polyphasic sleep dream

I’m sprinting across campus this morning, late for class.  Straight in front of me is Millikan Pond: decorative, clear, twenty feet wide and only two feet deep.  I’m wearing shorts and no one is in sight.  What the hell, I’ll just run straight across.  I’ve always passed this pond and thought about jumping in.

I reach the edge of the pond almost instantly, but time begins to slow down as my foot flies down towards the water.  Mid-stride, I begin to wonder if the refraction might have made pond look shallower than it is.  Maybe I should have at least broken stride and slowed down a little.  But it’s too late for regrets, and I fully commit myself so I won’t lose balance.

My foot enters the water, which is surprisingly warm.  The rest of me follows, and soon I start to stretch my foot out in anticipation of the unyielding force of the pond bottom pushing back on me.

Time snaps out of slow motion in an instant.

My foot doesn’t find the bottom.

Instinctively I close my eyes and my hands come up to protect my head as I fall.  But I don’t fall for long; almost immediately I feel weightless, suspended.  "I’m underwater,“ I think.  "But how on earth..?”

I open my eyes and freeze in shock.  I’m underwater, yes.  But through the crystal-clear water, I can see that the bottom is two hundred feet down!  In panic, I look up to see how far down I am, and see that the sunshine is twenty feet above me.  I pause.

“Ah,” I think to myself.  "I got this.  I’m dreaming, right?“

"NO!” my mind screams back at me.  "You were dreaming before!  Look around at the sides of the pool, look at the detail of those pipes and machinery and wires around you!  Compare that to how things looked when you were running across campus!  You might have been dreaming then, and I don’t know how you got here, but you’re sure as hell not dreaming now!“

"Dear God,” I realize, “That’s right.”  My momentary hope vanishes and I sink back into panic.  My mind gives up trying to understand and my body takes over, forcing me to swim upwards.  But my arms and legs aren’t meeting any resistance and I’m not moving anywhere.  Also, it feels like I’m pushing into something with my back.

Then my perspective slips, stops, and then completely shifts by 90 degrees.

Holy shit.  I’m lying on my back in the computer lab.  My feet are pointed towards the center of the room, and past them I can see the opposite wall of the lab two hundred feet away.  Leaning my head back to see behind me, I see the floor-to-ceiling window twenty feet away, with the sun glimmering in.  All around me are various machines and light fixtures and paraphernalia.

Oh man.  I was shaking.  I’ve had dreams that seemed real, but I’ve never opened my eyes while dreaming, seen my actual surroundings, realized they were real, and then kept dreaming with my eyes open using my surroundings as a backdrop.  Man, I’m still shaking.