In the dream, I entered a large room for a meeting. I approached a podium to check in. A woman said, “Press 3 – 5.” I looked at the top of the podium, which featured a large joystick on the left and three buttons at the bottom: [345] [3] [345]. The guy in front of me stared dumbly at the controls. I pushed him aside, but also stared without comprehension at the maddeningly dream-like interface. A guy (that guy?) said, “There’s the [5] button,” pointing to an area above the others, mixed in with buttons of various types, none of which had characters I remember.

At that point, I *felt* the involvement of a part of my mind that wasn’t caught up in the dream. That part speculated this was a test. I imagined – I did not see in the dream, but imagined about the dream – that there was a small screen, one line tall, a few characters wide and that whoever could perform the instructions despite this absurdly adverse setup would be selected. (For what?)

Later, awake, and telling the dream to Merri, I wondered if the guy I pushed out of the way was me. Not just in the sense of “you are everyone you meet in a dream.” Impatient with my own failing, I pushed myself out of the way. But I think the voice that identified the [5] was not the external narrator who hijacked the dream.