I am on a
lake, in a
canoe, with my
evil twin. He lunges at me, and pushes me over the side into the water. I am caught off guard, but I manage to flip the canoe while I am in the water, and I climb on top of it.
Now I am on top of the upside-down canoe in the water, and my twin is trapped underneath it. This canoe is defective: there is a hole in the bottom. If I stick my finger into the hole, I can cut off my twin's air supply. Both of us are thrashing around, causing the canoe to rock, so that the hole appears above water briefly, then submerges. Every time it is submerged, I take my finger off the hole, and watch my enemy's air bubble out from the canoe. When it appears above water again, I clamp my finger down.
As I write this up, I realize that a better strategy would have been to just keep my finger away from the hole and let all the air be forced out by my weight, but in my dream this has the desired effect. The canoe starts to sink, with my twin trapped underneath, until it is about 2 feet underwater, and I can stand on it.
Time shift
I'm back at my job. Apparently, I am a consultant for General Motors, who built the canoe I was in before. Instead of doing the work they have hired me to do, I am talking with a low-level engineer who implements the plastic-stamping designs that are used to make canoes, and I ask him about the fact that my canoe had a hole in it that was clearly put there in the factory (The hole was very cleanly cut and square, not something that can just happen by accident or collision. He says that it happens sometimes, but GM prefers to make defective canoes and then recalls them if anyone has a problem, rather than get it right the first time. I ask him what would happen if he discovered such a flaw in the manufacturing process and reported it to his boss, and he tells me he'd be fired. I find that interesting, and ask him to introduce me to his manager, to find out what his manager has to say for himself about this.
I am led to a large, open, somewhat messy cube farmthat requires security key access from the man I was talking to, and am introduced to a young man only a few years older than myself (the other engineer was in his mid-40s). I sit down in front of his desk, but before we can talk, I have to wait for him to finish grading a small stack of tests that are given in-house. I introduce myself, and the manager asks me what I do here. He asks me what I am working on, and I say I am doing work for a different department. I describe to him the project that I am working on in the waking world (for a company that has little in common with GM), then tell him about the leaky canoe I was in. This is not something that he worked on, but he can recall the model number of the canoe that I am talking about.
Just before he can explain to me his company's questionable business practices, a group of interns enters the cube to work on some sort of work/study project. They are all 16-year-old girls, and most of them are wearing black T-shirts with some sort of educational program logo on the front.
That's all I can remember.