Pandoricaa

One section I specifically remember, one part of the training course was a railway going through the desert, and I was describing my favorite part of it to someone, and they were incredulous, because it was an almost vertical stretch up a cliff, and apparently a lot of people died there, but I just thought it was fun. The following events weren't immediately sequential, but I don't remember what happened in between: there's a few of us in a railcar going down the tracks, only there's a piece missing, and we go off it and start falling down a crack, but I somehow manage to grab on to the top of the cliff, which was a shiny black rock like obsidian, and pull the entire car up, and somehow manage to get us back on track, and the others didn't even notice. I'm running desperately, I think I was trying to stop something from happening, and I go over the top of a rocky hill and scramble down the other side, sitting down most of the time because it's so steep and covered with small, sliding rocks, and I reach the bottom, panting, just as 2 adults walk down the path, and one of them (Seapeekay for some reason lol) says something and winks at me as they continue on, and I have to wait for them to get of sight before I continue, because they're not teachers but they're adults, and they're not supposed to know what's going on. And the ground collapsed beneath me and I fall into a small cave, and I look around slowly and realize that whatever it is, it can help me

And later I'm in a forest by a river, with a partner, and we're practicing camouflaging ourselves, (lol I may have been watching a lot of Meccha Chameleon lately), and then for the last round I think we should try against the railing next to the river, and it's getting dark out, and there's branches covering that section, and I tell some others they should try to find us, but they come over right away and head right to where we are and spot us immediately, and I just laugh and say we hadn't even started hiding yet

Later on I'm talking to someone as we walk down a snowy road, it's been plowed and there's a wall of crusty snow next to it that's taller than my waist, and I'm idly scraping a line in it as we walk. He's saying something about how it's (something) tonight, and how it's best not to go to bed before 2:00am, otherwise (something) will happen, and he only gets 2 hours of sleep, and I'm puzzled, and say I never stay up late, and he says "You're a first name, I'm a third name." His voice was miserable, and I felt bad for him, and as we approached my room, a small room next to the woods, kinda isolated but I'd never felt unsafe, with a glass wall and door at the front, with a small bathroom at the back, I'm considering it, and decide that I don't care, I'll protect him, and somehow the others can tell, and they appear suddenly and start chasing him, wanting to kill him first, and we start running, and I tell him to go in my room, and he's all surprised, and tries to refuse, but I can tell he's only doing that because he thinks it's what he should do, not because he doesn't want to, so I just yell at him to go inside, and he does, and I skid to a stop behind him and turn around to confront the others, and the ringleader stares at me but decides it's not a good position to attack from, and one of his people finds a letter from my 11 year old sister that I hadn't know had arrived, and he reads it out in a mocking tone of voice, and I make my voice all sweet and disappointed and say, awww, why didn't you write me a letter like that?? And he just glowers at me then leaves

It started with a doctor approaching someone at the library and asking if she'd be willing to help him in a research experiment in exchange for pay. She ends up agreeing, so he uses a needle to put something in her head then positions a large device next to her ear and turns it on. It starts to hurt and she tells him that, but he's too busy looking at the scan. She starts to get frightened and raises her voice wanting to stop it, but she can't move for some reason, and he completely ignores her while he watches two living cancer cells (that's what my brain called them, they were colorful, mostly spherical shapes that also had fins and a tail, each one was a different color and my brain also noticed that they would make a good stuffed animal lol) grow in size, and he's muttering to himself about how he'd only put the one in there, so the other one must've already been in her head, and then he takes one out but leaves the other, and I got the impression that it was going to end up slowly killing her, and that he'd done this to a lot of other people too

