I'm at college or high school again. I have a class and/or assignment, one that I've known about for a very reasonable amount of time. Nevertheless, I've somehow blown it off - usually because I was very busy with something else, but sometimes because I just plain forgot. In the dream, the time of reckoning has come; the assignment is due, the final or midterm is tomorrow, and there's no way that I can even hope to finish the assignment or learn the material in time. The dream isn't focused on the failure itself. I always wake up before I have to hand in the assignment or take (and fail) the test, and I'm so far behind in the dream that there's no sense in a scrambled effort to cram the material. Instead, the crux of the dream is when I realize and internalize the fact that I'm not going to make it - the "oh shit" moment itself, and the moments immediately following.

I was back at high school, on a campus that was more like a university. It was late spring - everything was green, the weather was quite pleasant. All the people I knew from high school were around (now, sitting at work, I remember names I haven't recalled for years), doing the things they do. And I knew, as one knows things in dreams, that I'd been away for about six months. I'd been taken by aliens, you see. They told me I had an important purpose to fulfill (it wasn't the Aprocryphal saving of the world, but damn close), gave me abilities to deal with it (dunno what they were) and brought me back. It had taken about six months for them to do this - I didn't remember the details, I just knew it had happened.

I do know I felt preternaturally balanced. I was doing things like walking along the tops of fences, hopping easily up into tree branches. Nobody looked at me oddly when I did this.

Walking through the campus, I came across my friends - Brian, Sean, Bob - and we started heading towards the buildings, into class.

"Where've you been?" they asked, and I gave some flip answer that satisfied them. I didn't tell them anything about what had happened, about this mission, this purpose, that I'd been given. Their interest in where I'd been seemed only superficial, easily mollified.

"Well, you know that genetics assignment is due," Sean told me. Indeed, I did know. I'd been given the assignment before I was taken away. But I'd forgotten it, until now. Hadn't worked on it, hadn't attended the class - or any class for that matter. How could I have?

"The teacher will fail you if you don't turn this one in," Brian added, "maybe give you a bar if you're lucky." A "bar" was a horizontal mark on your grade - not failure, not quite incomplete, you had an intensely high-pressure chance to make it up. No, we didn't have bars in my real high-school, this was an invention of the dream.

We walked into the building, towards the stairs that would take us to class, other students milling around in the normal pre-class fashion. This is where the dream would have normally gone into the old theme - I'd been out of class for months, no way I could make up this assignment, even with a "bar". I even started to get nervous about it, the "oh shit" moment was almost upon me.

Then my head cleared. No need to worry about this. So you fail this class, big deal.

You have something more important.

You have a Purpose.