Nazrax

Sale at Home Depot
I'm shopping at Home Depot, looking at what's left of the sale items. A lot of the good sales are either over or have sod out. I overhear a nearby employee talking about the $1000 bonus that all the Home Depot employees will be receiving after their shift is over. Listening further, it turns out that this is the second half of their Christmas bonus, so they're actually all getting a total of $2000. I try not to be jealous, but I think how nice it would be to have an extra couple thousand dollars to spend. I remind myself that I got a good bonus earlier in the year, and that it was welcome, even if it did have to go to home repairs and not to anything fun.

Now I'm sitting at a table near the cash registers, talking with my in-laws. A cashier is talking about taking spicy peas (like wasabi peas, but not called that) on vacation, because when they're dropped into the water they "bloom" and make amazing, beautiful patterns, showing what the underwater currents are doing. I think this sounds neat, but unfortunately it wouldn't work at our normal vacation spot, where the water is always cloudy. The cashier says he(?) vacations in Colorado, where the water is always clear. I think the water there must also always be cold, but I don't say anything. The cashier goes on to say that something similar can be done with a certain kind of peanut, but it's hard to find. Someone at my table says that they're easy to make. Now, we have a tray filled with peanuts, ketchup, mustard, and some kind of spice powder. Something has gone wrong; the peanuts are supposed to end up dry, but this batch is completely drowned in the ketchup and mustard. It's really pretty disgusting. A couple of peanuts get knocked on the floor; as I reach over to pick them up, I hear the cashier muttering something about this not being right.

Now I'm wandering the aisles looking for something or someone. The shelving units are too high for me to see the tops. Now I'm talking with another employee, asking him about the thing I need to buy. I tell him I'm interested in a particular color; he says he's not sure where they are, but he'll go get another guy who's more familiar with this product, and they'll find some and bring them out to me so I can pick the one with the color I like. As he goes through an employees-only door, he seems to wave for me to follow. I don't want to get in trouble for going somewhere I shouldn't, but he's now rounded a corner so I can't ask if he really meant for me to follow. I poke my head through the door and look around and see that I'm very close to another customer area. I take a quick shortcut through the employees area back to the other customer area, hoping this is what he meant.


MacGyver and tribal people
I'm watching MacGyver as he sneaks around some kind of hi-tech facility. Everything is brightly lit and very white, and the hallways are lightly curved. He comes across a room with what look like odd stones (long and narrow rectangles with the corners cut off) across the threshold of the doorway. He uses a piece of some kind of card to touch the stones, shoving the card down into the stones' frame. Something shorts out, and he steps into the room, explaining that his card made out of ???? was able to short out the force field generators (the stones). A man and a woman, dressed in lab coats, are huddling in the room. They're very glad to see Mac, but they say that a third guy was recently taken to become some kind of slave. They're glad Mac has saved them from the same fate, but they'd like him to go rescue their friend. I have a vision of a man stripped to his underclothes, hands tied behind his back, kneeling in a shallow rocky creek.

Now I'm standing at the back of a large group of tribal people. We're in the middle of an open field with a light scattering of tall, skinny apple trees. Some of the taller men in the group are picking apples off of nearby trees to give to others around them. I'm tempted to ask for an apple myself, but I'm too shy to go up to them. A rather large middle-aged woman is standing near an apple tree, telling some kind of story she thinks is both highly amusing and also very informative, though to my ears it's neither. She says she was talking to someone and pointed out "There's an apple." When her companion agreed, she said it again, and again, until he was very confused as to why she was talking about it - isn't it obvious that there are apples on the tree? She goes on to explain that when she said "There's an apple," what she really meant was what an amazing process it was for an apple to fall into the ground, a new tree to grow up, and an apple to form on the new tree. I look more closely at her and realize that her clothes don't cover as much as they should. I move behind a taller man in the group to block my view, not wanting to make it obvious that I don't want to look at her.

Now I'm around a nearby bend in the terrain. I know the other group is near, but I can't see or hear them. There's another group, this one not tribal, all very well dressed and proper. I see a well-groomed, well-dressed tribal man near a young girl. He sidles up to me and whispers that she may be the apple or the tree, then returns to her side. I realize he was the third man in the room who was taken to be a slave. He seems to be her caretaker, and he seems very content in his role and very fond of her. Now I'm back with the tribal group. I pull aside a guy I know and give him the other guy's message. He looks confused, so I tell him I think it means the girl is going to turn out alright. The tribal people hate the other group, so he scoffs at the idea that any of them could ever turn out to be all right.

Now I'm back to watching MacGyver, watching the third part of a three part episode. I think it's strange that the third part is only half the length of the other two parts. I see an SUV that's fallen into a deep pool, though it hasn't yet sunk because it caught on the rocks just right. There's something about a contestant nearly dying because he tried to be flashy, attaching a distraction explosive to the car instead of doing it the simple way. I see someone attach a rounded red cylinder to the SUV's handle, shaking it, almost making it sink. Now I see something about a large alien ship. It's sending out a slowly rotating laser beam, a solid "plane" of light going out along the long axis of the ship. It makes a complete rotation around the ship every few hours, and anyone in its way has to take shelter. I realize that if I only watch the first one and a half episodes of this three parter, the laser won't have reached me, and I can do that as often as I want; but it seems a shame not to finish the story, so I may have to brave the laser.