I am, after a long hiatus where I was kicked out of the in-group, back on Chicken John’s bus. We’re driving at night, sleeping in shifts, on some mission more serious than the usual Chicken bus trip. It seems he’s chosen to ignore the past between us, but while I’m fussing about with various jobs on the bus I realize that while I’m relieved to be back with my friends, I hardly trust him at all. There’s a soft, eerie glow which under-lights the driver’s seat that accentuates this.
After a wake cycle in the early morning, perhaps 7 am, the dream is echoed, reflected, continued. A group of me, my wife, Rich, perhaps others are trying to cross the Bay Bridge in Rich’s RV. There’s a closure, or a slowdown, or shutdown, and I end up re-routing us on a residential road through Marin, which is located about where Treasure Island would be on a normal map. The road turns triangular along a marina where homeowners have semi-privatized the road, and eventually we run into a yellow house which has an addition built blocking the road itself. I can tantalizingly peek between the corners to where the road beyond, but on examining the map zoomed-in I see only more privatized, road-blocking, rich-people nonsense.
I’m now sneaking about, avoiding some kind of mindless hunter-police. I’m breaking into my own home, a sandstone-colored villa. I parkour over a corner wall into the backyard, similar to the narrow gap from the yellow house earlier. I bypass a few armed guards by wending around their sight-lines. Now I’m in the long backroom, a wine cellar with sunlit arched pane windows. I crawl gecko-like along the stone wall, avoiding the searching guards, and find the alcove of the hidden room. The stray thought occurs to me, “I should really change this code, it’s too easy” before I tap the top left stone and it recedes, opening the false wall into my sanctuary/safe room. It’s a chill dark movie lounge with little colored lights and popcorn and a home theater. Like a cozy fabric-lined cave. I was really happy to spend time there.