Quick Frozen Dissident
This dream was long, with a wealth of vivid detail. It's length and my tiredness did not allow a really thorough review to set it all firmly, but most of the high points were preserved intact.
Begin: I was next to some railroad tracks in a garden. This seemed to be a demonstration garden because there were a great many different plants all together. The air was highly polluted, a dull gray with the disk of the sun not well defined through the murk. This appeared to be a permanent condition. There were a few people with me and we were discussing some large beets, sugar beets, growing in the garden.
I told my companions that long ago, when the sun shone brightly, sugar was made from canes, but now the sunlight was so dim the cane would not grow. I told them once the sun shone so brightly that it could be blinding and hurt you eyes. I had in my mind an image of the bright Southern California sun, but this seemed to have been lost to this world long ago, and my companions thought my comments were absurd.
Lapse: I was in an area of factories and shops, which abounded on this world, all made of corrugated steel, the cheapest possible type of construction. All were dirty gray and unpainted. My concern was with repression of the human spirit. This society did not seem outwardly a police state with blatant violation of human rights, rather the repression came from peer pressure to extreme conformity. Nearly everyone worked in the factories. Nearly all men, anyway, I don't remember seeing any women at all. I and my companions were above the laboring class, but subject to the same conformist pressures.
My talking about the former state of the world and the complete erosion of personal freedom seemed to have taken some root. I had convinced one or two men that the laws on the books still allowed a person to run an amateur radio transmitter, even though it wasn't done, and we had resolved to build one. Materials and equipment were easily at hand from the factories, it just wasn't expected that such things would be diverted to private use.
For mounting the equipment I requested 19 inch panels to fit a standard relay rack. These were quickly cut, the machinery available being quite adequate. Unfortunately there was a little confusion in my mind between this world and my waking one. In this world the dimension was 19 inches between the mounting holes, not 19 inches total width, so a new set had to be cut, to the annoyance of the man who had cut the originals. In any case, the equipment was finally built and fired up.
Lapse: Official repercussions were descending from the radio project. The man who had done most of the building, and who had actually used the radio, was being berated by a factory official from the basket of a cherry picker lift he was using as a podium. the cherry picker itself was outside the big back doors with the arm reaching into the building. It appeared that doing something still legal was not acceptable if it was unusual. In any case, there were going to be consequences.
The rest of us were just standing around listening and watching. That this proceeding was held in a factory building is an indication of the orientation of this world. Such a violation of the norms was so unusual no formal procedures were available. There were plenty of working types around, but they did not allow what was going on to interfere with their work. This was strictly a management problem.
Our group suddenly became revolutionaries, however, when one man cut down a high voltage wire which fell on the official, probably frying him. It snapped around as such wires will if they aren't turned off, and a laborer outside the building caught it. Not being able to let go, he danced to his death in muscle spasms, running into some machinery and other laborers on his way. This really set things off. I think my companions helped things along a bit.
That anything like this could happen was so unthinkable our escape was easy, and we entered a building several doors down. Meanwhile, the wire had started the building on fire, and other buildings were soon involved. Power was going out everywhere, but the building we were in was considered secure, having its own power. It was clean and full of sophisticated equipment, a special high technology area.
We had a discussion as to the best way to escape, but my companions felt some or all of us might be caught. In any case, they decided I and my ideas and knowledge of other times and conditions were too valuable to lose, so they decided I should be hid in cryogenic storage. The equipment for this was in the building we were in. I really did not want to do this, and was apprehensive, but finally consented. Machinery transferred me into the freezing room where I was frozen almost instantly. It was not painful and didn't give much of a sensation of cold. In any case, I remember freezing with my eyes open.
the next scene opened in the same building. I was outside my body and able to observe its being moved, which is probably why I had come back to it. An overhead conveyor was lifting it and moving it out of the freezer. I could see a great amount of time had passed, because the interior of the building had been entirely rebuilt. What had been starkly utilitarian with makeshift equipment was now dominated by heavy sophisticated equipment, all very streamlined and permanent looking. Where everything had been painted gray, it was now white.
I immediately looked around to find what kind of world I was being brought back into. I noticed the work stations for the operators were built into the equipment and were richly upholstered, obviously for people accustomed to creature comforts. I also noticed that one of the operators was a woman, the first to appear in this dream.
I accompanied my body very closely and examined the machinery, because I had no idea how this was going to be done. I passed under a bank of glowing heaters and was placed in a bath of liquid that was extremely cold. the heaters were above and would slowly heat the liquid. I could not figure out how I would start breathing immersed in liquid, unless the liquid itself were breathable and full of oxygen. I decided, though, the people doing the work must know how to do it.
Fade.
I suspect this dream went on a while after this, but I had become detached from it and could follow it no farther. I have no idea where I was between being frozen and being moved out of cold storage.
End.