In my dream last night, I was exploring a gigantic, possibly infinite mall in a Fallout-style post-apocalyptic landscape. At times, the dream was explicitly set in the Fallout universe. The mall was crowded with fellow survivors decked out with exotic weapons and outfits, and the place seemed to never end, with each room drastically different from the last. Supposedly, parts of the mall could be very dangerous, and I was prepared, but by this point I'd never found anything to worry about. As I walked through, I passed through dark, empty, narrow halls, crowded stores leading straight into other stores, and vast concourses filled with people, with large entryways leading into various other stores. Many people were only there to loot, others were settling down in the mall, and everyone was at peace with each other, as there was far more than enough to go around. It seemed you could find anything there, even things you'd never ordinarily find in a mall, or even in real life. There were grocery stores, clothing stores, and it seemed impossible to loot the entire mall clean. The loot was even better the deeper one ventured, though it also seemed the mall would become more dangerous.

At some point while exploring, the dream had me start over. I was a young girl, maybe about nine, escaping from my Vault-Tec Vault, and when I surfaced, I found a sandy and rocky desert filled with scattered metal debris. I wasn't scared of the wasteland, as I still remembered my previous experiences, as if I was just starting a new playthrough of a video game. I had a new goal now, to form a party so I could venture into the center of the mall and find its greatest treasures. At some point on my journey I wasn't a girl anymore, and I was just myself again, kitted out with Fallout-style gear. I met up with two of my real-life friends, and we trekked through the desert toward the mall. This reminded me of how in FO3 I always beeline toward the towering Capital City on the horizon, or toward the distant bright lights of New Vegas in NV. The mall was placed dead-center on my map, was the largest landmark in the wasteland, and was both a vast dungeon filled with endless loot, yet also the safest settlement one could live in.

When we finally reached the mall safely, we were happy to be out of the desert, and once inside, we passed through many places like I'd been before: dark corridors filled with cobwebs, crowded clothing stores, food chains, merchandise stores, and stores I've surely forgotten. I wanted us to stop inside a grocery store at some point. One store had a frosted window showing a curtain of cotton candy on the other side. A friend and I entered the concourse, and I spotted a doorway leading straight into that cotton candy veil. As I was grabbing a fistful to eat, I heard my friend still in the other store say he wanted to get to the cotton candy. I called over to say I was at the entrance, and he said "oh" like he felt a little silly for trying to find the entrance from within the other store. Behind the curtain of cotton candy was a grocery store, and as the fruits were nearby, we raided those first. I specifically remember watermelon.

At some point we stopped running into other people, and found dark halls monitored by Half-Life 2 tripod turrets with laser guidance, and wall-mounted motion-detecting lasers scanning rooms for movement. I checked my map, and saw that we wouldn't find any more stores until we'd made our way through this secure section of the mall, which could take hours, or days. We also seemed to have a quest that required reaching a security room. On our way through, we laughed about how my larger friend wasn't making any attempt not to get spotted by the lasers, which activated all the turrets near us. We made easy work of them though, as we'd step in front of their lasers, activating their guns, and then lift them up (as HL2 turrets are physics objects, and Fallout games give most objects physics) and use them to destroy other nearby turrets.

When I woke up, I was too tired to stay awake, but I had a feeling this dream was too memorable to forget.