The specimens
Dec. 19th, 2015 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnI had a dream again last night! It's been a very long time. As usual, either I don't remember my dreams at all or they're absolutely immense.
Whitney and I were on a long car journey (perhaps the dream was inspired by the trip we recently took to Washington DC) and we were looking for somewhere to stay the night. I don't know what attracted us to this particular place, but we found a blocky building on a university campus surrounded by a chain-link fence, and parked the car in a secluded corner next to the only entrance we could find from the road. I remember the layout of the building very clearly, and I've drawn it out to make the rest of this description a bit easier to follow.
We walked into the building through a small glass door and went through to a dimly-lit place that I'll call the A/V room - it was a mess, with assorted pieces of dated technology scattered around the floor and the available surfaces on the room. At the back there was a white plastic piece of machinery - the sort of look and feel that you get on medical devices - which had a blank screen a few feet wide mounted at the top, a robotic arm that either sprouted off the top of the screen or was attached to the ceiling, and a control pad with four translucent buttons on it marked with arrows. I took the pad, which was connected to the screen with a long cable that dangled down off the side of the screen, and tried to operate it but I couldn't work out how to control it.
There was a bed in the corner of the room near where we had come in, but I still didn't know where we were and went off to find the reception desk. I walked down a short corridor towards where I could see light (towards the north of the diagram), and entered a much brighter part of the building that looked like an upscale shopping centre, decorated for Christmas and with polished wood surfaces everywhere. It was busy, with throngs of people queuing up at the many gift shops - but I couldn't find a reception desk or someone to announce our presence to. I remember I found the front entrance somewhere and realized that people were paying for parking there, but I decided that our car would probably be safe and unnoticed where we had left it. Besides, I didn't want to go outside because it had started snowing.
I returned to the A/V room, where the robotic arm on the ceiling was now moving. It whirred around and grabbed a VHS tape from the floor, then spun again and carefully inserted it into a VCR that was part of the device with the screen. We still saw no picture, and I realized that the room had been set up so that a hacker could load the videos and transmit the medical lectures and notes on them to himself. Even though it looked like they were scattered around in a haphazard way, each tape had actually been meticulously placed, with the machine knowing the exact coordinates and orientation of each one so that it could pick up and load it. I remarked on what an elaborate plan it was, and how much easier it is now to get at files now that they're stored digitally.
I needed to find a bathroom before we could sleep, so I went in the same direction I had before, but didn't go into the corridor to the north this time, instead opening the door at the east end of the shorter corridor. This room had its lights turned off, but I could see two rows of small beds arranged one on each side of the room, each supporting an adult body that had a white sheet over it. As I looked around, a couple of them began to stir, and I backed out and tried elsewhere.
The next room I went into was to the south of the small corridor, and was very bright, the light exaggerated even more by the way the walls and floor were covered in gleaming white tiles. A glass wall with three doors in it separated the tiled area from a corridor that ran alongside it, and I headed for the door, opening it and stepping out into the corridor to the south. I turned and realized that the door was going to latch behind me and that I didn't know if I could get back - I tried putting my glove down on the floor so that the door couldn't close all the way but was still unsure.
Several people - older men in lab coats - were walking from elsewhere in the building down this corridor now on their way out. None of them seemed bothered that I was there, but one of them noticed that I was having trouble with the door and told me about its lock. He directed me to go back to the tiled side of the door and look at the mechanism, which was a small serrated piece of metal (not sharp - just a bit like a key sprouting off a rotating handle) that had to be turned correctly so that the door wouldn't latch. The door had to be closed to change it and it was soundproofed, so he had to mime exaggeratedly to me and I still couldn't get it right.
By this time, the people who had been in the room with all the beds had started to come into the white room - more and more of them came through the door that I had first entered the room by. They weren't threatening, just milling about - even so, I remember thinking of them as "zombies" in the dream. They were the specimens that were being kept in the lab, and I realized that I couldn't leave my side of the building and risk them getting out. As the man who had been talking to me had left, I decided I had to go and get Whitney to guard the door - even though by this time, a night-watch woman had arrived, and was looking up from the inside of a cylindrical bank of black monitors in stark contrast to the white of the room.
I went back to the A/V room and decided that I was uncomfortable staying the night - Whitney agreed and we gathered up our things and ran down a larger corridor (the location of which is unknown to me on the map) to escape. The specimens were chasing after us until we jumped through a door that had a drawbridge on it as it was closing - behind us, we heard the specimens falling into the water, and I remember saying that it was perfect to get them off our back and humiliate them at the same time.
