Last night I had a dream and this is its story:

I lived on a stunning green and blue planet named Earth, one of eight (more or less) that spun around a great fiery star called the Sun; contained within a swirling great galaxy of many other suns and planets, floating in a vast and boundless universe. (Certainly this, so far, is a scene anyone can relate to – the setting of a dream based on things we know.)

But as my dream unfolded and its details emerged I became aware of things startlingly different from our familiar world. Endowed with the omnivision of a dream I was able to see many places at once. And one detail soon became obvious: each country’s capital was marked by a huge and very unusual construction. These were all quite similar in their dark colors and overall angular characteristics, but their sizes and exact shapes differed. The presence of these structures everywhere made it obvious there was something very important about them.

So, using another special talent bestowed to humans only in dreams, I swooped down like a bird for a closer look. I circumnavigated one, then another and another of these massive shapes, traveling supersonically from one country to the next, searching for an answer.

Initially it seemed these were just massive blackish blobs of metal, though in fact angular, rather than blobular. But I knew there must be a significance to them, so I searched for details that might provide some clues. Closer scrutiny of one, revealed surfaces that were not smooth but irregular and marked with a great variety of small protrusions and depressions. One such shape jumped out in relief at me, but it took several seconds to register what it was – a partially melted gun. Thus informed, I scanned the rest of the sculpture and identified many more parts of guns, rifles, automatic weapons, grenades, missiles, weapons of all kinds. In our own nation’s capitol the sculpture was, of course, quite massive – created from many thousands of guns.

Then, with the speed and ease of a character in an Ann Rice novel, I revisited the sites of the other constructions scattered in capitals all over the world. Armed with my new insight it was now easy to identify the same shapes of weapons melted together in these huge metal piles. Intrigued, in one location I asked passers-by about the significance of this. (Of course they all could understand me perfectly.) They explained that citizens in each country had somehow been persuaded to turn in all their weapons so they could be melted down to create these monuments symbolizing a world-wide commitment to non-violence.

Then I woke up to the real world of the USA.