tadhg.com
tadhg.com
 

“Dream, 2012-05-05 04:21”

10:40 Sun 06 May 2012
[, , , , ]

Afternoon, a sunny suburban backyard. In the background, fluttering like clothes on a line, is a large sheet of white paper. Unintelligible writings in blue and black cover it. In the foreground, white-shirted Benedict Cumberbatch[1] drinks from a beer bottle, talking to unseen others.


(Haziness. Time passes, unclear how much, it could be hours or years.)


Bruce Willis[2] drives through an American suburb in the late afternoon. Despite the warm weather, he is wearing a fedora and a trenchcoat in the car. He’s looking for her; she’s been hiding for years, but the government have finally tracked her down and he knows she’s nearby. He just has to get a better fix and report her precise location.

I call her, warn her that they’re close, that she has to go. She’s in one of the houses nearby, living with Benedict. She looks like Gina Carano[3], and was washing dishes in the sink when the call came. Benedict asks her who it was, and she tells him that they’re close, that they’re going to find her. She may be in shock, and goes back to washing the dishes.

Benedict makes a snap decision and punches her hard in the side, doubling her over, and then forces her head under the water in the sink, putting all of his weight on it. He knows that he cannot beat her unless he takes her by surprise. She struggles but cannot free herself, and goes still.

We see the scene from further back in the kitchen, slightly above and looking out onto the suburban street through the window. It’s gotten slightly darker. On the other side of the street, able to see into the kitchen and make out Cumberbatch holding a woman’s head in the sink, are Gordie Lachance and, wheeling a bicycle, Vern Tessio[4]. Benedict ignores that they’ve seen him, figuring that’s something he’ll be lucky to have to worry about later.

He’s underestimated her lung capacity, however, and she’s managed to recover from the surprise and get ahold of a knife. She slashes at him enough to get him to ease off, and that’s all she needs to yank free and breathe. It’s clear that he can’t win, now, and that once his surprise attack failed he could not prevail against her. Not merely because she is more skilled as a fighter, but because she’s more than merely human, and more powerful than he is. The rest is one-sided, and she kills him with a sampling of the sharp edges available in the room. For some reason there is little blood, but he is nevertheless dead.

She staggers away from the kitchen, and the phone rings. She picks it up. I tell her she has to go, now, that they know where she is and they have better tech, she cannot fight. She hangs up, and looks at her front door, which is frosted glass.

There is a silhouette at the door, clearly outlined. It is Captain America[5]. The silhouette is monocolor, except that around his shield there is blood red.

She turns and runs, and under her control a silver sphere drops into the hallway, heading for the door.

Her sphere is not alone, but it and the others must contend with opposing spheres, more advanced than they are. Fire, explosions, and blasts of energy erupt around the house as she sets her drones against her pursuers. Despite the fireworks, hers are clearly overmatched, and while she and Captain America are lost from view in the ensuing chaos, her drones are swiftly picked off.

She reappears, racing across a nearby backyard. Now she looks like Sigourney Weaver[6], and is putting on the last pieces of powered armor, a metallic dark red sleek suit with a couple of fin-like parts near the shoulders, probably to help control flight. She is running very fast, faster than any human could run, and after she snaps the last piece into place she moves smoothly to flight. She continues to fly low, knowing that her suit is not enough for her to escape, and reaches a small jet that is emerging from below the grass. She swiftly gets into it, now looking more like Wonder Woman[7] but still in powered armor, and takes off.

All of this has been seen from the side. Her run, her flight, her climbing into the jet, the jet’s takeoff—a side-on view, like a cinematic side-scrolling video game. As the jet begins to leave the ground, a white streak flashes in from the left of the view, and Iron Man[8] grabs onto the jet’s tail. She despairs at the realization that not only is their suit tech faster than her suit tech, but their suit tech is faster than anything she has.

