SWAT

I'm on a SWAT team. The mission is an odd one. There are people held hostage on the second floor and the demand is for soap or perfume (maybe both). The team commander is convinced we need to go in there and take him out, but I believe negotiation will work. I have some brilliant idea on how we can resolve the situation, although I have forgotten what it was (or perhaps it wasn't a solution at all). The team made it to the room before me, so I'm rushing over there to try to help out. When I arrive, the team leader is trying to figure out what to do. There's a classroom full of people and it isn't clear who the suspect is. I'm surprised that we don't have the soap with us that the guy is demanding. It would've been a small task to actually fulfill his demands. Some guy gets up and says he can make the soap if we give him some ingredients. We are ill prepared to offer any soap or ingredients to anyone. Then a woman gets up and says she's the one responsible and she wants to surrender. The SWAT team seems very relieved at this, but I am certain it's a ruse. My suspicion is that the woman is looking for any way out of this situation, even if it means helping the guy responsible escape. On her way out, though, she stops by a man and begs him to let her leave. Now it's obvious who the suspect is. He starts beating up the hostages. The SWAT team is just watching this going on. I'm yelling at the SWAT leader that he's beating people up and we should get in there, but I suppose the fact that he has a gun deters this action given the number of hostages in there. I'm holding a very slim camera (which I had been using to take pictures of the scene) that doubles as a gun. I have no idea how it works, but the delay on firing is long. I'm holding this up at the gunman, thinking about shooting him. Unfortunately, hostages keep entering the line of fire and the odds of hitting one of them seem pretty great. The SWAT team is still very cautious about whether or not to go in. I decide I'm going to have to try and take this guy out myself. I take a shot at him and hit him in the shoulder or upper chest region. Then the SWAT team moves in. My decision to shoot really wasn't authorized by anyone, I sort of went rogue on the team. But, the results were probably good. A SWAT guy grabs a hold of the gunman, but the last thing he's able to do is to lift his arm and shoot me in the head. His aim is incredible. So while I hit the guy and was responsible for his capture, I paid the ultimate price and was killed. After the fact, I was congratulating the gunman on his accuracy and ability to take a bullet without losing composure. It was almost as though this was some sort of game and I had failed.

Now I'm again on the SWAT team. We've got a new situation. I'm not exactly clear what that situation is, but there are people with guns appearing out of doors. I find that getting killed makes me extremely cautious. I'm telling other SWAT members of threats so they can take care of them. I don't want any of them coming after me. Well we're in this hallway and the bad guys keep coming at us from alternating directions. First from the left, then from the right, then the left again. I'm doing my best at pointing out the threats to my teammates, but it's obvious I'm going to have to start taking shots at these guys. We begin to get overwhelmed. I take a few shots at this one guy, but he doesn't fall. He pulls out his two pistols and takes some shots at me. I go down, but I'm still alive. I do my best from the ground to try and get my SWAT teammates to cover me. Unfortunately there are too many gunmen and the SWAT team begins to fall one by one. I know I'm going to get killed soon enough. I think at this point I try to quit the game. I don't want the feeling of death again. I've already died quite a few times before this and something about this death scares me more than the others. I manage to flee the game.

I think a bit about death before awakening. Is death the end? From my SWAT experiences, death simply was the end of that game. I could play again. It wasn't a fun experience to die in the game. In fact, it was always a very scary experience. Every time it happened, I wondered whether that was the end of everything. So when I die in my dream, is that something I can relate to reality? Or is it all just a dream brought on by playing too many video games? Probably the latter.