I was in a small attic-like area at what I perceived to be a friend's house, where construction was taking place. Some workmen were trying to carry long boards from an unfinished area through the attic, and seemed to be having trouble doing that while holding the door open. I got up and stepped out into the unfinished area to lean on a railing and hold the door for them, but after they went through the railing collapsed.
Though about 5 stories off the ground, I managed to hold onto the edge of something and it seemed I had avoided disaster. But this went into a cascade of failures, as all the various boards I held on seemed to go flying or gyrating into the air. I shouted back to the house.
me: "Okay, I thought I was doing fine and had saved myself from a fall. But every time I do something, my motion just makes it worse, so I'm going to stay put. This is a dream, and the structures I'm dealing with are not obeying the laws of physics."
Someone managed to retrieve me, and put me laying on the ground as my friend looked on from the attic. One item I had grabbed was an elongated metal tool, and I let go of it...only to watch it fly back up to the attic.
me: (exasperated) "See! That's what I'm talking about, gravity should go DOWN."
friend: (sternly) "Oh, I see...so you speak for all protein-based life forms in saying that? What if I want to tell my tools to put themselves back in the toolbox, but they are at a lower altitude than the toolbox? What then?"
me: "Well...good point. But I obviously can't navigate this kind of setup without some help."
He came down to the ground level and handed me a small black device, about the size of a walkie-talkie. It had knobs on it for different functions and frequencies. I turned one of the knobs at random and began to feel a certain amount of pressure in my head. When I turned it back the pressure eased, and I felt very light-headed.
Someone who identified himself as "Kevin" stepped over to me. While keeping the device in my hand, he turned it to settings that seemed to make me feel normal. I stood up.
kevin: "There ya go. Now you're on frequency with what you're used to...20th-Century physics!"
me: "How can that work? How could you build a 'device' that changes the physics you experience while remaining in your hand? Wouldn't this 'new physics' change the very premises on which the device itself could operate?"
kevin: (shrugging) "That's not a question for me, I don't know how it works. You'd have to ask Doctor Woodrow."
Note
"Woodrow" is a guess at what he said, but it was some kind of esoteric name along those lines.
Standing up and looking around, I could see more people. There were some who were walking dogs, but the dogs were just translucent shadows...although the people were in focus.
me: "Why is it that I can see people but the dogs are nearly invisible?"
kevin: "You'll find that there are lots of quirks, you pick up on them as you go. Some things are just easier to experience than they are to have explained."
We wandered around and nothing of much note happened, until I wandered back to the roof to talk to my friend. A cheap belt I was wearing seemed to get stuck in a grinding machine that was a bit like a wood chipper, and I panicked until it just pulled the belt off me completely and tore it to pieces. I backed away from the machine.
me: "Okay, that was...not good."
friend: "Who cares, you can just get a new belt."
me: "Well I'm not as worried about the belt as I am about the fact that it got caught in the machine when I was nowhere near it. I'm staying away before I get chopped up too."
friend: (smiling) "If you stay far away from the machine you'll miss the best part here at the end. Watch."
He positioned me back to where I could see the underside of the machine. The gear train for the chipper was powered by a small elephant-looking creature running on a treadmill. It was kind of Teddy-Ruxpin-uncanny and robotic, and when it stopped running it did a little dance and sang a song.
me: "It's like an appliance from the Flinstones. Except with robots instead of dinosaurs."
We had a discussion about the person I thought he was, and he seemed to get irritated when I mentioned his name.
friend: "So that's who he is. I know exactly who you're talking about, but I never knew the jerk's name before."
elephant: (chiming in) "Oh yes, now we know!"
me: "He's not a jerk."
They ranted a little bit about comparisons, and I had a hard time understanding because it was like the friend and the elephant were talking at the same time. He began descending from the roof level into the main part of the building which was not under construction. I tried to follow, but quickly turned out to be either following the wrong person...or taking a step into a room and not being able to turn back and get where I came from.
Note
I've come to associate these sorts of "can't go back" situations as being a poor understanding of higher dimensions. By a similar token, a two-dimensional being can take a step forward in a three-dimensional world and drop down a level without knowing it has done so. This means that what's behind it can appear to change abruptly since it didn't notice the drop.
Wandering past some pools and signs, I found an area of tables. There were fancy slurpee machine dispensers on the surrounding walls. I was rapidly losing my sense of stability to stay in the dream, my hands and legs seemed to vanish and I was only a point-of-view in the room. Somehow I made it to a table which appeared to have two unfinished slurpee cups on it, which I drank and it restored my ability to function.
On a wall there was what appeared to be a mirrored surface, that showed a view looking down a long holographic tunnel. At one point it began to separate like a door opening, but in a strange angular collapsing pattern. People stepped into it, and it closed. Then the holographic compression closed it back to a mirrored surface and there was an odd visual effect behind it as whatever transport device moved off. I felt a sense of familiarity with something I'd seen in another dream.
me: "Okay, right...that form of transportation device. I've seen those before."
bystander: (chuckling) "Sounds like someone doesn't make it in from the boonies very often."
My wandering led me somehow to a brightly-lit pharmacy counter. The man behind the counter was perplexed and irritated as I explained to him that I needed help.
pharmacist: "We don't take these kind of cases. You people have to go to the public facilities."
me: "I don't have time to travel, I only have a matter of minutes or seconds."
pharmacist: "There is no documentation, and how would you pay?"
me: "Are you listening? This is important."
pharmacist: (scoffing) "How can you expect us to give away something for free?"
At this point there seemed to be some additional people appearing in the room. They were a bit out of phase like the dogs, listening and watching our conversation, but I got the sense that the pharmacist could not see them. I felt I was supposed to keep testing this interaction in the way I'd been doing and they would observe, so I didn't address them.
me: "Look, things here are pretty fancy. There appear to be free Slurpees out there, I don't see anyone standing in front of the dispensers like you are with these pills. As things that should be free go, Slurpees seem a long way behind medicine providing basic health to conscious and creative beings that can express themselves. And we're talking about inter-dimensional communications, here!"
One of the out-of-phase beings seemed to be sifting through some paperwork or computer files, as if their attention was on something I could not see in the room. An out-of phase female doctor and an assistant appeared, they floated and were able to walk through the pharmacist counter. The being who looked like he was analyzing something remotely remarked to someone else I could not see.
being: "Hmmm. It says DO NOT ENTER. Let's just call that 'suspicious'."
doctor: "I've got the receipt, looking at it now. That medication, hmmm...it's for GERD."
Note
FWIW, I have bought Prilosec and its generic form Omeprazole in the past. So someone who had access to a receipt database of my purchases might remark on that.
The doctor and assistant began pulling out all kinds of strange things. They began sticking them on me and reaching down my throat, causing various sensations. It was uncomfortable but tolerable.
doctor: "I'm sorry we're having to do this in a rush, there's not a lot of time. We can't be as careful as we'd like to be."
I woke up and my throat actually felt a bit better than it often does.