The Time I Witnessed the End of the World because Congress Couldn't Agree on Anything

Last night I dreamt that I lived in the future and university was just a place where geniuses dressed in gray jumpsuits with white racing stripes sat in a circle and opened their minds so that blue and purple energy came out and flew around the room. I liked to joke that my mind was so open that soon it would be empty, but I wasn't completely joking. My professors said that mindpower was like love—the more you gave, the more you produced—but I wasn't sure they knew what they were talking about. One of my professors was a little more intelligent. He looked like the dad from Bonanza who I guess was on the old Battlestar Galactica because I saw like two minutes of it once when I was flipping through the channels. (So that's where him in space comes from. It would have been super freaky to see the dad from Bonanza in a space-traveling future if I hadn't seen him on an SF show!) Earth was very full of people and almost all city. I don't think we produced much of our own food anymore.
Anyway, suddenly this huge white alien ship that looked a lot like the International Space Station at a hundred scale docked in our upper atmosphere and started either sucking out or poisoning the air (or both). This alien race also cut off our food supply. Our world congress contacted this alien race, who were the Star Trek kind of alien in that they looked like gray people in fancy high-shouldered robes, and asked them to stop, pretty please.

The captain of the alien ship said his people had decided that our planet was overpopulated, corrupt, and a drain on galactic resources. However, as we watched this speech on TV, my smart professor told me that he had inside information that these aliens were really experimenting on us to see if their atmosphere-stealing equipment worked, how fast it worked, what the average planet's response to atmosphere-stealing would be, etc. They wanted to use the technology on their enemies, but they had to experiment like the US experimented with nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands after WWII.

As we gradually ran out of food and air over the coming weeks, people started going nuts. People fought over the last candy bars from vending machines. Others committed suicide. My university held many extra mind-opening sessions, hoping our combined brainpower could blow the alien ship away. Congress couldn't decide on any course of action besides asking nicely. If we prepared weapons to attack the ship, some feared we would draw the wrath of the whole alien race. If we tried to sabotage their equipment, some feared we would fail.

At some point for some reason, my sister and I snuck on their ship and ended up eating crackers, grapes, and brie that the aliens had lying around. This was interesting because we both are allergic to penicillin and therefore have no business eating brie. We both knew that, but we were so hungry that we decided to risk anaphylaxis and swallowed it anyway. I skipped the crackers though because I'm gluten intolerant. An alarm went off when my sister and I took the food, so we went running off still chewing down the white metal grating walkway—so loud!—as the aliens chased us. They stopped chasing us once we hit the ground though because Earth is outside their jurisdiction.

Finally, as the planet's population came closer to total destruction, my smart professor and I flew out into space in his little silver spaceship and used our minds to put the alien ship in a time lock, so that this one pink-and-white shuttle kept detaching from the ship, flying a few yards, and snapping back to dock. It was only a temporary solution, and then I woke up.

The Time I Was a Mermaid and Fell in Love with Superman

During my mission, I dreamt that I was Ariel from The Little Mermaid, except I wasn't a cartoon and I looked like Sister Vance, my mission companion. (She had long red hair like Ariel.)
One day I was swimming around in the ocean, when down floated a Brandon Routh–Dean Cain Superman. Lex Luthor had hung kryptonite around his neck and kicked him into the water. (I'm pretty sure this happened in one of the Superman movies.) I swam over to Superman and removed the necklace. Superman thanked me and swam/flew off.Lex Luthor was so mad at me that he captured me, put me in a tank of water on a big oil tanker, and sent me off to a zoo in Metropolis. Superman flew in and saved me. He and I fell in love.
We went to my father, King Triton, to tell him that we wanted to get married (which was fine because Superman can breathe underwater). The king got really mad, but when I told him how much I loved Superman, he decided it was okay. Superman and I were happy and kissed. A lot. And then I woke up.

