I seem to be in Florida around 1960. The retro décor and social attitudes hide a surprising amount of tech. Maybe it's NASA's influence--we're near Cape Canaveral. Wait, have I been dropped into that movie Hidden Figures?

With a few friends, go into town for lunch. Grim place. Vigilantes armed like cops openly walk beats to "assist" the "overwhelmed" police force. Klan vigilantes...

...and our group includes both black and white.

A cafe/diner. Start to enter. The waitress, with a gleeful grin, drawls "You've committed a parking misdemeanor. I'm afraid,"--she's delighted, not afraid--"I'll have to call the police"--the vigilantes, of course--"and have y'all arrested."

I beg the universe. I can't change this whole society, but I just want us to have one cafe lunch uninterrupted... fine, I'll fight in the race war and kill Klansmen or whatever I have to do to change this place, later, but right now I just want to sit with my friends. I just... snap. Snap bad.

I say to her, with my full magical power, "You like to hurt people. I don't have the right to CHANGE you. But... BOTHER... SOMEONE... ELSE."

It works. She does.

The trouble is, she does. Looks around the diner, and the cafe section out on the sidewalk. Finds a lone black guy sitting at little round table with coffee and newspaper. And tells him gleefully "A misdemeanor just occurred here. And you're here. I'm gonna have to call the police." Meaning not the cops, but the vigilantes--the Klan. I used my magic and slapped her malice away from me--onto HIM. My wish ricocheted.

Using willpower's like smokin' in the ammo room. No wonder I'm so cautious. In a world full of spite.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Cape Canaveral circa 1960: from the film Hidden Figures, about the black women who computed orbits for NASA but couldn't sit in a cafe, use the NASA bathrooms, or check out books from the library...
• Threatened with violence, I use paranormal power: I just finished Sara Beth Durst's fantasy Conjured. Eve, amnesic, seems telekinetic under stress like 'Carrie'; but she avoids it even for self-defense; rightly fears the consequences! The dream explores subtler paranormal power: I'm persuasive when I want to be. But should I be?
• This is my fifth recent dream of willing or wishing that works: last week's "Mystically Summon Help, but Panic", plus The Black Wave, Spirit Chorus and Photos Lure Souls. In them I seem to be practicing intention--pure willpower. Lucid dreamers out there may think "But that's fine, the waitress and cafe-goers were just parts of you." Oh? How do you know? I've had too many shared/telepathic dreams to be so sure. Science called lucid dreams a myth for decades, after all. Dreams may not be private stage rehearsals, but open to the public. For all I know, someone tonight dreamed of reading the paper in a Florida cafe... till he was abducted by the Klan.
• I resisted the temptation to mess with that waitress's nasty mind... I just brushed her malice off me. But she re-aimed it at another! The dream warns I've learned enough restraint to use my will ethically in a world without malice; but in our wicked world...
• Do such worries seem silly to you? Not to me. I live in 21st-century America, where restraint's scorned and testosterone's king. I feel immature, even weak, for not guiltlessly using my full power, as long as I use mine ethically--even if ricochets are likely. To counter that brainwashing, my dream has to spell it out:

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