I was in a room--very basic looking, nothing ultramodern. A woman with a device that poked into my wrist poked it. When I asked what it did, she said it was a "people-juice for people-finding machine" (or something kind of flippant)
me: "How does it work?"
her: "Well, you've heard of [word1] probably, but this is based on [word2]."
Note
The words were sort of like 'plasma' and 'Zoop' but were unfamiliar enough that I decided I'd say they were new to me.
me: "I've never heard of those things. Say, have you heard of schizophrenia? Because a lot of people where I'm from would say that none of these things are real and that I'm mentally ill for even considering their reality."
her: (laughing) "Well those people better not be Christian. Because if someone believes in the Bible, then these kinds of things are happening all the time."
Note
Though I drew the inference that she was Christian at the time, I guess it doesn't necessarily follow.
Sooner or later I ended up in another room with a refrigerator. These people had a recording device, it was flat and showed sound waves. When I asked if there was anything that could help me stay awake they gave me a cup out of the refrigerator. It was pleated like a cupcake cup, and the liquid inside looked like vanilla cream.
Questions would pop up on the machine, and when they pushed a button marked "Start Trial" it would begin recording. The first question was something like "What brings you here, and what do you want to achieve?"
me: "I want to exchange scientific information, and perform validation that this is a real form of communication and not an illness."
The next question was something like How do you propose to do this?
me: "Well, I have an engineering background. I could probably transfer schematics and missing links for math proofs. Even if I can't understand it directly, I've got a reasonable vocabulary for being a messenger for such information. And the longer I can be here, the more information I can give you."
man: "Ridiculous. You guys trip over the most basic 4-dimensional manifolds, and I can do them in my head. I wouldn't want any information coming from that kind of incompetence."
me: "Well there are also cultural exchanges. I seem uniquely able to bring information across this barrier, and maybe I can't bring anything scientific that will impress you. But I can hear music playing from that stereo over there--so you still like culture. I could hum the latest tunes or tell you stories. Don't you do anything fun?"
I continued.
me: "Besides, our planet is a mess. People suffering. If you are superminds with such great technologies to spare, don't you want to help fix all the illness and destruction? Our people can't live up to their potentials because they're scrambling for resources and living in decaying bodies. If you've got that stuff solved, let's all do what we can to spread the knowledge."
someone: "That's a better answer."
The next question was interestingly relevant. It was On a day like today, what are you doing instead of helping [name of health organization I'm supposed to be doing a volunteer project with] further their efforts?
me: "Okay, obviously I'm asleep and here talking to you. Drinking beer and wasting time because I'm depressed. I'm depressed because these situations aren't more amicable and I can never seem to talk to the same people twice. And no one else I know has the experiences but me. Plus, for your information I am stalling on that volunteer project because there are some bugs in the system and I didn't want to push too hard right now because they might get a bad impression and then I can't help them at all. But fine, thanks for the reminder, I'll write them when I wake up."
Note
I did follow up on that project when I got up.
My response apparently went too long, and the waveform editor thing gave some error message. They didn't want that to happen because apparently you had to go through and select the portion of the waveform you wanted to save. Frustrated, they had to drag across a scrolling area for a long time--like when you're trying to select hundreds of paragraphs in a long document that goes way off the screen.
me: (mockingly) "Oh I see how it is. 4-dimensional-manifolds in your head and yet still, you run software that when it loses the selection you have to manually scroll through it all. If you're so advanced, why can't you just say 'computer, select entire waveform' and have it happen?"
Then I backed off, because I was theoretically trying to get help from these people.
me: "I'm just kidding, but there's a point there. Information exchange CAN help and it can even help you. And I need some more of that drink or I'm going to wake up."
They lost interest in me and kinda said "not now" and the questioning stopped. Everyone sort of dissipated leaving me alone. I tried talking to some people but they were not helpful and essentially ran away. In order to explore longer, I disobeyed the direction and drank another cup of the stuff in the fridge.
Then I went and sought the guy who told me to wait and said I'd waited as long as I could, however I was about to wake up so I drank more. He was kinda pissed about it and walked off, like I'd wasted some resource. I was tempted to go back and just drink all of the other cups, but I guess I didn't want to make them any madder and I also wasn't really liking the people or the place that much.
Explorations of the environment was just sort of boring. Nothing too interesting going on, not much to look at. Just a bunch of people who ran away when I asked if they wanted to talk.
A little later, a red-robed man on a flying motorcycle showed me two long strips of blue fabric. They were pleated with stitching, perhaps the material was a bit plaid. One difference was that one had an additional blue stitch running down the length of it, crossing the folds.
biker: "These are the banners used by the two groups. You must know the difference. That is all, and I've gotta jet now."
Note
I didn't catch the name of the group that used the first one, but when he showed me the second one had a ratio of something like "31 to 6" and then when he said the 6 again he stumbled and said "Sith", like it had to do with Star Wars.
The scene quickly turned violent and some people were holding a plastic bag over my head. I was going to force myself awake but figured--ah, fine, I'll be suffocated and see what happens.
The environment went all black except for three silver images of credit cards...Visa, AmEx, etc. Flipping the cards I was suddenly going through several flyer-like images in my hands. One of them was called "The Beavis and God Save The World Show".
Note
I interpreted the appearance of this flyer as a personal dig on me and my cosmic objectives. Upshot being that I was a pathetic figure who wished to solve the problems of the Universe by connecting with greater powers.
Other flyers were carrying information about how if I really wanted to know what to do, I needed to pursue meditation or some other courses of action like that. It looked like an ad for a New Age bookstore.