Dream Log: Time-Traveling Espionage

 COVID did not exist in last night's dream. It was the present day, for the most part, and I was my real age, 59 years old. Most of the dream took place in and around some of those extremely enormous buildings which exist in many of my dreams but not in reality. These buildings, a half dozen of them covering as much area as a medium sized city, had previously been what Americans call a public school, and Brits call a state school. Concrete, dirty windows, dingy floor tiles, very small scraps of lawn and shrubbery between the unrealistically-huge buildings.

At the beginning of the dream I had the ability to travel through time back into the past. Only into the past. I went back and forth between the present day, and selected points in the past. I did not do this by means of technology. Rather, it was a talent I had, like juggling or playing tennis exceptionally well. 

At first I was not aware of any other time travelers, and I was being coached by a time of what I assumed to be good people, government agents, about how to do the most good for mankind with my ability. But then I met another time traveler, who asked me how I could be certain that these advisors were who and what what they said they were. And then I kept seeing more and more time travelers, and it became clear to me that there were many different factions among them, representing conflicting interests. Furthermore, the groups to which the individual time travelers belonged were composed to a very great extent according to personal likes and dislikes among their members. And individuals were constantly moving from one group to another, and they were spying on each other, often belonging to one group only so that they could report on that group to another, hostile group. In short, the whole city-sized former school buildings were swarming with thousands of ruthless, cut-throat time traveling spies. Some worked for governments, some worked for corporations, some worked only for themselves. If there actually was a faction among them dedicated to helping the world in general, they were very greatly outnumbered. And a great many of them were double or triple agents. All in all, it was pretty depressing, apart from the great fascination -- for me at least -- of the huge imaginary architecture.

I only saw people planning trips to and from the past, never into the future.

I was still in the process of looking for a group I thought I might be able to trust, a group which appeared to be things I thought worth doing, when I woke up.