NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/dreams/4532

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-02 | 5.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Andrew Wing)
Newsgroups: alt.dreams
Subject: "Trip" to New York
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 2 Jan 93 05:15:27 GMT
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Organization: Temple University
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DREAM SEQUENCE - I was supposed to go to New York today.

My commuter train arrived at 30th street station at the usual
7:13 AM.  Just then I realized that my departmental director had
arranged for me and my supervisor to travel to the yearly
computer vendors showcase on Manhattan.  We were to depart this
morning for the big apple.

Despite having totally forgotten about the trip, I decided to try
and make it there anyway, without luggage, toiletries or even
sufficient cash to buy meals.

I figured that the early AMTRAK train to New York would be
leaving within half an hour and that I could catch it easily.  As
I tried to get off the commuter train, I discovered that 30th
street station had been rebuilt overnight.  The platforms were
gone and the trains were pulling into miniature canyons.  I was
forced to scramble up the side of a ravine in order to reach the
stairway, just avoiding being run over by another train.  The
single large ramp from the upper level had been replaced by a
series of endless tunnels, spiral stairways and railed shuttle
car lines.  The information screens were a fuzzy yellow slur with
unreadable words on them.  In the front of the station I found my
parents with my luggage and an airplane ticket.  Passengers were
boarding a jet sitting in the middle of Market Street.  Nobody I
asked seemed to know where the plane was bound for.  As I debated
what to do I noticed a Tasmanian wolf nearby.  I tried to pet it,
but its fur was so greasy that my hand slipped of its back, it
ran away.  I took a westbound subway train to 69th street.  I got
off and walked two blocks to an unfamiliar building.  I went up
on the roof to get my bearings and found my father and several
other men discussing the black smog cloud that had descended over
the city.  The cloud was very unusual in that it had a sharply
defined boundary with the clean air below it.  I could see City
Hall and Penns Landing very clearly.  I could even see Camden.
My father explained that the reason for such good visibility was
that the smog cloud put so much pressure on the underlying air
that light waves were bent as if a giant magnifying glass were
suspended over the city.  The cloud was now only a few feet from
the building.  I leaned over the railing on the roof, put my hand
in and was surprised to find that it had the consistency of
artificial christmas tree branches.  When I pulled my hand out it
was covered with black soot.  There was a sink at the opposite
edge of the roof and I went over to wash the soot off of my hand.
As I was drying off my hand several girls appeared out of a set
of swinging doors next to the sink.  I was standing at the
entrance to a girls high school that also happened to be the exit
from some restaurants kitchen.  A friend of mine came through the
door pushing a cart stacked high with clean stainless steel
serving dishes and began talking with the girls.  The smog cloud
had landed and become a row of pine trees along a narrow paved
pathway.  At the end of the path nearest to the swinging doors
was a small patch of fine green grass.  Within this patch were
three holes a few inches wide.  Coming out of the holes were fine
helixes of white smoke.  Looking into the holes I saw pools of
glowing yellow liquid a few feet below the surface.  A
maintenance worker emerged through the double doors and walked
down the paved path into the living room of his apartment which
had no walls or roof. The path ended next to his sofa.  The
maintenance man had a large tool belt around his waist and kept
mumbling something about fixing those holes.
    At this point I realized that trying to make it to New York
in time for the conference would be futile.  So I thought it
better to report to work and explain the situation to my boss.  I
got into my car and drove to the Schuykill Expressway expecting
to zip right out to work, but traffic soon slowed and then ground
to a halt.  I discovered that there had been a severe earthquake
overnight and that the highway was damaged.  However the
earthquake had been confined to a 100 foot wide strip of land on
the west bank of the river and instead of demolishing the roadway
had twisted it into sharp bends and hairpin turns.  I got out of
my car, got my bicycle out of the back seat and began to pedal
onward.  I arrived at a wide bridge that passed over the highway.
Beneath were about a dozen drivers seated around a large table,
playing cards, eating popcorn and watching TV.  Rain was coming
down on them, not from the clouds above, but from a sprinkler
system built into the overpass.  There were many new bridges over
the expressway, all created when the earthquake shook loose the
surrounding cliffs.  The stones and boulders falling into neat
groups of pillars and archways.
    I realized then that I would never make it to New York.  Off
in the distance I saw blocks of the city falling away, like a
layer of dominos being pushed off the end of a table.  The earth
indeed was flat and now it was shrinking as well.

    Any interpretations of this?  I've got more...

    Andy Wing

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