[Editor’s note: I cut out several dreams here that were more uninteresting than usual.]
In my final, most disturbed dream, I dreamt that I first met Roma in 1996 instead of 2001. She was trying to gain immortality by sacrificing money and technological devices to some type of large machine, and by stashing various Anti-Capitalist Manifestos in public places.
The first place I met her was a McDonald’s and she was obviously very disturbed. She was constantly obsessed with divesting herself of material possessions and spouting some type of ideological, political dogma, along with passing out her incomprehensible, typed Manifestos. I didn’t take seriously her crusade but I eventually became her friend. For some reason there was an article about her in the New York Times. Anyway, our friendship progressed as it did in real life, although from an earlier date.
Flash to the present day. I am traveling with a bunch of friends on a long road trip, and we decide to stop at a McDonald’s. When I get there I place my order but soon realize that I forgot to order a Coke. They inform me that I am going to have to walk down to the other McDonald’s to get one because their
machine is empty. So I start walking across a parking lot and for some reason the lot is nearly vertical in several places, and it is difficult for me to traverse.
On my way across this lot I am being followed or monitored by some type of intelligent dog. I pass a third, shuttered and fenced-in, McDonald’s on my way to the other one and am forced to wait in some sort of line and be examined by a security guard before I can buy my Coke. He rips off my shirt and holds me up to some kind of facial scanner in order to verify my identity and then leads me to a small machine in a corner, where I decide to order two large Cokes (in case I need one later). I pay him with eight quarters and he opens a door on the machine, retrieving the Cokes from inside. I think, “This is weird,” and leave the second McDonald’s.
When I get back to the other McDonald’s, I go in and everything has been painted green and consists of narrow, winding corridors. People in hospital scrubs are walking about with clipboards. Somebody quickly seizes me and says, “Come with me.” I see a glimpse of Roma in the distance and she says to me cryptically, “caco, everything is still the same.”
The hospital personnel lead me to some type of upright gurney and start strapping me in. “What’s going on?” I ask. “This is an interrogation to determine how non-materialistic you’ve been,” they say. “It all relates to your first encounter with Roma and how seriously you took her Anti-Materialism Manifesto. You’re awarded points based on how much money and how many technology gadgets you’ve sacrificed.”
“This is absurd,” I say, “what happens to me if I fail the interrogation?”
“You die,” they say.
“And what happens if I pass?”
“You still die, but the Leader doesn’t like to dictate when.” They place some type of goggles up to my eyes and start injecting me with what I assume are truth drugs. All the hospital personnel working on me have very grim yet sorrowful looks on their faces.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask them.
One of the personnel staff says, “It’s because America, and the Armageddon culture there, sucks.”
The interrogation begins. “Where did you first meet Roma,” they ask, and I explain it was in 1996.
Nearby I see a small monitor which has my “high score” listed on it. It’s pathetically low but has varied little over the years, decreasing when I was employed at Erin’s startup. Also the details of our first meeting are listed there.
“Right there it is,” I say, “on the monitor, operation 93224 in McDonald’s.“
“You must be mistaken,” the personnel answer, “Operation 93224 was headed by a totally different agent in Guatemala.”
“But it’s on the monitor there, I can see it,” I say and, noticing the monitor, one of the personnel starts to cover it with a large sheet.
For some reason this perception of reality causes the entire interrogation room to break down and people come in and start dismantling the place. Walls are taken down, surfaces are repainted yellow and finished with wood — it’s as though a team of construction workers is moving at VHS fast forward
speed.
Eventually I am standing bewildered in the center of a McDonald’s holding two large Cokes. I find my friends and take a seat. A strange fellow comes up to me and I realize that he is the one who interrogated me, and he has escaped the punishment of death.
“There are more things in . . . in . . . ” he starts to say, but he’s somewhat of a Redneck and gets tripped up on this Shakespeare quote.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” I finish it for him.
“Yes,” the man says, “I could be Dick if I wanted but I would be faking it the entire time.”
I am suddenly shown, in my mind, the personalities of several people who have escaped the death sentence after the interrogation. One of them is a Joe Dirt-looking fellow who has a massive intellect and sees everyone’s mind as a cloud of atoms above their head.
“Does this look like reality to you?” a disembodied voice asks.
“No,” I answer, “This is a delusion.”
“Hurry,” somebody says to me, “We have to move before everything changes back.”
I start running, following a large group of people who are similarly engaged in getting the hell out of there.
For some reason the layout of the McDonald’s is still rather confusing and I can still see hospital personnel gripping clipboards and shouting into intercoms as though they are trying to arrange for our recapture. I get tripped up while I am running and I realize I am not going to make it. Eventually a door slams in front of me and the hospital personnel grasp me by the arms and start dragging me back to my interrogation as the construction workers re-enter the place and start transforming it back into the cold, clinical interrogation chambers. It was then that I woke up.