The Blue Tube

Some dreams are more than dreams.    
   
Some 25 years ago I 'dreamed' this.  It is an exact description, for I remember every detail.    
   
It is a bright chilly day and I am walking in the parking lot of the apartment building where I live and am almost at my car door when a very loud metallic clang rings out, akin to the sound of a sledge crashing into an anvil.  I look up and towards the west from where the noise came and see the horizon turn white and then in a flash everything turns white.    
   
I wake up naked in a transparent tube with a bluish hue.  The tube runs from a boxlike object on the floor diagonally to the ceiling, about 8 meters in length.  I look around, amazed at what I am seeing, identical tubes about 2 meters apart line the side of the largest chamber I have ever seen.  I can't even see the end of the thing, it is humongous and in each tube sleeps a naked person.  My tube is almost at the end, on my left are only a few tubes and then a wall, but to my right it stretches on and on seemingly forever.  I can't wrap my head around that, I am in total awe of my surroundings.    
Facing me, on the others side of the chamber tubes line the wall, each with a person inside.  It is about 20 meters to the other side, I estimate.      
There are hundreds, if not thousands of people here.    
   
I look at the people next to me to see if I recognize any of them, but I don't  What in the world is going on here, where am I?  Am I dead?  I examine my body, everything appears in place, I am breathing, the air is nice, oxygen rich, temperature is comfortable, I seem to be alive.  In the tube next to me lies a brown skinned Asian lady in her mid thirties and to the right of her a brown skinned Asian boy, who looks around 11 years old.  Both are in a deep sleep.  To my left is a middle aged white man.  Everyone is sleeping except me, it seems.    
I reach my hand out to touch the upper casing, half extending my arm.  It is warm to the touch,  about room temperature and feels like something between plastic and glass.      
It is extremely smooth, not slippery, yet my hand glides over it easily.    
   
The floor is white with some sort of faint grid on it and it is immaculate, there is no mark from any vehicles or shoes or anything.  How can all these tubes be maintained without anyone personally attending to them I ask myself.  Fully automated for every occasion or mishap apparently.    
Whoever runs this place didn't figure on my habit of waking up when I shouldn't.      
I wonder if it has been noticed.      
   
I have to get out of here.  The tube is not roomy enough to sit up in, but I can inch my way higher and toward the ceiling, maybe that is where I can break out.  After a couple of meters I see clearly that the tube ends where the ceiling meets the wall, that is not the way out.  I start sliding myself down again and now I examine the boxlike object on the floor intently.  It is creamy beige in color, each tube has an identical box connected to it, about half a meter wide and about a meter in length, no sharp edges, smooth as can be and of course immaculate like everything else in here.  I am not going to make it out of this thing feet first, I have to turn around somehow, but the tube is too narrow, I am struggling and almost get myself stuck.    
   
A very calm and soothing female voice sounds in my head.  Do not be afraid, it says, you are safe.  I have a million questions, but the voice interrupts my thoughts.  That woman laying to your right is your wife and the boy next to her is your son.  But I have no wife and I have no son I argue.  She is your wife and he is your son, now you will go to sleep again, everything is good, everything is safe, sleep.  Her voice is so soothing, so caring, so loving, so tender, yet I want to resist.    
A gas of some sort is released into my tube and I try not to breathe but I have to.  I gasp and suck in the first breath.  Immediately I feel calm, it is wonderful, all cares slip away, I am residing in love, I am blanketed by care.  Sleep.  
   
The dream ends and I awake in my bed.  A few years later I began corresponding online with a Filipina lady in her mid thirties.  It was love in first letter, I know that sounds corny but it really was.  It was like we had known each other all our lives, kindred spirits.      
We wrote each other all the time, while I saved up enough money to come visit her in her little mountain village.  I knew from the start that we would marry and we did in her little village chapel across from her family's house.      
After a couple of months I returned home to work out the papers and applications for her to join me.      
Much to our surprise she became pregnant.    
   
We have a son.  He is almost 18 now.  In the dream I examined the woman in the tube next to me closely and the boy, it was my wife and it was my son.