Dream - A team of heroes, and the double spiral of boats under the ground

A few years ago, I had a very long and what seemed like an important dream. I was going to write it down, but I didn't, not for a long time, writing most of it last year and some of it now. In the long time between the dream and the writing, most of it was largely forgotten, but some parts of it remained.

In the dream, I was traveling by foot. Several people were with me at some point, fellow adventurers and heroes. We had many adventures, and many things happened. Some got killed along the way.

At some point, far along in the dream, I went into a large multistory building. I think some kind of party was going on, maybe one with foreign dignitaries. The room was crowded, and people were milling around and dancing. People were also shopping, though perhaps more on other levels. My father and mother were there, along with a lot of other people.

After a while, I started going up and down between floors. I used an odd method of travel. Instead of an elevator, it seemed to be just a large square hole with ropes that moved up and down. Several ropes hung down, and some other people used them, too. I think I volunteered to do something for my father, to go to a different floor and do something so he wouldn't have to. I think part of it was showing off, though.

Initially I was going up, but then I had to go to the bottom floor or basement. I saw a lot of toys in there, some of them Christmas toys I think, including toy horses large enough to ride on. The room had a lot fewer people than the place I came from, hardly any at all. I was doing something important there for someone. It seems I was supposed to meet someone, too, and maybe save someone who was being held there. There was some danger involved.

I went carefully through the area, going one way and then another, going through section after section. I came upon a person or two who helped me, going with me or conducting their own searches. Further on in the room I heard something, some noise or voice, from something hidden by the blocks of displays, or perhaps around a wall. After a short discussion, I went cautiously forward.

I came across someone behind a section, a woman. She was standing there, leaning forward slightly with her arms out a little, hiding behind the section. She was not currently tied up and or restrained in any way, but had been kept down there by someone, someone who had until recently been holding onto her, taking her with him from section to section, deeper into the place. He was still there somewhere nearby, perhaps very close, perhaps not. She had gone with him without much resistance, as she herself had not been certain about us, not knowing us.

She went with us as we went further into the place, though sometimes she was a little distance back and to the side. The light was dimmer here. Sometimes I saw a moving shadow on the walls, sometimes clearly the shadow of a person. I can't at this point say what the outcome was, or if there was an outcome, though I did eventually see an actual person.

Later, at maybe the third floor, I had a premonition of disaster. There was a large window all along the outer wall, and a glass wall and door separated it from the rest of the floor. I think some toys might have been behind the glass partition, but at this point something more important was happening there. The room beyond the glass was dimly lit and full of people, standing, generally facing toward the far left corner of the room.

I went in there a couple of times, but quickly went back out. Each time I went in, people started to turn partly toward me, sardonic distaste on their faces. It seemed to be a secret meeting of some kind, where people were listening to someone talk, and perhaps being given instructions. It felt like an evil place.

Each time I went in I stayed only briefly, and then went back to the other side of the glass partition. A few people were there, in the broad space between the windows and the glass partition, but not many. Someone there was talking to me in a somewhat friendly, matter of fact manner, generally from ten or more feet away. I thought they might really be part of the evil group, though, mid-level leaders probably. I kept feeling that something was about to happen, and was getting more and more anxious.

I finally broke the window to the outside and wrapped my arms around one or two people, members of my group I think, and made a long glide to the ground with super powers, taking them with me. We landed a long way away, down a broad open area lined with buildings. The third floor, distant now and still facing us, then exploded in flames. Someone was trying to kill us.

All the people on that floor, including those behind the glass partition, were evidently killed, though I thought it possible that a few might have escaped by a secret route at the last minute. Some of the people in the room in front of the partition were bad, but some may have been good, and part of my team might have still been there, too. The people who set the explosion were willing to kill them all just to kill us, or perhaps just to kill me, but I think very few of those there were actually aware of what was going to happen. I'm not sure if or how the other people in the building were affected, or what the fate of my mother and father was.

I went back and forth through the streets, then, on foot. Many of the streets were narrow side streets, like alleys. In time some of them got wet and muddy, sunken even. I kept going back through them. Some of them had large sections that were a deep, continuous puddle. Skies were overcast, and there was a feeling of bleakness.

I was being searched for, I'm not sure whether by the authorities or by some evil organization. I was generally alone at this point. Occasionally I came across one or two people, or they came across me. Sometimes they were part of the group that was after me, but I was never captured. It went on for a long time.


Eventually, perhaps in another dream, I was in a large open area, standing on pale, hard ground. One or two people were also there. They were pointing out a narrow hole in the ground that led to another place, perhaps another dimension. One or two ropes led down into the hole, and I had to climb down them to reach the other side. I climbed down them, then, but the rope ended perhaps ten feet above the ground, and I had to let go and drop the rest of the way.

I was in a strange place, then, a little city. I found that I couldn't return, that no one who comes can leave. I was told there was a way, though, that boats have to be arranged in a specific pattern, in a double spiral of lanes going in different directions. Such a thing was done there periodically. The rulers were coming from the surface, now, for a visit, and the spiral was being created as part of the celebration. The rulers would come down in a line of boats that would wind their way down through the spiral and then go back up with the spiral line going back.

There wasn't much time. I ran to the boats, jumping on and jumping from boat to boat. Some people were looking at me strangely. It was probably because of the jumping, but I wasn't really supposed to be there. Only certain people were allowed on the boats. I didn't have a ticket, or the connections it would require to get one.

The boats were moving along slowly, close together in their circular channels. I think I initially tried to stay in the same channel, though perhaps going in the opposite direction of travel, but I soon started going across to the other channels, which were separated by low, thick, white concrete walls, which sometimes had workers on them assisting the boats. Sometimes the workers seemed visibly upset as I jumped to the wall and then to a boat on the other side, but they usually continued working at what they were doing and didn't try to stop me, though sometimes they seemed to call out to someone or notify someone on little phones or radios.

There now seemed to be no way to get to the boats near the rulers, the boats that I knew would be going back out, unless I could somehow manage to jump across the channels to them. It was a more difficult jump, though, with more water and a little taller walls, and more equipment on and by the walls.

Originally the spirals from the inside and outside were supposed to join in one continuous loop, but now the spirals seemed completely separate. They didn't join up at the center, and one channel was always for boats on the inside and one was always for boats that came from the outside and wound around and then went back out again. The inside boats just kept repeating themselves in their travels, and I think that at least at times both the spiral from the inside and the spiral from the outside were going in the same directions, still wound around each other.

I saw the rulers, some distance away to the left, in their stately procession, in the section that was still up on the gentle slope leading downward. They appeared to be some kind of royalty. It seemed earlier that things had been working properly, that just by getting on the boats I could be assured of being part of the cycle that would go above ground and then back under again, though I would have to be sure of being on a part of it that would reach the outside before the cycle stopped. Now, though, there was no way I could get to the outside, unless I could jump to a boat in the line that went there.

I was jumping from boat to boat, trying to get to or near the rulers or at least on the line of boats going with them, the boats that would eventually go back up to the outside. I was somewhat concerned about being able to get too close to them, that guards might intervene before that happened. I finally got on the spiral of boats leading out, a few boats away from the rulers I think. From there, I stayed with the boat until it went through the spiral and back up again, and when it was well along the slope going upward, when the ceiling was much closer but still too far to normally reach, I somehow reached it and broke through it, and went straight through a broad foggy opening and got back to the surface.