We left to find somewhere else to stay.
Whitney and I were on a long car journey (perhaps the dream was inspired by the trip we recently took to Washington DC) and we were looking for somewhere to stay the night. I don't know what attracted us to this particular place, but we found a blocky building on a university campus surrounded by a chain-link fence, and parked the car in a secluded corner next to the only entrance we could find from the road. I remember the layout of the building very clearly, and I've drawn it out to make the rest of this description a bit easier to follow.
We walked into the building through a small glass door and went through to a dimly-lit place that I'll call the A/V room - it was a mess, with assorted pieces of dated technology scattered around the floor and the available surfaces on the room. At the back there was a white plastic piece of machinery - the sort of look and feel that you get on medical devices - which had a blank screen a few feet wide mounted at the top, a robotic arm that either sprouted off the top of the screen or was attached to the ceiling, and a control pad with four translucent buttons on it marked with arrows. I took the pad, which was connected to the screen with a long cable that dangled down off the side of the screen, and tried to operate it but I couldn't work out how to control it.
There was a bed in the corner of the room near where we had come in, but I still didn't know where we were and went off to find the reception desk. I walked down a short corridor towards where I could see light (towards the north of the diagram), and entered a much brighter part of the building that looked like an upscale shopping centre, decorated for Christmas and with polished wood surfaces everywhere. It was busy, with throngs of people queuing up at the many gift shops - but I couldn't find a reception desk or someone to announce our presence to. I remember I found the front entrance somewhere and realized that people were paying for parking there, but I decided that our car would probably be safe and unnoticed where we had left it. Besides, I didn't want to go outside because it had started snowing.
I returned to the A/V room, where the robotic arm on the ceiling was now moving. It whirred around and grabbed a VHS tape from the floor, then spun again and carefully inserted it into a VCR that was part of the device with the screen. We still saw no picture, and I realized that the room had been set up so that a hacker could load the videos and transmit the medical lectures and notes on them to himself. Even though it looked like they were scattered around in a haphazard way, each tape had actually been meticulously placed, with the machine knowing the exact coordinates and orientation of each one so that it could pick up and load it. I remarked on what an elaborate plan it was, and how much easier it is now to get at files now that they're stored digitally.
I needed to find a bathroom before we could sleep, so I went in the same direction I had before, but didn't go into the corridor to the north this time, instead opening the door at the east end of the shorter corridor. This room had its lights turned off, but I could see two rows of small beds arranged one on each side of the room, each supporting an adult body that had a white sheet over it. As I looked around, a couple of them began to stir, and I backed out and tried elsewhere.
The next room I went into was to the south of the small corridor, and was very bright, the light exaggerated even more by the way the walls and floor were covered in gleaming white tiles. A glass wall with three doors in it separated the tiled area from a corridor that ran alongside it, and I headed for the door, opening it and stepping out into the corridor to the south. I turned and realized that the door was going to latch behind me and that I didn't know if I could get back - I tried putting my glove down on the floor so that the door couldn't close all the way but was still unsure.
Several people - older men in lab coats - were walking from elsewhere in the building down this corridor now on their way out. None of them seemed bothered that I was there, but one of them noticed that I was having trouble with the door and told me about its lock. He directed me to go back to the tiled side of the door and look at the mechanism, which was a small serrated piece of metal (not sharp - just a bit like a key sprouting off a rotating handle) that had to be turned correctly so that the door wouldn't latch. The door had to be closed to change it and it was soundproofed, so he had to mime exaggeratedly to me and I still couldn't get it right.
By this time, the people who had been in the room with all the beds had started to come into the white room - more and more of them came through the door that I had first entered the room by. They weren't threatening, just milling about - even so, I remember thinking of them as "zombies" in the dream. They were the specimens that were being kept in the lab, and I realized that I couldn't leave my side of the building and risk them getting out. As the man who had been talking to me had left, I decided I had to go and get Whitney to guard the door - even though by this time, a night-watch woman had arrived, and was looking up from the inside of a cylindrical bank of black monitors in stark contrast to the white of the room.
I went back to the A/V room and decided that I was uncomfortable staying the night - Whitney agreed and we gathered up our things and ran down a larger corridor (the location of which is unknown to me on the map) to escape. The specimens were chasing after us until we jumped through a door that had a drawbridge on it as it was closing - behind us, we heard the specimens falling into the water, and I remember saying that it was perfect to get them off our back and humiliate them at the same time.
We left to find somewhere else to stay.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-12-21 11:56 pm (UTC)