The conspiracy dream

[garote]

I was standing in the lobby of a bank. Some clerks were working in glass booths farther ahead of me and my two companions. In front of us was a long counter with a few bends in it, covered with papers and stationery and small devices used by bank clerks.

My first companion was a man older than me, in his late 50's, with tousled white hair and stubble on his pale chin. He was staring apprehensively at my second companion, a boy about 16 years old. They boy was on the other side of the counter, next to a machine that was built into the countertop. The machine was gunmetal gray and had a cluster of big clumsy buttons on it, as well as a small display. It looked like an ATM, but it was on the side of the counter where the clerks stood, as if they were the only ones allowed to use it. The boy was attaching a wide, flat plastic device onto the top of this ATM. It looked like the lid of a square pot, and it covered up the buttons and the display. As soon as he had it in place, the device started whirring, as machinery on the underside began to mechanically punch the buttons on the ATM.

It was a device invented by the older man, and I realized that it was his attempt to "hack" the banking system. It was literally a brute-force hack: His device needed to be held in place, so it could push the buttons and read the display faster than any human, overwhelming the computer inside the ATM. If the boy held it in place long enough without arousing the suspicion of the clerks, the man would become a billionaire in only a few minutes.

In one of those acts of expositional remembering that is typical in dreams, I recalled that the boy was the man's son, and the man was a celebrated inventor and scientist. But something was wrong with the story unfolding before me, because I'd always thought the man got rich because his inventions were remarkably popular and useful, not because he used them to steal massive amounts of money from a bank.

While I pondered this, one of the clerks emerged from behind a glass-walled office, holding a binder. She glanced at the boy with the machine, which was punching putting furiously and making a sound like a manual typewriter in the hands of an excited novelist. It looked like the clerk was in the middle of some task, but her stride was faltering a bit, and unless the boy did something she would be distracted and stop. He abruptly yanked the machine off the top of the ATM, and it went silent. Hopefully it could resume whatever tricky business it was doing if he put it back in place later.

The clerk didn't say anything, but she stopped walking, still clutching the binder, and stared at the ATM as if she couldn't decide what she saw. The boy tried to look nonchalant, holding the flat device down below the counter. The father's eyes bugged out but he didn't speak. I waited to see what would happen next. Perhaps we should cut our losses and run out of the bank?

The clerk didn't raise any alarm, but two security guards appeared anyway, walking slowly towards either end of the long counter. If they got too close they would box the boy in. I muttered to the boy: "Everything okay, Chris?" The scientist father slapped his face in disbelief. Why had I used the boy's real name? The guards could have overheard.

"Aw dang," I thought. "Yeah, that was dumb."

Before the guards could pounce, we all decided to run for it. The boy dropped the device and jumped over the counter, and the three of us bolted out the glass doors.

We were outside on a crowded walkway. A glass paneled roof arched overhead. It was an indoor mall. Everyone was headed in the same direction, but in small groups at their own pace, rather than with the smooth motion of a unified crowd. I walked in the crowd for 100 feet or so and sat down on a bench. I was wearing a baseball cap, which I pulled down low over my eyes. Somehow I thought this would be enough to fool any bank guards that came after me.

I sat there contemplating my next move, and realized I could still see the people walking past me. There was a family with a young child. Some teenagers. Et cetera. I could make out details in their clothing and read their expressions, even though my hat was over my eyes, which were closed, and I had the palm of my hand over my hat so I could pretend I was taking a nap. How was this happening?

"I'm not seeing with my eyes," I thought. "I'm sensing this, not seeing it. The only way this could be happening is if I'm dreaming. Perhaps I am dreaming... But if I start to act like I'm dreaming - like I know what's going on - what will happen? And what will happen to my companions?"

I thought for a while longer, then stood up from the bench. Walking out into the crowd, I somehow located the scientist father from the derailed bank heist. He had the same crazed expression as before. I stopped him by grabbing both his shoulders, fixed him with my most emphatic stare, and said this:

"Listen to me. This is very important. I am sensing things without seeing them. That means I am dreaming. That means this whole world around us is a dream. And that means, when I wake up, everything will be destroyed in an instant. Including you."

As I said the word 'dream', I heard a faint ringing sound, as if someone struck a tiny bell just once, and the reverberations permeated the universe. The man and the crowd behind him - the entire scene - vibrated slightly. Then the sound and vibration faded, and all was as before.

"You need to find a way out. You're a brilliant inventor, so if anyone can do it, you can. Find some way for us all to get out. I don't know how much time you have, because as I move around, everything I get too far away from gets churned up. But you need to go out there."

I pointed over his shoulder, away from the direction the crowd was moving.

"... Because out there you will find resources. Out there are weird, powerful, terrible things that you might be able to use. And if you can't use them, well... Your time is limited, and at least you'll see them. You'll see amazing things. Now go. HURRY! GO!!"

I was shouting by the time I was done with him. He took me seriously - which I thought was bizarre, but fortunate - and he about-faced and began pushing upstream through the crowd. Meanwhile I turned the other way and kept walking.

Now what was I supposed to do? This was a dream and I knew it, but I had no idea when I would wake up. I had some time to kill. I walked with the crowd for a while. We were outdoors now, in a park. The flow of people eased, into a wide, flat courtyard made of bricks. It was a pleasant day and fluffy clouds drifted overhead as people milled around me in groups, talking.

I wandered up to a group of four women, in their late twenties or early thirties. Their clothing had an edge of old-school goth to it, in a playful style but not overdone. One of them was wearing a witch hat. Another had buckles on her shoes. One of them had a vest over a pinstripe shirt. She said to the others: "Actually, it's not the shirt or the vest. I'm just like that. I'm serious. Check it out!"

She opened her vest, then grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it up. On the front of her chest where one might expect to see two breasts, there was instead one large breast, right in the center, shaped to look wider by the under-wiring of a hefty lace brassiere.

The other women made appreciative noises. "Oooh!" "Cool!"

"Whoah, it's a bra for making one boob look like two!" I thought, staring in astonishment. "It's doing what sports bras do, but in reverse! It's ... It's a reverse-uniboob!"

My thoughts spun out. I felt an absurdly intense confusion. Women were wearing reverse-uniboob bras. How many women? What was the ratio? Was there a conspiracy in the fashion world to keep the true extent of uniboob a secret? Did sports bras have that problem on purpose, to sow uncertainty in the population? My god, this meant that instead of an average of one boob for each person on Earth, we could be looking at something like, two for every three. What if this ISN'T a dream?

In a panic, I woke up.

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

Wow. So sophisticated.

[garote]

My own brain often makes things a bit too complicated. :D

Perhaps that's why I've had to work so hard at my job to find the right balance between too simple and too complex...

[juan_gandhi]

Right, makes sense. That horse needs exercise.