I was sitting in a subway car in New York City. This wasn't real new york, because the the subway car was sparkling white with blue trim; the clean was pristine. I was sitting on the blue seat and I was looking through the plexiglass when something next to me caught my eye. It was a worn, orange backpack, the contents of which were spilling out onto the bench. On the top of the pile was something that looked like an ID card. I examined this more closely. It was some kind of libertarian driver's license that proclaimed that the holder was fit to drive and didn't need the help of the government to prove it. The name and the face on the card matched my friend, Graham. I resolved to take the backpack and its contents in order to return them to my friend. I would have to be sneaky because I was worried that I would look like I was stealing the backpack. I placed the orange backpack inside my navy one and ran off the train.
I flew out of the station. Ran down winding corridors of stone. I was unsure if I was being perused or not. In the interest of caution I acted as though I was. I finally came to an opening to the outside. There were no doors, just an opening in the stone to rain and mist. I appeared to be on the side of a building, though I could only see about one story above and below. The rain seemed to fall from an upper cloud and pass my face on its way to the lower. I thought that it would be cool if the rain didn't hit the ground but somehow re-mingled with the aerosolised water that made up the cloud above the street. I imagined that the people below were walking through a mist; I hoped this was true. I was being rained on but I didn't seem to care. I moved down the ledge on the outside of the building a bit, took a seat and removed Graham's backpack from my own.
"What are you doing?" The girl was smiling as she ate a sandwich under her umbrella. She seemed like a pleasant sort of person, the kind that wasn't terribly concerned that they were on a ledge on the outside of a building in the rain. She was wearing red sneakers. I told her that I had happened upon my estranged friend's pack and I was going to search inside to see if there was anything with his address on it in order to return it to him. She offered to take the bag to Graham, as he was her neighbor and it would be no trouble at all. I let her, because I trusted her, also I was having a lucid dream and I wast tired of dealing with the backpack.
The city of New York was a caricature of pictures I have seen, overly simplified and sterile. Once the girl had finished her sandwich and left with Graham's pack, the upper clouds began to lift and I could see higher up my building and some of the surrounding ones. They were all grey stone, with widely spaced windows. I knew I didn't live in new york, nothing was right here, there wasn't any odd detail poking out of the fog. It was a shell of an idea. Were I actually lived was another mystery. I tunneled in an out of this idea as I shifted in and out of sleep. Even a few minutes after I was finally awake all I was sure of was that I wasn't in new york.
