I’m on the tarmac at Burbank airport, watching a commercial being made. I notice a small fire on the edge of a wooden building and alert some nearby firefighters. One of the firefighters, the more senior one, has a cigarette in his mouth but doesn’t remove it while telling his subordinate to “have a look.”
The fire spreads but then I notice lava flowing by at my feet and trot my way back to the terminal. The tarmac is quickly becoming covered with lava.
As all of us inside the terminal are looking out the window we notice that the lava has disappeared in a cloud of steam, but when the steam dissipates we see water – as in an ocean – rising, rising towards us. It appears that the ocean will keep rising past the level of the windows, at which point we all scramble away from the windows. Behind us isn’t just an empty terminal but rather rows of benches sloping upward, such as you’d see in a football stadium except padded. Everybody scrambles up the aisles between the benches, but before we all get out the water rises above the windows and the windows all crash, allowing the seawater to gush into the terminal-slash-theater.
We all grab onto pieces of floating debris, and in a flash we’re in the ocean at night, though within sight of lights on a distant shore. Even though it’s night I can tell that the water is clear because I see the starfish and such a few feet beneath me on the ocean floor.
After a few minutes of paddling some fishing boats come and pluck us all out of the water. A short time afterwards we’re deposited in a small Italian village, where the townsfolk welcome us with cheers and waving flags (though not Italian flags). There are no officials to tell us what to do so we all disperse into the cafes and bars.
Later, as I’m heading back to the waterfront to board the vessel that will return me to Burbank, I realize that I’ve forgotten my backpack. (A real backpack that I owned for several years but got rid of a year ago) I go back to where I was sitting and am delighted to see that it’s still there.
I head down the street toward the docks with my backpack, and I wake up.