@fastfinge@interfree.calong post, dream, death, depression, ableism
I haven't done a #fedidreams in a while, and last nights was long enough to deserve it. It was one of those dreams where it was so awful that I kept waking up in horror, but every time I went back to sleep, the dream just resumed. So in the dream a new national government for all of North America had been formed, under the slogan "Laws for the hired, death for the fired." They created a system of cameras and police robots, and any employed person who broke any law was fired, and any unemployed person who broke any law was killed. Also, in order to get food, you had to report to the office of food justification. The office had really tiny elevators, that you had to enter and stand in sideways and crouched down. If you were too heavy for the elevator, or your stomach stuck out so you wouldn't fit in, you couldn't get food. Also, sometimes the elevators turned into trash compactors, and that's how the government got rid of undesirable people. Wheelchairs wouldn't fit, of course, and anyone who used one had already starved to death. I'd read reports that deaf people were getting the trash compactor treatment, so I was of course terrified as I entered the elevator. Thankfully, it didn't crush me, and it took me to the office of food justification where I had to complete an interview justifying why I deserved food for the week. However, as I went back home, a police robot caught me accidentally crossing the street against the light. There was no traffic, so I didn't know. But the police robot required my employer to fire me anyway. Now that I was a criminal, I couldn't get another job, and was evicted from my home. So I had to go to the local Poverty Place. The poverty place was a building full of tiny cubes. Every homeless person was given a cube, just large enough to sit inside of with your legs crossed, and that's where you had to live. There wasn't enough room to lie down or even stretch your arms. Both loitering and being homeless were against the law, and anyone living in a Poverty Place was considered a high risk offender, so we had to wear ankle bracelets with GPS trackers, and report to Poverty Place no later than 7 PM, and leave no later than 7 AM. When entering the building, you were permitted one bathroom use. If you owned any belongings, they were confiscated by the government, in order to cover the cost of your cube. On my way to register for my cube, I met a really old man, who told me that his wife had passed away, and he was just waiting to die so he could be with her. He gave me there portable house, because he couldn't stand living in it anymore. The portable house was a heavy rectangular object, about the size of a wheeled suitcase, with a button on it. Pushing the button would result in it deploying into an 80 foot by 80 foot fully furnished house. The old man told me to get as much food as I could, walk several days out into the woods, and deploy the house. He hoped it would keep me safe when the government started purging blind people. So I went to a McDonalds, pretending the portable house was actually a bomb, and made them give me all of the frozen food from the kitchen. Then I started running, hoping to escape the police robots and get to the woods. Thankfully, I woke up before they could kill me; there was no way that plan was going to work. And if there was ever a dream where death in the dream meant death in real life, that felt like it would be the one. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I can't describe to you how vivid that was, or the feeling of hopelessness, resignation, and darkness that pervaded the dream. I got up and cried in the shower.