The Time I Tried to Prevent the Fall of a Slavic/Teutonic Empire with Magic

Last night I dreamt I was a teenager and lived in a huge nineteenth-century Slavic or Teutonic palace. My parents worked there or something. My best friend was the teenaged crown prince (except his uncle was the emperor, which would make the heir like a duke or something). The palace was all gold-leaved carved wood and red velvet.

Anyway, there was this evil adviser to the emperor who was a mixture of Rasputin and Jafar. He made a plot to murder the emperor and his heir with magic. He struck the emperor first, and I could see it happening even though my friend and I were all the way on the other side of the palace. The emperor was tied to a chair and green smoke was all around him.

I told my friend what was happening, and he strapped on his sword, grabbed my hand, and started running through the palace to get to his uncle. We ran through a big concert hall with a red curtain like from the Moulin Rouge! DVD, up huge flights of thickly carpeted stairs that slowed us, and into a huge amphitheater that looked a little like an ornate version of the House Chamber in the Capitol Building. I was so tired. I was wheezing, and my shins burned.

"Come on!" said my friend, pulling me along. I wanted to let him go alone, but I knew he could not fight the wannabe usurper without my magical help.

I sprinted off the balcony of the chamber and swooped down with my arms outstretched. I was flying! I wanted to fly all the way to the small tower room where the emperor was dying, but I didn't have that in me. I looked down. My friend had disappeared.

I didn't know where I was going. I needed to be with him, but I'd never been in that part of the palace before. I tried to follow him, but I just ended up in the concert hall again. I closed my eyes and saw my friend blaze into the tower room with his sword out, and then I woke up.

The Time I Received a Second Mission Call and Ended Up Working as an Exotic Dancer

Last night I dreamt that I decided to go on a second mission during a very warm and very spiritual session of stake conference in this open warehouse place. It was August, and the yellow late-summer sun streamed into the concrete building. I was wearing the wrinkle-free black dress with small white pin-dots that served me so well in mission pictures. I stood up and declared my intentions. But what about getting terribly sick last time? Was I just going to serve those last five months or another eighteen? I didn't know why I'd stood up. I didn't know why I had turned in my papers the first time.
Elder R. Gomez—who was my zone leader for nearly all of my actual mission—turned around in his seat in the row in front of me. He had on a missionary tag that just said "Elder" without his last name. It also had a little line like the service missionary tags have, but I don't remember what it said.
"Elder Gomez!" I said, my eyes wide. "I mean, R-h-radhames!" (My tongue was dry in my dream, and I couldn't roll my rs.) "It's so weird to call you by your first name."
"Good job," said Elder G. Gomez, who was sitting next to him. It was an Elder Gomez kind of a dream.
"So you're going on another mission," Elder R. Gomez said. "Do you think you can handle it?"
"Um . . ."
The stake president announced that I was going to Nebraska.
The scene changed. Elder R. Gomez and I were outside in the grass in the shade of a tree, and he was shaking his head at me. "You can't handle Nebraska," he said.
"No, it won't be that bad. I'll get used to the cold—maybe."
He shook his head again. "I wish I could go on another mission. Real life is hard. Women have it so easy."
I thought about tracting during a Nebraskan blizzard and felt very, very afraid.
I flew down an orange-lighted road tunnel, the breeze cutting through my trusty mission dress.
I was working as an exotic dancer. I was trying to pick out a costume for my next dance, but since I was lower on the totem pole, none of the pretty red-and-gold Indian-themed things were left. All I could pick from was powder pink and covered in feathers. I just wandered around and around the racks of stuff looking for something more flattering.
The top-billing dancers were wearing knock-offs of a famous designer's wear in order to "subvert perceptions of contemporary American culture," as one of the good dancers told me. I stole one of the nice outfits and dressed myself. When I went out on the stage I saw a guy I recognized near the door. (He wasn't someone I actually know.) I ran off the stage, and he followed me. He was there to rescue me. I just couldn't take real life.