I was walking into my apartment building, and noticed some mail sitting on the steps. One thing was a small delivery sealed in white plastic, and I understood it to be some kind of connector that I needed to give my roommate. Walking in the door with the connector, I was accosted by a girl I did not know.
girl: "I'm going to need things to be quiet for a while. I'm taking a nap."
me: "I'm sorry, but...who are you?"
Note
I know the people who live in my building in waking life, thus I would be likely to ask such a question if someone unknown approached me asking for quiet.
girl: (angrily) "I'm the girl who takes naps on Mondays, and I need it quiet. I live next door."
me: "Sorry, but I don't believe we've met."
girl: "Yes we have!"
me: "Oh. Right. You're Angela."
girl: "It took you eleven seconds to remember!"
Note
No idea why I thought her name with Angela, it didn't come from any waking life recognition of her looking like someone I knew.
me: "I'm sorry, but if we've met before, it must have been to only exchange names...because I don't remember ever spending any time talking to you."
girl: "Well, they did a study of what the easiest to remember name was. And do you know what topped the list?"
me: "No. Maybe...Scott?"
Note
Also no idea why I said that.
girl: "It was Angela. Well, no, not really. The study was inconclusive, but my name was one of the easier ones to remember."
There was someone I vaguely recognized present, who seemed to have injuries like black eyes.
me: (to black eye guy) "Did someone attack you?"
black eye guy: "Yes, just a little bit ago, on the corner. He was just beating me."
We began riding to a store somehow while I asked him further about the attack.
me: "Were they just attacking you for fun, or were you mugged?"
black eye guy: "Oh, he took my wallet. Yeah. If he'd just stopped a minute and asked I'd have just given it to him."
me: "He probably thought it was a better way to not get caught. But don't worry, there's a bigger mission going on. Maybe he won't get caught here, but at a higher level."
black eye guy: "I doubt it. This sucks, what's the point."
As we got out and walked toward a grocery store, I noticed a man with lots of strange creatures. Though the grocery store seemed fairly normal, the color and music coming from inside his store seemed other-worldly. He made a small purple elephant-like creature run around--I held my hand out to it, and it sniffed me.
me: (to black eye guy) "See, this is the part where you're supposed to clue in and go 'oh, hey, this isn't POSSIBLE...I must be DREAMING...maybe I'm being shown something."
black eye guy: "Hmmm. Uh..."
me: (to vendor) "Where do you get these animals from?"
vendor: "There's only one place to get them, and that's from me. I make them."
There was a detour in the dream at this point that wasn't terribly interesting, as I started walking around through stores and cafes. They seemed rather nice, but at one point I tried to use a bathroom. Somehow as I reached out to close the door, water splashed everywhere out of a trash can. This distracted me and I got up to find paper towels, but a woman came and closed the door to that bathroom and opened another one, which looked rather messy...and it had an open wall, so people could look in as you used the toilet.
woman: "Every time I leave that other bathroom open, someone messes it up."
me: "There was a trash can full of water. Didn't mean to knock it over, but it was just water. Anyway, I'm not using this one if people are watching."
She walked away, and I decided to go find the more magical store again before I woke up. I had some help getting through the crowded mall-like area, but when I thought I was reaching the colorful store I instead landed at a several-story building full of books with glass walls.
Seeing a gray-haired old man who looked like Dustin Hoffman inside, I beat on the glass to get his attention. I think the store was called "Allo Massi". Our dialogue was somewhat disjointed.
old man: "There is a lesson in everything. For some beings, they have never had the experience of walking in a room and being noticed, they have never stood out in a crowd. If you are black and you are the only black person in a room of one hundred white people, it is fundamentally different."
me: "Sure. Great. But can we arrange a meeting? I'd actually like to learn something substantial for once."
old man: "Education is God's ultimate work."
me: "I couldn't agree more. So will you help me with some means of staying longer, where I won't wake up and I can experiment with this place better, and you can explain its relation to my world?"
old man: "That doesn't sound like education. That just sounds like 'hanging out'."
me: (furious) "Look, do I have to sit down and write out a sample script to show you examples of conversations or studies that DO produce value?"
He looked at me somewhat fearfully.
me: (still angry) "If you think the only way to educate people is to put them through some kind of random wheel-of-karmic-suffering so they experience every unpleasant thing possible, you're wrong. Maybe you'd learn something by talking to me, because I can get the gist of many different things just based on first principles, and solve problems before they happen."
old man: "You need to work on your own problems."
me: "Give me a break. You're not the only one who gets to decide what's a problem and what isn't. Maybe I know more about God's real way of education than you do, and I'm here as a messenger to tell you your problem. Which is you're so selfish about your time that all you'll do is give out random platitudes and don't actually care about helping disoriented people who are seeking information about the things they see and why they see them."
At this point I noticed some other people had gathered around. One of them made a mock gesture of grabbing "Dustin"'s neck as if he were snapping it, though he seemed fine. I glared at him.
Note
I had an interpretation that perhaps the person doing the neck-snapping was under the impression that I was too disoriented to tell the difference between a mock attack and a real one, and was trying to antagonize me and/or free "Dustin" from having to talk to me anymore.
me: "Since I'm still here, I'll try some very specific questions. What is a hull?"
someone: "Oh yes, I got trapped in one of those once."
me: "I don't mean like 'the hull of a boat' or the 'hull of a nut'. I'm asking about something specific, which would apply to 'bathroom layer normal' and 'bathroom layer depraved'. Moments ago I was dealing with some crazy bathroom stuff, so I'm investigating these specific terms."
As soon as I said "Bathroom layer depraved", a sharp attack started from behind at around my waist. But a guy in a suit started making an attempt to answer, so I tried to hold out.
suit guy: "Oh yes... bathroom layer depraved, isn't that... a desert device, between two computers...?"
The guy made an unusual rolling motion with his fingers as I woke up.