I find myself a newcomer to a future dystopia. Everybody else around seems to have been there a while and to know how everything works, but I have no idea. I learn quickly that the only jobs to be had are in malls and the only travel is by bus. But in this dystopia, all the malls are in gothic-looking university-type building complexes. I'm lucky because I land a job at H&M.
I climb on a crowded, rusty bus to find my way to my new job. From talking to people on the bus, I learn that there are three classes in this world: the very wealthy, who are the people who managed to horde cash before whatever apocalypse happened, the mall workers (who can pay small sums for rent and hence have homes, and the rest, who are sort of urban nomads, squatting in whatever empty space they can find. I'm lucky to have my job at H&M, because I'll be able to rent.
I have no idea how to find my new job, and when a group of people who look interesting to me get off, I follow them. We end up in a vast mansion--what might have been a former museum--with all marble floors, walls, ceilings, and furnishings. A large family, with twelve children, many of them grown, lives there. They welcome us and ask us to wander where we like. I find a giant marble bath tub and decide to settle in and relax.
After my bath, I realize I have to get to work. I ask one of the older kids for directions and find out H&M is just around the corner. When I get there, I see that inside H&M is just like any H&M in any city in our world: brightly lit, multi-leveled, and crowded. I put on a pink H&M short-sleeve knit shirt and a name tag and get to work helping people find clothes.
As I was waking, I was wondering where the clothes were made. Were they left over from before the apocalypse, or were they evidence that in other parts of the world, people were living and working (and producing goods) in normal conditions? Then I realized I had been dreaming and would never know now that I was awake. The dream didn't tell.
Comments (2)
What strikes me most about this dream-- how much exposition there seems to be, how much you are aware of without actually experiencing any of it in the dream. And the closing statement: "Then I realized I had been dreaming and would never know now that I was awake. The dream didn't tell." I don't know exactly what it is about the statement but there is something sad there, and I sympathize with it. It reminds me of a very pretty and favorite passage from Denis Johnson's "Car-Crash While Hitchhiking." The narrator is watching a man take his last bloody and dying breaths as he hangs, "snoring loudly," "rudely," from his broken seat after a car wreck.
"... I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real."
It's funny I hadn't read his tuff in some time. Just did yesterday and, again, I was amazed at the amount of dream imagery.
Posted by Scott Cheshire | January 18, 2007 8:52 PM
Posted on January 18, 2007 20:52
The clothes... those soylent clothes-- they're made of people!
Posted by John A. Dreams | January 30, 2007 4:30 PM
Posted on January 30, 2007 16:30