A year in a night...

I slept late because my dream went into overtime. Sorry 'bout that.

Let me stream-of-consciousness this before I forget all of it. Pardon any typos, this is a first draft straight outta the forebrain...

We were moving and Bobbi had gotten a huge old apartment in a big Victorian walkup in some apparently fictional dream city down in Appalachia someplace. East Tennessee? Western North Cackalacky? Hilly, winding streets, very old architecture in the town center.

Anyway, the building was half on a college campus, and I rolled up with the moving truck late at night, worried about the legality of all my old Mausers and Mosins. Bobbi, who was on her way to work the graveyard shift, assured me it was perfectly legal to have guns on campus, and so I backed the truck up as close to the building's entrance as I could and started carrying old rifles in by the armload and stacking them in the lobby. (For the price of a single nice AR-15, you can own more Mosins and rusty Gew.88 "Commission Rifles" than you can carry in three trips!)

As I was getting ready to carry a load up the staircase, a commotion happened around the corner and, like an idiot, I went to see what all the flashing blue lights were about. I left the rifles where they were in the lobby, figuring that a bunch of low theft value rusty five-foot-long Soviet tomato stakes would be safe unattended for a moment. I had been using the single-point sling on a carbine to carry it in the same load and, rather than leave it, I just trusted the fact that it was dark out to keep people from seeing the carbine I had half-covered with my shirt.

There had been some kind of stickup at a convenience store half a block away and a crowd had gathered and I rubbernecked from the dark out at the edge of the crowd. Totally spaced that I'd left a pile of surplus rifles stacked like cordwood in the apartment lobby until I noticed the sky getting light.

I hurried back, hoping nobody would see the carbine and freak out. When I got there, I found Bobbi, already home from work and in her pyjamas, hauling the last load of rifles up to the apartment and giving me a chiding look.

I sat down for a second before going out to move the truck, as it was getting on towards full light and the street out front was getting busy. When I got up to finish the chore, I was outside before realizing that the carbine had somehow come unhooked from the single-point sling and must still be in the lobby, next to the chair in which I'd been sitting.

Just as I was headed back in through the doors, this dude came bustling out past me with the gun, and I was all "Hey!" and he took off running.

"Hey! Stop that dude! He's got a stolen gun!" People are turning and looking and I'm running as best I can, but he's got a good 25-yard lead and opening it wider when he stops and turns and starts aiming the loaded carbine at me. Right there in front of God and everybody.

He's well down this broad flight of steps, standing behind a concrete planter that comes about waist-high on him. He fumbles with the folded stock for a second before leaving it alone and looking through the optic. I'm going for my holstered pistol and fortunately Dream Me's stolen carbine was an HK G36 and the guy can't find the charging handle and I squeeze off a single shot at probably 30 yards and he goes down like a sack of potatoes*...

...and I'm standing over him trying to keep a gun on him with one hand and pressing my cell phone on a bystander with the other "Call the cops! Call 911! This guy stole that rifle and tried to shoot me with it! Call 911!" and trying to remember everything from Massad Ayoob's MAG-40 class.

And everything was all jake and it was self-defense and I had witnesses a-go-go, which helped, no doubt.

The other disjointed part of the dream that sticks out is that I was taking a shortcut along a walking trail which skirted one edge of the campus, and it bordered this area that was all fumaroles and small volcanic cones and geysers and bubbling mud pits, which is odd topography for southern Appalachia. The local hovercraft enthusiast's club was out, and there were these two- and four-fan hoverbikes and personal hovercraft parked up all over the place. While the causes of all the other elements are fairly obvious, I have no idea how this part got into the dream.


*This part was interesting. I've been trying to get plenty of range time, and I do a lot of shooting strong hand only and weak hand only, and try to practice fundamental marksmanship, and improve my shooting skills, and in the dream, I was aware that this was a long and difficult shot and concentrated hard and was surprised at the effect of the first shot, fully having expected to need to fire more.  After the whole thing, when I reloaded after the incident (yes, the dream police even let me keep my heater. I want to move to Dreamville.) I noticed that the remaining rounds were all bound up in the magazine like the TulAmmo at Blogorado last year. I'd have had a second shot and then a *click*.