Then it jumps to the main character's POV, I'm reading in a school library and it's a really good, really thick book and I'm really invested in it, and the dream jumps throughout the day as I fit reading it around other things I have to do, but apparently it's my first day at school and I don't know the layout of the building that well so after lunch when I look at my schedule, I realize I'd accidentally been so focused on my book that I missed most of my next class, and I don't even know where it is, so I decide to just skip the rest of it and go to the class after it so that I have enough time to find it (it's called Baird for some reason lol, I don't know if that's the teacher's name or the subject name). And I wander through the school, and also think about how I've been reading for probably 2.5 hours cumulatively already, and it should only take me 3 hours total to finish reading it, but then I realize I somehow didn't see a whole section of the book and it's actually going to take me 5 hours total to read it. And then I get to the class and there's a teacher's helper outside who assigns me a locker, and I start trying to use it and he stops me and says they have to give out the locks first and then he notices that I have one in my hand and he narrows his eyes accusingly and says "I see you already have one though", but I just go sit in the classroom and read until class starts

Then it cuts to me in bed with the doctor, (lol apparently there's less stigma around people sleeping together casually), and it's the morning after and he's watching me sleep, and he tenderly tucks my hair behind my ear as I breathe peacefully, but there's kind of a background feeling of why hasn't he done the living cancer cell thing to me yet, and it's only a matter of time before he loses interest in me

And then it cuts to a group of guys standing in a field, and one of them is yelling "Who's trying to have a relationship with her?" And he says relationship like it's a bad word

Then the movie finishes and I get up and walk up the stairs of the theater (and this bit is just weird dream logic, I had apparently put all of the dead mice I had gathered earlier into in popcorn bag, and instead of holding it the whole time, I left it on a chair next the exit at the top of the room, so I grab it as I leave) and I was one of the last people to leave so the garbage can was gone already, so I keep carrying the popcorn bag (full of dead mice) and I walk through the main room until I find a movie that hasn't let out yet so I walk over and finally dispose of it (and as I look down to drop it I notice the bodies are all contorted into weird angles) then go to the end of the room which is actually a balcony looking out over a massive indoor mall, and I see my friends (they looked like the people who had been on the team in the movie) at the food court so I walk down the stairs to join them

Then it's the sequel but the events are actually happening to me, I don't remember what was causing the dead mice, and what we did about it, but it's happening again, a town over, only now it's not just mice, it's all small rodents, and the news is full of stories of "(this many) dead animals found in this yard!" and people are freaking out and we go there to investigate and in the process of doing so we run into this kid and for some reason we think he might be connected, but he denies it and starts trying to help us, and I remember this next part vividly, we're standing with the kid on a sidewalk outside a house, and my coworker finds a little brochure, and it's a glossy school promotional thing, with normal info about the fancy school and the teachers and stuff, but it also says "PAR" on the front, and we start talking about the different definitions of par, and we open it and there's an entire page talking about the dead rodents, and there's a picture of a proud looking dog (golden retriever?), and whatever it says makes us very concerned for some reason, and we realize that the number of rats doesn't make sense, for there to be that many someone has to be breeding and releasing them, (and I don't know when, and I don't think it was in person, but at some point you can see large tanks absolutely writhing with rats, like there was actually a few layers of them stacked on top of each other), but the kid interrupts and his face has gone white and he says "Actually, I think it might be meant for me." and it turns out his name is Phillip Arthur (dream logic again, I don't remember what he said here, but when dream-me was thinking about it later, his last name kept switching between Langham and Clarke, even though it should have started with R) and my coworker flips the brochure over and the camera zooms in on the "PAR"

And then suddenly a lady comes around the side of the house, and it's his estranged mother, and she looks scared to see us and runs away, so we follow, leaving the kid behind, and we catch up to her in the backyard, there's a large coiled hose that's full, like if you touch it, it's completely solid instead of being squishable, and there's a hole in the dirt with some kind of contraption next to it. I forget the specific details, and what her plan was, but we manage to convince her that it's a bad idea, only the process has already started and hundreds and hundreds of rats are about to get out, and they're going to do something really bad if they do, and we persuade her to help us stop it, and turns out the hose is actually connected to a tank full of poison, so we hurry to put the end of it in the hole that leads to the crawlspace that the rats are in, and she gets the contraption set up, and it uses pedal power to run so she sits down and gets ready to do that, and I look at her very sternly and warn her against betraying us. she doesn't, thankfully, and we succeed and manage to poison all the rats before they can escape

