Visions of the Future

It was early spring and I remember feeling content.  I went to bed one night with Pat next to me.  But it wasn’t a normal sleep.  I fell into a series of visions, just like before when I’d been younger.  This time the visions were clearer and they went on and on.

I saw a world that I couldn’t fathom.  People were wicked, fighting about trivial things, war in the streets, martial law was in place.  Everyone was unhappy and the government had put insane limits on the people.  The environment was ravaged.  Everything seemed dirty and dangerous.

People were being grabbed off the street. Families disappeared overnight. Children were stolen from their parents. There were strict curfews in place. My city was in ruins.

I woke up screaming in terror.  Pat was next to me, trying to calm me.  It took me a while to realize that I was safe in my bed.  Once I calmed down, he asked me what I’d seen.  He never questioned what had happened.  It was as though he knew without me saying that I’d seen the future.  I told him everything.  I told him about the horrors I’d seen.

I slept the rest of the night, wrapped in his arms.  I went to work the next day and came home.  I went to bed as normal, thinking that what had happened the night before had been an isolated incident.  But I was wrong.

I received a second round of visions.  In this set, I was some sort of leader of a resistance.  I had teams of people and we were trying to save people, sneak them away.  I had a safe haven somewhere far away.  I was leading people through ruined areas of the city of Minneapolis.

We’d spend nights in buildings filled with rubble.  I would tell the children stories to calm them.  I played guitar and sang to people at campsites.  I walked through the forests with groups of people following me, on a pilgrimage to some place of safety.

At the end of the dream, I saw myself hiding with my team in a college.  We had joined a class and were hiding out in the classroom.  The government was looking for us.  A man with a gun came in the room.  He had a bald head and a wicked look in his eyes.

He started calling out names, asking us to stand.  All the names were the people on my team.  A few of them stood up and he shot them right away.  He came to me, but then the man stopped suddenly staring strangely in front of him.  I realized that the teacher had stabbed him in the back of the head as the bald man fell forward, dead, the knife protruding from the back of his bloody head.

I woke screaming again.  I’d never fathomed such horror.  I couldn’t believe such awful things could happen.  What had happened to my city?  What had happened that caused people to be so awful?  No one was like this in 2005.  We were still living off the highs of the late 90s.  A new technology had just been born.  Wasn’t this the upward lift of society?

Again, Pat asked me what I’d seen.  I told him everything.  He asked if he was there.  I told him no, I hadn’t seen him anywhere.  I told him about what the world had been like and he listened to everything.  He believed me.

The third night, I was afraid to go to bed.  I didn’t want to see anything else.  In these visions I thought I was in my mid thirties.  How could the world change like that in such a short period of time?  It couldn’t be real?  Could it?

This time, I fell asleep and I was transported to a city unlike any other city.  I was different.  I was somehow a peaceful leader.  I had strange abilities, something like magic.  One of the abilities was to be able to put my hands on either side of someone’s head, about 3 inches out from their ears, not touching them.  I could heal them, I could make them see their truth.  I could show them what they needed to see, or I could make them feel the pain they had inflicted on others.

The city was beautiful, perfect in every way.  Everyone was kind to one another.  Everyone lived in harmony.  There was no money, no acquisition of wealth or titles.  It was simply a peaceful place where everyone was equal and safe.

I walked around the city, speaking to people, learning about where I was.  Wherever I went, people were in awe of my presence.  I had earned their respect somehow.  I was so different, so calm, so peaceful.  Nothing seemed to bother me.

Then I was in a hallway underground,  I remember counting how many bricks there were from the floor to the ceiling.  We were in a place that had been difficult to get to.  We had to save some children from some horrible fate.  They were locked in cells.

We were in the hallway, outside the entrance to this dungeon of sorts.  The hallway t’d off at the end.  To the right were the guards with guns, guarding the entrance.  My team and I snuck down the halls.  I told them not to hurt them, to incapacitate them with tranquilizers, which we carried with us.

We attacked and the guards were taken down by my team with great speed and skill.  I put my hands on the sides of both of their heads in turn, showing them the pain they had caused.  We left them there on the floor and went to save the children.

But someone evil was there and I sacrificed myself so that my team could save the children.  I knew if I could keep this evil man busy, face him, my team would be successful.  I had some sort of battle with him, both of us wielding powers beyond normal human capacity.

I remember his eyes were black, as though filled with oil.  He was no normal human.  It took everything in me to repel his attacks.  I finally showed him his evil, but he got to me too.  The vision faded and the end was uncertain.  Had I defeated him?  Had I succumbed to my wounds?  There was no answer.

I woke again to Pat next to me.  He patiently listened while I told him about my visions.  He again wondered why he wasn’t there.  He was nowhere to be found.  He wasn’t on my team and he wasn’t in the beautiful city.

That was the end of the visions.  I didn’t see anything else the next night.  I had received the messages though.  Had I received a calling from the universe?  Was I meant to build the city and face whatever evil would somehow manifest in the future?  There were aspects of these visions that were impossible.  How could these visions come true?  It didn’t make any sense.

But they were very like the visions of the past.  And though I could not decipher their purpose or meaning, I continued to have visions over the years.  I began to try to work out how this beautiful city was possible.  It was always in the back of my mind.