In my dream, my wife and I were walking through our suburb on a day far too sunny for Seattle. The lighting was perfect, the colors as vivid as a movie, post-edit. Lush lime green lawns. Robin's egg blue sky.
Clouds formed, discrete and pillowy, none blocking the sun. They weren't the usual white; inside the colors roiled, an artificial shimmering shifting to red or black, like the rainbow refractions from a gasoline spill. My wife said there was so much pollution that the clouds now were made almost entirely of rayon.
We strolled along the sidewalk, passing house after manicured house. One of my cats rubbed her head on my leg and I saw that my wife had brought both of them along. About three yards ahead a streaming puff of smoke scudded between the houses. In its wake, three people ran, screaming. A few seconds later, another smoke bomb. More running. More screaming. The sound was muted, as far away as television, an unlikely drama unfolding right in front of us. The peace shadow of front lawns was punctuated at every gap between houses by smoke and screaming. One cat cowered behind my leg, the other sought refuge in my wife's arms.
Eventually the sky turned yellow. The sidewalk ended at a sulfur refinery. Without suburban houses to shield us, the world was choked with smoke and chaotic with panicked people. We crouched a little to get into one of the giant concrete effluent pipes that exited the facility. It was fairly clean and dry. We walked along it for about fifty yards and emerged into a huge hangar. Dozers and cats parked like toys in the cavernous space.
I felt sad, witnessing the world ending. I wished we had left the cats at home; I worried they would get badly hurt. I wondered what to do, where to go now.
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