Dream I had last night

[3rdragon]

I was at home. My brother was hanging out with some friends in the little 3rd floor room next to mine, and I was either in my room or hanging out with them. I noticed that there were a bunch of people in the hall, and went out to investigate. I discovered that the little third floor hallway was chock full of old ladies and their caretakers. I recognized several of the old ladies from . . . somewhere (looking back on the dream, I know that they had the appearances of several of the women at the ABE/UCC church I'm going to currently, but I don't think that's where I knew them from in the dream). I greeted the women I knew, and introduced myself to those I didn't, and generally played the gracious hostess. In the course of all this, I discovered that our third floor was being used as a sort of way-point for going on excursions.

To understand this next bit, you'll have to know the layout of my dad's house, so I'll explain the relevant parts. My dad lives in a three story rowhouse, but the third story is only about 3/5 the size of the other floors because there's a flat roof over the second floor at the back. This flat roof connects to the flat roofs of all the other rowhouses, so that you could walk to the house five doors over along the roofs (not that you'd want to; you can't be sure that all of the roofs are kept up enough to keep peoples' weight). It's a sort of tar beach scenario, only we don't have anything around the edge to keep people from falling off, and consequently generally only go out to look at the sky during meteor showers or eclipses, or other astronomically significant events that aren't significant enough to get away from the city for. And in the dream, there was a nursing home full of old ladies two doors down the street from us. What makes this amusing is that there is a nursing home across the street from my dad's house, but that wasn't there in the dream; I'll get to that part later.

It was not entirely clear to me whether the directors of the care facility were aware that the old ladies were going out, so I'm not sure if going down the street was a sort of preparatory move, like, going out but not really, or if it was a way of sneaking out without the people in charge knowing (although the caretakers who were taking them out knew; I just don't know if their bosses did).

After I did the hostess thing, I went back into the little room and shut the door and asked my brother, "Isaac, do you know why there are Residents in our hallway?" His explanation was not entirely clear, but started with him neglecting to lock the window to the roof when he left the house one day, and then maybe there was another bit that I've forgotten, or maybe he just came home and the people were there and it was too much trouble or perhaps would be too rude to kick them all out, and now they were a Fixture. It may be worth noting that when thinking back on this dream, I realized that in my dreams Isaac still talks in his child's voice, not the new grown-up voice on my mother's answering machine.

Stuff happened. I don't remember what, exactly, but Isaac and I went across the street to the complex that ought to have been a nursing home but wasn't. The fence was still there, but the architecture of the buildings was different, more like quad houses. Either shortly before we went or almost immediately after we arrived, there was some sort of localized disaster that only affected that square block, but resulted in several of the buildings falling down or tending in that direction. My father was there at this point, I think, and he immediately went off to do helpful things, and I presented myself as able-bodied and willing to help to a brusque woman who seemed to be organizing relief efforts, and she sent me over to the west side of the complex where the building on the hill had lost some walls, telling me to help survivors and to pick up anything I came across that looked like it had sentimental or monetary value and was easily portable. She warned me that there was a bit of wildness going around, and also told me that the corporation that owned the complex had unlocked all the gates and was sending a regiment of trained relief workers who should be arriving any minute. So I headed over where she sent me, and I guess Isaac followed. Luckily it was the middle of the day, and the complex was residential, so very few people had been in the buildings when whatever-it-was had happened. I picked my way through the rubble of fallen stone blocks. Near the bottom of the hill there was a well-loved doll on the grass, so I picked it up and headed up the hill (luckily the stairs where large, mostly intact, and not too covered with fallen stone). I hadn't gone very far when I saw a boy who can't have been older than eight. He was dust-covered and very flighty-looking, like he wasn't sure he trusted us, and I was suddenly reminded of the woman's story of wildness, and the way people sometimes become concerned only about themselves during catastrophes, and decided that it was wise of him to not necessarily trust the first people he saw. He looked us (Isaac and I) over for a loooong moment, then turned towards one of the intact portions of building, a set of arches, and beckoned. A little girl, perhaps four years old and very obviously the boy's sister, emerged from behind a block of stone and came over. She was clingy and very anxious to have someone in charge, and I realized that the boy was being cautious not for himself, but for his sister.

