Fighting a giant robot worm

Date: 10/17/2019

I had a dream and it’s kind of hazy, I can only remember bits and pieces. The first thing I remember is being inside of these tunnels, they were semi-transparent but in a compact room so even tho you could see through, all you saw on the other side was the white color of the iron ceiling and walls just above and around you. The tunnels reminded me of a hamster’s tunnels kind of. Me and some other kids were set loose and it was like we had to get out in the time limit or we’d be shut in for the night, and left to escape the robot. I was with this girl from my class, because we had decided to stick together since two minds had a better chance of getting out than one. We could hear shouts from corners around corners, distorted laughs that sounded a little too much like screams, and words garbled by space and the thick plastic tubing. Dark shapes, with odd spots of color and vaguely shaped like people, could be seen through the miles of semi-clear tubing that formed the walls of the maze, in some turn just like ours but too far away to see. We got to this room and it was a break from the same old tunnels, inside was just a clock showing us how much time we had left. There was a hatch and when we stepped on it, it let us down a one-way path to a second set of tunnels. It was kind of like a check point; we knew we were on the right track. We went through the hatch and the girl was yelling at me to hurry, she could hear something. I listened and heard it too; the robot. Then I remembered my little sister, who had come down the tunnels as well. She had been ahead of me which meant that she was either already out, or stuck in the tunnels ahead of us somewhere. The strange squeals that reached us through the miles of tunnels got louder as we walked and it became more and more apparent that whoever was making those sounds was not having fun. Then there was a fork in the road, one seemed like the better path just based on both of our intuitions, the other lead to a path which showed several people moving around near the end of it, lost. I wanted to go down the ‘wrong’ path to find my sister or at least to help some other people, the girl said there wasn’t enough time. We ended up splitting, she went the way we thought was right and I went down the way everyone else seemed to have gone. The shapes grew larger, and I spotted two blobs moving fast down tunnels, making decisive turns ahead of me, and a few blobs on the ground, still. I felt my stomach flutter as I heard more muffled screaming and a strange sound that was like an engine whining, and rusted gears turning at the same time. I broke into a sprint towards the shorter blob, hoping that it was my sister. As I got closer and closer I saw more detail of the blobs, the ones on the ground were now obviously people, and the plastic tubing near them was splattered with dark brownish red which seemed pixelated through the layers of plastic between it and I. There were many split paths but I somehow had a gut feeling on every one, which turned out to be right when I emerged and found the first body. It was one of the people which I had seen on the ground, definitely dead. Selfishly I was glad to see it wasn’t my sister, or anyone I knew. Their face was mostly torn off but they had long red hair, they seemed young and they were wearing a powder blue sweater which was soaked in blood. I ran past and smelled a strong coppery smell and gagged. This is where the dream gets hazy. I ran past and I don’t know what happened, next thing I remember me and my sister are together, running from the robot. I’m glad to see her alive but at this point we’re both lost. Then we find what seems to be another ‘checkpoint,’ this one goes above ground. There’s snow for miles around and a giant plastic bubble around us, meaning it’s just meant for us to see how far we’ve come, not the actual end of the maze. There’s a weird smaller bubble covered in snow, where we came out of the tunnels from. There’s several holes in it, but the snow blocks the holes so it’s kind of random. Then I get an idea. I tell my sister that we need to grab the snow, move it, get in a hole and put it back. She and I do the same and come out in a secret looking area, a control room of sorts. It’s round and medium sized, the same size as the bubble. There’s several control panels with buttons and levers on them situated around the room, connected to the walls like desks. In the center there’s simply just a giant tube covered in metal, like a column. We mash the buttons but nothing does anything. It’s unused. Then we hear the robot slithering up the tube and we realize that the tube is how we came up. We hear it and my sister tells me we have to kill it if we want to get out alive. I’m reluctant but I know she’s right. I peek out of our hidey-hole and see the worm. It’s long, made of several small connected parts like those wooden snake toys, clinking when it turns. It has bronze and iron on its back, and gears turn deep inside of it every time it moves. It’s face is just a pointed end with red sensors that scan in front of it reminding me of a spider. On its tail, there’s an array of sharp tools. Weirdest of all is the fact that it can almost, in a way, turn invisible. Every few seconds its body shimmers and almost all of it disappears, save for a few sections of metal and its head. It doesn’t go completely away, but rather turns to the same plastic material as the tunnels. Then I realize that it’s at a disadvantage when it’s up here above ground; it used the tunnels to sneak up on us, since through the plastic we wouldn’t be able to see it with the invisibility thing it does. But above ground, even at night, we can see the plastic against the snow clear as day. My sister leaps out of a hole in the snow, for some reason the snow doesn’t break she just leaps through the snow and like phases through it. Then she starts shouting and gets the worm’s attention and runs back into a hole. We hear it bang against the metal as it tries to follow but it can’t see the small details which show where the holes are, little dents in the snow in the shapes of the holes, like my sister and I can see it. I jump out later and do the same thing, it seems like I can’t run fast enough, like I’m too slow, yet somehow I still make it. I hear it bang behind me again. Then I hear an electric crackle as it starts breaking down. We do the same thing a few times but every time my sister goes out I’m worried for her because I’m scared she’ll be too slow, or trip, or something. That’s all I can remember.