Sci-fi overdose.

May 17, 2002. I had a weird dream this afternoon. It ended like this:

The three of us were on the terrace, conversing. I leaned back onto the ledge, separating from the conversation to look at the glorious starlit sky while they continued.

The sky was crowded with stars. I had never seen a sky so bright before. Never one so beautiful. The effect was literally hypnotic. The sky span madly as I watched. Everything rushing to my right, then to right and below, then down, then right and down again, then slowing to a halt only to start spinning to top-left...

I watched enchanted as the spinning madness continued changing direction randomly.  I started to make out a thicker concentration of stars running in a belt around the sky. The Milky Way! I had spent a lifetime looking at the sky in despair trying to find it, cursing the pollution each time. Here it was now, visible in all its glory. As I watched, the belt became brighter and brighter, until I had no trouble at all identifying its boundaries. The sky's spinning continued unabated.

And then I realised that nearly directly above me but a bit to my left were a group of stars holding steady in the sky. They were vibrating but they weren't moving with the sky. There could be only one explanation for that: they were spinning with the Earth. They couldn't be stars. They grew bigger as I watched.

By this time my companions had realised that the sky was not normal. They looked around wildly trying to make sense of what was happening.

I turned back to the little steady cluster, convinced that was where any forthcoming action would be. The first of them had grown to the size of a rising full moon, scarred white and perfectly round. The second was just a little smaller.

And then the meteor hit the atmosphere and burst into flame. As the sheet of exploding colour sent waves through the sky, a second meteor brightened through the haze and in turn caught fire. Then a third lined up behind it. The phosphor burn remained imprinted in my eyes for a good many seconds. What a spectacular sight!

I was broken out of the spell by a shooting pain in my left shoulder. Something had hit me a few moments before the fireworks had started. I sat up to survey the anarchy around me. Rocks of all sizes were falling out of the sky. My two companions were half way to the door, running for shelter as fast as they could. Beyond the parapet walls was the sound of much screaming. Car horns blaring, more screaming, and then the sound of a police or fire engine siren.

Anarchy was reigning. The sky was falling down. I surveyed my own situation quickly and decided I didn't have much hope of making it to the door without getting hit. I got off the ledge and dived under it, but there wasn't much space below. I hoped none of those rocks would bounce in. Then something furry and rope-like brushed my neck. The tail end of a little pup, also looking for shelter. I decided my situation there was hopeless and made for the door, hoping I wouldn't be hit. She saw me coming in and quickly ran to shut the door behind me. He was nowhere to be seen. Must have gone into hiding somewhere.

And then I woke up and realised that the sky couldn't possibly have been spinning. Inertia would have killed everyone within the first few seconds. But the image of the burning meteor still lingered. What a phenomenally spectacular sight! I wonder if I will ever see anything like that in real life.