The Defender
I've just had a beautiful Really-Big-Thing dream. I have these sometimes and I really like them; they're usually about something planetarily huge happening in the sky, like a new sun or something. This time it wasn't really that big, but it was big enough. It went like this.
We were in a trip in the desert when, in the morning, we looked east and saw something odd. In the beginning I thought it was a big hurricane-like cloud formation, but as I looked lower and lower, it solidified, until I saw the spot where it touched the ground. It wasn't clouds, it was some kind of a gigantic pillar made of something like spikey metal. The entire pillar was surrounded by, or perhaps made of, metallic sections, each ending in a short spike, like a rose's thorn. There were never two spikes directly above each other; they were arranged like rows of seats in a movie theater or the bark of a palm tree. (I considered going "Hey, it's a Shrike tree!" but thought it would be too geeky). The pillar must have been at least twenty meters wide - maybe more - but it was the height that was astonishing; it just shot right into the sky, where, as I could see now, it curved. It wasn't a pillar at all - it was a half-ring, the far side of which came in touch with the earth again across the mountains and all the way down in the dead sea valley. Or perhaps it was a full ring, half of it buried in the ground. That would be really amazing, because the farthest point of it would have to be kilometers below the surface. And frankly, I was flabbergasted enough about the half that I did see, because I was quite sure it wasn't there the night before.
No one else seemed that surprised, though. Apparently everyone knew they were going to build this semi-ring thing, except me, because I don't watch TV. They told me it was called the Defender, and was built with help from the Canadians and the Belgians and the Swiss, or something. There were even guided tours along it. We'd sit in a sort of a white, circular elevator-like thing, that encircled the main pillar, and it'd began to float - It looked like something right out of a Sci-Fi movie - upwards and onwards along the Defender's main shaft. Rumor had it that conditions for soldiers in the Defender's operating base are really good, all you do all day is serve food to Canadians and Belgians and such. Even the papers were making fun of it, badly. Someone trying to copy Ra'anan Shaked's style wrote that since Israel is shaped like a penis, the Defender is obviously a condom. Ha bloody Ha. No reason to let people publish things in the paper when they have nothing better to say than "Hey, It looks like a dick!".
But since it's called the Defender, what does it defend us from? I asked. It can't be just protecting Israel from Iran and such, because then why would the Canadians and the Belgians and the Swiss be involved? No one wanted to tell me. Either no one knew, or everyone knew except me, because I don't watch TV.
We were in a trip in the desert when, in the morning, we looked east and saw something odd. In the beginning I thought it was a big hurricane-like cloud formation, but as I looked lower and lower, it solidified, until I saw the spot where it touched the ground. It wasn't clouds, it was some kind of a gigantic pillar made of something like spikey metal. The entire pillar was surrounded by, or perhaps made of, metallic sections, each ending in a short spike, like a rose's thorn. There were never two spikes directly above each other; they were arranged like rows of seats in a movie theater or the bark of a palm tree. (I considered going "Hey, it's a Shrike tree!" but thought it would be too geeky). The pillar must have been at least twenty meters wide - maybe more - but it was the height that was astonishing; it just shot right into the sky, where, as I could see now, it curved. It wasn't a pillar at all - it was a half-ring, the far side of which came in touch with the earth again across the mountains and all the way down in the dead sea valley. Or perhaps it was a full ring, half of it buried in the ground. That would be really amazing, because the farthest point of it would have to be kilometers below the surface. And frankly, I was flabbergasted enough about the half that I did see, because I was quite sure it wasn't there the night before.
No one else seemed that surprised, though. Apparently everyone knew they were going to build this semi-ring thing, except me, because I don't watch TV. They told me it was called the Defender, and was built with help from the Canadians and the Belgians and the Swiss, or something. There were even guided tours along it. We'd sit in a sort of a white, circular elevator-like thing, that encircled the main pillar, and it'd began to float - It looked like something right out of a Sci-Fi movie - upwards and onwards along the Defender's main shaft. Rumor had it that conditions for soldiers in the Defender's operating base are really good, all you do all day is serve food to Canadians and Belgians and such. Even the papers were making fun of it, badly. Someone trying to copy Ra'anan Shaked's style wrote that since Israel is shaped like a penis, the Defender is obviously a condom. Ha bloody Ha. No reason to let people publish things in the paper when they have nothing better to say than "Hey, It looks like a dick!".
But since it's called the Defender, what does it defend us from? I asked. It can't be just protecting Israel from Iran and such, because then why would the Canadians and the Belgians and the Swiss be involved? No one wanted to tell me. Either no one knew, or everyone knew except me, because I don't watch TV.