The first thing I recall is sitting in the passenger seat of a 2-seater, side-by-side, fighter jet, on what seemed to be a parking lot next to a street near some military installation.  Suddenly there was some call to action, and a bunch of guys in other fighter jets began mobilizing.  I recall feeling a bit out-of-place, because I had only limited fighter-jet training/certification at that point, in terms of my military career.  So my sense was like OK, well if this is a ‘calling-all-cars’ type of thing, then I’ll join in, but obviously felt a bit under-qualified to be a front-line fighter.  At the same time it was like I had a flash of vision of seeing myself as Kimi Raikkonen, which seemed a bit nonsensical in the context of piloting a military fighter jet, because obviously he’s an F1 driver, and while driving an F1 car is often referred to as ‘piloting’, it seemed again a bit of a mismatch in skillset.  So at first I started to taxi the plane in the same direction as the other jets, which seemed to be toward a highway onramp.  I was a bit concerned because I wasn’t sure where the proper runway was and I considered the potential in this emergency situation for the guys to use the public highway to take off.  As we were rolling forward the pilot in the plane directly to my left looked at me and radioed over that I ought not to go any further, and that doing so might be grounds for some disciplinary action if I were to overstep in this case.  I had a feeling of relief that I wasn’t obligated to join in this mission because I anticipated being at a disadvantage if I were to get into battle with new equipment, trying to learn it for the first time and fight simultaneously.  I turned it around and headed back. At the same time I seemed to learn about, observe, and vicariously experience a weird ‘feature’ of this particular fighter jet, which was that there was no good solution for pilots who suddenly needed to pee.  Rather than having some kind of bladder or container to pee into, or even just soaking into their flight suit, in this case all the pee just collected at the bottom of the cockpit, and sloshed around the pilot’s feet, about ankle deep.  I observed a conversation between one of the more experienced pilots describe this to his daughter, who apparently was with him for a ride-along, and she demonstrated learning by finishing his sentence or repeating the rule “If you have to go, you just go!”

Then suddenly it was like I was back on the base in the evening. Suddenly there was an alarm and a voice over the loudspeaker that all people in a particular unit had to get a particular pistol that was issued to them, then show up at a particular location, ASAP.  For some reason, I remember seeing some Roman numerals indicating a seven (VII) had been called, but I thought I belonged in unit ten (X), so there was a moment of dissonance but I was sure I had to respond for this drill.  I happened to have a black sack with me, like a  draw-string backpack, with several holstered guns in it.  I rummaged through it to see if I had the particular “Jack” gun which was required for this roll-call drill.  I first took out a smaller sized gun, which was kind of like a stub-nosed revolver.  Then I reached in again and pulled out a black gun that either had a long narrow handle or barrel which had some curve to it, and that informed me that it wasn’t the one I needed.  Then I pulled out a third gun which was odd because at first glance it appeared to be missing the chamber and barrel.  I looked at it more closely, confused by what I saw, as it was a mostly-white handle, with the interior section in front of the hammer, where one would expect the firing pin, darkened to a rust or brown color. Then I became aware that it essentially was some kind of hinged-construction configuration, and I had been holding it backward.  That made finding the second piece easy, as it was like ‘hiding’ behind my hand. So I unfolded it, clicked it into place.  That was good to figure out, but it wasn’t the right one for this drill either, and that was all the guns I had with me, so I went back to my apartment to retrieve the proper one.  On the way there I contemplated the time that this was taking to get collected and get to the right spot on time– obviously this was an exercise to teach guys the value of being aware of where all their stuff was at all times, to be ready in case of emergencies in order to respond swiftly.  I seemed to believe that most guys would be in the middle of something where they had no chance of getting there before me, so I wasn’t overly concerned with taking a bit of extra time to stop by my apartment.  Better to be earlier, even if there was no great benefit and which would carry a small burden of waiting, than to be too late; real trouble would probably be for the last ones to arrive.

I arrived at the apartment area, and nearly attempted to go into the door immediately to the left of the correct one in the hallway. That was quickly sorted, then I went inside and found the correct gun: a large mint-green Desert Eagle style pistol.  I grabbed it, then noticed that my roommate was there– a slender, fit, petite, shortish-length red-haired girl wearing mostly black.  It was like I knew she was my roommate but at the same time it was like seeing her for the first time.  Her back was to me as she was standing on a stool or something which elevated her, so her midsection was more in my direct line of sight.  She was doing some routine task, like putting something into or taking something out of an overhead cabinet above a countertop.  I went over to the sink to grab a quick swig of mouthwash in order to freshen up a bit, not wanting to take any extra time required for a full-brushing. On the way to the sink I said to her “You’re just too damn cute!” which was with that tonal quality that revealed how I suddenly realized how attracted to her I was, that it was something I couldn’t ignore or hide anymore.  She responded immediately with “So are you!” which felt good because it seemed to reciprocate what I had expressed. It was more than platonic affection from her perspective as well.

It seemed like it would have been appropriate to have had a bit of a special ‘moment’ together.  I definitely looked forward to returning to see her afterward,  but I just could not delay for this drill any longer, so I got a move on and quickly arrived at the specific meeting place, which was like a patio near a beach.  There were maybe about a half-dozen other guys who had arrived before me, relatively few in proportion to the whole unit, and a few officer-level guys were ‘drafting’ the guys as they arrived much like picking teams for a pick-up game of basketball.  I don’t know exactly how many teams there were, or who was on whose team, but the officer seemed to be pleased to get myself and one other guy on his team. This other guy was probably in his young-twenties, blond hair, pale skin, blue eyes, average height.  I thought of him as a bit ‘green’, inexperienced, etc, all ‘bright-eyed and bushy tailed,’ probably an ‘overachiever’ type.  He came over and wanted to chat me up right away, like he wanted to be buddies with me since we were the like-minded guys who were on the officer’s short-list, likely to be groomed for the leadership roles, etc.

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