I usually dream in the early morning for some reason, and today marks the visit of one of my strange REM-induced imaginings. I was on EDSA and right before Ortigas, maybe in front of Poveda, where the buses rattle on by on their plumes of smoke. I wasn't looking at them, though, but up at the sky, which--it occurs to me now--is unobstructed by the bulk of the MRT Ortigas Station. For some reason, Mulder and Scully were there, complete with the bulky early-season trenchcoats. We were all looking in the direction of Shaw Boulevard, but up at the sky.
"Hey look!" I called out to Mulder, "Aliens!" And right then, a thin, yellow beam of light shot across the sky like a meteorite, but it was bright enough to be visible in the daytime--possibly late afternoon. This was followed by the specter of a large bulk of flying technology--you kind of know by the black interspersed with yellow patterns--turning from behind a thick cloud cover.
I was then accosted by a little girl--about three or four--who seemed to have been lost. Her features are indistinct now, but I do remember she had a backpack. So off I took her to look for her guardians.
My perspective shifted then to a third-person camera view, focusing on some balding old man in glasses handling what appeared to be little toy men--not quite dolls. They had the same head-to-body proportions as Stewie from Family Guy, except their heads were slightly rounder and their eyes were closer to the nose. Their heads were also all orange, and their bodies all purple, like those cheaply molded plastic toys we see. And then I got a closer look at the toys: the right eyes contained two smaller circles in them, sitting side by side. Sometimes they would change positions within their eye.
The old mad-scientist type started muttering something malevolent. As is the case with arch-villains--it was obvious then what he was--like this, he had a large globe with him, as if to remind him of what he was about to conquer. He took the little toy men and started pushing them, head first, into the globe, training their weird little eyes on the interior. I had a Hermetic moment ("As above, so below"), and considered it a simulation of what I had just seen outside.
By that time, I had gotten the little girl into some building, and we were still looking for someone to pick her up. We were in a semi-circular room that looked like a cross between 40's and 60's architecture, with the polished wooden floors and staircase that followed the curve of the wall--like Eugene's house in Gattaca. One wall was flat, and had some kind of observation window, although there wasn't much to observe there. At that point, I was fully cozignant of the old man's nefarious intentions, so when the little girl gave out a cry of alarm, I knew it had something to do with him. True enough, inside her backpack was one of those plastic toy men, and it was moving. It was slow at that time, but I'd seen enough TV and movies to know it'd gain speed soon enough. I took it from the girl, laid it on the floor, and we hurried out of the room. As I locked the door, I had a vision of flames erupting on the inside, so I knew we didn't have that much time.
The room we were in was an exercise in decadence: it was part of one of the office buildings near EDSA and Ortigas, but its design was solely for its owner's taste and needs--whatever they were--and wasn't meant for office work. We found this out because we were going down a fire escape and emerged once more near the corner of both avenues, beside the mall.
I was afraid then that going into any of the malls would subject us to the old man's panopticon, so I thought of going to this fictitious park (the only kind we have in some parts of the city) build by one of the pharmaceutical companies that have operations in the Philippines. It's supposed to have lots of open spaces, few places where cameras might be hidden. I placed a call to someone, asking for backup.
Getting there gave us another unrestricted view of the sky, this time of planes flying here and there. The local planes were the usual stiff vehicles we know them to be, but the others took on stranger shapes. A specimen from Air France in particular looked more organic, and was flapping its wings, much like the languid manner a swan has once it has achieved a high enough altitude. Still, we hurried on to the park.
My priorities shifted upon getting there; it became less of a matter of global conspiracies and personal security, and more of ... socializing. My old colleagues from Makati were there, for one reason or another, and were regaling me of the new kinds of committee work they were doing. I retroactively gained another purpose in going there, flashing on a memory of reading an email asking for a meeting at one of the cafés there. Because of some communication mixup, they ended up going there just to hang out instead. The little girl was all but forgotten when Aldus turned up, leading to a strange meeting between him and my former officemates.
Now I don't know what happened to Mulder and Scully, the old man and his panopticon, and the little girl. I hate these to-be-continueds.
