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1996
I was going to be a hero of the unions. They'd been striking, trying to get the bosses to give the workers a raise. I'd managed to negotiate a deal for my workgang--I'd managed to get pay even better than what the union negotiators were asking. Now that I'd set this precedent, all the workers in all the workgangs would be getting high pay. All thanks to me. Maybe now I would become a union leader. Heck, if the union wouldn't up me, maybe I'd start my own union. Obviously, I had the stuff. I was psyched, though I didn't think the word "psyched" or "amped" or any other word that Larry might use to describe such a mental state--in fact, I wasn't really too aware of my mental state at all, I was just in it. I reached into my shirt pocket for a cigarette, but there weren't any.
I'd been up late talking with the bosses, and was up early this morning to round up the boys in my gang and bring them to the site to start work. After the meeting with the bosses last night, I'd got a ride home from my friend, and I'd told him and my girlfriend about the deal I'd cut. They seemed really upset. My girlfriend, especially, said that I shouldn't do this kind of thing without going through the union. What did she know? The union had been dragging its heels for a long time on this thing. Now I'd shown them a thing or two about negotiating. And I'd show her. Soon I'd be a big shot, once word spread about what I'd done.
My friend was supposed to be coming by to pick me up in his car, so we could start heading around to pick up the gang. He was late. Maybe it was time I walked out of the compound and looked down the road a bit for him. I walked across the pavement, through the break in the chainlink, and out onto the dirt road. No sign of him. My friend lived in town. I would walk into town--if I didn't run into my friend along the way, I could get a ride with someone else in the gang in town.
I started walking down the road, which was basically a few ruts in the ground with grass growing up all around. I walked past to a car that had been abandoned in the middle of the road for a while. I was familiar with this car--I'd been seeing it every day for a while. There was a man going over the vehicle; he seemed to be searching it for valuables.
He seemed strangely alert for a scavenger or vagrant. I looked at him as I walked past. He looked up at me. "Hey," he said. I looked around. There was early morning sunlight shining through leaves on the trees on the hills. It didn't really occur to me that it was a pretty morning. I just noticed that there wasn't anyone around, and wasn't too surprised by this fact. I looked back at him, and started to say, "Hey," as he quickly pulled out a gun (which looked new and sleek and I thought he must be from the city) and I thought "maybe I can..." and he shot me in the throat and I thought "nope" and I could feel this tearing on my throat and then it was like my brain was full of light. And suddenly I was Larry, clawing my way through air, coming up to a sitting position in bed, looking over at the clock, which said it was 5:30 in the morning.
I figure that the protagonist of my dream hadn't been too smart. I figure he'd been talked into setting up his workgang as a bunch of scabs in the middle of some strike. And he'd thought that these wages would last beyond the strike, and that they'd be offered to all the striking workers. But the union had figured he was going scab, and someone had decided to put out a hit on him. Hell, his friend and girlfriend had probably tried to explain this to him the night before, but he'd been too much of an idiot to see beyond his vision of himself as the great negotiator.
So if I'm so smart and he's so dumb, how come he doesn't have to exist, but I had to experience getting shot in the throat?