TOW 		             
Dreaming; Night of
January 11, 1985
       6:37              2Wow! I and others were visitors to a planet. We were in a hovercar-type craft (like in Bladerunner), being given a tour by a local. He showed us all over, all sorts of fantastic sights. The thing that impressed me the most, however, was a huge city, all skyscraper-type buildings, which I made our driver take us to even though he was afraid to due to a local superstition about the place. We got near the place and I said to my companion, who was my father (not real one), that this place was at least as good as the city scenes in the movie Bladerunner. We landed, and looked around a sort of peripheral area between the barren wasteland surrounding the city and the city itself. It was here that some brave local nomad-types did small-scale trading with the city's inhabitants. None of the locals were ever allowed within the city, though. We were looking around and I spotted a beautiful girl lying on the ground. She was wearing loose-fitting, colorful clothes which labelled her as a city-dweller (they did come out, on occasion, into the peripheral area). Apparently, something had happened to her. I went to her side. Of course, the locals were falling over themselves trying to help in some way because she was from the city. I could see that she was fine, maybe just enjoying the spectacle, and I discreetly went up and began rubbing her bare foot. She looked at me, and we had a long moment of eye contact during which we seemed to fall in love. She got up and headed toward the guarded city entrance. My father, the pilot, and I followed, and while the pilot, of course, was not allowed in, we were and continued to follow her. We being off-worlders, which were virtually unheard of in this somewhat decadent and regressive society, were not bound by the stricture against admitting the common local. I am not sure, however, how much the girl knew that we were off-worlders. She may have merely thought that we were from somewhere beyond the desert-plain, perhaps from another, competing city. In any case, it was an uncommon move to bring us in, but then she was an uncommon girl, adventurous and rather defiant, as her being outside of the city in the first place showed. She took us through a hallway on the way to her high-ranking family's living quarters. Unlike the skyline, the inside of the city seemed a labyrinth of rooms and corridors. At one point, we stopped when she said not to lean against the wall and I questioned why. She made a section of the wall opaque (I don't remember this, but assume it must have happened, as one moment the wall was a wall and the next, a window-wall) and I could see the outside of the city (a rare scene from within the city) or maybe it was an outside-seeming pen of some sort. All of a sudden, a huge mass thunked against the wall. Looking, I could see several creatures milling around, apparently powerful desert felines of some sort. We continued walking and arrived at her home. She showed us around a little. My father was stunnedly impressed by the library which held vast numbers of seemingly very old books. Across all of humanity, not just on this world, society was in a reversal, much like the barbaric times of Foundation, and virtually no one read anything. Only the very rich and/or educated (which were usually one and the same due to the high, high costs of books) were at all well-read. So this library was a fortune, which my father recognized, being somewhat of a scholar on our world, although he knew that this was far beyond his depth. He was enthralled, but was not permitted to read, as it was illegal for any local to read. The girl was leading me up some stairs to show me a higher level when we met her father coming down. Her father was a gruff old man, feared by all because of his power and nature. He didn't like the boyfriends who tried to call on his daughter, even though they were city boys. I, being of questionable origin, was in an even worse position. He led us back down into the library and grilled me with a sort of oral examination to see if I was of any worth and gauge my intelligence. What followed was a series of banter-like exchanges as I answered his questions as eruditely as I could. I don't remember any of the questions now, except the one which almost tripped me up. He asked me the meaning of a local word (began with an "R," fairly long). I had no idea, but took a guess and said the animals I had seen on the way in. We continued in this manner until, just when it seemed he was about to accept me, I woke up. Damn! This dream was visually incredible, with an extensive background and well-rounded characters. I give it a (C)