a slight deviation from the norm

"I don't think you understand, I'm a guest at this hotel."

That was how my dream started. Or more accurately, that's the first thing I remember. I am struggling to make the desk clerk understand that I have every right to use the elevator. He seems to think otherwise.

"Do you have any identication?"

I search my person and find that I don't. I feel that typical pain when you reach for your wallet and it's gone. Your mind instantly races- where did I leave it? Since this is a dream, I "push" the conversation on, knowing that I don't want to waste time on this detail.

"You don't belong here." The desk clerk says. Not ominously, but it catches me offguard. You know how sometimes you can control your dreams? I just did with the wallet thing. But this wasn't from me. This was the dream speaking. And it was right.

Next thing I know, I'm being introduced to the way things work. We're walking through a mall-esque structure. Shops selling indeterminate items pass by. We stop at a food court and order food. It comes on a tray out of a hole in the wall- kind of like the old Fish Market. You never see who prepares it- it just appears in a hole in the wall. We don't actually eat the food, but we do admire it. Then they show me the forbidden zone.

The shape of the zone is hexagonal. Drones patrol it, marked by red dots on my mini-map. It occurs to me that I now have a mini-map. The entire dream takes on a video game-like presence. I see cones of light emanating from the drones, showing me what direction they are looking. The dream is urging me onward, face these robotic (but not completely inorganic) beasts. I decline and end up talking to a shoe shining bum outside the forbidden zone. I don't remember the substance of our conversation, but I do remember him being very sarcastic- questioning the reason why that damn zone was forbidden in the first place. We have a laugh about it. Then my body starts to disassemble. Like it was made of polygons. Then I wake up, sweating. And I grab my notebook at start writing. I can't actually explain it well. But it was very strange and very real to me. The first thing I wrote across the top of the page was

PURGATORY