Those Whacky MIB's

So I had this bizarro dream just prior to waking up this morning. I dreamed that the CIA showed up to recruit me while I was on vacation hiking. They said that was how it worked, and I had to go with them right then, I couldn't prepare anything and I couldn't tell anyone. (They had rounded some other candidates up as well, so I was with this group). I chuckled to myself they would come for an old guy like me.

Anyway, they started giving us this random stuff like a hat and some other survival-like stuff. We were apparently going somewhere on some kind of a survival course. They didn't come right out and say it, but it sounded (from others) like we could only go with what we had on our person and the stuff they gave us. It was shaping up like it was going to be an episode of the show 'Alone', but in a weird dream-like way. We had to walk all over the place through this campground to get the stuff they were giving us. Along the way I was secretly grabbing other stuff I saw along the way (things like gloves, some extra socks, food, knives, sunglasses, a bandana, etc.). Finally they gave us this big sleeping bag / shelter thing. And with that we were off.

They took us out to this remote forested location and left us. They didn't say when, or even if, they would be coming back. There was no particular objective, at least no instruction, we were just "there". We'd been dropped off at different locations like we were supposed to go it alone, but we weren't that far apart and they hadn't done a very good job concealing one location from another to anyone paying attention.

The first day was very short, we got there late in the day, so there wasn't much time to do anything except make camp and go to sleep. The next day I organized all my stuff and started getting some supplies like wood for fires, and water, etc. After a couple days I was pretty much living like a king with no major hardships, it was kind of fun actually. So I decided to go find some of the others. After a while I found one guy, and he was just a complete wreck, stuff scattered out all over and running around like a chicken with his head cut off. Then I left to go find some others (hey, it's a dream, right???). Soon I found some others and they were better off than the first guy, but still enduring hardship.

I thought to myself how dumb these guys were that had prepped us, and about how they didn't look to see if we'd all brought the same stuff. Clearly my grabbing a bunch of extra stuff had enhanced my position greatly. At first I felt like I was cheating, but was I? They hadn't told anyone what we were supposed to be doing, or even what the hell was going on. They had just rounded us up, threw a bunch of stuff at us and drug us out into nowhere-land.

Not knowing what the real game-plan was I hadn't really revealed my situation to anyone else. I just sort of took notes. I tried to help people where I could, or show them what they needed to do, but I didn't take any of their stuff (they had it hard enough already). I also didn't attempt to bring everyone together into one group (again, not knowing what the true objective was). I'd just show up, and move on alone later to someone else.

It took a few days to find most of the group (seems like 3-4 days in my dream), and I think I located about 2/3rds of them. Eventually I got the idea that maybe we should be trying to find our way back, and that no one was ever coming back for us. Many of the people I'd located disagreed and felt they'd be disqualified if they left. But we'd been given no rules, and no timeline, basically nothing. Eventually, myself and one other guy decided we were going to venture off (basically to find our way home). Everyone else stayed behind in their respective miseries.

On the morning we left, I'd packed up and was ready to go. I'd had a nice breakfast and (and I distinctly remember this part) I had dry socks. I met up with the guy who was going to leave with me at our agreed upon rendezvous point and we headed out.

It wasn't particularly hard bushwhacking our way through the forest and the walking was fairly easy. In my mind I knew it would be a long journey, but I wasn't particularly worried about it. After a day or so we were both pretty resolute about the decision we'd made to leave. Those who remained behind just became a memory. Life was pretty good, all things considered.

Then I woke up.

As I sat there on the edge of the bed recounting my dream (something I often like to do) I couldn't help but feeling I'd somehow cheated. But in retrospect, nobody had ever laid out any real rules, or any real objective...so how could I have cheated?

Obviously, I don't know the final outcome, other than to say I was feeling pretty good about our situation when I woke up. Don't know what happened to the rest, but I'm not sure I really care. They did what they wanted to do, and we did what we wanted to do.

I don't know, I just thought this was kind of an interesting perspective on values, rules and life.

The End.

You didn't even get some Ray Bans and flashy thing ?
Cheapskates.


.... could have at least let you keep the suit.

a reply to: DAVID64

Nope, no Ray-Bans (but I did cop a pair of Oakleys in the campground, because someone had stepped on mine).

And sadly, no flashy thing. Now that would have been COOL!!

I'm pretty sure the suit I was wearing was a pair of brush pants, a denim shirt and a wool sweater.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Had you stayed, maybe you’d be still dreaming...

Perhaps this was an astral abduction... and you were there in spirit.

Think if more people had the same “dream”...