My alarm went off at 7.30 this morning. I hit snooze, and as per usual, after 5 minutes, was too tired to do anything, so smacked my phone, which tends to turn off the alarm. Not great. So I then slept for another half an hour. Not only did this make me late leaving the house for my weekly clean in Acle (luckily bad traffic meant I had a valid excuse, my over-sleeping was not brought into question), but this also allowed for 30 minutes of mental half-awake, I've-turned-my-lights-on style dreams.
The setting was this big old village-hall looking room, except I think it was supposed to be the drama studio at my high school (which is odd, as I don't dream about high school ever anymore). And whatever was happening there was quite relaxed, but I think my notion of school slipped into my dream, because we were all sitting on the floor, with cushions and shit, staring up at the stage. I found Al, Nathan, Macina, Will, Coates, Matt and, sitting nearby, Adam, all in a group. We all sat together chatting. Nathan was explaining who we were about to see to me - it was an Italian opera singer famous for being directly related to the mafia; Macina of course made comment. People asked why certain people were missing - I explained Maria's in Italy, and Macina explained that Martin and Paul were in Aberdeen, filming. As you do. So, this guy comes out, fat and in a suit, and starts singing. Adam starts to applaud really loudly, and we all shift further away from him, annoyed. Around the edge of the room was a big black curtain, I think they're useful for the sound quality, or something, and there's about two feet gap between them and the wall. As we shuffle, Matt becomes lost in curtain. As the others laugh at the situation, I try and help him out, and as I do so I notice that at the back of the room, hidden from sight by the curtain, and only therefore visible by me, is an Observer (creepy people in Fringe, completely bald, suit and hat, briefcase and no eyebrows, from the future, able to read minds, very fucking scary and can apparate suddenly and move through time and space effortlessly, rending human weapons useless). When I see him I panic, and hastily act like I didn't see him, and try block my thoughts, in case he's looking. I then realise something else: a lot of the people in the room are quite important. Some very intelligent professors, some financial types, lots of suits and lots of power. I realise how stupid it is that a bunch of post-grad idiots may be caught in a terrorist attack, and I think 'fuck, we need to get out', but obviously I can't tell anyone. So I take out my phone, and try typing a message. I write the message really slowly, in between each word I think up a bunch of other words, telling a weird story, so that my thoughts can't be infiltrated. My message includes a warning about being mind-read. I pass it to Matt, and Nathan reads it over his shoulder. They both stare at me, terrified but blank. As the message gets passed along, Al is the only one to speak up, offering 'I really need a piss, can we go find the toilets?' but Nathan points to the toilets door - it's next to where the Observer is hidden. My phone is passed back to me, and Al points to Adam - he wants to warn him too. I shrug and pass him back my phone, but Adam reads it and basically swears at us all, so we decide to leave him to die.
I can see a stage door up and to the left of where we are sat; I nod Matt towards it; he does lots of hand gestures I don't understand. I try explain this to him, and he passes me his iPhone, earplugs and all, and mimics music in ears. I realise what he's doing - keeping the observer's out. Everyone follows suit, but it means that we now have to communicate through sign language. Al, Will and Macina stay in the room, trying to 'act casual', whilst Matt, Nathan, Coates and I explore the stage doors. We find two path ways, so me and Nathan take the right, and the other two take the left. As we walk, I realise how quiet it is outside my earphones - the stage doors must be soundproof. I turn the music down, and as we turn a corner we hear voices, and I recognise one immediately - that of Peter Bishop / Pacey Whitter / Joshua Jackson. And of course, being my dream, I don't understand which one he is. So he explains that he's Joshua, but in Peter's world ie. the Fringe world is real, but the Observers are after him, so it's best to call him Pacey, so they don't know who we're referring to. He tells us that there are no ways out back here, so he comes with us to find the rest of the guys. We find coates and matt, but the boys have disappeared from the hall, so we start to panic a bit. 'Pacey' tries to keep us calm, and hands us each a observer-tech gun, that can kill them. I ask where he got them from, he won't tell me, so I ask where Olivia and Walter are, and he looks sheepish. He explains that the observers, through their manipulation of time, have once again deleted peter's existence from their universe, but he has once again survived, despite being in the wrong timeline. He therefore is on his own, but really thankful for meeting me, because no one else believes him. Suddenly loads of people in the hall are scattering and we can't see the observers, so Nathan opens the door a fraction and takes out his earplugs - a high, deafening tone is screeching through everyone's minds. We see the opera singer has collapsed, and some italian looking thugs are around him, controlling the noises being made. Matt understands, and tells us all - the Mafia are on our side. Obviously the observers, in wanting to control everything, have pissed off the mafia, and they're fighting back, with the same idea matt had but much more controlled / effective. So we approach the Mafia, and in following them back to the dressing room, find Macina, Al and Will, who had all figured out what we just had. Suddenly all the lights go out and we're trapped, the music has all been switched off and the dressing room can't hear the high-pitch tone. 