I jumped into a car with someone who I thought I recognized... to get away from something. He immediately began to drive the car backwards, seemingly navigating it without much trouble.
As I looked out the front window to see what we were running away from, I saw lots of explosions. They were pixelated as in a video game, though the car itself seemed normal.
me: (nervously) "Ummm. Okay, well, I guess this is happening. Who are you?"
Theodore: "We're both worldly people. I'm Theodore Trembly. And a lot of others, depending on who's asking."
Note
This name is very close to the name of Joaquin Phoenix's name in the movie "Her", and I didn't make that connection until some time after taking notes about the dream. But Wikipedia gives that name as "Theodore Twombly".
me: "Am I more than one person?"
Theodore: "No, no. You are mining your own coin. But since it's your own, at some point it's not better than using coupons from the mainline."
me: "So this is pretty weird. I took a drug I hadn't taken for many years before I fell asleep, does that have anything to do with this?"
Note
I was having trouble sleeping due to various stresses about COVID-19, so I had decided to try taking a medication I'd been prescribed some years prior, and still had hanging around.
Theodore: "Absolutely, it got us a whole lot of information."
me: "Does it mean I should keep taking it?"
Theodore: "Probably not. That would just leave room for more villainy."
me: "So... might I ask. The explosions are all obviously animated. What's going on?"
Theodore: "This is over the StackOverflow stuff. I mean, I like women as much as the next guy. But it's pretty much a staring contest now."
We pulled into a parking lot and went inside an office building. Theodore pointed me up to some stairs, but trying to climb them I couldn't keep pace. He was going up hundreds of flights, and I would wake up soon.
Against my better judgment, I got in an elevator and pushed up. When I did, it wasn't before long that the typical "dream elevator goes crazy" kicked in. The walls warped, and spikes and sticks started to poke up through the floor into the elevator car.
At one point a giant big red button with white writing on it emerged that said "IMPROV". I figured what the hell, and pushed it.
The elevator doors opened on a floor that was a kind of horrific scene of half-human bodies strewn around. Someone was calling out numbers in a monotone voice.
counting voice: "Six. One. Two. One. Two. One. Two."
other voice: "FRANK! Put another 2 on that."
Around this time, something came around a corner and attacked me.
other voice: (jeeringly) "We're not saying a user can't get in. But they can't get to the top!!!"