There was a fence around the complex, as I mentioned, but the rubble had knocked it down at this spot, so Isaac and I led the two children outside. We walked along the perimeter until we came to one of the remote-controlled electronic gates, and I recalled the competent woman saying that the company was opening the gates to let in the relief workers. The gate was still working, so I knew it hadn't malfunctioned, and there was no sign of any reinforcements.

Oh hey, it's 5:00. I'll finish this later.

EDIT: So we were standing there looking at this gate/door, which had clearly not been opened and was equally clearly capable of being opened, and I, at least, came to the conclusion that the company had no intention of sending any sort of relief efforts and was, in fact, leaving everyone hanging out on the line to dry. I could hear people talking on the other side of the gate, and it seemed to me that being able to get out of the complex without scrambling over several feet of rubble would be a good thing. I should mention that while the gate was still fully operational, some of the casings on the electronic bits had come off so the wires were exposed. So I yanked on a black one (In the dream I had sufficient knowledge of either wiring in general or this kind of lock in particular to know that this would have the desired effect and not electrocute me or anything unpleasant like that) and broke a circuit or something and the gate came unlatched and we opened it. There was a small crowd of people on the other side of the door as well as a house that reminded me of King/Scales even though it didn't look at all like it.

I'm a bit fuzzy on motivation at this point, but I think I wanted to get back to the east side of the complex where the competent woman was so that I could tell her that we would be keeping the children at our house (or maybe at my aunt's house, which is more child-friendly), and for some reason we couldn't or didn't want to just go around the outside and avoid the rubble. Actually, now that I think about it, there must not have been a gate on the east side, only one on the north and the one we were at. I guess that must mean that the disaster occurred after Isaac and I were inside the complex.

So we went in and I left the children outside, to one side of the crowd of people, who seemed useless but not dangerous, and ventured into the house to see if it was safe to get through. I went in through the double doors, through the foyer, and peered cautiously around. There was a lot of noise, and a group of dusty people talking, and some scavengers stripping food from the dining hall table, but no axe-wielding murders or obviously unstable structural elements, so I turned and began to wave the children into the building. One of the dusty people saw me and came over. He was white, middle-aged, and balding, and reminded me somewhat of a teddy bear in a saggy sort of way. He said, "I don't recommend that . . ." and some other things that I couldn't hear for the noise. I shook my head to show that I couldn't hear, motioned for the children to wait, and we went back into the foyer where the noise wasn't so bad. He explained that the building was dangerously unstable; something about blocks of masonry falling through safety nets on the fifth floor, and told me that most of the building had collapsed on the other side. I told the teddy-bear man that there was a competent woman running things on the east side, and why I thought the corporation wasn't going to do anything to help. I then went back out and explained things to Isaac, and we headed back out the gate/door and headed for the gate on the north side, which was actually a gate with large white bars (and is, in fact, the front gate of the nursing home that stands on that patch of ground). I was just wondering if Isaac was still skinny enough to slip through the bars or sideways into the little gate casing and around the back of the gate (because these gates open by rolling sideways rather than by swinging forwards or back) so that he could get over to the little guardhouse/gatehouse, or if I'd have to send one of the kids, and then I woke up.

It was 4:00am, somewhat cold, and raining. I spent the next while making sure I could remember as much of the dream as possible, wondering how many people would be able to sleep on the floor of my dad's house if we had to take in refugees and weren't picky about having beds for all of them, whether it would be better to use a battering ram on the hinges of a modern double door or on the lock, and what the deal was with the electronics on that door at the west side of the complex. The only conclusion I came to was that the west door was radio-controlled, and I went back to sleep.



I just finished a game of Tigris and Euphrates with Emily and Gwen. It was marvelous. I really enjoy that game. And now I think I'll go to bed, because I'm exhausted for no reason that I can determine.