(This may not be chronological or one dream.)

I was in a small work room with three people. Someone was insisting we rewrite another department’s documents, but hadn’t discussed it with me. The insistence was making me livid and anxious since it made no sense.

A French man I didn’t know changed into new shorts—apparently from a skirt. I thought this weird for a work place. I didn’t see how it happened—it was like magic.

At some point we separated. When we came back, the room was different, and I couldn’t find my assigned spot. I remembered my seat number. I was still trying to figure out how to get the co-worker alone in this setup to explain why we couldn’t pursue their plan.

I was on a train—home? It was running underground, and when I looked out the back window, it was turning off but another train, a freight, was coming toward it as though about to slam into it. My train, however, completed the turnoff with perfect timing to avoid being hit—by a cat’s whisker.

I looked for my aunts to say goodbye as somehow I knew I would be getting off the train soon. Then I was to transfer to a train downstate (Springfield?) and somehow get to wherever I was going.

My first aunt refused to hug me, but the other did. I went back to my car, but abruptly I found myself off the train, standing underground, watching the earlier freight go by. I knew it was the same freight because each car was painted with a part of a seamless scene that looked like the Swiss Alps. It was an amazing effort.

I was panicky with no wallet, no phone, and no idea of where I was, realizing I was going to miss my connecting train. I kept finding myself in bizarre underground markets and had no idea to get aboveground.

At last I found someone who was busy but was willing to answer one question, about where I was. “5400 N. (something),” she said. I assumed Chicago. I was a cab ride away from home, but how to get there with no wallet and no phone?

And how to get aboveground?