the pool were changed, there was still a war raging out there in the distance. We just looked at each other, and there's a blank spot where I don't remember what happened. The dream doesn't quite end there though.
Next I was in some place in Africa, fighting against some warlord and his troops with my own followers from that region (the only significant visible difference between the two forces was the color of the uniforms). The fighting had moved into a warehouse.
Now it was playing out a bit more like a third person shooter, rather than an RTS, and I started helping out to take down the enemy. There were environmental hazards like the usual explosives littered around, and there were also these plastic jerrycans of gas sitting about (this appeared to be more of a garage area, with numbers of vehicles scattered around) with lighters attached.
Everything was fire. Using the cans, I could either spray fire on close-range opponents or throw what amounted to a super-powered molotov at clusters of them farther away. The enemy withered under the onslaught, and we were victorious.
But then my fellows started rounding up the survivors, the ones who had surrendered or been overwhelmed. Started using them as target practice, beating them up, burning their skin with the fuel cans. Worst of all was a large group that had assembled outside an incinerator, and was scaring, prodding, tricking or outright throwing the enemy survivors inside before shutting the door and killing them. The only thing louder than the screams was the laughter of the troops I'd been fighting alongside.
As an avid gamer and film viewer, I've seen a lot of pretty horrifying shit. But this hit me. This hit me hard. I couldn't stand to look at it, and just had to start walking away, out of the warehouse. While passing by a friend I reached out an arm and said "Don't go there, man".
One thing is how sickened I was at the pain and torment and the insanity of what they were doing to these people. Another thing is how guilty I felt.
I had driven the bus, I had brought them through the stages of growth and technology, I was the reason that they were here at all, or that any of this technology existed that they were killing and torturing each other with. They were ignorant of their history and how these people they were gunning down had been their childhood playmates at some point in the long-distant past. It was because of what we had done, in our ignorant and carefree way, that this was happening.
Walking out of the warehouse and being weighed down with the realization of guilt and the screams of those being burned within, the dream ended.
Author
Topic: The Dream Thread (Read 609683 times)