[or: wow, there really is a character limit on the title of Dreamwidth entries]
I was dreaming, as is my wont.
And someone was complaining about how the St Martins New World had been built in a location that blocked out the view of the church. And I was all, what are you talking about? The supermarket was built in the place that's always been (for want of a less grandiose term for a mere half block) the commercial centre of St Martins. When I was a kid there were shops and an empty field full of goldfinches; the goldfinches were replaced by the supermarket and a parking lot, and since then the supermarket and the shops have vied with each other and shuffled around a bit, but they've always been there and the church(es) haven't. One church is way up the end of the road near the school; another church is small and forgettable but still a couple blocks along; and the other church, mine, which seemed to be the subject of their complaint, is even further along than that and around some corners.
[So far I know all this to be true, so clearly the rest of my dream must be also.]
So I was walking that way, first along Wilsons Road, and I noticed that instead of regular houses, each property seemed to now have high-density housing on it: two or three storeys, timber-clad and painted blue, each storey with room for a couple of apartments. I realised this must be the future, and I looked back towards the shops (which had always been one storey) and saw they were now more like CBD towers, that shiny black architecture with neon lights and looming.
As I kept going towards the church, turning at the roundabout onto St Martins Road, I heard some boys laughing at me riding a bike, such an old-fashioned thing. One of them wanted to take a photo, and at first I said no, but then reconsidering that I was going to need money to get by in the future I asked how much he'd pay. Yeah nah he wasn't going to pay; I just got more laughter at that.
I continued but the layout by this point in the future had changed, and I found I was going to have to cross what looked kind of like a park with a grassy knoll but also kind of like someone's residence. So I started up and when I saw the owner I asked if it was okay for me to come this way, explaining I needed to get to the church. Impressed with my courtesy she let me through her house. The floor was grass and there were no walls but I saw a kitchen space and at the doorway where she let me out, she fetched a shaped and polished plank of wood and fitted it onto a step down the hill for me.
As I went down there was a flood of people coming up. I realised I was again even further in the future. I remember a sense of threat from the people, who might have been high school boys, but I can't remember details; in any case I got down and found myself in a maze of intersections, high-rises everywhere, all sorts of streets I'd never heard of. One was a St Davids Street. I knew I just had to find St Martins Street again to get to the church, and finally I saw it, but had to cross a road to get to it. For some reason I didn't wait for the lights to change but dodged traffic, first to the median line, then the lights changed: I think they'd detected me. There may have been sirens warning the cars, which were essentially hovercraft. The lights turned orange, the cars stopped, and I finished crossing safely.
I'm unsure of the connection to what follows, or the sequence of events. Maybe I reached the church and that's where this took place; or maybe this happened and the church was forgotten. But I was with friends entering a... museum/historical reenactment place thing? We took our shoes off stepping inside. Another door led to a courtyard where it was or had been raining. My friend went out there immediately, and went to a man from one of Jane Austen's novels. In this alternate timeline some romantic entanglement had gone divergent from the books, disappointing him, and, in holding a grudge against some group of people as a result, he had made decision after decision that precipitated various wars that should never have happened. My friend wanted to intervene in some way to reduce the disappointment ('to heal his broken heart' being a bit too dramatic a way to describe this) and avert the grudge and wars. I felt she was going to make a hash of things, with embarrassing consequences, so hurried out after her with no regard for wet feet.
After this, chronology and causality go very hazy. I saw more of the man's history: he'd lived through the whole period from his own time to this future, becoming possibly a mad steampunk inventor. There was a point where various of us were going through a public transport station with vending machines and I marvelled that items in the future were priced the same as in my own time; or maybe it was that a 2020 dollar specifically could buy the same amount of future goods since it was rarer so worth more than a future dollar.
Things fizzled out, as dreams do. There was no moral, though my waking mind notes that, though it's true in 2020 that the supermarket never blocked out the church, clearly by some point in the far future all those new roads and high-rise buildings effectively will.
