I’m riding BART and worried about getting all my things off the train so I can go into work. I have with me my backpack, a jacket, Emily’s laptop (out of its bag), and a large piece of luggage in the center aisle. I’m in the window seat and at one stop that I’m worried is mine, the person next to me leaves.

I get up to start gathering my things, including the luggage. When I turn back around, a very portly gentleman has sat in the recently vacated seat next to my collected stuff. The jacket, backpack, and laptop are next to him. There’s really no way to reach my stuff, so I have to ask him to get up briefly so I can gather my things, but he seems very bent out of shape about this and grumbles while he stumbles out of the seat.

Suddenly I realize it’s my stop and have to grab everything hurriedly and rush (ambling under the weight of all the stuff) to the doors. Just as I set foot on the platform, I realize Emily’s laptop is out of its bag and I have to retrieve the bag. I run back into the train car, grab the first laptop bag I see, and run back to the doors. The doors start closing in front of me, but I stick the laptop bag between them, the doors jam, reopen, and I stuff myself through them.

I’m standing on the platform of Macarthur BART when I realize that the laptop bag in my hand is blue and isn’t mine (or Emily’s). The train is pulling away with the actual bag, while I have someone else’s. I wonder briefly whether it will even matter that much, but I soon realize that Emily’s actual bag is much nicer and probably has some of her other things in it.

I start trudging down the steps of Macarthur BART and out toward a nondescript part of town when a couple of not unfriendly police start gently ferrying me toward a gargantuan police station that looks like a very nice high school/courthouse combination. I’m vaguely ushered without actually being escorted and suddenly my shoes are gone. The police ask what I’m doing with that bag and I can’t tell whether the implication is that I’ve stolen it or that I shouldn’t have jammed the BART doors with it. I’m wary of telling them too much, but they ask me to go see someone in the office. I look at the office doors and they’re clearly the well-guarded entrance to the cells in the basement and I look back and say “No one intelligent would go in there voluntarily.”

They smile and do nothing to compel me, so I start subtly half-running for the exit, seemingly content to leave all my stuff behind for the time being. As I get outside, there’s a rolling lawn that’s even more school than courthouse and I think they’re going to let me go (albeit in sock-feet), when suddenly a casually dressed man emerges from the courthouse and then is suddenly ahead of me inexplicably. He starts launching a small remote-control helicopter and flying it in my direction. He is making lots of jokes that seem somewhere between good-natured and sinister and I catch the first helicopter and break it in half, flinging it aside. I feel enraged by these helicopters and I want to send a message. He sends three more helicopters my way, each meeting a similar fate before I wake up.

If nothing else, I think my subconscious wants me to realize that I have too much stuff.