Do the Devil's Work

          I slept for 15 hours on my own floor and had a series of sinister dreams. In the first, I was shipped to some strange compound out in the middle of nowhere. Low, hazy mountains could be seen on the horizon, but I had no other clue as to where I was. There was a low-slung, dated-looking roadside inn that I was presumably staying at, but it was extremely unwelcoming for no good reason. There were several other small, prefabricated buildings with no distinguishing features, all of them a uniform light grey. Aside from some scattered chain-link fences, there was nothing keeping me from just walking away, but I knew I wouldn't be alive very long if I tried to leave. I became aware that I was here at the behest of some atrocious, totalitarian regime for unknown purposes; in the dream, my first instinct was "political rehabilitation," but that was just a guess. At this point, I decided to trace the boundaries of the compound to see what I could learn. Far to the rear, I came to a tall fence trimmed with barbed wire; behind this was a dusty field with sparse patches of grass, and beyond that, a seemingly abandoned power plant. After staring for a few moments, I continued and came across a hulking factory surrounded by tall, thin trees. Outside, men in hazmat suits of various colors were rolling steel barrels around, pumping fluids into empty ones, and in at least one case, controlling a leaky, spraying barrel. I considered asking someone what was going on, but understood that no answers would be forthcoming, except perhaps as to what happens to people who ask too many uncomfortable questions. The rest of the facility was surrounded by low, rolling hills and patches of desert, so I returned to the central area. I soon got into a conversation with two or three government spooks, who grilled me about an "Uncle Jim" that I had no knowledge of. Withdrawing, I made some offhand comment that made all of them raise their heads. A wide-eyed agent asked whether I was carrying "the Hope Context," and all of them were visibly anxious. In this reality, the government was so oppressive that dissidents genetically engineered huge, sentient and parasitic tapeworms to infiltrate and destabilize it. These were dubbed the Hope Context; in shorthand, one "had Hope." I shivered, and the scene changed to the interior of a dimly lit but entirely wood-paneled trailer. It was entirely empty save for me, but I knew it was a remodel of the old one my troop used to cart stuff around when I was in the Scouts. Brian's older brother, Sean G, entered the trailer through the back doors and laughed. The scene shifted again, this time to my family's minivan. In real life, I live in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, and in the dream we were inching down Platte Clove, the more direct but much scarier route down the mountain. (In my junior year, a recent transfer fell to her death while hiking in a nearby area called Devil's Kitchen; she was not the first.) The dream-road was slick with packed snow, and the overcast sky made it nearly impossible to differentiate safe patches from ice. We stopped at a small parking area to talk with the other "family" members driving with us. My dream-cousin brought up an Uncle Jim, and I froze, listening. My dream-uncle changed the subject, and when the cousin inquired again, and my uncle again changed the subject. I kicked at a tiny clump of snow and watched a huge mass fall off the ledge I was sitting near. Thoughts about the butterfly effect kept racing through my head before I woke up.
          Daniel, a friend of Alaric's (and my acquaintance from College Writing) came to stay for the night. We had a good time chatting, drinking, and being far less awkward than the last few times we spoke.

The Clove.