I just woke from a dream that was unlike all of my previous ones, in that I was a twelve-year-old boy from India.

* * * * *

I’m in the hallway of a large office building. There is a young girl about nine years old who is either my sister or my sidekick. (I suppose she could be both.) She is Indian like I am, since that’s where the two of us were born.

We decide to explore the building a bit, and we walk through a doorway into an unused part of the building. It seems to have been vacant for quite some time, and there are huge piles of flattened cardboard boxes stacked up and waiting to be recycled. We walk through that room and into the abandoned bathrooms. The only light in this area is provided by the small amount of sunlight that’s able to penetrate the layers of grime on the windows. It’s dim, but we can see clearly enough.

Suddenly, a man climbs in one of the windows and grabs SisterSidekick by the leg. He pulls her toward the window, but she is able to free herself and we both scramble away.

This kind of thing becomes a recurring theme of the dream, and the two of us constantly find ourselves being chased, threatened, held at gunpoint (and even fired upon!), and a few other similar situations that we always manage to extricate ourselves from, or simply talk our way out of. I can never quite decide if we’re part of a television show or not.

Then the dream changes, and I’m suddenly an adult—my real-life American self—riding in a car with a beautiful woman. True to the form of the rest of the dream, she seems to be my captor, and is holding me against my will, although not entirely. She is around thirty years old, very slim, with her dark blonde hair tied into a ponytail. She’s wearing simple jeans and a light blue chambray shirt, but I know that she has various small weapons hidden inside her clothes. I also know that we’re in London, despite the fact that she’s driving on the right-hand side of the road, and on the left-hand side of the car, like we do in America, and like they do pretty much everywhere else except Japan and the remnants of the British Empire.

I look over at my so-called captor while she’s driving, and through her window I notice that we’re driving through an extremely elegant and picturesque old neighborhood. I point out a huge cathedral made of weathered red brick, and mention something to her about how We Certainly Don’t Have Churches Like That Back in the States, but secretly I think to myself that we probably do, especially on the East Coast.

I look around the beautiful neighborhood and blurt out, “I wish we lived here.” She says nothing but gives me a little smile that I’m unable to interpret. “Actually,” I continue, “I wish we could have lived here in the Sixties, back when this was the center of the universe.” Her smile fades ever so slightly, and I realize she’s lost in her own thoughts, not paying me the slightest bit of attention. Despite that fact, I attempt to continue. I start to say, “It seems like everyone back then became famous,” but about halfway through the sentence, she makes a strange gesture with her hand and a dollop of water splashes me in the face, rendering me speechless. I brush myself off and curl my lip into an exasperated grimace as I turn to her and say, “You didn’t have to do that.”

I think to myself that from here, this story can go in one of two directions. If this is the cheesiest romantic adventure story in history, she will turn to me and say, “I didn’t have to do this, either,” and lean over to kiss me. If this is one of those surprising adventure thriller stories, she’ll say the same thing but punch me in the face instead.

It is at this juncture that I seem to be unable to decide which of the dream’s possible trajectories will play itself out. I suspect that the punch will make for a better story, but she’s also very beautiful, and I’d love to kiss her. The two disparate trajectories will forever remain disparate, however, because my brain never does decide which story to follow, so the two of us drive together silently for an inordinate amount of time, at which point I awaken from this incredibly strange dream.