Dream #1: Northstar Autopsy

Sharing: The title of this dream was received in the dream, right at the very end, when I was told that the title of the documentary was Northstar Autopsy.

Dream: The dream begins in Repentigny (a former city where I lived). I am on a bus with several people. It is some kind of organized group bus going to visit something. We are on the bus, passing through a low socioeconomic neighborhood of Repentigny. There are several apartment buildings, and many people are out on their balconies. Some are smoking, others are watching; in fact, they are not doing much at all. At that point, a narration begins, like in a film, and I am the one doing the narration. In it, I comment on the people on their balconies, and I am judgmental toward them. I think they are wasting their time; they should be doing something instead of sitting on their balconies “doing nothing.” I comment on what happens when a social class becomes disconnected from society. This is what I describe in the documentary, and I am about to go visit a kind of industry with a group of people. The organized group was heading there. On the bus, I am with my 2 older sisters, and I tell them about the documentary I want to make about this industry, which I believe has unusual practices or something I want to understand and investigate further. The bus continues, and the narration about what is happening in Repentigny stops. We arrive in an industrial neighborhood, with all kinds of industries. The factory is on the right side of the industrial boulevard. It is entirely white and looks fairly attractive, high-tech, if you will. But around it there are enormous fences, really, really high—at least 10 meters tall—with barbed wire and signs saying: “No trespassing” or “Area under surveillance.” It is clearly a protected site. The bus arrives, and before getting off, I speak to my 2 sisters. They tell me they will not go inside the factory but will wait for me outside, and that as soon as I finish, they will take the car and meet me outside so we can leave together. To begin my documentary, I take a notepad so I can write things down and look serious. And I put on a pink wig, something a little silly. My intention is to see how the factory works and bring a slightly “Patch Adams” element to my approach. When we arrive at the entrance, we have to put on some kind of lab coat. My sisters are in the entrance and leave me, but just before they go, when they see the lab coat, they tell me, “Ah, don’t put that on!” I say, “No, no, it’s fine, it’ll be funny.” I am actually a little late, because the group has already started (what I do not yet know in the dream is that all the visitors received an electronic chip before entering the facility), so I hurry to get into the factory. I quickly put on the lab coat and catch up with the group, and I do not have a chip because I arrived late. The person leading the group has already left and is giving explanations. I do not go through the same door as the group. They went through a corridor, while I go through a kind of general entrance, and I hurry, walking quickly to catch up with them. The guided tour begins, and the guide explains what the company does. The room we are in is white and truly enormous. It is like a large circle and is 15–20 meters high. At the top, on the highest floor, which is large and must have at least 20 feet between it and the ceiling, there are only windows, with people who can look down at what is happening—supervisors and so on. But what I realize is that I do not see the same thing as the other people because I do not have the electronic chip. This chip changes people’s perception. Except for one person beside me, a kind of outcast, someone whom the majority of “normal” people in society would find strange. But I am interested in what he has to say, and it is as if he wakes up. He has a chip, but he wakes up. He says to me, “Hey, do you see what I see?” He explains that he takes some kind of medication for his health (possibly related to his psychological health, because it is clear that he is someone who could easily be prescribed medication if he went to see a psychologist or psychiatrist; he has a somewhat unusual appearance and is different from the others in the way he speaks, dresses, behaves, and so on), then he says, “Hey, look at what’s over there!” In the place he points to, there are what look like waste containers—large metal containers—and inside we can see limbs, arms, things that are either cut, burned, or all twisted up, torn off, like something from a horror movie. Limbs that have been mutilated; either experiments were performed on them, or they suffered workplace accidents, things of that sort. He says to me, “Do you want to go look inside?” It is disgusting. There are really, really many of them. I say, “No, no, I hate seeing that, I’m sorry, I find it… I don’t like seeing ugly things like that; I can’t look.” He says, “There are, like, tons of arms, tons of things like that,” and describes what he sees. I lift my head slightly and catch a glimpse of what is in the containers. I think, “Oh my God.” Around the same time, I look down at my apron and see that it is covered in blood, pieces of skin, and things like that, and I realize, “Oh no, that’s why my