Two dreams
First dream
I'm driving home from work, or trying to, but it's the apocalypse. Terrorists are conducting spectacular attacks on virtually everything taller than two stories; you can watch the highrises and apartment buildings as smoke and flame billows out of all their windows, floor by floor. I know that civilization cannot withstand this conflagration. I'm racing home to be with Amy, but the Tappan Zee and Throgs Neck bridges are both about to give way. Many of their steel beams are burned, curled up, twisted, and broken apart from the roadway. I have to speed across the bridges at 90 mph in order to get clear of them before they collapse. I watch my car hurtle down the bridge from above, like the O.J. chase. Once I reach the other side of the bridge, I'm suddenly looking at a Hot Wheels car, rolling back and forth at the end of the bridge as the momentum carries it almost over the edge of the rising terrain, then gives way to gravity as it rolls back down. I'm also feeling the controls like I'm playing Grand Theft Auto, trying to fight against momentum and inertia. Eventually I get back home but home is one of those huge institutional spaces I always dream about; this one is more like a hospital. Actually, now that I think about it, it's like the brightly lit, empty hospital at the beginning of 28 Days Later. In addition to the terrorist attacks and reprisals the apocalypse is being brought on by plants that grow out of control, huge thick (like the thickness of a car) tentacle-like vines that simply grow and grow and grow and impale and wrap around and crush any humans they come across. The whole world will be swallowed by them. Suddenly the policemen and firemen we're with realize that water causes the plants to disintegrate. They start battling the vines back with fire hoses.
Second dream
My sister is dead. She died of a violent allergic reaction to something. I find out and drop to my knees, crying. I worry how we're going to tell her boyfriend. I think to myself that I just don't get it--she was there, and now she's not. The line of her life has simply stopped. I miss her so much.
Real life
Still absolutely no word of or from my cousin Christopher.
I'm driving home from work, or trying to, but it's the apocalypse. Terrorists are conducting spectacular attacks on virtually everything taller than two stories; you can watch the highrises and apartment buildings as smoke and flame billows out of all their windows, floor by floor. I know that civilization cannot withstand this conflagration. I'm racing home to be with Amy, but the Tappan Zee and Throgs Neck bridges are both about to give way. Many of their steel beams are burned, curled up, twisted, and broken apart from the roadway. I have to speed across the bridges at 90 mph in order to get clear of them before they collapse. I watch my car hurtle down the bridge from above, like the O.J. chase. Once I reach the other side of the bridge, I'm suddenly looking at a Hot Wheels car, rolling back and forth at the end of the bridge as the momentum carries it almost over the edge of the rising terrain, then gives way to gravity as it rolls back down. I'm also feeling the controls like I'm playing Grand Theft Auto, trying to fight against momentum and inertia. Eventually I get back home but home is one of those huge institutional spaces I always dream about; this one is more like a hospital. Actually, now that I think about it, it's like the brightly lit, empty hospital at the beginning of 28 Days Later. In addition to the terrorist attacks and reprisals the apocalypse is being brought on by plants that grow out of control, huge thick (like the thickness of a car) tentacle-like vines that simply grow and grow and grow and impale and wrap around and crush any humans they come across. The whole world will be swallowed by them. Suddenly the policemen and firemen we're with realize that water causes the plants to disintegrate. They start battling the vines back with fire hoses.
Second dream
My sister is dead. She died of a violent allergic reaction to something. I find out and drop to my knees, crying. I worry how we're going to tell her boyfriend. I think to myself that I just don't get it--she was there, and now she's not. The line of her life has simply stopped. I miss her so much.
Real life
Still absolutely no word of or from my cousin Christopher.
posted by Sean T. Collins at 3:10 PM
4 Comments:
I'm holed up on a sailboat in the middle of Boston harbor.
It hit us hard here in Massachusetts.
We haven't been hit as hard here in Oklahoma -- lots and lots of people here have guns, and the city's so spread out that you usually see 'em coming.
One of the docs here at the University is working on the microbiology -- got a huge grant from the NIH. Even got the research approved quickly through the IRB (the human subjects oversight board) -- they're doing the work in the AIDS lab, so hopefully they are safe enough; no possible human exposure that way.
I hope your cousin's OK. I've gotten to the point where I don't even try to hope for people I've lost contact with.
This is kind of dumb, but you know hit me today? That if things had been normal, if none of this had begun, this would have been the weekend that the new "Star Wars" movie came out. I don't know if we'll ever see it now. NOBODY wants to spend two hours in the dark in a public place anymore, so the theaters are all either abandoned or turned into shelters for the displaced living.
Mistrmind & Jodie--I hope you are well. You've confirmed the general sense that I've gotten, which is that the Pacific Northwest is the worst off, the Midwest is in pretty good shape (a good thing considering that's where most of our edible goods come from), and the East Coast is somewhere in between.
Dr. John--I know exactly what you mean.
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