Droubble: Dream

Dream

The dream was like any other, a mish-mash of symbols with no clear narrative thread to hold it together. In fact, if it had been much less notable, we’d never have noticed. But as it was, some percentage of people mentioned the last night’s dream, around breakfast tables or water coolers, at which point everyone who heard would admit to having the same dream. Soon it was the top news story worldwide – over about a twenty-four hour period, everyone in the world who’d slept had shared the dream. Scientists tried and failed to explain it. Religious authorities and philosophers and just about everyone else tried to find significance in the dream’s images – the bear holding the balloon, the gravel pit, the gnarled tree – reaching, in the end, very little in the way of consensus.

The event was not repeated, and attention flagged. With nothing new to report, there was only so much to say; the event’s utter mystery, the thing which had made it so amazing, soon plunged it into obscurity.

One would expect such a shared experience to change the world, maybe even bring people together. But in the end, things went on pretty much as before.