I was talking to a woman who was touching me and sort of walking around me. There was a feeling that began like her holding my hand but then more like a tickle or stabbing pain that went into my body, always coming from the direction when she was facing me. But she seemed nice and like she wasn't doing it on purpose, so I begged her to stop.
me: "Please, please... stop touching me... I'm going to wake up."
It took a while...but she un-latched from me somehow and went away. There was a long table I decided to sit at, across from another friendly-seeming man. At first there were a lot of people at the table, but when I turned my head and back again it seemed half of them had disappeared.
me: "Okay, well...how about you answer me this. I'm going to look at all the people at the table, and count them. But how many people do you think are at this table?"
man: (smirking) "Thirty. Ten. One hundred. Whichever aspects I need to see, I focus on. The aspects I don't, I defocus. Your default -- the ones you're most likely to see until you learn to focus -- are going to be strands from your immediate family."
A woman took my hand and began looking at it, like some kind of palm reader.
woman: "Ah, I see, dolphins. You're with them. And there was a recent victory for you guys, 40 points."
Someone seemed to be irate and approached me with a syringe, like the ones I get injected with a lot. I begged him to not stick me with it and just explain what it was. He rolled his eyes, and as I dodged it, eventually he gave up and shrugged.
attacker: (annoyed) "You're busy with a journey. You're not supposed to be interrupting it like this."
Another grinning man picked up a syringe (maybe a different one) and approached me. When I protested, he held it up to me and held my hand to the tip to remove a protective cover. But instead of injecting me, he injected himself.
When he did so, he sort of started to wave and fibrillate becoming a lot of different shapes and phasing out and walked away toward a crowded room.
woman: "What was that one?"
shapeshifting man: "1960's...now, ha, bell bottoms...everywhere..."
woman: (laughing) "Oh, jeez."
A black woman who was dressed like a nurse (or perhaps a food service kind of uniform?) began walking along with me.
me: "So the injections are... for... umm, time travel? What?"
nurse: "Injection is how it's mapped for you. Because it causes discomfort, and puts materials in you...so it's a more-or-less accurate metaphor for training. But there's no such thing as time travel. Hmm... how can I put this...?"
We walked along in an open area that seemed to have counters and seating, like a cafeteria.
nurse: "It's generally thought that you're 'too young to leave the crib' yet, so to speak. Most believe you don't have enough experience, so every time you 'crawl out' they reflexively put you 'back into the crib'. That way you're not bumping around annoying everyone--not to mention potentially actually hurting yourself. Perceiving as much as you do, and taking such large intuitive leaps here and there are unusual for your stage. But while that's impressive in some sense, it's still far from being able to do anything useful. You need more practice, and more patience."
I started feeling woozy like I was going to wake up.
nurse: "Let me try another angle. This place you don't understand yet is always going to be here. You dying sooner or later won't change the amount of what is available to you ultimately. Given that it's irrelevant, why rush?"