Jurassic Park (kind of)

Date: 4/18/2021

Note: I have neither watched Jurassic Park nor read the book. In the dream, Jurassic Park was not a theme park people could visit, but an island on which some insane billionaire scientist had decided to create a new society. A bunch of people had been put on this island to live among the dinosaurs, and I was one of them. What the island actually looked like changed throughout the dream, but at the start it was pretty small and looked kind of like a mountain jutting out from the water--steep sides going right down to the sea. The vegetation was lush and gave me tropical rainforest vibes. At this part of the dream, it all felt very artificial. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the “ocean” was in fact an enormous pool, and somewhere, high above our heads, was a ceiling. This is also the only part of the dream where I remember dinosaurs being actually present I attended a meeting run by the insane billionaire scientist who created the place. In it, he explained that every part of the island had been carefully bioengineered, including the drawbridge that connected us to the real world. He showed us a diagram of how he altered the genes of the bridge (?) to make it function the way it did. I remember thinking, “Wow, I’m glad I’m reading the book instead of watching the movie--they never would’ve explained this in the movie.” (Even though I was doing neither, I was actually there in real life.) I woke up in a hotel room with red wallpaper (I guess the first part was a dream within a dream). I left my room and found my parents, grandparents on my father’s side (even though my grandfather died last year), grandmother on my mother’s side, and aunt. Apparently they were all here for a family reunion. I told my dad about the “dream” I had had, including the weird bit where I thought I was watching a movie when I was really there. He agreed that that was weird. The dream changed and I was back on Jurassic Park Island. I knew I had to get back to the real world and see my family, since they would miss me at the family reunion. I made my way over to the drawbridge, but it was going up for what I somehow knew was the last time. I made it across by stopping time (which was apparently a thing I could do) while there was still enough space between the two ends of the bridge to jump between, then running across. Fortunately for me, the other end of the bridge happened to connect to the parking garage of the exact hotel my family was staying in, and I found their room easily. When I got there, though, my grandparents were preparing to leave. My grandma told me she had wanted to spend time with me, but since I had gone over to Jurassic Park Island, there was really no point in staying. I was saddened and told her I had come all the way back from the island to see her, but she was adamant. The dream changed and I was, once again, back on Jurassic Park Island. This time, however, it was much larger, closely resembled my hometown, and there were no dinosaurs in sight. I knew I needed to get back, but as I walked to the bridge, I saw that it was fully up, and there was a long line of people waiting by it, hoping it would come down again and they would be able to cross. I realized that the only way I could get back to the real world was by solving THE RIDDLE. Apparently, the insane billionaire scientist who created the island had a sister who was equally insane and brilliant, and she had convinced him to let the most intelligent people leave the island. She would determine who the most intelligent people were by writing a riddle, which, if one answered correctly, one would be able to go home. The riddle itself was a pagelong, cryptic rhyme written by the sister with directions to various areas around the island. Unfortunately I don’t remember any of the words. I joined with a group of fellow teenagers trying to solve the riddle, including a number of people I know from school. We managed to figure out that the first section led us to a park, and we went there. However, we were accosted by a group of teenage boys who had been playing baseball until we showed up. They ran over and started harassing us, for no obvious purpose except to be annoying. I made them go away by yelling “I have Covid!” and coughing in their faces (the only indication in the entire dream of the pandemic). From the park, we figured out that the next place we would have to go to was an abandoned school. We got there, but didn’t know what to do next, so we decided to poke around inside. There were stairs leading up and stairs leading down, and most of the group wanted to go upstairs to smoke weed, leaving me and one other girl to explore the basement. (Pretty typical of a group project involving high schoolers, honestly.) The other girl was carrying a big fancy camera and planned on taking photos of the school, to see if they could help us figure out the next section of the riddle. The other girl ran ahead of me, and by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs she was nowhere to be seen. At the bottom of the stairs was a four-foot drop, and then a large room, from which branched off several dark hallways. I could hear the girl walking around and snapping pictures down one of the hallways, and decided to stay where I was, because it looked easy to get lost down there. That decision proved a wise one when the girl came sprinting back towards me, screaming, “I saw something back there!” I pulled her up and then we both ran up both flights of stairs to the top floor. For some reason, at the top of the stairs, instead of a door there was a large, open window about four feet off the ground (whoever designed this school loved random four-foot climbs, apparently). The rest of the group was on the other side, sitting around on the floor. I didn’t see or smell any weed, but they were all pretty clearly high and none of them offered to help us through the window. The girl and I sat on the stairs to catch our breath, and she tried to explain to the rest of us what she had seen. Her description was pretty incoherent, and nobody but me seemed to care what she was saying. Suddenly I heard loud footsteps coming from the basement. I freaked out. I asked the people inside if they could hear it too, and they all nodded but didn’t seem bothered by it. I asked if someone would help me get through the window, but nobody answered, so I tried to climb in on my own. It took a while and involved a lot of undignified flailing, since I am neither particularly strong nor particularly tall. I was about halfway in when I woke up.