At the beginning I was on a chairlift with my dad, going up the side of a dry, rocky, dusty mountain.  There was no snow; temperatures were ambient.  We were about 30 feet off the ground, and below us were a bunch of guys who looked like perhaps Afghanis.  It was a busy scene, guys doing different things, but suddenly a huge white bulbous tank came into view, about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.  Several guys were huddled around it, maybe moving it with ropes.  To me it looked like a giant propane tank that had been converted into a bomb.  It aroused some concern for me, but everything appeared stable as we passed by.  Suddenly my dad shouted “King Aziz!” and I noticed it turned a few heads.  Then he shouted “Abdullah!”  I had to hush him, not knowing what affiliations and allegiances existed among the guys below; who knew whether one might take offence and decide to shoot at us?  Fortunately nothing came of it.

Then we arrived or were just suddenly inside a narrow stone corridor which was on top of a place that felt natural, like a mountain, but also which had been constructed– like a pyramid?  There was sky above, although it was night time, and walls on both sides; the pathway sloped downward.  We started walking down, then I looked to the left through a gap in the wall; I saw a masked military special-forces guy who resembled one of the Counterstrike game’s counter-terrorist characters.  I noted that to my dad as evidence that something was ‘going on’.  So we kept going down the hallway a ways, then it morphed into an office building stairwell which led into the building’s lobby on the lower level.  As I made my way through the lobby I noticed several other people were there and it was apparent that the collective attention was on whatever was ‘going on’ in the upper levels of the building, which had caused this stir and aroused everyone’s concern.  Apparently there was some degree of ‘official response’ to the situation, as it seemed to be known, at least amongst myself and some others, that there were some military guys doing something up there.

Interestingly, one of the guys in the lobby was Keanu Reeves, who was dressed in a grey business suit, white shirt, perhaps a red tie — looking much more like he did in Devil’s Advocate.  I asked him if he was going to ‘suit-up’, insinuating that he might jump into the role of action hero as I gestured towards upstairs.  He looked up in that direction like he acknowledged what I meant but just shrugged off my suggestion– like he only played the hero, and this was the real deal.

I didn’t seem too vested in his decision, so I went outside.  I was standing in a courtyard outside of the building which now was just a typical office tower.  It was evening or night time.  Then there was suddenly a ‘boom’ explosion in the upper area, which drew the attention of the few people standing there with me.  It wasn’t so much scary as it was a confirmation of everyone’s suspicion that something was, indeed, ‘going on’ up there, as there hadn’t been any hard facts or details yet about exactly what– everyone had just been ushered out and were standing around waiting for direction, just wait-and-see.  The blast didn’t seem overly devastating or destructive; there was no subsequent focus on fire or falling debris, etc, and the building was still standing intact.  Suddenly I noticed some pieces of paper falling from the sky; as one got closer I recognized it as cash.  I jumped up to grab the first one before it landed, and it was a $100 bill!  Within a moment of thinking something like “Oh, they must have blown up the safe,” there was now cash everywhere on the ground like carpet.  I reached down and scooped up tons of it expeditiously, knowing it would draw more people, no doubt, so I wanted to get it collected and secured before others started showing up and potentially fighting for the scrap.  I felt like I got the lion’s share of what was there.  At first it was everywhere and there weren’t too many people, so it wasn’t competitive or warranting any aggression.  But then all but a few bills had been picked up; a few more people arrived and they each got a few bills for themselves.

At that moment I sort of did an inventory of what I had gathered.  I was wearing a black hoodie, and each of the front two pockets were absolutely full of neatly stacked and folded wads of cash.  I wondered what it added up to, as I wasn’t counting or paying attention to the denominations while scrambling to scoop it up.  I knew if at least some of them were $100’s it would be quite a sum.  Then I seemed to transition into a small office where I got a vision of a cash-counting machine which had the number 467 on it.  Then I took out a piece of paper which I had apparently also scooped up that was not a cash note, but looked more like a Monopoly game property card.  Weirdly enough, it had a small square cut out from the interior space, like a punch card or perhaps it was meant to be a special viewing window when used in conjunction with another piece of paper when lining up certain text.  It had something to do with an insurance company, and it had a value of $200 on it.  That made me a bit curious– was it something I could spend or redeem?  Then I noticed another thing I had picked up which was a photograph of a young professional guy in an office bathroom.  He was doing something very ordinary like washing or drying his hands; not sure exactly, but what sticks out was just a big cheesy grin on his face.

So then my sister appeared, and I wanted to show her the money I had collected, but we weren’t in a private setting.  We were outside and a bunch of people were hanging around, so I didn’t want to just whip out the fat stacks I had in my pockets, just in case some onlooker got ideas of envy, jealousy, entitlement, or what have you.  We went inside and suddenly in a dimly lit hallway.  Down toward the left I saw a door which I believed was to my bedroom– in my mind it was the bedroom I had as a teenager in the Lake Oswego house, which was on the second level in the house, but in this case it was definitely on the ground floor, and there were no other recognizable similarities to the actual house I lived in.  In this case the door was white and had blue light dimly cast on it, unlike the actual door which was wooden.  I was suspicious about trying to go in there for privacy, thinking perhaps it was rigged somehow like a booby-trap, made to look inviting by being somewhat familiar.

I was feeling a bit ‘flush’ with cash, so I decided to stop into a restaurant and basically drop cash on each table that had customers, as a way to just treat a few strangers to their meals.  It was a relatively small place, much like my local favorite breakfast spot.  The first table I went to was on the left side.  I pulled out some cash, peeled off a pill, noticed it was a $5, so then got another, which was also a $5, then another, then another.  I made my way around, basically putting about $10-15 per person on each table depending on how many were seated.  At the last table toward the right side I placed a $50 bill which was folded in a unique way: there were two horizontal folds, each about a ½-inch from the top and bottom edges, such that the amounts in the corners were out of sight, and the portrait of the president (Grant) was visible in the middle.  It was the ‘old’ style note that was printed up until 2004.  One of the guys at the table said thanks and we shook hands.

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