It was very much as though I was watching a movie. There was the main character which was an 18-20 something guy, but sometimes I stepped in to join the dream in his place. There were the "bad guys" who worked for the media, who's companies had gradually taken over the U.S. And there were the rebellious heroes who were fighting the media, often using their own tactics against them.
It took place in the future. I won't say the near future, but for number's sake I'll approximate it was about a century ahead at least. I'll say now that I'm awake, the dream had many things in common with the movie Demolition Man. There were many nicely landscaped areas. Everything was clean and tidy (at least what I saw). There was evidence of advanced technology too, but not as blatently everywhere like in the movies Blade Runner or Minority Report.
The very first part of the dream escapes me, but once the action moved to a huge lumber yard, I can remember more. I think the main character worked at the yard, but he may have started out with the media people. He trips over a small cache of wooden rings that the rebels had partly burried in the dirt. (There were still roads and sidewalks, but much less pavement and concrete for some reason.) The main character picks up one of the rings before the media people can stop him and inscribed on it is something like: "Death over Fame" or "Death before Fame." I can't quite remember. The main character asks the media people what it means and they try to shrug it off that: "some people don't want to be famous. Can you imagine?" They destroy the rings.
Something happens that I don't remember, and the main character finds some rebels and wants to join.
The rebel leader (of the group in that city) and the main character go to a high school that looks a lot like the elementary school I went to, except instead of on top of a hill and surrounded by forest, the one in the dream was in a small depression surrounded by a huge lawn. No trees, although there were some hills and dips in the lawn. The two of them crossed about half way across the lawn towards the school.
The rebel leader was holding a huge Sci-Fi looking gun about 2 1/2 to 3 feet long, and almost a foot high (but only a few inches thick). It had a small computer where the scope would normally be. The gun was mostly box like, maybe plastic, but was all black. He lifted the gun up and programmed something into the computer, while talking to the main character, but I don't remember what he said.
He shot the gun at the school (during the night, no one else around) and it sort of spray/printed a huge graphitti sign across the whole building (which was otherwise flat and brown with few windows). I don't remember what the message was, but it reminded me of a soda ad. It had bright reds, oranges and yellows, with diagonal block letters that sort of had lines through them that gave them an optical illusion/3D effect. And there were bubble images, clustered at the bottom and interspersed upwards to the top of the ad/graphitti/building.
Then as they quickly walk away from the school, the scene jumps to the boardroom of the city's Media Studio, a few hours later as the sun is coming up. The Director asks how it (the graphitti) was done and one of the others in the room types on his laptop type thing and a section of the wall lights up and then images start scrolling past (like on Serenity), with the guy explaining them. They were looking at specs for the gun thing that the rebel leader had used. The gun was a Chinese-made, "Panda" brand, graphitti gun.
The Director asks, "hadn't those been banned in the U.S.?" Computer guy says yes and pulls up an article about it. I don't really remember anything about the article, no dates or anything, just the "Panda" logo: sort of a striped Mickey Mouse head, slightly squashed.
Then the dream jumped back to the rebels and night time again. They either came out of a secret tunnel, or teleported (I can't remember) into a vacant lot. It wasn't quite landscaped lawn, but since it was in the city and visible, it had to be presentable and free of trash. The back of the lot was closed by a chainlink fence and looked out over the lawn at the high school from earlier, already cleaned. Looking into the lot from the street, I didn't really see the building on the left, but the building on the right was either brick or painted concrete blocks. Strangely the sidewalks were packed dirt tracks between the buildings and the road, with some grass edging them.
Some incident I don't remember had happened with the media people and whatever the plan had been for the night, it had to be abandoned, so was going to be replaced with general mischief. The rebel leader and main character and I think two other people, appeared in some manner in the lot. The leader was angry and clenching the "Panda" graphitti gun. He says, "We'll have to make our base here tonight." The main character asks if it's dangerous so close to the previous night's activity. The leader says something along the lines of "it's as safe as anywhere else."
As the leader was talking, two more small groups walked into the lot from the right and left (not at the same time, right side first I think). They were coming in from the ruined plan in another part of town. They all had canvas knapsacks over their shoulders, but I'm not sure what was in the bags. They were wearing normal clothing, nothing that would announce that they were up to no good, or that they were anything other then a group of friends or students (other then the huge gun).
So, once the group is back together, the leader calls for general mischief and the groups break up again. I can't remember if the main character stays with the leader, but whichever group he's in, the first thing they do is partly bury a small cache of the wooden rings that say something like "Death over Fame" or "Death before Fame" on them in the packed dirt of the sidewalk by the corner of the brick or whatever building.
Then the stupid birds woke me up. I tried to fall back to sleep and keep the dream going, but I was awake. So I just did my best to remember it before getting up.
In addition to this, I thought: If this was a real movie or story, this is how I would want it to end:
All (or most) of the rebels in the city would be arrested. The media people's first thought of punishment would be to expose everything about the lives of the rebels. The rebels point out that their "punishment" is what they'be been doing to random normal people for decades, to make them famous (as though it's a good thing). So the normal people would all realize they were being exploited for no reason. The media's second thought of punishment would be to cover everything up, as though the rebels never existed or did anything. The rebels point out that anonymity was what they wanted in the first place. Either way, the rebels win.
Then the night before last, I dreamt that Manga style mercenaries were in Afganistan or something, rescuing POWs. But instead of just getting in and rescuing, and getting back out, they would offer the POWs really strange weapons so that they could take revenge on their captors. Unfortunately, all of them wanted revenge, but none of them knew how to work the weird guns and didn't want to ask, so all of them ended up maiming themselves to some degree. I think they did manage to kill or hurt their captors despite the maiming, I don't remember. Another weird dream...
Tigger and Lincoln were in the area last night so came over and after catching up for a few hours, we brought out our Pirates of the Carribean Monopoly and played till 2am, when I had to give up all my properties to Tigger since I didn't have any money to pay her rent. Everyone was getting tired, especially me (I could have fallen asleep if I tried), so they counted up their money and properties and Tigger won. Then we said goodnight and I fell into bed and asleep. Also, before we started the game, since it was almost Peter's birthday, I baked a cake for him. That way we could share it. It was yummy. We had a good time. Hooray for friends! :D
HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER!!!
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