I was dreaming, as is my wont.
And someone was complaining about how the St Martins New World had been built in a location that blocked out the view of the church. And I was all, what are you talking about? The supermarket was built in the place that's always been (for want of a less grandiose term for a mere half block) the commercial centre of St Martins. When I was a kid there were shops and an empty field full of goldfinches; the goldfinches were replaced by the supermarket and a parking lot, and since then the supermarket and the shops have vied with each other and shuffled around a bit, but they've always been there and the church(es) haven't. One church is way up the end of the road near the school; another church is small and forgettable but still a couple blocks along; and the other church, mine, which seemed to be the subject of their complaint, is even further along than that and around some corners.
[So far I know all this to be true, so clearly the rest of my dream must be also.]
So I was walking that way, first along Wilsons Road, and I noticed that instead of regular houses, each property seemed to now have high-density housing on it: two or three storeys, timber-clad and painted blue, each storey with room for a couple of apartments. I realised this must be the future, and I looked back towards the shops (which had always been one storey) and saw they were now more like CBD towers, that shiny black architecture with neon lights and looming.
As I kept going towards the church, turning at the roundabout onto St Martins Road, I heard some boys laughing at me riding a bike, such an old-fashioned thing. One of them wanted to take a photo, and at first I said no, but then reconsidering that I was going to need money to get by in the future I asked how much he'd pay. Yeah nah he wasn't going to pay; I just got more laughter at that.
I continued but the layout by this point in the future had changed, and I found I was going to have to cross what looked kind of like a park with a grassy knoll but also kind of like someone's residence. So I started up and when I saw the owner I asked if it was okay for me to come this way, explaining I needed to get to the church. Impressed with my courtesy she let me through her house. The floor was grass and there were no walls but I saw a kitchen space and at the doorway where she let me out, she fetched a shaped and polished plank of wood and fitted it onto a step down the hill for me.
As I went down there was a flood of people coming up. I realised I was again even further in the future. I remember a sense of threat from the people, who might have been high school boys, but I can't remember details; in any case I got down and found myself in a maze of intersections, high-rises everywhere, all sorts of streets I'd never heard of. One was a St Davids Street. I knew I just had to find St Martins Street again to get to the church, and finally I saw it, but had to cross a road to get to it. For some reason I didn't wait for the lights to change but dodged traffic, first to the median line, then the lights changed: I think they'd detected me. There may have been sirens warning the cars, which were essentially hovercraft. The lights turned orange, the cars stopped, and I finished crossing safely.
I'm unsure of the connection to what follows, or the sequence of events. Maybe I reached the church and that's where this took place; or maybe this happened and the church was forgotten. But I was with friends entering a... museum/historical reenactment place thing? We took our shoes off stepping inside. Another door led to a courtyard where it was or had been raining. My friend went out there immediately, and went to a man from one of Jane Austen's novels. In this alternate timeline some romantic entanglement had gone divergent from the books, disappointing him, and, in holding a grudge against some group of people as a result, he had made decision after decision that precipitated various wars that should never have happened. My friend wanted to intervene in some way to reduce the disappointment ('to heal his broken heart' being a bit too dramatic a way to describe this) and avert the grudge and wars. I felt she was going to make a hash of things, with embarrassing consequences, so hurried out after her with no regard for wet feet.
After this, chronology and causality go very hazy. I saw more of the man's history: he'd lived through the whole period from his own time to this future, becoming possibly a mad steampunk inventor. There was a point where various of us were going through a public transport station with vending machines and I marvelled that items in the future were priced the same as in my own time; or maybe it was that a 2020 dollar specifically could buy the same amount of future goods since it was rarer so worth more than a future dollar.
Things fizzled out, as dreams do. There was no moral, though my waking mind notes that, though it's true in 2020 that the supermarket never blocked out the church, clearly by some point in the far future all those new roads and high-rise buildings effectively will.