Somehow I ended up boarding the aircraft, despite not having wanted to do so.  My friend was going to be irritated because I had driven to the airport, so he would have to find his own ride home.  Also this was going to cause trouble for me because I needed to be at work the next day.

The plane was a small jet.  There were only three rows of  seats, with four seats in each row.  The flight attendant was very surprised to see me because I was not on her list, and she said that I shouldn’t be there, but there wasn’t anything that could be done about it so she told me to take a seat.  The third row was empty.

A little later the flight attendant sat in the same row.  Apparently the flight was only supposed to be for people that had made a big donation to some charity event.  Those people were given a fancy watch, and she asked where mine was.  I mumbled something about having left it at home.

Later another passenger and I tried to figure out why the video monitors at our particular seats weren’t working.  We traced out the wiring and found the problem.  We fixed it, and got the video working, but this apparently caused a catastrophic failure in the aircraft’s control systems, and the plane went into a steep dive.  We hastily undid our changes, but it didn’t help.

Postscript: after waking this morning, I happened to look at some online news, and read stories about Thursday’s Boeing 777 crash landing at Heathrow airport.  Both engines lost power, but amazingly there were no fatalities.  The cause has not been determined, but there has been much speculation, including theories that it might be due to an electronics failure, fuel contamination, or police using cell-phone jamming equipment.

My grandfather asked what I was going to do with the money.  I told him that I would buy a house, and quit my job in order to go back to school full time.  He didn’t approve of that plan, though he didn’t tell me what he thought I should do.

This escalated to severe restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Many people continued to support the government’s policies, still believing that it made them safer, but an increasing number of people were unhappy about it. Unfortunately public protests had long since been banned.

We tried to vote for politicians that promised to restore some of our lost liberties, but they did not get elected. Because the electronic voting machines provided no audit trail, we weren’t sure that the elections were legitimate.

I came up with some new form of civil disobedience to use in the fight against oppression, though I don’t recall what it was. It caught on quickly among those of us seeking the return of our freedoms, and we actually succeeded in winning a few back.

Then I woke up.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.. — Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. — Ronald Reagan

However, the flight was very scary. Instead of flying at a normal altitude (perhaps 35000 MSL), the pilot was hugging the ground within a few hundred feet, and sometimes closer. That wouldn’t be so bad in flat areas, most of the terrain between San Jose and Denver is mountainous.

However, once we drove into the first island, which was covered entirely with an enormous building, we got lost under that building. The freeway seemed to go straight through, but hit a dead-end at the other side of the island, so we couldn’t find the second bridge. There were various exits from the freeway, so we drove around for a while. Finally we found a “blue area” parking lot, and stopped to ask directions. It was getting late, so we also thought we might be able to find a hotel room.

We found out that this entire island was a government installation of some kind, not open to the public. However, I was surprised to learn that my wife had a security clearance that allowed us in. They did offer us rooms to stay overnight. They gave us ID cards which acted as keys for our rooms, and also allowed access to other services, including restaurants and use of the computer network.

The purpose of the installation was a mystery to me. The computer wouldn’t tell me very much. I could request certain documents, and they were delivered in capsules by a pneumatic tube system. After doing this several times, another capsule arrived unexpectedly. Someone had set up a program that saw my pattern of queries and delivered to me a set of index cards with a lot of information that he or she had managed to compile about the nature of the facility.

Based on the information on the cards, I took certain corridors and elevators, until I found myself outside the office of the director of the facility. I told his administrative assistant, a robot, that I wanted to see the director. The assistant smiled, and said “welcome back, sir.”

Apparently I was the director, and my memory of this had been erased when I embarked on a mission several years before, in order to avoid inadvertently divulging any classified information. Bits of that memory started returning, but not the big picture. Apparently I still had to keep a low profile, and hide the fact that I was the director.

The purpose of the facility was to house a group of extraterrestrials and keep them safe. They had arrived several years before, and their spacecraft was damaged, so they were not able to leave. The bigger problem was that the aliens had pathogens very harmful to humans, and no way had yet been found for the aliens to safely coexist with humans. We tried to make their stay as pleasant as possible while keeping them quarantined.

Unfortunately other parts of the government felt that the only safe solution was to exterminate the aliens. We constantly had to fight these efforts both politically and by countering “black ops”. A rogue agency was trying to kidnap top executives of the facility, myself included.

I needed to give a presentation to the alien leaders. This was done by use of an alien technology that swapped the minds of two individuals. The aliens had adapted it to work with humans. I found myself in an alien body, which was basically humanoid but definitely not human.

As I gave the talk, a group of humans in hazmat suits broke into the facility and tried to capture me. I made it into an elevator which closed just in the nick of time. There were only two buttons, for up and down. I pressed the up button. After about 45 seconds, a voice announced that the elevator was nearing the top of the shaft, and I had five seconds to press the stop button. What stop button? I couldn’t find one! I pressed the down button, but the elevator did not slow.

The elevator crashed through the top of the building, and started flying under its own power, like the “Up and Out” button of the Wonkavator. I urgently needed to get to my office, but was still in an alien body, and still being pursued. The elevator asked for directions, and I found that it would accept voice commands. I directed it to enter the facility through a cargo entrance, and head for a biology lab, where I could don a hazmat suit so that I could get to my office without endangering humans.

I was carrying a chicken, which kept pecking and scratching me.

My friend’s daughter was with us.  She had some sort of supernatural powers, which apparently were due to her long hair, and she was causing a great deal of mischief.  Someone tricked her into doing something that set her hair ablaze, burning her but putting an end to her shenanigans.

My friend was very depressed because the astronauts that died in the accident had been very close to him, and within a few hours committed suicide.

In the dream I tracked down the people that did it, and got revenge.  If it really happened, I’d have to settle for the insurance claim.

The snake was just lying on the floor.  I picked it up, and it was cold.  As it warmed up, though, it started moving.  Just a little at first, but after a while it was violently thrashing in its effort to get away from me.