Sunday 29 March 2009

The Dream of March 29

I'm sitting by my computer, except it's in my brother's room (which it was for a while after he moved out so we wouldn't have to keep a cord to the modem all the way through the flat), and I'm playing something that could be an odd dream version of the World of Warcraft, while keeping one eye on something on the telly, sort of (not literally, even though stranger things have happened in my dreams). There was a film or something on in a language I don't speak. Something east or south-European. A dark-haired woman wearing what looks to me like an 80s style blouse (in some odd white, grey and black pattern and a light material) - but the fashion of it could be older - is doing something by a wooden bench in an old cottage. I'm not sure if she's cooking or making something out of wood or what she's up to, but suddenly she looks out the window in front of her, pulls an angry face and darts out of the cottage very quickly. It's summer outside and she heads for an oak tree across the yard where chickens (well, they're hens, really) and little girls are running around. There's a bloody mess of feathers on the ground in one spot and further away is one of the girls, seemingly killing another chicken. The woman shouts at her, angrily, in that language I don't understand, but the subtitles tell me she's telling the girl off:
"What are you doing? You can't do that to the chickens! You all get out of here, now, run along with you!" She adds, to that girl who'd killed chickens: "And you go home and tell your parents what you've done!"

That's all I remember of the film. In the next part of the dream I'm still at the same comp, in the same room, but some of my brother's furniture have gone and a woman is standing next to me. It's job interview and I'm supposed to show her my Office skills or something. So I close down that game I've been playing and I attempt to start working but I get a weird error message saying F: (the DVD-burner/player is F: on my comp) has stopped working completely, and I think "Shit, that's not good, I can't play CDs now. But at least the one in there now is just the installation CD for the webcam." (this is true). And I press the button to push it out and remove the CD, but nothing happens and for some reason I have to get rid of it, so I just pull on it and the sort of "loading" thing for the discs just comes flying out as if it wasn't in any way connected to the rest of the DVD-burner. That, and the actual CD dart across the floor and there's a hideous odour of burning plastic. I decide to ignore it, given my ongoing interview and smile at the woman while thinking to myself that my brother's gonna kill me for the mess I've made of his room. In addition to the demolished bits of my computer I've got a little notepad and some little book-like things that look like instruction manuals for various components on his desk (other things too, but I can't recall what they were now).
The computer is locking up and I decide to reboot it, but when I do it loads up the game I was playing before and a lot of other things that have got nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be doing. I try to shut them down, but they start up again. I can feel panic setting in and I try rebooting it again, same thing. Now I'm at the point where I no longer care about the job interview, I just want to be rid of that stupid game and the other stuff that keeps loading and I just crash the computer manually and leave it off. But it boots itself and everything starts again. I crash it again and it starts on its own. This time I crash it and switch the power button in the back of it off, thinking that'll be the end of it. And it is... For a few seconds before it powers up again. I look at the power switch at the back and it's back into on-mode. I switch it off there instantly, not even bothering with the normal power-button thing at the front. And I watch as it slowly switches back into the "on"-position and starts up again.

Now, I can't quite recall what I do next. I know that I considered unplugging it and I might've done. But I might actually have gone nuts and bashed the entire computer up until I was sure it wouldn't magically reboot again.

Either way, at this point in the dream I know the computer isn't going to start up again, it's dead. It's early in the morning and my mum's just getting up. She asks me what I'm doing up that early and I just shrug, not wanting to explain the computer situation (the job interview woman is long gone, she must've left some time during my psychotic attempts to kill the computer). The last thing that happens is that I think:
"Oh no... that computer is never gonna work again. I'm computerless now, what's James going to say?"

At that point I woke up, feeling massively dehydrated.

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