hypocritepoet

Weird, after having such a terrific night

Dream 1 — The Client

A client who owes me a huge sum of money calls.

He tells me I charged too much and that he is not going to pay me.

I am desperate.

I start bargaining with him, begging him to at least pay half.

The whole thing feels humiliating because I need the money badly. There is no comfortable buffer. Losing that payment would be catastrophic.

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Dream 2 — Plane Crashes

Horrible dream.

Ng and I have been in a plane crash, but we survived. We walk away from a broken fuselage. We seem to have been the only two people aboard.

The plane had been some kind of experimental AI-piloted aircraft.

Later, we are invited to a picnic at Kitty Hawk. It is a big event. President Carter is there, although somehow we are on the steps of the Capitol building, like the old Schoolhouse Rock “I’m Just a Bill” cartoon.

We are having lunch under a large tent at the edge of a huge grassy area.

I walk outside, look up at an empty sky, and say:

“That plane is going to crash.”

There is a murmur as a thousand people look up and see absolutely nothing.

Then the murmur turns ugly.

People make snarling remarks. The whole crowd seems angry at what they think is a tasteless joke.

But I just stand there staring at the sky.

For.

A.

Long.

Time.

Eventually the music starts again and everyone returns to the garden party.

What are we celebrating? That we survived? Or something else?

There are too many people for it to be about us.

Elegant food. String quartet. Very swanky.

Then I see it.

I raise my hand, point, and say again:

“That plane is going to crash.”

A small private jet appears.

It falls almost in slow motion.

I watch it smash into the ground about a thousand feet away.

There is no explosion. It is more like a train hitting a cement truck.

A huge smoking crater.

The crowd is stunned.

The music stops.

A woman begins to weep.

Everyone looks from the wreckage back to me.

Moments later someone shrieks and points into the sky.

Another small plane is falling.

This one is on fire.

Then another.

And another.

Soon two dozen aircraft have fallen out of the sky.

The landscape is covered in wreckage.

Some are enormous airframes. A few are helicopters.

Then I hear a dull roar growing louder and louder.

I look up and see a gigantic plane coming directly toward us.

One wing has been sheared off.

It is spinning.

Flames trail behind it.

I shout to Ng:

“Get down!”

She just stands there.

“What? Why? Why do I need to get down?”

I shove her across the lawn and into a drainage ditch, then dive in behind her just as the flaming wreck slams into the tent where we had been standing.

Earth and fire explode into the air.

The wreckage surges over us while we lie in the ditch with our hands over our heads.

Some time later, we are at a press conference at the ocean.

Actually, in the ocean.

The audience stands in shallow water with pant legs rolled up while an official explains what happened.

There had been a problem updating the software.

They needed to change from a 12-hour clock to a 24-hour clock, but nobody could find a good time to make the transition.

So a technician decided to turn air-traffic control off and back on “real quick.”

When the system restarted, it allowed AI to take control of the aircraft.

They still could not explain why the AI crashed all the planes.

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Self-Analysis

These two dreams feel connected.

The first is almost painfully direct: something I depend on is suddenly taken away by someone else’s decision. I have done the work, I expect the payment, and then I am told that the agreement may no longer matter.

What gets me most is not the money itself, but the helplessness of it.

I am reduced to bargaining.

Please pay half.

Please give me something.

That emotional state carries straight into the second dream.

The plane dream begins after I have already survived one disaster. I am not standing under the sky as an innocent observer. I have already been through the crash once.

That may be why I am watching so closely.

Everyone else is eating, listening to music, enjoying the party.

I am scanning the sky.

I know something can go wrong because it already has.

When I say, “That plane is going to crash,” no one believes me because there is nothing visible yet.

That feels familiar.

Sometimes anxiety is exactly that: seeing all the possible consequences before there is any evidence that they are actually happening.

The crowd is comfortable because the danger is invisible.

I am uncomfortable because I know invisible danger still exists.

Then one plane falls.

Then another.

Then everything starts falling.

That escalation feels like the real center of the dream.

One problem is manageable.

Two problems become a pattern.

Then suddenly my mind is imagining total system failure.

The first dream gives that pattern a very practical foundation. When there is little margin for error, one failure can feel enormous. A single unpaid bill can seem capable of knocking over everything behind it.

There is another kind of vulnerability here too.

Once something has been put into the world, I do not always control what happens to it afterward.

Money owed to me is outside my control.

Words read by someone else are outside my control.

A plane handed over to an automated system is outside my control.

Different situations, same emotional structure.

Something important has left my hands.

Now I am waiting to see what happens next.

The garden party makes that contrast almost ridiculous.

Everything looks polished.

Important people.

Good food.

Music.

A beautiful lawn.

A civilized explanation for everything.

Meanwhile, machinery is falling out of the sky.

That may be my brain making fun of the idea that life is ever as orderly as it looks from the outside.

And when the biggest plane comes at us, all of that disappears.

There is no time for explanation.

No time for debate.

I protect Ng and get us into the ditch.

That is probably the clearest instinct in the whole dream.

When everything becomes chaotic, I stop trying to understand it and protect what matters to me.

The ending is almost comical.

All that destruction comes down to a software update, a clock change, and someone deciding to reboot the system “real quick.”

That feels exactly like anxiety about fragility.

Huge consequences.

Tiny trigger.

The most unsettling part is that even after the officials explain what happened, they still cannot explain why the AI crashed the planes.

They can explain how control was lost.

They cannot explain what happened after control was gone.

That distinction sticks with me.

Both dreams seem to circle the same fear:

I can do my part correctly and still find myself depending on people, systems, or circumstances I cannot fully control.

And when I am already stretched thin, even a small failure can look like the beginning of planes falling out of the sky.