Dream Journal

My memories of this are scattered because I had several dreams afterwards.

I was in a job interview. The environment was very corporate, and I was not enthusiastic about this job. We were in a windowless conference room with fluorescent lights. Everyone was dressed up. I sat near the end of a long conference table, filled with about 16 people. I was one of three applicants for a web job. Someone there said that the other two got jobs there. I figured they had interviewed earlier, since I just got there for the interview.

It turned out there were about 300 applicants, and maybe 10-20 positions open. The interview began, and we were divided into groups of 5-6. The order of the following is uncertain:

At one point, I went underneath the floor in the building where the company was. There was a round glass pillar with open space all around. I stood on a platform. Maybe 50 feet below the platform was a floor that was a grid pattern — not really a solid floor but just the grid. The forms of dead interviewees were down there, all wearing white and red bodysuits. They were sitting there motionless, embedded in the grid. I felt like they had tried to escape under the company’s floor and not made it. It also seemed that the bodysuits were virtual reality outfits and that the grid I was seeing was a peek beneath the pattern. Surrounding the grid of the circular floor were a bunch of stores. There was something else going on down there. People — interviewees, I assumed — were swinging from hanging cables, trying to follow the commands they were given to swing about and break through security measures to attack table-sized blocks in the stores.

At this point I was getting a little more excited about the interview process. Back up on the company floor, I watched as one group of five tried to defend from an attack of some sort, using their powers. When my group’s turn came, I expected the same test, but instead our test was offensive. We needed to get from one end of a hallway, through all these defenders, to reach the interviewer. We were in position at the far end of the hallway. So what did we do? We sat around a table eating breakfast. We had plates full of food — scrambled eggs, biscuits, and more. I felt it was important to keep everyone focused on this and began a conversation, commenting on a biscuit, keeping everyone involved, and it worked. Perhaps focusing on our own little reality made the defenders disappear? At any rate, we passed the test.

At one point I was walking somewhere with one of the people in my group. I told her that I thought she’d make a great defender, that her personality was right for it, and she did well in a test of that type.

Next there was a tour of the office. It was Christmastime. There were stacks of company-branded shirts here and there, meant to be given to interviewees. This part of the office was nice, with windows, and everyone seemed focused, competent, and friendly. But I noticed something. The scene was being overlaid with Halloween. Black and orange decorations appeared. There were black cat decorations. I knew this was being done as a test, but wanted to pretend I was being fooled. I spoke loudly. “Wow, this is great! It’s Halloween, with presents, and all these Halloween shirts! What a great idea!”

I was eventually led to a dining area, with lots of decorations hanging from the ceiling. I sat across from a cool-looking guy with a tall afro, who engaged me in friendly conversation. It seemed like I had made it through the tests. I assessed my situation, and realized I sat in a room with a bunch of young people who had special powers, and nobody knew what powers anyone else had. It was like the birth of a superhero team of some kind, though I didn’t have any expectation of what we were going to do. But it was exciting to look around and wonder what everyone there was capable of doing.