Visions in the Dark

I'm at a public park in Shanghai where some kind of festival is going on. There are many rides, attractions and fast food vendors. I am my dream incarnate Chun-li, who is usually Chinese, but I know intinctively in this dream that I am half Chinese, half Japanese, and this is something I have to keep a secret because at this point in time the Chinese and Japanese have very tense relations and there is great suspicion between the two nations in my dream.

While there is not yet war, trade and immigration has been halted and anyone who is Japanese is immediately exiled or extradited to Japan. The same thing happens in Japan to people of having Chinese descent. People like me, with half and half relations, keep quiet because of the fear of being rejected by both countries. I greatly fear being exiled to Japan because I have lived in China my whole life and would not know where to go or what to do in a foriegn country.

I am with a small group of friends (who know of my half blood and keep it a secret) and we are watching acrobats doing tricks on giant trampolines. Afterwards we watch some fireworks and then go to check out the food vendors. The park is open all night but many people have left and few people are still around. Mostly the campsites containing the vendors families and supplies are still active. The moon is full and directly over head. My friends and I go down one road at the edge of the park and find North America food vendors containing stores like KFC, Taco Bell, a few pizza places and Burger King. One of the vendors between all of these North American vendors is a food store selling Japanese style food and sushi, though it outwardly passes itself off as a fish and chips joint. We are surpised at this and dare to order some food from there. The vendor is very kind and quietly gives us are meals (I order sushi pizza and an eggplant handroll) and we sneak off to a picnic table in the now dark park to eat our forbidden food. I become nervous because I can see some of the Chinese vendors across the street watching us.

The next day my friends and I are at a mall complex doing some shopping when we hear the news that Japan and China have declared war with each other. Many people in the mall have gathered around a large audio/video display which was previously selling automobiles but has been switched over to report the breaking news. The reporter says that the two countries armies have met in the Sea of Japan, not shots have been fired yet and there seems to be a highly tense stalemate with neither side yeilding their positions. The report then reads a breaking bulletin that people of Japanese decent, no matter the degree, are now labelled as enemies of the state and are to be arrested immediately. I feel dizzy and sick to my stomach when I hear this, and have to sit down for a moment because of weakness in my knees.

When I gather myself I leave my friends and run all the way up to a second floor department store where I know works a half Chinese half Japanese fashion designer. We know each other as acquaintences but he is not happy to see me. Because of his open and flamboyant personality (he's gay and dies his hair blond) he has never denied being half Japanese and now he knows he will probably be arrested because of it. We sit on a display counter in his store and listen to the news report coming from the floor below as it reports the breaking news that the two country's navy vessels have begun firing at each other and several ships have been already sunk. Almost everyone in the mall is now gathered around the giant television to watch.

Suddenly my friends come up the stairs and run to us. One of them says that we should start a protest for peace and that we could have a fashion show as a fund/awareness-raiser. The fashion designer is pleased with the idea but says he will probably be arrested soon. My friends give him encouragement and they start fussion over details like location, participants and the such but I kind of phase them out and listen to the live reporting of shell fire and bombs now on the Chinese coast far south of Shanghai. The dream skips ahead a few days, the fashion designer's store is a hive of activity. We have found hundreds of people to join in our war protest and dozens of people willing to participate in the fashion show fund raiser. The fashion designer has not been arrested but he and his store is under constant servaillence.

This dream ends here and I get up to use the washroom. It sort of continues after I fall asleep but there are some differences.

I am in the mall from the previous dream, planning a fashion show with my friends, but we are no longer in China and there is no war with Japan, but the gay fashion designer is still here, though he is now just Japanese, and he is arguing with one of the other designer's of the show, who is a Chinese woman. They each want the show to be influences by their countries of origin and argue like cats and dogs about trivial details like colour themes and placement of artwork. Several of my friends are watching the arguments with bemusement as we help set up.

One of my friends is a brown haired girl named Lily. She suddenly leaves the store and we cannot find her. A young man with blond hair shows up and asks me and some of my friends to join him outside, were we find Don Cherry about to start a tour of the city in what looks like an Apache helicopter. On one side of the Apache is a smaller version of the copter as some sort of escape vehicle. It seems normal to everyone else but I cannot understand why the helicopter has a helicopter on it.

The blond man gets in the mini copter and detaches it from the big one and lands it on the mall's patio roof. Don Cherry and my friends get in the big Apache and take off. I am too freaked out to get in either copter. When they are gone Lily suddenly shows up but I notice that something is odd. She has no idea about the fashion show she had previously been helping set up and she started talking about the public park festival from the previous dream, which in this dream, was not supposed to exist.

The blond man tells me that there has been a tear in space and time and that there are now two Lily's in this world. The doppelganger Lily doesn't belong in this world and her presence here threatens the existence of the real Lily, who is stuck in the past. The blond man gets into the mini copter and there is a brilliant flash of light and he and the machine disappear. The doppelganger Lily is very shallow and airheaded and keeps asking me vain and repedative questions.

The big Apache carrying Don Cherry and my friends return and are happy to see Lily, but they don't notice that this is obviously not the real one. I can hear the blond man's voice in my head saying that space/time is shifting so that all the abnormalities that came through the interdimentional tear are becoming normal. Things will only return to normal if he can find the real Lily and return her to this space and time.


I cannot remember the end of this dream.