Once I was got my head screwed back on straight, I grabbed my phone and tried to compose a summary of the dream (I’m a believer in dream journals.) While a bit scattered, here it is, below, copied from the “Note” pad in the iPhone:
Nightmare of technology. Arguments are predicted in advance. A horrible military simulator where a loop of getting shot by Russian soldiers plays over and over again. A plane shaped like a dog’s head with a damaged ear. Google maps will keep zooming in whenever you think of a location in your mind. Physical features will be filled in whenever you imagine an area (flowers, gardens etc.) you will have no original thoughts whatsoever, everything will be predicted. Some fucked up never ending loop thing where you pull a cloth or towel out of a hole in the wall and it keeps coming out and you keep pulling it. Eventually it turns into loops of other things like obnoxious late 90s girl band pop lyrics.
[The bolded part was when the dream was most ‘raw’ in my head, like 4 minutes after waking up. The section below this is when I had regained my composure a bit, vaped some nicotine and drank some water, and tried to be more specific and descriptive.]
Google maps came out with some kind of new update that was supposed to improve everyone’s lives, but it predicts everything in advance and it’s totally impossible to be surprised or have any original idea. You zoom into any area in your mind and it shows exactly where traffic is going to be, in real time. You keep zooming and it just keeps getting more and more detailed, and shows you ideas for landscaping projects and gardens etc , like it’s replacing your own creativity.
The whole military simulator was absolutely horrific, someone was stuck in a loop of a vehicle getting shot and something exploding, and there was no way out of it. A succession of character actors with very deep voices would recite a certain line (can’t remember). A related part of the simulation involved being trapped in a shootout with Russian soldiers, low end guerillas with old and rickety equipment and outdated guns - not a high tech Armageddon scenario with bombs and planes, more like WWI combat. It wasn’t like a video game where you could take a million shots and still survive. One shot would kill you and then you would revive somewhere else in the battle and be killed again instantly. No hope of escaping at all.
[editor’s note, as of this posting - the following passage relates to my job. I work for a GREAT construction company, a tight crew of seven skilled specialists. I am their trucker - I drive their dump trucks and haul their materials and excavators around. Now that the major demo and excavation jobs are complete for the summer, and necessarily materials mostly delivered, they have very generously put me to work doing other things, inlcuding teaching me how to weld, and helping out on the sites. I truly am not complaining about my job, as I take pains to point out within the note that follows, and because i know my work friends are going to see my dream journal and we’re all going to laugh our asses off at it.]
Was at a construction site for bland suburban development, carrying boards and placing them at either end of rectangular pits that had been dug for foundations. I was arguing with Brandon over something , not a real argument, just jokingly, but as I places the wood around I feel like I am doing it not of my own free will, but like I’m being controlled by a program. I try placing the wood in the wrong place just to see if it’s possible, and I can’t. I get very frustrated with my lack of ability to “override” the programming. Programming might be the wrong word, it’s more like I can see my own future - not long term, just like the immediate next few minutes. I know exactly what I am going to do and I don’t feel like it’s a choice that I’m making. This is not a complaint about my job, just for the record and because my head is now more lucid as I’m writing this down and I know I’m probably going to show it to people that I work with, so here it is on the record, I LIKE MY JOB, I have no conscious dislike of any of the work that I have to do, not even the most menial tasks. I enjoy having something to do and being productive. If there is a SUBconscious dislike of something, well, that isn’t a situation I have any control over. The frustration in this dream was NOT about the actual work on the job per se. it was about my bizarre ability to predict what I was going to do before I did it, like I had a sneak peek of the next page of my “script” running through my mind at all times and I hated it because I felt like it completely robbed me of my self determination. Note that this applied to other things in the dream besides work, like the google maps bullshit that showed me things that I could do to “improve” my garden or the garden of any conceivable place I could zoom into. And the worst part was that I KNEW THEY WERe RIGHT, the suggestions were totally the best possible ideas, I was just very pissed that they were googles’ ideas and not MY ideals.
The dream culminated in a horrific argument with Amy over some petty bullshit, but it took place with in a partially framed house with wood everywhere in various stages of assembly. I started throwing 2x4s around , not AT her , just in frustration and anger. That’s when I woke up, still screaming .
[Amy is my domestic/romantic partner and things are GREAT between us, I hasten to add. She always finds my recollection of these events in dreams highly amusing.)
Well, there it is. Laugh, cringe, play armchair Freud, draw some inspiration for your upcoming cyberpunk novel - whatever you want. It’s your decision. (Or is it?! )