The chase game

I'm a teenager, and I am studying something that is sort of like magic and sort of like religion. My classmates and I are chiefly concerned with creating manifestations of God in the form of glowing bubble-like spheres with faces on them. Then we talk to the spheres and thereby achieve miraculous results.

There's another student, a girl several years younger than me, who looks up to me as a role model. Her work never seems to turn out right - for instance, one of her spheres has a frowning Cyclops face on it. It doesn't look like my work or anyone else's. I realise that she is actually contacting some other entity, a powerful demon instead of God. She's not doing anything evil herself but there is a great danger that her work will be used for evil.

We keep seeing pictures of the hazy surface of a gas giant planet, similar to (but not) Jupiter. I think it's much further away from here than Jupiter, at least in another star system and possibly another galaxy, or a place not in this same universe at all. There is some kind of vehicle in orbit above the surface. Each successive picture gives a closer view of it - it is all girders and round pods, like a space station, but with an obvious propulsion system. I remember seeing the control room where the pictures are being received - they're being sent to Earth by a probe of some kind. I know that the demon the girl is contacting lives in the place where the probe is, and there's some connection between her and the probe.

I'm talking to her, and she's wearing a long white dress like a bride or a priestess. She doesn't understand the danger she is in. I tell her that even if she has no great ambitions or evil intent, she has now become so powerful that anyone who wants to take over the world will automatically put defeating her on their to-do list. We devise a plan - she will run, I will pretend to chase her, and when others join the chase, we'll use our powers to stop them. This will somehow solve the problem: after we've run far enough, would-be conquerors of the world will no longer see her as a must-defeat opponent.

We run. Sure enough, a dozen or so men and centaurs begin running with us. One by one, they get tired or cramps and drop out of the chase. It looks like they are simply unable to keep up, but I know that actually, the girl is using her powers to interfere with their ability to run. It is important that they don't know what is happening. We run until we are in a different world.

Now I am running through a mall, with four teenage girls. I am still a teenager myself. Now it's a game - we are trying to see how much confusion we can create. We shout at passers-by, things like "Oh no, he's getting away!" or "Hurry, don't fall behind!" Many kids join us even though they don't actually know what the point is. It's sort of like the "Bavarian Fire Drill" in the Illuminatus! trilogy.

The mall is roughly triangular, a 45-90-45 triangle. We run along one short leg of the triangle, turn the right angle, and up the other short leg. At the next corner we run out the main doors and I find myself standing in a bunch of about two dozen kids, just outside the door. I have to lead the group back along the hypotenuse of the triangle, and then in the doors at the corner where we started. I decide it would be fun to go single file, so I start running, slowly, exhorting the crowd, "Come on! Don't waste time! Single file! One at a time! Remember, single file only!" But the kids mostly don't pay attention. A group of about six, including the four girls who are in on the project with me, makes its way about halfway and stops there. They stand around chatting and ignore my urging. By now I am all the way to the other corner of the building. After a few moments, I enter the mall alone, wondering what to do next.

There is a stand in the middle of the mall where they sell round discs of ice cream, maybe 15 centimeters across, on paper plates. It's frozen so solid that you can stick a fork under it at one side and tilt the whole thing up as one solid piece. Lots of people are sitting around the stand eating the ice cream. There's someone reading numbers over a PA system. It's a raffle or lottery of some kind. The paper plates are like tickets; they have numbers on them which are hidden until you eat away the ice cream.

I see the four girls. They have changed their clothing, and are now wearing black-and-white striped sweaters. I pretend not to recognize them. One, the prettiest of the four, a beautiful blonde, walks up to me and asks if I know her. I say, "Let me check," and begin feeling up her breasts while she smirks. I say, "Oh, yes, I know you." She says that she stopped the game because she was concerned about getting in trouble with the mall management. Some of the merchants were getting mad and threatening to sue us. I tell her that as soon as they actually talked to their lawyers they'd be told that they had no case. "Don't worry," I tell her, "I've been, unfortunately, on both sides of such cases before."

The crowd is much denser now. I push through it, towards the announcer. I encounter a small boy, T. [Unlike the characters mentioned to this point, who are not people I know awake, T is a specific former classmate of mine from the Montessori school; at that time, he was six or so and I was eight, but in the dream, I'm more like seventeen and he's still six.] T tells me that he was sorry he missed the chasing game. I tell him that there is some chance we may be able to start it again. He should wait here and I'll go find the girls.

As I'm working my way through the crowd again, I realise that I'm not wearing my shirt. I gave it to T! I'm afraid I'll get in trouble wandering the mall without a shirt. I look for my family, and I find my father and sister playing catch with a balled-up light jacket made of greenish plaid wool. My father is also wearing an identical jacket. I convince them to loan their "ball" to me until I can get my shirt back.

I find T in front of a candy store. He says that his parents wouldn't let him wait for me. He has my shirt hidden up his sleeve, and he pulls it out and gives it to me. I put it on, and return the jacket to my family.

I am talking to the blonde girl from the chase game. I tell her that the game was only fun because it was a game. If we had really been serious about running, she could run a lot faster than me and there'd be someone else in the game who could run a lot faster than her, so we'd all be scared and frustrated.