Normally I don’t remember dreaming, let along retain details from those dreams, but I had a dream a few nights ago that has stuck with me for some stupid reason:
I enter the local Fleet Farm, a store I don’t frequent and haven’t visited in the real world in probably four months. Despite having not been here recently I have vivid details of the layout from childhood visits, accompanying my father. I wander aimlessly for a while and arrive in the back of the store where a fairground style series of booths and tables are set up at the entrance to a farmers market in the back of the store, connecting to the lumber yard out back.
Curious about what’s going on I approach the registration desk and a villainous looking teenager tells me I have to check in my car keys upon entry.
I hand him my keys and sign the clipboard at the registration table before beginning to wander the farmer’s market looking area. After a few tables of weapons and exotic animals I realize that this is some sort of literal black market. I continue browsing guns and monkeys before deciding that I don’t need anything and the sun is coming up outside, so I should get home.
I return to the registration desk to retrieve my keys and am told that they are unsure where they are. When I’m asked what they look like, they state that they may be lost, but they have a solution. They offer to make duplicates of my keys for under $20 and needing to get home, I instinctively pull my keys from my pocket and show them what my car keys look like for them to reproduce.
At this point I became confused. Not wanting the Fleet Farm, black market staff to think I snuck my car keys in, I say that these are my spare keys, which I know isn’t true. They create a new set of keys for me and I realize this whole black market was set up to get people’s keys, sneak them back into the owner’s pockets, and then guilt them into over-charged key duplication purchases. . .
Made-Up Laboratories 