May 12th

With all the thinking I’ve been doing about dreams lately, it’s funny that I haven’t had one until now. A nightmare, of course. Logically, it should be connected to what happened yesterday, but I can’t find the relation. Writing it here so I don’t forget:

I was outside my office in the halls. The lights were off and the only noises were the far-off creaks of decades old pipes and the other completely indescribable groans of a metal shelter sitting so far underground. It looked, sounded, and felt exactly like Sector F at two in the morning, but empty, somehow. Like some essential human component had been lost and now I was just buried alone within the Earth.
I started walking with no real purpose. Even as it fades in my memory, the detail of the dream feels immaculate. I suppose you think in dreams, but I can never remember any of my thoughts. I walked along, examining every service and reading every notice. Surfaces grew dusty, creaks began to increase. Paper began to rot and cobwebs began to weave through everything. I was examining the nametags of my co-workers, who had died so long ago and left this husk in the Earth as their only goodbye. I was reading every warning sign and every memo, every calendar and note on the office fridge. They were rotting and almost illegible, but I kept reading, as though I was the only person left who would understand what any of it meant and assign it meaning. 

Then, a groan louder than anything vibrated through the dull, eviscerated corridors of a Black Mesa that had been abandoned for two thousand years. I looked out and saw a corridor that I know for a fact has never existed here. It was pitch-black but there was something there. I don’t know how to bring it into any meaning or justification. It was alive and dead, or sentient and non-sentient. Old and new. There was another groan that split through everything, and there was light at the end of that awful fake tunnel. Orange, and then green… barrelling at me like a train. There was a howl as it approached, like a train through a tunnel made of open, screaming faces. Then, as it appeared to split through the darkness, as though it was a barrier, I woke up. I never caught sight of what it was. Perhaps there was nothing to see at all, just a figment of a concept my brain conjured up to scare the hell out of me.
Nothing to busy myself with. I couldn’t bring myself to leave my office because I know I’ll just be walking through the places in my dream again. And--this is utterly insane--but I can’t help but feel like I’ll see that tunnel that isn’t there. If dream theory is accurate, then it was a form of wish fulfillment. I can’t believe that, though. There was something too primal about it, like an animal. I hope I never see it again.

I managed to find some relief today. They sent out a memo that the survey sample that caused so much commotion has been moved to Sector C ahead of its big day in the test chamber. I don’t know when and I don’t care, but I’m happy it’s gone. Those headaches scare the hell out of me. More importantly, we’re open to other departments again, so Perl can visit. I’ll email him tomorrow.

Hoping for a dreamless sleep tonight.

Signed, 
Dale R.