The mountain

I was in a place that I'd seen before in a previous dream. I don't remember what happened in the previous dream, but I remember that I had gotten a good idea of the way the place was laid out. As best as I can figure, I was driving a lot in my last dream about this place.

If I had the skills, I would draw you a map of this place. Before anyone asks, yes, I remember it, and, no, I'm not making it up.

In this dream, I was driving my dad's old Ford Bronco around (the same one I wreaked the second time I drove it). I was driving it along the road towards a large mountain.

The road I was on wound around through trees and smaller hills, but you could see this mountain over it. This one mountain was part of a mountain range. The road was positioned in such a way that from the angle that I was coming at, you couldn't really see the mountain range, you only saw what you thought was one huge mountain.

Well, as I got nearer, and the road continued to wind, the other mountains in the range became much more apparent. The roads on the mountain itself did not rest immediately on the mountain, either. They were all supported by large posts, which then rested on the mountain. (Think of a traffic interchange between two major highways. You know those bridges that go over the highways that allow travelers to get from one highway to another? Think of supports like that.)

I was going on a tour of the inside of the mountain. When I drove inside, I met with a number of people there all going on this same tour. Since this mountain was so large, the idea was the everyone would drive around in their vehicles and tune their radios to an AM frequency, so that they could hear the tour announcer. That's exactly what I did. I tuned my radio to the AM frequency, and we followed the tour guide.

There was a lot of what you would expect in a mountain, but there was one thing you would not expect. Inside this mountain was the world's largest natural deep fat frier. You can't really imagine how big this was. This was the bulk of the tour, showing off this deep fat frier.

--"History"--
The mountain was, in fact, completely natural. No man had built it. A mining expedition had discovered it, and, in discovering it, had discovered one of the products of the mountain, namely something you would cook in a deep fat frier: potato chips. As the original mining expedition was going, after digging a tunnel into the mountain, they discovered a natural cavern. This natural cavern led to another room, and this room was filled with new, crispy, golden potato chips. The miners all tried one, and sure enough they were real -- it wasn't a mirage of anything. They continued exploring in the mountain, and they discovered the an immense pool of golden liquid. It was cool, so they went to investigate. They discovered that it was 100% pure, and after monitoring it for some time, discovered what it did. Needless to say, it became a tourist attraction like no one has ever seen before.
--End "History"--

As the tour continued on past this immense lake (you're probably still not imagining a deep fat frier lake big enough), we were shown the products of this mountain. At that moment, the lake was producing some sort of cheesy cracker--along the lines of the Ritz cracker, but cheesy instead of buttery. I was very interested, because I'm a big fan of stuff like this. They were offering samples of what the mountain makes, so I gladly took some. Imagine the best cheesy cracker you've ever had, then think of ways to improve on it. That's how good this was.

I left quite happy and also intrigued as to how this thing came to be. As I drove away, there was a slight rumble. I figured it was the mountain settling, or perhaps beginning to prepare another batch.

As I drove out of the mountain, a separate mountain in the chain suddenly erupted. It was spouting the cheesy goodness that I had just praised. The problem was the this yumminess was wiping out everything in its path, exactly like lava. I watched in horrored fascination as a forest was quickly buried.

My mind quickly flew back to my family living on the other side of the range. I pulled a quick U-turn in the truck and sped out of there as quickly as I could, but unfortunately, it was not quickly enough. The mountain that I had just been in joined in the fray immediately in front of me. I was caught up in the wave of crackers and swept away.

The next thing I knew, I was alone. The eruption had happened, and I was still alive. The truck still ran, but it had sustained some body damage. I got out of the truck and looked around. Trees were snapped in half, forests were partially flattened. I looked where my family's house would have been, and it was gone. There was hardly any sign of life anywhere, aside from a few birds. Since there was nothing left here, I decided to hunt around for other possible survivors.

My house was gone. The good thing was that there were no bodies, so I had hope that they had all gotten away in time. There was no sign of tracks, but then again, should there be? I think not. It would be odd indeed of forests were wiped out and tracks were left...

I continued searched, and I found a refugee hideout in Best Buy. Or what I thought was a hideout. It was actually no hideout. It was business as usual at Best Buy. They were having a clearance sale, and stragglers from the wreck outside were coming inside to spend possibly their last dollar on cool new toys for themselves. Anywhere from video games to laptops to appliances: it was all on sale. I recognized several employees: Big Brad, Zack R., and a few others who I knew in passing. They didn't recognize me off hand. I applied for a job there -- I had to make money to begin rebuilding, right?

I still had my uniform, so I threw it on, and began working. For some reason, there were a lot of customers who all needed help, but aside from a select few, the employees were all too busy chatting with each other to help out any of the customers. This affected me very oddly -- it really disturbed me that these people were spending their last bit of money on useless technology that would not help them in rebuilding, which they couldn't even use anyway, because of the lack of electricity. I wept for them inside, but I did nothing to stop them, because this is what they wanted to do.

The dream finished up with me being done with closing the store down after a short day, getting back out to my truck, and seeing a very sorrowful sight. All the people who had just made these purchases were barely alive enough to use them. They did not have money for the necessities of life, and were starving. It was very apocalyptic...