Meltdown

I had another vivid dream last "night". And yes, it involved that feeling of imminent death that I have become so familiar with. I was exploring a futuristic power plant with a girl - the cute, short, supergenious type. She had some kind of connection to the plant, which is why she was able to get me in to take a look after hours. I have no idea how the power plant worked, except that it was similar to a nuclear reactor in one aspect - the dangerous potential for a devastating meltdown, should things go wrong.

Well, the plant was housed (ironically) in some kind of biosphere, so wandering around it was actually quite like wandering through a forest. And since it was after hours, it was dark, so it was also pretty creepy. And it was huge, like a forest, not just a little greenhouse. After exploring a bit, we were back at the entrance, where there are these huge circular monitors. The girl wanted to test out the system or something, but as soon as she activated it, things got bad. A few of the circular monitors were flashing red, and I had a feeling something was wrong. Whether the girl explicitly said something to the effect, or if it was a subconscious realization, I knew that the place was going to blow. When I heard the words "four seconds" uttered, I ran like the devil towards the door.

The explosion at four seconds was mercilessly minor, but I heard the girl shouting something about another one at 27 seconds or so, as I kept running. She was quick on my heels. Exiting the building, there was a gateway ahead, and the girl shouted that the explosion would be centered on that gateway, for whatever reason. I realized that I was running towards my death, but I also had an understanding that to stop, or to go back, would be even worse, if the whole place was about to go, which I believed it was. The only thing I could do was keep running.

I expected to be annihilated in an intense wave of heat and wind as I passed through the gateway, but the explosion, while serious enough to shake me up and hurt my neck, wasn't bad enough to stop me running, let alone kill me. Still, I was running for my life, hoping that I'd be able to get far enough away from the building before the big bang, or that the automatic-response rescue team might arrive and save me before then.

And that was the end. Of the dream, I mean. The stuff we saw inside the biosphere was totally awesome, but unfortunately I can't remember any of it in enough detail to describe.