This Morning's Dream (Written Immediately After Waking)

I was outside of a building complex located out in the middle of nowhere, with some people I knew... maybe from school. Mix of girls and guys, my age or slightly older. No Jake, no one from quizbowl. We'd come there together as either part of a real-life (or reality tv?) version of a popular sneaking game, or maybe we were actually in a VR world. The grass looked genuine, but probably wasn't real at all. We were standing outside of the fence around the complex, waiting for someone. He was late, and we were all having second thoughts... an Asian girl wanted to just go ahead and break in already, and one of the guys was already using wire cutters to cut through the chain link. I was studying the little pieces of metal on the ground (various things, all still shiny, less than three inches long) when Charlie Steinhice (UTC quizbowl) emerged from out of the trees.

In demeanor at least, he was basically the same Charlie as in real life. His purpose was a little more urgent, though... he was our contact to get us inside. A disgruntled employee of the company that owned the building, he was going to be leaving its employ if he could, after having discovered some disturbingly shady dealings involving his ex-wife, who was now a VP or something.

From over at the fence, the Asian girl asked him what exactly he'd done inside the company. Charlie started talking about how the company's front was as a nuts & bolts manufacturer. He took some time going into the details. Nervously, I began picking some of the screws off the ground and eating them, but only after carefully removing the nuts and washers first. As Charlie and one of the guys started going into ways to get into the building, there was dissent among the ranks. Outvoted and miffed, the Asian girl and guy who had been working on the chain-link said to hell with it, and climbed through the hole in the fence anyway, running at the building. As they turned the corner, we could see one of the security guards spot them, and start running around to the front of the building, yelling into his radio.

We decided if we didn’t follow them, we wouldn’t get in anytime soon, so we ran at the building, which as we got closer looked less industrial, and more and more like a very large old house. Charlie instructed us all where his office was, and we decided our best bet at making it there would be to split up. As some people headed for the back steps and the older guy started scaling a drain pipe, I took a basement window and shimmied through. Sneaking my way around covered furniture, I made it to a set of rickety stairs and went up, coming out in a small alcove. I could hear many, many people just around the corner, talking casually above some background music. Stole a glance, and it was a cocktail party. Perfect. I'd blend right in.

At this point, certain things began to hint that this was virtual reality and not a set of actors. The people at the cocktail party were clearly NPCs... I could talk to them, but it was less conversation and more interchange, and if we talked long enough, they'd repeat themselves. What I needed was a nametag, like everyone else. The fact that everyone was shaking hands with me and inclining their head in digital confusion before commenting on my lack of one was starting to concern me. I ran into my high school biology teacher and tried to take hers. She didn't understand the question, and my attempts to just peel it off felt like hitting "use" on an object, and failing repeatedly. I gave up and proceeded on, not talking to anyone, looking for the drinks. Stumbled across a table full of paper nametag backings. But wait... there was one left. "Hello my name is... Bernard Malamed?" Okay. Must be the one I'm supposed to take.

I wound my way back through the party, talking freely to the NPCs as Bernard. They didn't provide much useful information. The company was celebrating something, and holding this big event, but most of them were pretty vague about it. I bolted the ballroom in search of some of my cohorts, prepared to play hopelessly lost guest if stopped.

The rest of the dream was sneaking. I rescued a kid trapped in a closet, and got some keys. Then I found one of my companions sneaking through a kitchen. We got some maces in a hallway, and then found the office. Charlie caught up with us, but his ex-wife was following him. We tied her up, but she turned Charlie into a medium-sized talking dog.

Sometimes he floated.

I think then we were trying to turn him back, although honestly, I was thinking that a floating medium-sized fluffy pun-cracking dog was pretty cute. And then someone from Kill Bill stopped me and told me to find O-Ren's lawyer.

Somewhere around there I woke up.