I had one of the most complicated dreams ever. It begins with some kind of diplomatic dinner party. My parents are expected but only my mother is at the dinner. Eventually my father shows up and he says, there's no one I know here. I said yes there is. Look there is Thanom Kittikhachorn. My father says, yes but there's no one else I know. I look around at all the people at the dinner and I realize that he is right. Everyone there is a stranger to him.
But that's not surprising because I'm actually at some kind of science fiction conference, and it isn't a diplomatic dinner at all. They send me to my room at the hotel, more like a motel actually. I'm amazed because it is a luxurious suite. I take out my laptop and work for a while. It's really early I don't know why, maybe like 9:10 pm. But I fall asleep. While I'm asleep inside my dream I have another dream.
In the other dream, I'm some kind of advisor in some ancient war. I'm trying to negotiate some huge treaty between the revolting peasants and the aristocracy. I successfully make a deal. I go into a huge park to inform the leaders of the uprising that everything will be OK. It's an incredibly beautiful, lush, green park. To my horror, I see rifles poking out from under vegetation. I called out, it's safe now, the war is over. But as I move closer, I see that The dozens of people crouching down with rifles is aimed at me, they are not alive people at all. They are all skeletons. As I look further in the park I see many many more skeletons. It seems that while I was negotiating to help these people, they had all been gassed. I was the victim of a terrible trick. The amazing thingabout this dream within a dream with the incredible greenness of the landscape. The beauty of the vegetation and the horror of the countless corpses. I woke up inside the dream and I was still in a hotel room except it was him to be my own bedroom as well. I was thinking I have to write this down, I have to write this down.
I leave for breakfast but I come back to the suite. I mean to write down the dream is soon as I can. When I open the door it's a completely different place.
First, it's full of people, And there are eight doors in the suite H leading to a bedroom bathroom or closet. All the people in the room are staying in the same suite. There are people I know like Connie Willis. They all have rooms in my suite. But where is my room? All the science-fiction writers have rooms, and every other room is either a toilet or closet. And the scariest thing is I left my laptop behind in what I thought was my bedroom. But now I don't have a bedroom.
I'm about to go and complain to the hotel management when I look up and see a huge hole in the ceiling. Through that whole I can see that the room above is a big dormitory style room with lots of small single beds in rows. Suddenly I realize that we have to look after a whole bunch of young children or students, and that this isn't an ordinary science-fiction convention but also something educational.
I'm very frustrated in particular about the laptop. I decide to go and see the convention chairman so that I can tell him what happened. I go down a very narrow corridor and turn right into what appears to be some kind of antique shop. Or a China shop. It has things on display in tall glass cases with lead-rimmed panes, like stained glass but clear.
I'm with somebody who is also with me in the suite when I discovered it wasn't my suite. I think he's another sci-fi writer but I don't remember his name.
Anyway, it appears that I am holding a laptop after all. But when I look at the laptop it is not my laptop. I see clearly but it has the logo of Phillips on it. Also, it is a carrying handle like an old-fashioned portable typewriter I can't possibly write about the dream on it.
My friend points out to me where the con chair is standing. It is some kind of balding, Asian person with glasses. He's with another fan. I go up to him.
Look here, I tell him, I've literally had an alternate universe experience where I've actually slipped into another world. Something is really wrong. The room is wrong everything is wrong the laptop is wrong.
Really? He says but suddenly only his head remains and it is on the floor and it is deflating like a balloon, and also cackling.
Oh my God, I said to myself with sudden realization. I'm still dreaming, aren't I? And I wake up with a start.