The perspective breaks from its side-scrolling lock, and she jumps out of the jet. Iron Man flings it away, and they close for battle. A bitter but one-sided battle. She is slower, weaker, underpowered, outgunned. Their energy weapons are the most evenly matched, so Iron Man seeks to make it close combat. She tries to get away, he grabs her legs and slams her to the earth. He keeps her there and hits her viciously, repeatedly. She escapes, but briefly, and the cycle is repeated. And then again. A few more times. Her desperation, and all her attempts, are not enough. When she is weak enough, he prepares to rip off her armor so that he can kill her.

Something lands, or emerges, onto the street behind the park where they are fighting. Something colossal, the size of a large building. Its shape is constantly changing but is approximately rectangular, longer than it is tall or wide. It is made up of grey/black cubes of smooth metal, each about 4 meters per edge. The cubes on the bottom fire jets towards the ground, and some other cubes fire jets in other directions, controlling its movements. Smoke surrounds its lower sections, perhaps from the jets, or perhaps as a defensive measure of some kind. The upper cubes, on the near side, are the ones in constant movement, and they extend into thinner limb-like arrangements. These have demispheres of green and red energy on their near faces, and are energy weapons.

These energy weapons open fire on Iron Man in a broadside, stopping him from taking off her armor or doing anything else. The drones that had earlier defeated her drones arrive, and try to shield him from the barrage, but this can only be a brief respite, as the firepower is too great. Still, this allows Iron Man to escape, the energy weapons still firing at him as he flees.

This vehicle belongs to Cobra[9], and it takes her aboard. On it, she stands on a platform, without her powered armor, now looking like the Black Widow[10]. I’m there, also on the platform. In front of us is Guile[11], who is asking her to join Cobra. She refuses.

I go to her and have a quick and quiet conversation, my face close to her ear. I tell her not to be a fool, that if she doesn’t join they’ll leave her here for Iron Man’s backup—which we all know is coming, and which we need to leave to avoid, but apparently Guile won’t leave until she’s decided one way or another—and that if she chooses not to join it’s choosing death. She assents, I go back to where I was, and Guile asks her again. She says she’ll join.

Guile nods, and the vehicle takes off, flying hard. He approaches the front of the platform and gestures that she can leave it. He’s clearly not happy with her initial refusal, but equally clearly under orders to recruit her. He starts to tell her about the initiation process, and is about to describe uniform requirements when the ship’s AI speaks. It tells her not to let him trick her into putting on a ridiculous purple, green, and yellow costume that they often make young cadets wear as part of hazing.

Guile scowls as he was obviously about to try this, and the AI laughs, and I laugh, and she laughs, and it’s all going to be okay.

[1] Dark-haired, the way he looks in the new Sherlock Holmes series, although his facial features are more muted somehow.

[2] Looking, apart from his clothes, similar to how he looked playing himself in Ocean’s Twelve.

[3] Specifically, in Haywire, but perhaps a little less muscular.

[4] Aged about 12, as they were in Stand by Me.

[5] Even the little eagle wing things he has on his head are visible in the silhouette.

[6] Probably closest to how she looked in Alien: Resurrection.

[7] The Linda Carter Wonder Woman, obviously.

[8] The suit is close in color and style to the movie version, but without the glowing white part of the chest plate.

[9] Yes, the bad guys from the GI Joe universe.

[10] Although not in any of the costumes I’m aware of; she is in all black, with body armor like a standard flak jacket plus some extra arm/shoulder protection. She has black hair and looks Eastern European.

[11] A thinner and more wiry version of the Street Fighter II Guile.

3 Responses to ““Dream, 2012-05-05 04:21””

  1. clay Says:

    I could dissect all of the hidden meanings behind the many aspects of this dream, but the fedora is what stood out to me. It clearly represents your guilt around having yet to see the Conspiracy of Beards.

  2. jeffliveshere Says:

    I looked this up in some dream interpretation books, and it looks like you hate Leonard Cohen. Hmmm.

  3. jeffliveshere Says:

    ps: I wish I could have any dream including Gina Carano. And/or Cumberbatch.

Leave a Reply