Last night I dreamt that I was living in a weird little village – mostly basic shacks, quasi-colonial-style houses, lots of dirt and gravel roads, but there were a lot of industrial infrastructure elements too – big pipe junctions, areas where the air was thick with power cables, a field of solar panels outside the village, et cetera.

I was friends with three other kids there, and one day while we were exploring the various buildings of the village, we ran across some sort of huge machine, with knobs and levels and dials and blinking lights, which we decided to play with. We changed the settings to see what would happen – and it started to heat up, setting off alarms, threatening to explode. We quickly changed everything back, and it was okay again.

Then, for some reason, we made it into a game – over the next few days, we would return, and see how close we could let the thing get to overloading without it actually happening. We had no idea what would actually happen if we messed up. We let it get closer and closer, but never too close.

Until the night that I snuck in by myself. I turned everything up to full, then stood watching all the readouts go up, flash red, and the alarms go off. I watched the impending overload entranced – until I snapped out of it as I suddenly realized that it had gone too far, and was past the point of no return!

I ran, taking dark hallways down under the ground, closing big heavy steel-and-concrete doors behind me as I went, trying to find a place to hide, not only from the blast, but from what I’d done. Finally, I hit a dead end – it was a damp room, with loose plastic covering the floor and walls, which were dirt. The room was rocked by what seemed like an earthquake, and I heard a roar as the machine exploded – a tiny puff of smoke woofed out from the crack between the floor and the door.

Everything was quiet. After several minutes, I started retracing my steps, opening door after door, avoiding hanging wires and pipes venting steam, until I reached a door that was melted shut. I found a ladder to crawl up, leading to an access hatch in the solar power field. As I stepped outside, I realized I had come out too soon – towering above me was a growing mushroom cloud, and a fog bank of smoke was climbing the hill towards me. I knew it was too late for me too – I already had radiation poisening, I felt my skin start to itch…

What is this one – fear of natural disasters? Repressed guilt? I don’t think I feel guilty about anything right now… hmm. Well, other then the things I always feel guilty about, and I think I’ve more or less dismissed them over the years – oh well.