My favorite dreams are the ones I have that have a nice plot, so experiencing the dream is a bit like watching a movie. I hate it when the dream ends before the story concludes, but this dream from last night finished the story! Here is the story, complete with some AI illustrations for visuals.

In my dream, I was on the planet Hypoxia. It was a dystopian world in a distant star system where the entire planet was covered in a dense, toxic fog, and people had to live underground. I was in an underground café that had a food line and a very Soviet-era dystopian feel. There were drone cameras, like wasps, just drifting around, keeping an eye on everything we did. As I got to the food server, they portioned out some slop into a bowl for me.

I loudly said, “Reconstituted pseudo-beans again? Aren’t you all sick of this swill?”

The people around me took notice because I was pretty loud. Someone whispered, “Be quiet! You’re going to anger the Queen.” Well, at this point, apparently I had angered the Queen, since a drone camera flew near me. Someone said, “Too late. He’s angered the Queen.”

Over the speakers on one of the local drones, I heard the voice of the Queen (Queen Anthraxia, what a great name!): “For your transgressions, you shall die!”

She summoned a local death trooper to come blow me away. The death trooper was a Nazi-looking soldier (of course). He had a death bazooka by his side, and he shot in my direction. I managed to evade the shot, and a crate next to me exploded in a ball of fire.

He walked closer, and I could see that this next shot wasn’t going to miss.

I thought to myself, “Well, even an evil space queen needs some good PR once in a while.” And so I said to one of the drone cameras, looking at the audience that was surely watching this scene planet-wide, “Spare me, O Queen! Show us your benevolence!”

She gave an evil cackle. A few heartbeats passed, and she said, “Very well. We shall play a game. You have 30 minutes to find two people who have these particular citizen IDs. Find them and you live. Fail and you die.”

She listed out two different numbers, which I hastily wrote down. These were six-digit code numbers that served as citizen IDs. They both began with the numbers 898. Now, I happened to know that everyone’s citizen ID was engraved on their big toenail. So I was in a race against time to find people with these codes on their toenails.

I ran around frantically, saying, “Does your citizen ID begin with 898?” And then moving to another person, “Does your citizen ID begin with 898?” People looked around. Some shook their heads. Some had forgotten their citizen IDs, and I would frantically ask them to take off their shoes and show me their IDs so I could inspect their toenails to see if the numbers began with 898. Well, most of the time had elapsed at this point.

Finally, I saw an old friend, an Asian lady named Yining, who was eating in a booth. (Yining was actually a person I worked with at Capital One. So I guess Capital One has a campus even on a remote planet like Hypoxia.)

I screeched out, “898! Does your toenail say 898?” She pulled off one of her shoes and looked at her toenail.

The first three digits were, in fact, 898! I frantically compared the next three digits, and it was a match!

I exclaimed, “I found one of the numbers!” I was very excited. However, there were only five minutes left on the countdown.

I looked out across this dystopian landscape, where there were thousands of people in the various stalls and hallways. The odds of me winning this contest and not getting blown away by one of the death troopers were not very good. The drones were swarming. This had become like a media event, where the whole planet had stopped everything to tune in to what was happening. I noticed in the distance that there was a trash dumpster someone had set on fire, and there was a commotion. Occasionally, there had been citizen riots against the Queen, but they had never been coordinated. Planet wide coordination was impossible because Queen Anthraxia’s empire controlled all the communications media.

I realized that this was my moment.

I looked at the camera and said to the entire population of planet Hypoxia: “Your revolts were never coordinated. But today is your liberation day! Rise up and revolt!”

With this, I heard a great cheer, and people, filled with pent-up anger, took to the streets. They were overturning death trooper squad cars, setting dumpster fires, and busting into administration buildings. There were death troopers out trying to maintain security, but they were overwhelmed by the much larger population, who were eager to revolt. The rule of the evil Queen Anthraxia was coming to an end!

At this point, the dream ended. I’m pretty sure dramatic music swelled and credits began to roll as the movie closed.