I had two dreams featuring a similar theme last night, and yes, I’m 100% sure they actually were two dreams, rather than a single dream shifting time and place, because I was awake between the two, getting up and scribbling down the initial dream before falling back asleep.

In the first, I was at a science fiction convention, only it was far classier than any science fiction convention I’ve ever been to. It was more like a classy Park Avenue cocktail party, with a bar, and waiters circulating with canapés, and someone tinkling away at a grand piano. As I wandered with drink in hand, I saw Chip Delany in the distance, and went over to greet him. Although in the dream he was still the age he is now in real life, he was trim the way he was in his youth, and filled with vigor, with no need of a cane.

“You once more look like a god,” I told him, amazed at his transformation.

We talked a bit about how he had gotten as fit again as he once had been, but then he seemed a bit miffed, and told me that he was a little upset I was talking about all that instead of asking after his child. So I apologized, for in the dream, he and his partner had recently adopted a baby, and I’d known that, knew the kid had health problems, and felt a bit embarrassed for not asking how he was doing.

I told him, yes, I do need to know, but first I had to put my drink down, so I went over to the bar which was spread out across the grand piano. I was about to leave my glass, but when I looked in my hand I saw that it wasn’t just any glass, but the glass that’s my favorite in real life. So I pulled back just as the waiter was about to snatch it from me, and told him I’d decided to keep it instead.

I went back to Chip, and said, now tell me all about what’s happening with your baby. And suddenly we were no longer inside at a party, but instead walking through the Village. He told me all about the endless health challenges, the operations he’d had to endure, etc., but that now the kid was doing fine. I woke as we got near Washington Square Park.

In the second dream, which shares but one characteristic, I was also at a convention, but there was nothing classy about it like the one above. It was a sweaty mass of humanity in a hotel hallway. I was on a chair with my back against the wall as people milled past me.

And suddenly, William Shatner appeared in front of me.

He was the same age as he is now, but he, too, was as fit as he’d been in his youth. He came over to me as if we knew each other and greeted me warmly. I congratulated him on becoming once more what he once was, and we talked a bit about how he had done it. I asked him if, now that he was thin again, he’d tried on his original Capt. Kirk outfit.

He shook his head, smiling wryly. That just isn’t done, he told me.

I got up from my chair and we walked through the convention, chatting, catching up on some shared past we supposedly had, and the oddest thing of all about the dream, far odder than the fact that he’d come up to me, a stranger in real life, and greeted me with obvious friendship, was that—no one bothered us.

We wandered through the crowds unmolested. Which would never have happened in real life. We’d have been attacked by autograph seekers, people wanting to snap photos, etc., but instead, we walked along, having a pleasant conversation, with me not realizing how strange it all was until I woke and thought, like that would ever happen.

So—what do you think me having two so similar dreams so close together was all about?