Dreamed I look through an artist's book with a bunch of images I find impressive and which all deal in more or less abstract ways with octopuses.. One of them shows an aquarium with a small squid in it. I am suddenly inside the aquarium and see that the squid has partly been cut open because its side fins grew beneath the skin. Someone probably cut it open in an attempt to free them but instead the squid just hangs motionless in the water, half cut open.
Being back out of the book, I continue to look through the images. There's a moving picture that shows a mechanical octopus shredding one alike himself with his arms. A second picture shows a giant mechanical octopus floating above the sea, widely spread out, in the process of catching a swarm of pigeons with his iron shredder tentacles and killing them all at once. Someone beside me says that this octopus is the space ship of a long begone imperial power and that in this picture it demonstrates its superiority by killing the pigeons. There's a young woman in a little elevator capsule on the left side of the ship, who I am told, is a prostitute captured by the Imperium and actually never was seen again after this picture was taken. As I wonder what happened to her, I suddenly find myself in her place. I run through the maze of corridors within the ship trying to find a way out. One of the stairways leads to a little room with two white cabins, much like toilet booths. In each cabin is a naked warrior, who's hands had been chopped off. They are both holding a lance with their elbow. One of them comes out of the cabin and pushes me into the stairway while he talks in a language I don't understand. I'm afraid he will try to rape me somewhere but that doesn't seem to be the case. He withdraws and holds his stumps like fists in the air, suggesting that we should rebel against the power.
I move on through the endless stairways until a group of men dressed in black pass me by. One of them wears a pair of wide, tightly filled out trousers which show that he's half an octopus from the waist down. I say something like "Good day Gentlemen" in the hope that I will appear proper and familiar. But they don't reply and give me disdainful looks as they pass. A little further along I can hear them conspiring to hunt me down and do me harm. I start running and silently hush into an orange door by the stairs. Behind it lie a couple of storage halls, filled with all sorts of items. I'm eager to find a retreat and consider hiding in a green dumpster or underneath a messy shelf but something always warns me that I'll be discovered there. I rush on. All this time I dimly remember how someone told me that the picture taken of me after my capture was the last time I was ever seen. I am torn between the likelihood of awaiting some horrible dissolving fate and the hope that knowledge will help me alter it somehow.
I wake up.