And then I walk into my boss's office, he's already talking to my coworker, and as I enter she asks him a question, and I just automatically answer it, and it's about the plan for what we'll be doing with the dead rats, and we keep talking, and it's a corner office with large glass windows and in the distance you can see the other city, the one that just started being affected by the rodent issue, and I suddenly start laughing, and the other two look at me annoyed, and I apologize and tell them to ignore me, and after my boss leaves I tell my coworker that I had actually dreamt everything that happened in that city, and when I answered the earlier question I had done it with information I had gotten from the dream

I'm supposed to be in bed but I want to keep reading so I curl up on a landing by a bannister, using the light from a fire downstairs to read. At one point I stretch my legs out and I'm right at the bottom of the stairs and someone steps over them and walks right past me without even looking at me (I feel like he didn't live there lol, and that the fire wasn't in a fireplace, but I don't know that for sure)

The story itself was kinda a magical/demonic romance. It mostly follows 3 main characters but it wasn't a love triangle, the second guy was just kinda there. At one point the two possible romantic partners are having a very important conversation as they're walking through the forest while he (I think his name was Adrian) holds the reins of a horse, the terrain is too bad for him to ride, but I forget what they were saying because I was more focused on the placement of their feet because there were a lot of dead fallen trees they kept having to climb over/walk on and they were very slippery and covered with moss and she was wearing heeled boots and they both kept slipping

I forget the backstory but his mom was a main part of it, she wasn't physically there, I think she might have disapped, but it was suspected that she was involved in something magical/demonic and we were investigating it, he of course didn't want us to find out that she was bad but I don't think I trusted her very much. But at one point we reached her house and we walk around it and someone, maybe a neighbour? Maybe a police officer? Is telling us about what happened, and it looks like it had exploded, but the house stayed together even though it was physically impossible, like the outer layer of stucco had been 90% disconnected from the rest of the house, the top was mostly still connected but in some spots the middle was bulging out and in other spots the entire thing was hanging downward at an angle, like a flap on a cardboard box, and if you stood at the corner you could see all the way to the other end of the house. It was kinda like it had frozen in time at the peak of the explosion, but there was no signs of any heat/fire

Everyone's saying that there's no actual reason for him to hyperfixate on that, especially with the literal end of the world coming, right?

But I'd say his initial reaction is understandable, he realizes he's in a position to save JFK, so, he tries to do something about it. That first, one day action is reasonable. If things had played out differently, he probably would have been able to move on and focus on objectively more important things

But that's not what happened. Instead, before he can even see Oswald, he gets arrested and taken to a mental hospital where everyone is constantly telling him he's crazy and forcibly sedating him and probably drugging him and taking away all of his autonomy and free choice. And this goes on nonstop for 75 DAYS

I don't know about you, but I'm the type of stubborn where when people try to tell me I'm not allowed to do something or it's a bad idea, that just makes me even more determined to do it, even if it'll end up hurting me. And if I realize at some point that it actually ISN'T the greatest idea, I'll do it anyways just because I'm not going to let them tell me what to do

I can easily see Diego being that kind of stubborn and the more people tell him he's crazy and wrong about JFK's assassination, the more he thinks about it and fixates on it and stays up late planning how he's going to escape and then save JFK and going over every detail in his mind over and over and over again

Also, what else does he have to live for? As far as he knows, his family is dead and he's all alone. So he latches onto saving JFK and that becomes his lifeline, the only thing that he has to look forward to, that keeps him moving forward and stops him from just giving up

Plus, he has zero control over his life at this point. He isn't allowed to make any decisions for himself, not what he eats, not what he wears, not how he spends his time, probably not even when he has a shower. If you don't have any control in your life, it's natural to pick something you DO have control over and focus on that

This all explains why Diego was hyperfixated on saving JFK during his time alone in the past. And again, this went on for 75 days. Over 3 months. When you do something for that long, you can't just stop. That was his only purpose in life for MONTHS. So when Five suddenly, unexpectedly shows up, he can't just change gears and forget about it. It's too big a part of his life at this point