sisters told me not to put this on,” when I was rushing to get inside. I realize that it is really not clean, that what is happening in this factory makes no sense. At first, I had thought it would be funny to make a documentary, but now I realize that I am actually in danger, because everyone has a chip and I do not, and if people realize that I am awake, things will go badly for me. I decide nevertheless to go into the back corridors, where there are, for example, emergency staircases, mechanical rooms, and so on—places tourists or visitors would not normally see. It is not welcoming. So I go through these corridors and make my way to the outside courtyard at the back. There I see workers doing things outside, and others who are on their “break” because they have absolutely no energy left. Some have gone outside to try to escape, but they have no strength left, really. They are leaning against the fence, one arm trying to climb, but they are completely drained. They are not zombies exactly, but in a way they are, because they are basically dead. They have no vitality at all, and I realize that they are ultimately prisoners of this factory. At the same time, I realize that we are in a backyard in Repentigny, with the same people who were there at the beginning, sitting on their balconies and watching. It is as if there is a poor neighborhood close to the industry, actually behind it—in the factory courtyard. They look at me and wonder what I am doing there. I think they must not see me, because if someone raises the alarm, things will go badly for me. I try to return to the group discreetly. I pass underneath these people’s balconies so they will not see me too clearly, and I am stressed. The general atmosphere of the nightmare is like that of a horror film. I return to the group and say to the outcast, “Listen, I have to get out of here right now, before people realize I don’t have the chip, because I saw the workers’ conditions in the back, and they are prisoners. We have to get out of here as quickly as possible.” At that point, the outcast stays with the group, as if he is no longer awake like before. He does not understand why I am stressed. He stays there. So I think, “Fine, I can’t do anything,” and I leave. At the exit, one of my university friends is there. I ask her, “But what are you doing here? Why do you work for this factory?” She replies, “Oh, you know, they recruited me. They thought I did my work well and hired me. I have good conditions, and so on.” I tell her, “Listen, I have to leave.” She asks, “Aren’t you with the group?” I say, “No, no, no, my sisters are waiting for me. I have to leave.” She says, “Okay, then I’ll deactivate your chip.” I reply, “That’s kind of the problem—I don’t have one.” She says, “Oh! Security is going to come after you.” So I say to her, “Exactly, that’s why I absolutely have to leave.” Then she says, “Look, go ahead and try to get out as best you can. You’ll have to climb over the fence. I won’t be able to cover for you, but I’ll slow down security.” So I hurry and run, and at that point my son is there. I ask him, “But Nathan, what are you doing here?” He replies, “Well, I’m here. I was waiting for you outside, Dad.” I tell him, “Okay, come on, we really have to hurry. We have to get out of here.” So we run to the fence, and I tell him, “Okay, go ahead, climb, climb. We’re going to do it; we’ll get out together.” The fence is really, really high. When we reach the last section of fencing before the barbed wire, I pull very hard to tear the fence open, and after a few attempts, I rip it apart. I tell Nathan, “Okay, go ahead, go through first. I’ll hold you, and then we’ll do the same thing, but we’ll climb down the fence on the other side. But don’t look down. Just climb down calmly, one step at a time; I’m crossing too.” So I cross the fence and say, “Keep going, keep going, we’re climbing down.” We have about one-third of the fence left to climb down, and Nathan looks down. He gets dizzy and falls to the ground. He hurts one leg. It is not broken or anything, but he is on the ground crying because he is in pain. I hurry down the fence and pick him up. I tell him, “Come on, Nathan, it’s okay. We’ll take care of your leg, but we really have to leave now, okay?” I carry him, and with perfect timing, my sisters arrive in the car at the side of the road. I tell them, “Okay, hurry, we really have to move.” I put Nathan in the car and sit down. I say, “Okay, we have to leave here as quickly as possible. Don’t wait, because security is coming after us.” We set off down the road, and then something really strange happens. It is as if we are going to be teleported and leave the car—Nathan and me. But just before that, it is as if we reach the end of the road and the scenery comes to an end. A little like in the film The Truman Show, as if all of this were a set and, at a certain point, there were an ending. And by going there, we could see reality behind the set. At that moment, I realize that, in fact, everything around the factory—the industrial setting we had seen at the beginning—was not real. It was like images projected by the factory to make it look like a real place, but the factory was all alone, in the middle of endless woods or a forest. It was really huge. Kilometers