Dream: Ghosts in the Alpha Quadrant

Dream 20030824, 4:30 AM:

This dream has perspective shifts; sometimes, it seems like I’m the main character, other times it seems that I’m watching the action, like a movie.

The first phase of the dream is in a building. I am leading a group of people who have rented the building for an event. The setup isn’t right – they have put us in a much different room than what we requested – and we are trying to sort it out. I remember pointing at the Pepto-Bismol-pink carpet, and explaining that it was totally different than the room we had asked for. A woman takes us to a different room, and we try to figure out if the number of tables that we need would fit into this space; it seems about the same size, but more of a square room where the other one is oblong. We decide to go with the original room, pink carpet and all.

The group of people is lined up in rows of chairs, and we’re watching a movie projected onto a screen with an old reel-to-reel movie projector. This is one of the parts where I see the characters from the outside, and “my” character looks like a cross between MASH’s Colonel Potter and Star Trek’s Jean Luc Picard.

After the movie, which I don’t remember, there are a bunch of robots who come up and keep bringing us food and other things. I know that the place is trying to run up our bill. After a little while, (again, from the outside perspective) I realize that all of our people have on these strange goggles; they are like two silver-dollar-sized coins connected by a strap that goes around the head, and they effectively blindfold everybody. The robots have put them on us. They have been bringing things faster and faster, trying to confuse everybody. At the last, they bring a contract that I have to sign, and I sign it, but without them knowing, I use a false name, which makes the contract not binding. We get out of there before they realize what has happened.

Once we’re outside, it seems like we’ve disembarked from a spaceship. Other people come up and board it by way of a ramp. Apparently the contract-signing bit has saved a bunch of money for the organization I work for, and they tell me that now I’m going to be a secretary on a new mission. It’s kind of a let-down, because I was the Captain of my last mission, but this mission is much larger, so it’s appropriate.

Then, we’re moving through space in a ship. We’ve heard that there are ghosts in the Alpha Quadrant, and we have to go there and handle the situation. I remember watching from a sort of raised perspective, as the ship goes through a golden-orange path that is marked out like on a gridded map. The path looks almost like the worm-holes that worms eat under the bark of a tree, with a curving, organic quality to it. The ship progresses down the path, and then I’m inside the ship, watching as we go along. From the inside of the ship, the path is visible as an orange glow, round like a tunnel. When we get near our destination, the ship begins to spin rapidly on its axis in a dizzying way; everything seems to swirl around. This is something the ghosts are doing. There is a repeated phrase said loudly again and again, but I don’t remember exactly what it is – something like a warning to go away. The view of the orange worm-paths narrows down to a single spot ahead of us, and we go through it and then find ourselves above a planet surface.

I am not sure if we land, or somehow beam down, but we are on the surface now, and I remember hearing that we’re in Australia, but in a different time. It looks very post-Apocalyptic, with a lot of refuse scattered around and people in ragged clothes, kind of like Mad Max. There are buildings that look like cubes up on one corner, and many of them appear to be partially destroyed. I am in an appropriate-looking body, but it’s like it’s a suit; I remember the odd sensation of walking as if I’m having to control each leg. They remind me of the puddle-jumper things I had as a kid, where you walk on these upturned flower-pot things that you hold with a strap, like really short stilts. It feels like my actual feet are on top of the knees of the body/suit. It makes me walk very clumsily, and I feel it when each foot hits the ground with a hard thump. I’m not sure if there’s another person sharing the body/suit with me, or if I’m communicating with somebody else by remote. We walk along, and a young dark-skinned boy takes us to see someone – he seems hesitant to do so. When we get to the place where she is, he opens the door on the back of what looks like a van, and she is inside. She has very pale skin and long red hair. She introduces herself as Ruby. The people walking by seem to be afraid of her; they all have dark skin and hair, and her coloring sets her apart. She is wearing a long soft gown, and appears to have crippled legs; she moves kind of like a seal when she turns sideways to talk to us, because her legs don’t move. I get the impression that the people on the street might try to hurt her, throw rocks or something. I don’t remember anything else before waking.