Almost a year later to the day, this is a second strange dream in which I am not myself, although everything in the dreamscape seemed vivid and familiar. Recording this as part of a series?
September 18, 2022
I was a resident in a future ‘city’, which was itself a giant cylindrical structure like a building. It was massive, over a kilometer tall, with a diameter larger than a football stadium. It was perfectly smooth. This city was an enclosed system, with shopping, living, entertainment, government, and everything else one could ever want within. Residents of the city had traded their entire net worth of possessions in order to gain passage, and lived in a tiered system according to how much they could afford. The lower levels offered a more basic lifestyle, while the upper levels had the extravagances which come with affluence. Levels were grouped into sections with silly-sounding names like Ultimate, in a kind of carryover marketing mentality from the world these residents had left behind. For example, maybe the top 50 levels were all branded in Navy Blue and Silver, with “Ultimate” signage to remind Residents of their importance. Below those levels was “Preferred” with a different color scheme and a little less luxury. Perhaps above Ultimate would have been “VIP” or something equally vapid, as you might expect if you visited the world’s largest casino.
Overall the concept of the city was similar to what is being discussed with the NEOM project in the Middle East right now, but with one major difference. This city was somehow mobile. It moved slowly through the landscape, although the mechanism for this was not obvious in the dream. It did not “roll”, because its movements were too smooth. Perhaps it was some kind of anti-gravity stabilization or other tethering, but later I would discover that it was definitely in contact with the ground. As if on a large ship, movement was perceptible but not objectionable. Residents enjoyed a carefree lifestyle in which everything was included in the price already paid. I had the feeling like I was an early adopter, participating in the future of humanity. It was not clear what my role or purpose in the city was, or if I even worked. But it seems my purpose in the dream was to be an Observer. All was not well in the city, despite appearances.
It began with the city’s systems. Broken elevators or trams, leaky ceilings, and other things which we could consider to be maintenance issues. The city had a well-oiled marketing / messaging team, which was effective at masking these problems to the population. They would advertise some other route to take, for example, so fewer people would notice a broken tram. They would promote a new kind of electrolyte drink in response to a water shortage, as another example. Pretty soon residents just couldn’t get enough of that new drink, and did not notice the shortage of water. The design of the city went to great lengths to include viewports, panoramas, and balconies. It also featured a great many ‘daylight’ windows which were really screens projecting the outside world. Presumably these would be coordinated with the time of day and physical location to lend a seamless experience to the Residents. On occasion, a digital glitch would reveal that the view was enhanced, but 99% of the time the sensation was foolproof.
The glitches in the city began to pique my curiosity, and I suppose the flow of this dream was much like a movie. By and by, I found my way into some of the inner workings of the structure, where a whole population of workers feverishly maintained the place. These were not an oppressed lower class, as one might expect after watching Metropolis; rather, they were company employees, like the crew of a giant cruise ship or Disney park. The view from the inner workings was markedly different than the serene, club-like atmosphere of the public areas. It was harried, rushed. It was ‘real’ in the sense that these workers had actual jobs, schedules, and productivity goals. Their world was that of the company insider; they knew what it took to maintain the perfect illusion to the Residents, but it was not always within their control to do so. Like any corporation, it had many middle managers, whose job was to keep the experience rolling along smoothly. The ‘leaders’ or governance of the city were really Administrators from the company, with half of their job description being Public Relations.
In following my curiosity, I began to wonder why so many people were happy with the new electrolyte drink in lieu of just water. I actually preferred the water. But I learned there were other shortages too, like various grains and other staples. These shortages too were cleverly masked by the marketing machine, which would promote different alternatives. I began to descend into the lower levels of the city to see what I could learn, and discovered that some problems had been happening now for a long time. I saw managerial staff hustling water containers up emergency stairwells, making sure the upper levels had the least interruption in supply. The more I learned, the more fragile the entire system seemed.
At some point I found myself outside the city, in the Virginia countryside approaching Richmond. This was the only connection to my own waking life, being a place that I used to live. It looked about the same way it does today; a beautiful, rural Piedmont landscape. What struck me however was that the view from outside the city was different than the viewscreens inside the city depicted. It would be like comparing a painting to an actual vista, or elevator muzak to an actual symphony. In the dream city, I had forgotten how vivid real life was. Outside, there were no shortages of anything. The earth was still producing its crops, people were still living their lives, and water still flowed in the rivers. Being somewhat shocked by the vibrance of it all, I rushed back up into the city to my ‘levels’, to make a better comparison before the memories faded. What I saw with my fresh perspective was haunting.
The view out the viewscreens was like a bad cartoon. Not realistic in any normal sense, but artificial in the way you might expect if your production budget got slashed and you were using 25 year old computers to keep the place running. Physical sensations did not properly match the screens either; feelings of motion where the visual did not match, or a flock of birds flying past with no sound. The hour of the day looked to be dusk, even though it was mid-afternoon when I was standing on the ground shortly before. My thoughts went to recent memories of standing in a restaurant balcony and looking out at the landscape: were those views fake as well? Was my perception dulled-down to the point that I just accepted whatever I saw? How had I become so acclimated to what seemed like incongruous depictions of the outside world? Why was I worried the impression of ‘outside’ would soon fade? This was all baffling, disconcerting. I began to see things as they were: noticing the worried looks on the faces of the company employees…wondering why it had been months since certain menu options were available at the café…remembering various visual glitches in the view ports that I never questioned before. Never questioned. Why wouldn’t I question? I began to wonder how long I had actually lived in this city, but the memory was hazy. Two years? Ten? There was an alarming kind of awakening happening, but just within me; apparently I was the only one who noticed. But it was about to get worse.
I tried to reach someone who might have answers. There was a familiar-to-me middle administrator, who maybe I had met before in the outside world, but whose name I could not recall. Whenever we would pass by – he on his way rushing somewhere, me pursuing whatever leisure thing – there was a flash of recognition in his eyes, as if to say If you only knew. I somehow came across a paper, an internal company memo from a briefing it seemed. It may have been purposefully left by this administrator for me to find; how it came to me is hazy. But the content of the memo was an outline of the coming season’s operational projection, and how the staff was to maintain the lifestyle of the upper levels at all costs, even when they knew the city was dying. They were to keep this information from leaking out, keeping up appearances while the poorer classes slowly became sick and died-off, or were even euthanized. The lower sections of the city would gradually be emptied through attrition and then closed, to support the upper sections for as long as possible. Marketing / messaging would be designed to prevent the upper classes from knowing what was happening below. Eventually enough supplies would be depleted, and enough critical maintenance systems would go unrepaired, that the city itself would cease to function and everyone remaining would be at risk. The memo gave a prediction of six to eight months’ life left in the city. Nowhere did it make any mention of evacuations or disclosure; only ongoing obfuscation to the point of destruction. There was a whole world waiting just outside the city, yet their plan was to fiddle while Rome burned beneath them.
The last image I have from the dream was that of a premonition, of the whole structure leaning and then falling to the ground, killing all who remained inside. The Administration was walking us into a catastrophe without any plan to let us know in advance, or even to change course. I had precious little time to somehow warn everyone, as they went about their oblivious leisure lives. How would I tell them? How would they believe? That is when I awoke, with my final lingering thought being that I would not be in the city when it collapsed.
/End
Visayas Outpost