I'd found myself somehow trapped in some kind of underground living area. It was sort of practical in the way an internal office area would be with no windows--it had a kitchen with a coffeemaker and such, but it was somehow sealed so I could not escape it.
At moments it seemed like I was the person who was trapped in this place for a long time...something like several months. At other moments I appeared to be advising them on things they might try to do to attract attention. The person who "was me but wasn't" had gone through a number of ideas.
Finally he/we managed to chisel away at support beams in the room's structure long enough. It made the ceiling collapse and we realized the room was underneath some kind of subway tunnel--the reason no one could hear calls for help was because any time they went by they were in a noisy car. People came and seemed to want to greet someone, but I was ignored.
This shifted into some kind of story about a documentary about the person who had been trapped for months. People were showing up to talk about it, and there was some issue where you could make people teleport into the room by using a translucent white bag. It seemed like the bags just contained garbage to me--you could see the labels of boxes inside.
man: "They'll never appear if you keep it completely in the light so you can see through it like that. It spoils their trick. Put it somewhere else."
I moved one of the bags to an area of the room where light was playing on it such as it was "overexposed", and no longer translucent. It began to inflate and take shape.
An attractive black girl who I identified as being somewhat Naomi-Campbell like appeared out of the bag. She was wearing tight jeans and a shirt with an exposed midriff. She walked right toward me and embraced me, and then we sat on a couch with her in my lap.
She had a religious book she offered for us to sit and look through. It had a scripty font and lavender-purple pages, and was saying something about Biblical topics like the Commandments and Noah. I couldn't really get what the point was, and I turned to the people I'd been talking to before.
me: "Well this is certainly interesting. Supermodel materializes from garbage bag, comes and sits in my lap...in order to give me a religious pamphlet. This is not something that happens where I'm from."
black girl: "You're not from where you say. You only pretend to be from there."
me: "What do you mean?"
man: (assumingly) "You know what that means!"
me: "No, I DON'T."
black girl: "You run the company. You buy the books. You just got a big new lot of them, but there is a problem--a sentient hiding in the data."
The environment transformed into a giant library. I was suddenly involved in some strange issue of figuring out where this sentient was, and it was a matter of figuring out which card in a book about playing cards was the culprit.
All the cards in the book came to life anthropomorphized. They were on a hunt, yelling at each other to try and figure out which one was the outlier. Somehow it was concluded that the 8 of diamonds was the culprit, and someone shot the person dressed up as the 8 of diamonds in the head with an arrow.
Note
This reminds me of the scene in Men in Black where the agents pull a gun on a ruffian standing in front of a graffiti'd wall. They make a demand to "put your hands up!" and the guy does it, but they say "No, we mean HIM!" and the alien they were after is the graffiti character...who becomes animated.
After that little detour was over, everything collapsed into the book with a "case closed" status and the people disappeared. So I wandered around trying to get answers from people filing books in the library. I spotted a young man with a cart.
me: "Hey. What's up with, the... books? They said I bought books and ran some company. What's that about?"
book guy: (gruffly) "I don't have time to talk to you about any of that."
me: (yelling) "DOES ANYONE HAVE TIME TO TALK TO ME FOR A BIT HERE!"
One female-looking disembodied head floating on a box seemed to beckon me over to a corner.
floating head: "Sure, Wreck-It Ralph. I've got time for you."
Note
Wreck-It-Ralph is a character in a movie about video game characters who get tired of playing their role in the game they're in, and leave for other games. This is 'breaking protocol' as everyone is supposed to stay in their own games. I wasn't clear if that was a metaphorical comparison or a lack of understanding of who I am.
While on the subject...I liked the movie, it's good as such things go. I think it's perhaps more on target than the Matrix...in that it suggests a "multiverse" as opposed to The Matrix's sort of monolithic model of there being a "prime simulated reality". Although in The Matrix there's a suggestion that the "real world" of the machines simulating humanity is really another "Matrix" in its own right as well.
The floating head morphed into a printer of some kind. It had some information that seemed to be about me, like a profile document. It had a lot of criscrossed writing and I tried to make out what it was saying.
One thing caught my attention was a large thing that said DIAGNOSIS: EATING PROBLEM. It had a list of preferred foods that read something like "tuna", "salmon", "sushi" and at the end of the list it said "dumbarbie".
Note
Might have had two Bs as dumbbarbie but I'd give that lesser odds.
I tried to get people to clarify, but no one would. My first guess was that it was some kind of sex-related "joke" or "judgment" relating to an insinuation that I enjoyed performing oral sex on dumb-but-attractive-"Barbie"-like girls.
Note
If it seems that I jump to such conclusions about what things mean too readily, I will point out that a paranoia about censorship/judgment/sexuality is a very real thing. I'm extremely bothered that something as simple as a nude picture causes such insane responses from most people. Very troubling to me are the consequences of censorship authorized for purpose A to block information intended for purpose B; how many "bugs" can you introduce into a system with just a word like "Viagra"? How might the very text you're reading be censored because of it, or because of a blue diamond image? And how might someone knowing how those things work use them as kick-me signs if they're beyond the limited thinking of control? Anyway...
Noticing some girls in the library nearby, I decided to challenge their awareness of what "eating" a person would mean in a sexual-vs-cannibalism way. The first girl I asked didn't know. A second girl at first didn't but then realized what I meant.
second girl: "Ohhhh... wait, I get what you mean. But I hadn't heard that term for it. Even if you explained the term, someone would have to have taken Sex Ed to know what you are talking about."
My attention was drawn to a vending machine that had what seemed to be soda in it, but it was emblazoned with a "Dumbarbie" logo (as opposed to Coke or Pepsi). I walked over to it to try and figure out what it was that they were dispensing and calling "Dumbarbie"...which was the label on the bottom-most button to push on the machine.
Pulling out my wallet, I tried to feed a bill into it. The bill was rejected. I flattened it and tried again a couple of times, but it still rejected it. Some intuitive flash (or voice) instructed me.
voice: "It's not rejecting your bill because it is wrinkly. The denomination of the bill you are using is too high for the machine to make change for. Use a smaller denomination."
I awoke before completing the task and seeing what Dumbarbie Soda was.