Just the first scene from last night’s epic road trip dream:

I am driving my old Corolla. The narrow road is carved out of a mountainside, a steep rise on my left and a steep drop into water on my right. The mountainside has been shaped into faux bricks, which means someone put some real money into making the road. So why didn’t they take the time to make the road wide enough that I don’t feel like my car’s about to topple over and tumble into the water?

So naturally my car topples over and tumbles into the water. I am uninjured in the crash. I roll down the window– I knew getting the manual windows would eventually pay off– and swim towards the far shore. I am not a strong swimmer, but I make it almost all the way over to a dock on the far side. I am almost completely drained, and the floor of the dock is just a few feet out of reach. I can’t summon the energy to kick my way that extra little bit.

My brother comes to the dockside. He reaches out, and I reach for him, but we can’t quite connect. I’m not going to make it.

He stands straight for a second and looks around. He runs somewhere I can’t see from my vantage point. He comes running back with a bottle of Pepsi. He reaches out to me with it, and it will be long enough for me to catch hold of. I’m almost saved…

…until he pulls back. He looks at the bottle with a hint of disgust, and runs off again.

I panic. I flail. I’m going to get him in the afterlife one way or another. And then I hear him coming back…

…this time with a bottle of Coca-Cola. He reaches out to me with it, and it will be long enough for me to catch hold of. I’m saved.

…

And then on with the rest of the dream.

A recent dream:

I am driving through verdant French hills and the sky is bright. MQ is sitting in the passenger seat, navigating with a real live ink-and-paper map. We are running low on gas, so we look for the nearest town big enough to show up on the map.

We find a gas station. Pull up to the pump, get out of the car– turns out we’re in a blue mid-80s European hatchback. A box on wheels. Probably a Volvo.

I check my wallet. Nothing but American currency. MQ points out a machine that makes change. I slide a few bills in. It returns Euro coins, but unlike any I’ve seen. Each coin looks like a shattered shard of some larger shape made of all varying denominations. I spend a few minutes sorting through the coins, and try to decide whether the odd shapes are brilliant or stupid.

MQ stares at something behind me. I turn to look. Off in the distance stands a man wearing some dark clothing and sort of head covering. Might be a turban or keffiyeh.

He walks toward us.

I say he probably needs gas. Maybe a jump.

He speeds up to a light jog. A scabbard hangs from his side and jostles with each step.

As he draws nearer, I hear a woman yelling in a heavy local accent, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” I’m fixated on the man with the sword, so the woman may as well have been disembodied.

The man draws a saber from his scabbard and charges towards us.

For reasons unknown, we don’t run or get in the car.

MQ screams.

I back away from her and flail my arms to make myself the target. It works. He swings at my abdomen. I step back enough that the saber barely touches me. No blood, just a slice in my shirt. He freezes.

I grab his saber. He doesn’t resist. I swing the saber towards him. He doesn’t throw up his arms, or scream, or even flinch.

I swing the saber into his gut several times as hard as I possibly can. It does nothing. It doesn’t even cut his shirt, never mind his body.

He waits for me to stop, then smiles broadly and makes the ta-da pose. He pulls up his shirt and reveals a saber-proof vest. He laughs.

Then I slice his face off.

…

After I told her this story, MQ asked if it was sunny in my dream. It was. Good catch.

A recent dream:

I am in the garage of my grandparents’ house, which for some reason looks out over my aunt’s back lawn. I am getting ready to go home after a long day of eating.

The weather has been fine, maybe a bit warm, so I am glad to see a cloud form in the sky, right in front of the sun. That should cool things off just enough to make the day perfect.

Other clouds congeal in the skies. One particular cloud looks especially dark and is closing in from the south pretty darn fast. I think I’d better get home before it starts raining, and no sooner does that thought cross my mind than it begins to drizzle. I get in my car and drive home.

The cloud I saw earlier now hovers over downtown, but the rain never gets any heavier. Traffic comes to a dead stop south of the bridge, so I put the car in park and turn to a talk channel in hopes of getting a weather and traffic report.

More dark clouds slither in from all directions. They bounce off each other and roll over each other and spin around each other. The clouds occasionally glow, and the brief gaps between them betray a terrific lightning storm high above. The wind whips up, and this storm is darker and brighter and louder and far more forceful than anything I’d ever seen before.

I can see the high-rises downtown wobble and rattle. Debris falls from the tops of some of the older ones. Signage comes detached, and ten-foot letters tumble down or dangle by mere serifs. The wind shatters the windows on the highest floors of the highest towers, and it drags some poor souls right out, and they hang on for dear life. I can see people on the inside hesitate to approach the windows to save the hangers-on, but the wind then pushes some of them back in. The wind breaks more windows, and pulls more people out, and the cycle repeats.

The interstate is still a bumper-to-bumper parking lot, but I’m not sure I want it to start moving again.

…

There was more to this dream, but I can’t make out most of what’s on my voice recorder. Here’s what I remember:

1. Something was wrong with the Earth’s core. A blue holographic world map in some sort of situation room showed these massive, burning rifts across continents and along ocean floors. How that affected the skies in part one of the dream is beyond me– or maybe it was a separate dream and had nothing to do with the storm.

2. Some frauds had convinced Congress that the problem was that the core was rusting, so billions of federal dollars went to them instead of my lab.

3. The frauds and the guys from my lab were having a cookout.

And that’s it. I don’t remember if the frauds and my guys had teamed up to fix the Earth’s core, or if they realized that we were all doomed so we might as well enjoy some burgers and beers before the world ended, or what. I need to work on dream retention.

…

Rusting. Jesus.