I was part of a group working on a presentation that was going to be given in some college class. The way you could tell this was a dream was that everybody was both pulling their weight and having fun simultaneously, which made it a joyful experience.

At some point I realized I had traded bodies with some other guy (Kokoro Connect, anyone?). We could fake it well enough while working on the project–but then it was time to go home. The guy whose body I was inhabiting apparently lived with his father, and pretty much the only advice he gave me to survive the evening was to avoid his dad. I blew that almost immediately, since I didn’t know the layout of his house.

The next day the body swap had reverted, and we were in class (also a joyful experience, with a professor who expected a lot of us but also joked around)… which was immediately interrupted by the arrival of President Obama. He pulled me aside, gave me a slip of paper with some seemingly-random scribbles on it, and whispered something in my ear that I only half-heard: such-and-such EMP at so-and-so time blah-de-blah be there.

That night I woke up about 2:00 am to the sound of planes flying overhead. Looking out my window, I saw they were dropping things–things that had parachutes and were decidedly not exploding on impact. A nearby drop gave me a better idea of what the items were: Christmas presents. First-come first-served, from a Santa that played the lottery more than worrying about who was good or bad.

I barreled out of my place (still wearing my pajamas) and over to a nearby Target, where a couple people had gathered to open their mystery packages. The two I saw were both nothing fancy, though I can only remember one now: a set of globe ornaments for a Christmas tree.

…

And there you have it. No Mt. Fuji, hawks, or eggplants this year, either.