I’m in a large meeting space, possibly a conference room in a hotel. There are hundreds of other people there, all managers and employees from a previous employer I used to work for. Everyone is dressed in business wear, and the mood is light. Though it’s not clear why we are gathered, I get the sense it is to hear a good news announcement of some nature. As I look around the room, each person who I settle my gaze on, I know. There is a very comfortable familiarity in the room.

Before it becomes clear why exactly we are there, several of us find ourselves riding mountain bikes, still in our business wear on a fairly technical, very muddy narrow trail. I observe one former coworker lose control, and he and his bike veer off the trail, through some bushes and toward some boulders. I stop with the intention to help, but he waves me on. The trail widens and out of nowhere a large truck is behind me. There is nowhere for me to go to get off the road so I try to pedal faster. The mud and the steepness of the trail make it difficult. After rounding a corner, there is a small trail that leads off the road, and I take that.

In the next moment, we are rejoining the large crowd, but in a new hotel that seems to have multiple entrances on multiple levels. I get the sense it is very new and fancy. There are even more people there now, and the mood has become a little uneasy. As I am greeting a few new people, I notice a group of individuals in dark suits entering. They look like lawyers, and I recognize a few past union executives and union representatives with them. The chatter falls away, and a few others who have been there the whole time, who, like me used to work with the union, or currently do including the current union president,  look visibly uncomfortable.

A few of the people I have known the longest in the room get up and leave, and I follow them. As we go outside we are now in the small town where I first started working for this employer. The others I’m with produce what looks like pickets signs, seemingly out of nowhere. The signs are facing away from me, and are all really odd shapes. They walk to an intersection on two rarely traveled residential streets and start displaying the signs. Before I can catch up to them and see what the signs depict, I wake up.