I'm trapped in MASH--the movie or TV show. Helicopter gunships strafe our camp--one heavily armored gunship and half a dozen smaller choppers around it. I'm caught out in open ground. I drop behind a low wall, in a ditch, but what good is that? Their flagship comes and hovers directly over me. I'm exposed, they can kill me instantly.

Some idiot on the camp loudspeakers endlessly chants a list of the frightful weapons on the armored choppers. I get tired of hearing it--we get the idea! Suddenly I push my anger outward, and though they fire at me, I'm NOT killed... seems like my willpower alone can shield me.

I fire back, and shoot down an escort chopper. Islamic warriors on jihad pour out! They have odd claw-knives, like rooster-spurs. They come after me in particular because I know some of their language and use my limited vocabulary to insult and challenge them to one-on-one duels... and it works.

I knife-fight one man and stab him. Another comes up, the others draw back in a circle. Duel. He has a whip and knife. Rather than flee, I let him whip me, grab the whip and jerk it free. I whip him, though I'm inexperienced with a whip, and he has an energy shield. He laughs at me and closes in fast, making the whip useless. I'd hoped to keep him distant with it. I step back, fear rising, then slash at him over and over with my claw-knife. Small cuts. Learn as I go. I know that with his shield I can't stab him vitally; but I can drain his energy. He acts as if the peripheral wounds are trivial, painless.

He cuts me in the shoulder, deep. My spirits sink. It's not just a slash--he implanted a tiny ball. A second later, it explodes. I'm sure my shoulder's ruined, and I'm doomed. Desperately I stab him as deep as I can, but I can't hang on to consciousness any longer... I faint.

And wake in a hospital bed! He was using the last bit of his strength to cheat, implanting that explosive ball... and it wasn't enough to stop me. I used MY last strength, and killed him.

The doctor says I shouldn't be crippled; my shoulder's healing well. I barely won our duel... but I survived.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Helicopter gunships: Huh? Until I see the evening news. Predictive! Earlier today, British helicopters invaded and retook the island of South Georgia from Argentinian invaders [2020 NOTE: up to this point, negotiation still seemed possible; but this began the Falkland War.]
• Anger is a shield: my dreams have been posing me a series of assertiveness challenges.
• Frontal attack will fail, so peripheral slashes: the Brits first took back uninhabited South Georgia, not East or West Falkland.
• Dueling, knives & energy shields: in Frank Herbert's Dune, such shields block bullets and lasers, but a slow knife-stroke can get through. Duels return! In Dune the locals fight a guerilla war against high-tech invaders. The Falklanders did try to resist the Argentine invaders, but were ineffective.
• Enemy implants a deadly little metal ball: a couple years ago, a Euro diplomat was jabbed with an umbrella, leaving a tiny metal ball in him; he died of poisoning. Assassination, almost certainly by Russia.
• Squeamishness about killing: Before the dream, I thought: "You ALWAYS have the right to shoot down military helicopters attacking you. Anyone who sends gunships to kill folks on the ground is ALWAYS in the wrong."
  Well, this dream puts me in that dilemma--on, apparently, the Argentinean side, which I disagree with--the English found the Falklands/Malvinas islands unoccupied in the early 1800s, they've lived there for generations, and they (quite reasonably) don't want to live under Argentina's brutal junta.
  Anyway, I think the dream's warning I go too far. "Maybe gunships ARE usually in the wrong--but ALWAYS?" Don't the Brits have a right to free their people?
• Fight to the death: a second more personalized assertiveness challenge. Here I survived BECAUSE I fought to the last--gave it my all.

SEVEN YEARS LATER

Ball in my shoulder, surgery: long-term predictive. Seven years after the dream, a cyst grew in that same shoulder--a tight little ball that required the only surgery I've ever had (minor though it was).

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