The first thing I remember is being in an indoor place like an office with many other people.  We were doing some activity regarding modifying text on a piece of paper.  The paper had white-out covering up particular sections of the lettering.  I was holding something like a paint brush, and I brushed away the cover up that was over a particular section which revealed a “10” underneath in blue ink.  There were many long tables in this room, with other people doing this same kind of treatment to their respective papers.  I guess we were finished; there weren’t any instructions but people began filing out, so I followed.  I put this piece of paper I was working on in an envelope, then placed it on top of my stuff inside a small duffle bag, about the size of a normal carry-on for a plane trip; the top flap of fabric zipped around like a “U” shape, but I had it unzipped at that point.  Then I went out of this place, was suddenly driving a car, and had to go through one of those checkpoint booths.  I then realized this whole operation was in China.  So I drove down the road, maybe about a ½ mile, then came to some lane partition signage, like when you get close to airport terminals, where you have to pick a lane.  Each of the lanes went in a different direction, and seemed to have their own control-stations; I just remember the sense of wanting to get it right, choose the right one, since going through the wrong one might cause excessive delays, or maybe permanently lock me into the wrong thing altogether.  So I read the signs — I believe I chose the one that said “Advantage” which was in the third slot out of four, counting from left to right.  They were blue signs with yellow lights.

Then suddenly I was indoors, like I’d gotten off a plane after a flight, and had been ushered through a gift shop at the destination airport before going on to the bag claim or transportation services area.  I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, like where do I go from here, etc? I turned around and saw some people streaming through, coming downstairs and through the shop; I was checking to see if any of them had their papers as well, but didn’t see anyone with them.  I had a brief chat with a woman who I recognized from the text modification office from earlier, and we just had a quick chuckle about the fact that there were no instructions about what to do with the papers, where to go, etc, everything was either poorly or loosely organized, or we were all on a need-to-know basis, etc.  Apparently no one really knew what was going on– it wasn’t just me.  So then I remembered that my ex-girlfriend Caroline, was also on this plane that I had come in on, so I hung out for a few moments to see if she might file through as well; maybe we could put our heads together about a strategy for where to go next.  I considered the possibility that she was ahead of me, which might mean waiting for a really long time, but doubted that probability, so decided it was worth the risk of waiting to see if she’d appear.  Sure enough, she did come down and through rather quickly, wearing a turquoise shirt, and seemed happy.

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