I had a dream that I was wearing a chicken costume.
I was at a party at a banquet hall and was part of the entertainment. I took a break and leaned back against the wall – out of the way and off to the side. I lifted one chicken-foot-booted foot up and pressed the sole against the wall. Then did the same with the other one – at the same time.
So, back to the wall and both feet off the ground. I sort of hung there for a moment, then carefully pushed upward with my feet. I slid up the wall, now even further off the ground and unsupported. With a little effort, I made my way up and navigated the corner between the wall and the ceiling until I was stretched out across the ceiling.
Looking down, I waved to the party goers. They looked back up – interested, but not afraid.
I rolled over and crawled across the ceiling, trying to figure out what was holding me up there.
Was it magnets in the chicken suit and a metal ceiling? I didn’t feel any pull like you get when you shift a magnet and that seemed to rule that out.
Was it all in my head? A hallucination? Not likely – the people on the ground could clearly see me up on the ceiling.
I made my way across the ceiling and crawled down to the floor again. All through the trip I tried to keep as much of my body in contact with a solid surface. Seemed to be necessary but I didn’t know why.
Back on the ground, I got changed out of my chicken costume and headed to class. While the professor was talking, I casually lifted a pencil up off the desk and let it go in mid-air.
It didn’t fall. Instead, it hung there in the air unsupported.
A few classmates around me tried this as well and soon the air was filled with gently floating objects.
The professor came over and I explained what had happened with the chicken costume. He proposed a simple experiment – I would leave the room and walk away for 3 minutes, then come back. Getting out of range would tell if it was me specifically or something global.
I walked out of the room and down the hall, heading outside. I kept checking my watch to track the time and…. it didn’t seem to be progressing.
After a while – how long, I couldn’t tell since my watch wasn’t working – I headed back into the building.
And then I saw the problem. It wasn’t just objects floating anymore. Instead, everything was frozen in motion.
I hadn’t been defying gravity at all. Instead, I had just been falling so very slowly that it looked like I wasn’t falling at all. That explained the chicken costume on the ceiling (sort of) and the floating pencil.
As I progressed through the building I realized that I was the only one moving at all. Everyone and everything else was either frozen or slowed down so much that it didn’t matter.
I took off my useless watch and dropped it to hang in the air, then wandered around the silent building – full of people that I could no longer interact with.
It was frightening and lonely.
I wandered around the halls trying to interact – maybe bring my own time field to cover someone or something else. But, as my watch evidenced, it was me and only me that was on “normal” time.
I wandered back outside to see if the rest of the world was affected and that’s when I dragged myself out of sleep.
The alarm clock next to my bed seemed to flit back and forth in time for a while – it was 5:23, then 5:18, then 6:05 the next minute. The alarm started going off and I woke up the rest of the way.
I got out of bed and sat on the floor next to my cat. We hung out for a few minutes so I could settle back into time – then I got to my feet, got dressed, and went to work.
Things seem to be okay here, but if they day feels like it’s taking forever, it might be me.