The Ice Sorceress

I dreamed that President Obama gave a press conference saying that a giant spacecraft had crash landed in Antarctica and he admonished all Americans to visit the crash site because it was vital to the survival of the human race. So I joined a local pilgrimage group and we hiked through the bitter cold and stinging winds of Antarctica until we came upon the wreckage of a giant spaceship that looked like the Technodrome from the Ninja Turtles cartoons. When we arrived we saw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims streaming into the dark interior of the ship through a giant smoking hole in the side.

Inside the ship, we walked down miles of dark hallways that were filled with mazes of conduits and sparking electrical panels. As we descended lower and lower into the depths of the ship, the temperature dropped dramatically and the walls, which were now made of rocks, were coated with a thick layer of ice. At the end of the journey we reached a large clearing with a frozen river running down the middle. The multitude stood shivering and confused for several hours, wondering why we had been told to gather in this miserable place. But then on the horizon we saw the figure of a barefoot man wearing a white suit walking down the frozen river towards us. As he approached, the ice started to melt, and pretty soon the clearing was green with plants and the river started to flow again. Finally the man came close enough for us to see who he was: President Obama.

The crowd broke into ecstatic cheering as Obama took his place on a shallow sandbar in the middle of the river. He silenced the crowd and gave an impassioned speech in which he explained that the spaceship belonged to the Ice Sorceress, who had come to earth to freeze our planet. He said that the earth would be doomed unless we forced her to leave our planet, and the only way to do that was to vote for his environmental reform platform. In the meantime, he had negotiated with the Ice Sorceress and she agreed that she would not kill any humans until after the vote. At the end of his speech, Obama told us to tell all of our friends and family about what we had seen and encourage them to also make the same pilgrimage to the crash site in Antarctica.

As we left the clearing and returned to the hallways of the spaceship, I somehow managed to be the at the very front of the crowd. All of the ice had melted away and everyone was excited to spread Obama's message. But as we reached the end of the final corridor, around the corner came the towering figure of the Ice Sorceress. The whole crowd gasped and we were frozen with terror as we saw her with her with her crown, her jeweled scepter, and her robes flowing in an eerie slow motion. But our fear quickly dissipated because we remembered that Obama had promised that Ice Sorceress would not kill any humans. We were about to resume our exit, but her booming voice announced that although she had negotiated with Obama, he had agreed to let her shoot at the first human that she saw, which was me.

The Ice Sorceress raised her arms and shot a blue lighting bolt at me from the jewel at the end of her scepter, but I jumped out of the way and rolled underneath a metal staircase. She had wasted her only chance to kill a human until after the vote, and she was furious. As I peered through the metal slats of the staircase where I had landed I had an excellent view of her face. She looked so familiar and with a shock I realized who the Ice Sorceress really was: Drew Barrymore.

My first thought on realizing that it was Drew Barrymore was, "Good for her! She's branching out into new types of roles." But then it dawned on me that I had uncovered an enormous conspiracy: President Obama had staged the spaceship crash landing and hired Drew Barrymore to play the Ice Sorceress to frighten America into voting for his environmental legislation. I ran out of the "spaceship" and went to find the one person who I knew would believe my story: my sister Emily up in Minnesota.

By the time I completed my journey from Antarctica to Minnesota, it was Sunday morning and Emily out was strapping the kids into their car seats before driving to church. I breathlessly told her that I had uncovered an enormous government conspiracy, but she said that she didn't want to be late, so I sat up front in the van and told her the whole story on the way to church.

*****

I had this dream on a Saturday night while I was with my parents visiting my sister Emily in Minnesota. The strange thing about it was that when we went to church the next morning, my Mom asked me if I wanted to sit up front so I could talk to Emily. I told her the whole story, just like I had done in my dream.

(I also found it strange that I had such a political dream - I consider myself by and large to be a fairly apolitical person.)