I’ve only ever had one celebrity dream that I can recall, and it was pretty weird.
To begin with, I started the dream with my own backstory: I worked for the government in some top secret division or somesuch. I had knowledge of very sensitive and very sought-after information. This is why some sort of mercenary team had broken into the building and captured me. They had me sequestered in a small office, wherein they had set up a device I was locked into. I knew what this device did. I helped design it. It was an … extractor of sorts. It extracted one’s essence, the core of one’s being that contained the sum total of one’s knowledge. I suppose you could refer to it as your soul if you’re of that sort of bend. Nonetheless it rendered you immaterial – or mostly so anyway; you still had energy of sorts that could interact with the environment. You retained all of your consciousness and knowledge, you could still see, hear – in fact, you were really no worse for wear after the process save that you had no physical body. The idea of this device was that so freed of its mortal coil, your essence could be sifted through and your knowledge extracted easily using other equipment.
The machine powered up with me inside it. Its whine rose in pitch to nearly deafening until there was a snap, a flash of white, and suddenly, I was free, floating above the extraction chamber, looking down at myself in much the same way near-death experiences are described. But I wasn’t going toward any light. I wasn’t supposed to be outside the chamber. Something went wrong. This was my chance to escape. I flew up, knocking open a ceiling tile and making my way along and through the pipes and beams. Below, a commotion was brewing. They found my body, but not me. Orders were barked with the stern missive to find and capture me at any costs. The hunt was on.
I made my way out to a glass-enclosed sky bridge that connected my office building to a very large, multilevel mall across a wide, bustling city street. There was no hiding here; no ceiling tiles I could fly above. It was a straight, line-of-sight jaunt to the mall, and though I was invisible, they had devices that could track and capture me with ease. I flew down to the bridge and took a quick look back. A team of black-suited, beweaponed mercs were hot on my trail, led by a mean-looking Michael Ironside. (This was the early 90s, and I’d recently seen Total Recall and was at the time reading the book) He was pointing the tracker at me and barking orders; “Go, go, go!” I turned around and flew as fast as I could into the mall.
Beyond the doors was a positively massive and spacious mall; I was on the 3rd floor. The glass ceiling was a good 50 feet up at least, and the floors wound around a large open area that overlooked the floors below, all bordered by glass with metal railings. Somehow, in all the years I worked in that office building, I’d never been to this mall. It was quite a sight; clean, sparkling, very open and very large.
But I didn’t have time to gawk. The mercs were closing fast. I flew down the escalators and made my way to the ground level. Shoppers were milling everywhere. I weaved my way through the crowd looking for some place to hide. Michael and his crew weren’t far behind. I hid briefly behind one of the potted ferns that bracketed a mental bench. The mercs arrived in the middle of the lower floor. There, for no comprehensible reason, was a small haunted house, painted all black with spooky imagery of ghosts and skulls. Michael swept his scanner around, looking for me, but found nothing. He pointed two gloved fingers at the haunted house and ordered his crew to check inside, with him following behind, searching all the while.
I took that opportunity to bolt. I saw a wide open storefront. Painted white, and with very bright lighting, it was completely empty. There was a door on the left, and a large bay window with a one-foot ledge at its base spanning the rest of its width – except there was no glass. I flew in and slunk down below the ledge. I found that the ledge angled inward so I schooched in as far as I could – and straight into a spider’s web. Spider webs freak me out when I run into them, so I dutifully freaked … and woke up.
And that was that. It was quite vivid and surreal, but very memorable and pretty cool in its own way. I feel like I could almost write a book on it.