and kilometers of forest. So when we had arrived by bus, everything we had seen—the city, the other neighborhoods… none of it was real. It was all just forest, in the end. So I say to Nathan, “Listen, I think we have to get out of this forest as quickly as possible, because people are going to come and catch us. We have to run.” We then run through the forest together, and I hear 2 guards ordering someone to release the wolves. About 5 or 6 wolves are released in the distance, but they are running incredibly fast. I tell Nathan that we really have to run as fast as we can. Then, even though according to the logic of the dream his leg should have been hurting, no—he is running. We run together. There is then a family of deer. Some have escaped, but 2 deer remain—like a father and his son, which resembles our family model at that moment. The father deer and his son start running, as if to protect us. They run diagonally behind us so that the wolves will catch them instead of us. Finally, the wolves pounce on the deer. We do not look back, because we have to keep moving forward. Then, eventually, we get out of that place. At that moment, it is as if I have the perspective of an outside observer. It is as if this part of the dream ends there; we had managed to escape. I see from above, as if through an aerial camera view, 2 Indigenous people in the forest looking at the dead bodies of the deer and reacting like, “Oh no, why…” They are truly sad that the wolves attacked the deer. The Indigenous people seem to be the only inhabitants allowed in this forest. They perform a ritual of gratitude to the deer, and the scene ends that way. In the next phase of the dream, I have finished my documentary about this industry. I know it will be controversial because some people will not believe it, but I want to tell the story of what I experienced and what I saw. The documentary is playing in theaters. I then see the documentary poster, and it is called Northstar Autopsy. On the poster, it is as if we can see half of a face, a little like the character in X-Men named Mystique, with blue skin and orange hair, who is like a chameleon, capable of transforming into any shape she wants. She only has to touch a person or an object, and she can change into any form. So the character on the poster resembles that, but on her face we can also see something like barcodes, traces of surgery, or high-tech scientific experiments, like a human who has been altered by an industry. The documentary is going to be shown in a theater, and it is like the film’s premiere. The documentary plays in 2 parts at the theater, with an intermission. The first part of the film is more or less the part that was just described (this dream). During the intermission, people talk, and I see many of my university friends who came to see the film. They have a beer and discuss: “Yeah, well, do I agree, do I disagree, is it true or exaggerated?” But basically, they rationalize it. They intellectualize the documentary and do not really take it as something true. They see it more as a movie and criticize it, as some film critics do. I go over to some groups and tell them, “Listen, no, no, this isn’t a film I made; it’s a documentary. We used actors because we obviously aren’t allowed to film at that factory—it is under heavy surveillance and everything. But we tried to reproduce what happened as faithfully as possible. It isn’t exaggerated, no.” Some people are doubtful, while others strongly agree. But it is truly polarized, about 50/50. There are just as many people who take it seriously as people who say it is impossible, that we live in a society with laws, and so on. These are the two opposing viewpoints. After the intermission, in the second part, I had decided—so people would understand the reality of what had been experienced in that industry—that the documentary would cut abruptly at a point where the ending was unresolved, without credits or anything. At that moment, people came in, including medical authorities and security personnel whom I had paid, to escort people out through a somewhat dubious corridor. It was meant to make them experience what it would be like not to be allowed to leave anywhere except through the designated exit. Everything looked serious, with security guards and people dressed in white lab coats who appeared to be medical or scientific authorities. It was meant to make them experience what the workers experienced in there, as if we were making them leave the theater through emergency or alternative exits. In the end, when they arrived outside, people realized they were in the rear parking lot and were reassured. But during the transition, these people had experienced the fear that the factory workers might feel while working there. The film presentation ended that way. The next day, I saw the review in the newspaper, and the headline was: Northstar Autopsy, a documentary that does not please everyone. It explained that the audience was polarized between the skeptics and those who said it was true, that something had to be done, and that this industry had to be stopped.

Sharing: When I woke up, I was obviously really stressed. I did not feel well. This dream is long to tell, but everything happened quickly, like an action movie.