Last night I had some difficulty breathing. This only happens a couple of times a year, and it’s usually a minor inconvenience. Therefore, I seem to have lost my inhaler since the last time.

Apparently, last night while I slept, I also had some difficulty breathing. I had this dream about it:

I was doing some maintenance in the hangar of a spacecraft carrier. No launches were scheduled, so I wasn’t wearing my pressure suit. I know that’s against safety regulations, but when you work on the ship all day, it’s a pain in the butt to suit up and lose a bunch of agility while you work, just to fix a couple things and then leave.

I saw some member of the crew stroll casually into the hangar. I said hi and she said hi. THEN, she got into one of the ships and initiated the launch sequence! She was stealing the ship! Cripes! The big hangar door started to open and the air started evacuating.

I pulled the emergency door shut lever, and the door started shutting again, but the ship was already on its way out. It crashed into the door, damaging one of the mechanisms. The door was stuck and couldn’t close all the way. At this point, the room was almost out of air, and it was still leaking. I couldn’t open the inner door because the pressure differential activated the safety mechanisms.

I got on the radio and quickly described my situation. They couldn’t think of a good rescue plan. They couldn’t cut through the door because that would take too long and it would start evacuating the ship. They could send somebody out another airlock to come send a pressure suit in to me, but that would take too long.

I begged them to start sending air into there. They said that the ship had too little air to just go bleeding it off in to space. I told them to just give me enough to survive for 20 minutes and I would think of something. They agreed.

I grabbed a piece of sheet metal and started welding it over the hole in the door. My plan was to seal the breach and then we could repressurize the hangar and let me out. The problem was that the way the door was stuck, it was in a cycle where it would try to close, something would catch, and then it would open a little bit, and then try to close again. So the whole thing was moving and I couldn’t just weld stuff on to it.

I woke up then.

A combination of deliberate breathing and caffeine to dilate my stuff has helped. I’m sure I’ll be fine later. This never lasts long.