I’m wondering through a high school, seemingly looking for someone, when I have a slightly lucid moment and decide to go exploring outside instead. Behind the school is a big house that's built like a church. I walk through the front door of the church-house and head straight for the back, where several rooms are lined with dressers and shelves full of “hand-me-down” clothes that are free for the taking. Another room, off to the left, is about the size of a large closet, with a door at each end, each with a half sheet of plexiglas in the doorway; The room is filled with water, about waist deep, and children are taking turns swimming back and forth from one side to the other. [Looking back, the room was obviously a baptismal area.]
There are a few people I know wandering through the back rooms and someone asks me to keep an eye on their young daughter for a bit. I let her play in one room while I sift through clothes in another. I find several swimsuits I’m interested in, one in particular that has long sleeves. I ask my sister, Shannon, to watch the little girl while I’m trying on clothes, although she is a couple of rooms away. I tell the girl to make sure that she says something to Shannon every few minutes so she’ll know she’s still there (not the best baby-sitting advice, I suppose). For some reason, I decide to go back to the school to look for a restroom where I can try on the swimsuits. On my way out of the church-house, an Arabian man and his two sons are walking in and ask me where our “river” is. I point to the water-filled closet and say “We use that.”
Back at the school, I find a set of restrooms just outside of the lunchroom, but they’re both filthy. In the girl’s room, a girl is crawling in the floor vomiting, with some kind of robot following behind her, attempting to clean up the mess she’s making. I leave and head through the cafeteria, where groups of high school kids (several I went to school or used to work with) are having lunch. I find another restroom labeled unisex that appears to be beyond clean, almost high class. The toilets resemble large, comfortable potty-training toilets, and circle the room along the walls. There is a huge, flat screen television set on the wall by the door. As I walk into the restroom, I feel an electrical energy flowing through my body, especially in my head, pulling with a magnetic force towards the right side of the room. I pull against it, trying to leave the restroom, but the more I resist, the more painful the sensation becomes. Covering both ears with my hands, I force myself through the door, back into the cafeteria.
I frantically start telling everyone that the school is trying to brainwash us, and that I think they put things in my head. My friends tell me that I’m being ridiculous and they say they’ll go into the restroom with me to prove that it’s nothing. As my friends file in ahead of me, I watch as each of them are pulled to a certain toilet, boys on the left, and girls on the right (except for my friend Ray, who apparently has an item belonging to his girlfriend, causing him to be lead to the girl’s side). When it’s my turn, they all tell me to just go with it and let it guide where it wants me. “It doesn’t hurt if you don’t fight it,” one girl says. As soon as we’re all seated, the TV lights up, flashing between various movies, cartoons, and live video feed of other parts of the school and the church-house. The screen displays a line of people going into the church-house to “swim” (actually a baptismal ceremony) and I’m glad that I left when I did. The image switches to a (familiar) guy with long blonde hair, in a boat rowing down a river. The boat seems to have sprung a leak and is slowly filling up with water. As the boat begins to sink, the guy nonchalantly sings “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”
I’m eventually able to break free from the brainwashing restroom and head back outside. Past the church-house is a bonfire party at the edge of a river. As I walk towards the river, the scene shifts and we are at a beautiful house on a hill, overlooking the ocean. I greet some random person and say, “I’d love to live in a house on a hill, looking down on the shore.” The perspective shifts again - suddenly we’re at the edge of a cliff, miles above the ocean and I laugh “Whoa! Not THAT much!” and awaken.
