Blackest Day

I had a really peculiar dream before the Brazil-Chile match last night. I dreamt that I was a civilian observer in some sort of paramilitary exercise. I was out on my day job as an intelligence operative, minding my own business (which in the trade is normally someone else's business) and having coffee. When I got back to the headquarters, which was also some sort of training institution, I found a note in my shoe which said, "The Riders are coming!"

This was a code telling me to 'bug out'; that is, grab my stuff and run. As some of you know, I do indeed carry a contingency package which allows me to do many things that most unprepared people can't. I grabbed it and left just in time to see the building enter 'lockdown', with a convoy of light troop carriers and several black helicopters surrounding it.

I found myself watching from a perch high up on a nearby building across an alleyway. The trainees inside were herded into classrooms in full uniform, as were the civilian staff. There, a bunch of thugs in black uniforms alternated between being saccharinely polite and being violently rude. As far as I could tell, they were searching for someone who had made nasty allegations about their Great Leader.

I had no idea who might have done this. But it was clear that about 1/10 of the population was being herded into black trucks, each with a small yellow star painted in a corner of the rear section. The trucks were lined up neatly on the astroturf pitch where the trainees used to play football.

Then I noticed, on a grey balcony set in the face of a grim building, illuminated from below and some distance away, the figure of the Great Leader himself. He didn't notice me in my shadowed nook, but he was grimacing, as if in some sort of nervous anticipation. He drooled slightly from the left corner of his mouth, then raised a gloved hand to wipe his lip.

Then I woke up. If dreams are indeed a clearing out of the subconscious, my subconscious needs to be reined in. Whoa!