Lucid Dreams

It's dark.  Pitch black void, uninterrupted.  The veil begins to lift, blinking in fluorescent light.  It floods my vision.  I slowly adjust to it.  How long had I been asleep?  As the blurriness subsides, i take in my surroundings.  I'm standing in front of a classroom, students gaping at me in disbelief.  Some of them, i recognize.  This feels...familiar.  I notice friends.  Enemies.  I feel a draft, and reflexively cover my underwear.  I notice bullet points of a speech in my hand.  This has all the familiar beats of a dream.  I pinch myself and distinctly feel the sensation.  Friends are still staring, silently willing me to go on and salvage my dignity.  I can feel goosebumps take form on my bare skin.  My palms are clammy with anticipation.  It all feels so...visceral.  This cant be a dream. How did i get here?  Where are my pants?  My head is swimming in a fog.  The students are now pointing at me and laughing.  The teacher stifles a giggle and beckons me to begin.  I steel up my courage, resign myself to the moment, and recite my speech.  The speech starts disjointed, but eventually comes naturally.  I gain confidence.  The students slowly stop laughing and become engaged.  Eventually i forget about my exposed skin.  There is only me in the moment, delivering the most passionate speech of my life.  I belt out my closing paragraph, finishing with a flourish of oratory skill.  The students stand and clap.  The teacher beams with pride.  I take a bow in triumph.  "Thank you", i say to no one in particular.  "Once I got started, I stopped thinking about how I looked and it all just became eeeeeeasyyyyyyyyy..."  

     The voice trails off.  His eyes dim and he pitches slowly forward.  A tech runs in to break the fall.  He reaches behind the fallen man's head and disconnects a cable from the base of his skull that runs into the wall.  The holograms of the crowd and teacher disappear.  Many techs are running around now, cleaning the space, resetting furniture(in what formation).  The fallen man is placed on a cart and wheeled to a room for storage.  A man located on a perch above the room observing the scene nods his head in understanding.  He jots down notes on his pad and files it away under a folder labeled Fears and disconnects his consciousness from the terminal.