'shit', Pacey mumbles, 'everyone grab hold of everyone else, we need to know we're all still here.' We all shuffle around in the dark, saying names and checking people are all still present. Yes, we're fine. I'm in between Nathan and Pacey, and Nathan's making stupid comments about how he has sweaty palms, and he's really sorry. I feel Pacey's grip tighten, something's wrong. Suddenly we're all yanked; like a rope attached to your insides is stretched, and we're moving through time and space, and we're in a really bright, cold room, all concrete and ugly and plain, huge windows showing the disgusting New York of 2037. As we land, everyone is split up; dozens of observers have descended upon us and are trying to seperate our limbs, any touching, and I notice one observer is on the floor in pain, he's the one that just lifted us out and he's taken the hit for such a move. In the light I see how many - us 8 plus another 10 or so mafia members. People scramble to safety and shit starts getting real: the Mafia guys have gone into war-mode, and with their own tech they're blasting the room apart trying to shoot the observers, who are apparating around the room like bouncy balls. I'm still holding on to both nathan and pacey, but an observer is getting dangerously close to me as he avoids the mafia gunshots, and pacey yanks me towards him, leaving nathan exposed. An observer lands above him, and he's reading him, we can all feel he is, and I panic that my thoughts haven't been hidden at all, and suddenly Will jumps out from behind Nathan and shoots the observer square in the chest. I wonder how Will got the gun and see Coates' body at the back of the room. Something hits me; a wave of realisation, shit, coates is dead. Shit, I might die. Shit. I look back to Pacey and he's loading a gun, and he's putting it in my hands, and putting grenades in my pockets and I feel terrified. But behind him, I see Al, Macina, Matt, and a couple Mafia guys in combat mode. And they're all fighting like its a war, and the block of rubble that Al is hiding behind gets blown apart, and he turns, exposed, and three observers creep in on him, so he opens fire on them and falls in a blaze of glory, killing two and wounding the third, who then tries to apparate away but Matt grabs his arm and puts a gun to his head; as he does so, sirens trigger, and I see maybe 10 more observers crowding in on him, not wanting him to get to their safety point, and I see his earplugs in, he's blocking their thoughts, because this is a plan, this is a set-up, and he's the bait. Macina, Will and Nathan have been pushed to the back of the room by the mafia, who open a grenade-looking device and throw it to Matt, who catches it, and smiles at his surrounding foe, and a gas leaks out: 80%nitrogen, 20%oxygen, its our pure air that they can't breathe. I try move toward the smog, try to figure out if Matt will survive, I can't figure out if the gas is actually poisonous to us, because if it isn't, why did the mafia move the other boys away? But as I ponder this, pacey moves us out of the room and we're running. The whole of central park has been concreted over and it's vast, and it looks like a concrete desert, never ending, as far as the eye can see, the direction in which we're headed has two tower blocks at the end but nothing else, making it an open landscape, and we're both very easy targets. He's trying to teach me to run whilst crouching, and I can't focus because my music is too loud, and he's not got music, and I'm worried about his thoughts. But then I hear his thoughts: like a radio in my brain, he's telling me it's fine, he's mastered their control of thoughts, he's hacked into their system and he can do it all himself. I'm amazed at this, and ask how, as Etta died before she could teach him. 'in this universe, where I don't exist, there is no etta, but there is a lincoln, and he didn't die'. Lincoln; of course, he would never have moved to the alternate universe. Pacey's thoughts linger in my mind as we run, and then I think about moving faster - time-jumping, 'leaping', spiderman, superman, all the ways in which one can cross distances faster. And then, we're flying, we're in the air, and we're being attacked by the observers. Full on flying/fighting sequence, I'm pretty terrified and don't know how it is that I'm flying, so refuse to let go of Pacey's hand, and then I look over to the two tower blocks we were running towards and I see the Boys all lined up on the ground, half of them firing at the observers, the other half manning a giant machine which appears to be the reason why we're flying. And I duck as a shot comes straight past me, and I feel Pacey ducking and dodging too, and I find in my pocket one of those banger things that create a huge amount of smoke, magicians use them, and I remember I found it earlier that day, and steal an observers hat, throw the banger as hard as I can on top of the hard surface of the hat, and as the smoke clouds around them, I let go of Pacey's hand and I drop, and I fall quite quickly, and my ankle hurts, and I hit the ground and start running toward the boys, and they've done something to the machine so it's flashing, it looks like a bomb; like they've created an anti-gravity ball, shelled it, and now they're going to blow it up, and I don't know where Pacey is but I can't afford to look back because I'm directly beneath it so I keep running and as I run I see that who I'm following is Macina, Nathan and some Mafia guys, and I stumble slightly, and I fall and scrape my hands but roll and push myself up and keep running, and I think I'm bleeding now but I can't stop running, the huge ball in the sky has a shadow which I'm still inside, and the the edge of the shadow is not too far away now, so I push myself harder, I keep running, I run past the big machine, and it has five seconds left on the clock, and I keep running and I'm counting in my head, and I hear another voice counting in my head, but it's not Pacey, and I'm confused, and I'm listening, and I realise it's Lincoln, and he's urging me on, just a couple more meters, come on, 3, 2, almost there, 1... I turn around, knowing that if this is my last moment I may as well see it, and I see Pacey is being half-carried by Matt and Will, and they're wearing gas masks and they throw him out of the shadow and he comes tumbling towards me, and the sky explodes in a huge inferno, and as the fire rains down from the now dying bubble, and the smoke is creeping out of the gaps, and the suited bodies start falling from the sky like flies, Matt and Will stand over us, bloody and sweaty and triumphant, and pacey is in a heap next to me, he's missing an arm, he's badly bleeding, and Will, through his gas mask, says "and the skinny guys win again", beaming. Pacey laughs, but in my head I hear Lincoln; he's telling us to keep moving, one observer stayed alive long enough to alert the rest of our position. We scramble together, we walk towards the tower blocks, and... I wake up.