VITAL STATISTICS
Dreamer: Helen
Date: June 19, 2000
Title: Frictionless Goo
Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the Starship Enterprise and I, along with many other people were attending a fancy cocktail party in a fabulous NYC penthouse which featured a stunning Babylonesque hanging garden on the rooftop balcony. At centerpeice of this garden was an impressive obsidian-black, rectangular reflecting pool.
I didn't know anybody at the party - they were all generic, snooty rich people. In fact, at this stage I was merely an observer, not a participant, in the dream. I watched Jean-Luc, who was quite stuck-up himself, shun the other guests for the most part. He wandered offf to the balcony to shoot some hoops with a basketball and hoop that happened to be set up there. Except that the basketball was in reality composed of this evil goo disguising itself as a basketball. Whoever touched the goo became contaminated with it, and was converted to its peculiar physical properties. Namely, they became a big blob of frictionless, formless goo.
Nothing could hold the frictionless goo, and no living being could touch it except during the brief moments that it assumed the form of some object. It spent most of its time sliding endlessly around and around in the reflecting pool, which, I noticed, had rounded corners on the inside.
I watchd in horror as Jean-Luc disintergrated into a frictionless puddle. The look on his face as he realized what was happening to him was truly chilling. I got the impression he knew what this stuff was, and how he would end up, because in the last moments he dashed to the reflecting pool to collapse into it. The last I saw of him he was a dark, frictionless, formless blob sliding endlessly around along the pool's track.
Next thing I know, I'm standing outside of a dream-P&C supermarket in Essex Jct., VT. As far as supermarkets go this place was depressing. It was basically a huge, run-down warehouse filled with immense racks of moveable shelves stacked with cut-rate/cut-out products. I doubt there was an item in the whole place that hadn't long passed its expiration date. The produce section, in particular, was filled with some of the sorriest former fruits and vegetables I had ever seen gathered in one location - waiting to die as their last days crawled slowly by as they slipped inexorably into permanent decrepitude and decay.
My vision flashed back to an attractive, but lethal-looking, woman in the a skin-tight black leather catsuit standing in the garden on the balcony. She knew Jean-Luc had been converted into frictionless, formless goo, and she had come to the obsidian reflecting pool to taunt him and to learn his secrets. She wanted to discover if there was some way she could harness the goo for her own nefarious purposes.
Unfortunately she made the mistake of somehow getting a little bit of the goo on herself. At first she thought she could just keep from letting her hand touch any part of herself, but then a bit dripped on her thigh and I watched her struggle, with mounting dread, as she realized she was helpless to stop the conversion. She was reduced fairly quickly to goo and slipped into the pool.
Then I'm back at the P&C. I'm the only one there. I look in vain for anyone, but the place is totally empty. I assume it must have been abandoned because the lights were still on the and it had been left open. As I'm walking around, someone arrives and tells me they're here for the class. For some reason I feel obligated now to lead this training session even though I have no idea what it's about. I find the classroom area behind the customer service area, and I learn the class is supposed to be about supermarket bookekeeping and cash register procedures.
More people show up, and my friend George is among them. I recruit him to help me teach the class even though he doesn't know any more about the subject than I do.
Finally the trainees have all arrived. George and I begin teaching the class, but we only manage to confuse people even more. Seeing how badly things are going, George suggests a team-building excercise wherein we all go over and shoot some hoops with the basketballs and basket that happen to be conveniently located over by the baked goods section.
Everyone files out to shoot the baskets which does seem to get folks relaxed and more comfortable. George tells me I have to shoot a basket. I try to beg off because I know I'll just fluff it, but he insists. So, I step up to the basket laughing to let everybody know this is all just in good fun and it doesn't matter to me if I mess up or not. I'm just doing it to humor everyone. I shot the ball and I miss spectacularly. And my ball falls to the ground with a deflated splat.
George tells me I have to try again. Now I'm laughing very hard, because frankly, the idea of me shooting baskets is hilarious, but also my first miss was so spectacular it didn't seem entirely natural. I play along because I feel like I have to. I decide to dribble my ball a few times before shooting, like pro players do, but the first time the ball smacks onto the concrete floor it splits into five pieces - the largest piece almost the size of half the ball.
Now I become really nervous. I scoop up the five pieces and carry them over to a kiddie wading pool that happened to be nearby. As I set them down they instantly return to their friction, formless goo state and my heart sinks. I look up and see Jean-Luc and the woman in the catsuit approaching the basketball court full of innoncent trainees. Gathering all of my courage, I walk over to intercept them and ask them why they've come to disrupt my incompetent P&C cashier/bookkeeping training class. Then I wake up.
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