A strange dream

During grad week I had the strangest dream. It consisted of a dystopian world, in which the privileged portion of the human race lived in a large, regulated dome, whereas those not privileged worked as miners in a strip surrounding the dome, separated from the harmful and formless void of space around that, but without the light and oxygen so lavishly pumped into the privileged dome. The privileged dome's people looked like celebrities, or stepford wives. Each 'country' in the dome was a Church sanctuary led by a pastor, while its 'citizens' listened obediently in pews.

Hannah and I were (in this dream) part of a rebel group within the privileged dome, campaigning for miner's rights. The problem was that as the world died around us, the oxygen supply was being depleted. What oxygen the void supplied was pumped into the privileged dome, and as a result the miner's were surviving on less and less, and inevitably they would be entirely starved of oxygen.

So with our rebel group we charged through the churches towards the edge of the dome, where through the glass you could see the miners working in a dim darkness. Only a door separated them and us, a door only open-able from within the dome. I put my hand on the handle as a miner loomed before me and pulled the door open. Immediately, his hands shot out and grabbed my face, and suddenly I realised that letting him in would mean less oxygen for me, for the people I knew, and would mean letting in an angry, disenfranchised and oppressed group who were strong, and ferocious, and hungry for revenge. And so I wrenched myself from his grasp and closed the door, feeling sick at myself for doing so.

Somewhere in the dream Hannah was shot - I cannot remember if her death was the impetus for the rebel charge or was some sort of punishment from the church for our attempt. But I do remember also washing the miner's grubby hand marks from my face, realising that I was at heart a self-preserving, selfish person.

The dream ends with the oxygen in low supply. Even within the privileged dome there is not enough oxygen to sustain activity - every one lies among overturned pews in a cold blue light, breathing shallowly to preserve what time we have left. In my dream, the woman I love curls up near my belly, and I curve around her wanting only to protect and love in the little time we have left. And suddenly I see and know that when we die, our bodies, preserved by the formless void, will resurface in the distant present as the petrified bodies of Pompeii - that the dystopian dome world was not, as I thought, from a distant future but a distant past, and that humans were passing away with the world only to be reborn again.