I and my brother, sister and parents are going for an outing to the beach in a Volkswagen, but not the bus, the bug. We all cram in somehow with our carry-on luggage and then we have to hide it all when we park. This takes some clever packing, but we have a fold-out concealed trunk to stow it all in. My mother insists we hide everything before we go for a walk on the shore.

The waves are very high today; there are storm warnings. As we head down the beach, huge waves come in and engulf me, but I find my way to shore. My brother Chris swims by, remarking "The water's unusually warm."

We walk on a higher path above the beach to a little town, a blend of Boston, Mendocino, Pescadero and New York. I go into a bookstore and my Aunt Evi is in there, organizing some emergency supplies for refugees. She starts to hand me some bottled water before realizing it is me. She greets me, then sees my sister Erica and they fall into a long affectionate conversation while I browse around the store, then I talk to Evi some more.

She says my Uncle Mac was paranoid and had a bunch of strange inventions. I see Mac sitting in a corner on the floor reading a book and looking some other stuff up in a reference book simultaneously. He looks up, smiles, and says, “I hear you’re writing. I’ve been writing too. I took a literature class. Here's an example of a short story I had to read." He shows me a sheaf of pages that have huge sections blacked out with a sharpie. I ask what that’s about.

He says, “oh, I did that; those parts were no good. But look at this line. This makes the whole story worthwhile.” It was a line ending in a cryptic philosophical twist, a take on the adage “if life gives you lemons.” It said something sort of like “If life gives you lemonade, but the water in the country you’re in isn’t safe, you can remake it into lemons.” His face lights up; he says, “I’ve spent my life making lemonade back into lemons,” and goes back to his books.

I ask my aunt what he means, and she says, “You know those books he reads, all those thrillers?”

I say, “I read ‘The Firm.’ A guy finds himself working for an evil corporation, and with amazing, ballsy, devious cleverness manages to escape their clutches, expose their crimes, and get away with millions of dollars himself, plus a changed identity, to a Caribbean island so no one can exact revenge on him. He escapes the rat race forever.”

“It was books like that that shaped Mac’s life,” says my aunt. “He learned how to escape everything he didn’t like. He was making automated people to inhabit his own world, with artificially produced music.”

She shows me a roomful of instruments in the back of the bookstore. “He had machines that would play them in whatever combination he composed.” She plays some creepy calliope circus music, and an automaton, a ballerina with a mouse head, dances to the music.

She shows me boxes of parts and chemicals, and says “He almost got arrested once; he was ordering so many unusual controlled substances and so much equipment they thought he was building a drug lab. Then he developed A.I. to make his people interact with him.”

A group of more realistic-looking people emerge from boxes with various expressive faces. They start to dance for my uncle, who is now standing nearby in a magnificent suit with a wide-brimmed hat.

Then they complain about the cramped space and go sit on barstools to have a drink instead, and one of them, a young woman with a ring in her nose, looks like she’s got an attitude–she’s unpredictable, and bored, smoking a cigarette–she sidles up to my uncle and tries to flirt with him.

He looks young and handsome again, under his hat, but then she takes off his hat and he suddenly ages rapidly to his nineties and then falls into pieces on the floor.

Other random A.I.s waltz in, and it begins to snow heavily.

I go back to the car and start to drive away, but I’m in a hilly city like San Francisco trying to get down a steep street, but everything is covered with a foot of snow. I’m driving down the hill and my car starts sliding faster and faster until I have to steer into some bushes in a park in order to stop it. I back out, and find a side street that is level, taking it to a bigger street that has been plowed before continuing downhill.

All the while, automatons and A.I.s are dancing through the streets amid huge clumps of falling snow, whirling on ice skates or roller skates.

I wonder if it's all part of my uncle’s secret plan to end the rat race forever.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites