Whooping

I am someone who is investigating a woman, and my partner and I are searching her apartment. I am going through old chat logs on her computer. As we leave, walking down the stairwell, we talk about something I found in those logs. I am saying to her something about "the desire to feel someone else can understand your experience, your point of view. The internet can be great for that." I am thinking that I am starting to understand this woman we are investigating, to know how she thinks; I can relate to her. I am also thinking that the internet's never worked out that way for me - but then I think, feeling alone in something is a universal human experience in itself. Connecting directly to that feeling-alone-in-something thought - we get to the bottom of the stairwell and walk out the door, and outside, we are in the ruins of an apartment building where I used to live. Everything I can see is covered in debris. We are standing in front of what used to be the indoor pool on the first floor - there is no water, there is a layer of debris at the bottom, and there is no wall or ceiling, the pool is the only recognizable part of the building left. This is a memory of where I was when my wife and daughter died. I climb down to the pool ladder, trying to recreate the moment. But I am shorter now than I was then, the perspective's wrong. Getting the right eye level means putting my feet on a different rung of the ladder than before. It is not quite right. Looking around, I find something in the debris. It looks like a cartridge for an old video game console; from the pictures and words on it, I get the impression it is not a game itself, but a soundtrack. My partner takes it from me and looks it over and says, yeah, if you do not know what you are doing it will just be a soundtrack - but this contains a hidden emulator. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) Fantasy setting loosely based on ancient China. As a disembodied observer, I am watching a man teleport into a large tunnel or cave, only to immediately crumble into dust. I am thinking, whoops. Let us retry that. Earlier, a woman showed that man a dark green and glittering substance kept in a small, rectangular, light green bottle, and explained that to use it you simply rub it over the palms of your hands and clap them together. Having seen him crumble into dust, I can tell she was tricking him, deliberately leading him to his death, but I am also aware that this substance really is something of value - this man only asked her about it because he is seen her use it before. There is an old man listening to their conversation, and when she is left that old man catches the younger man's eye and takes the bottle himself, tucking it into his sleeve. The scene skips ahead to a moment when those two men are surrounded and need to escape in a hurry; the old man produces that bottle, rubs the contents over his hands - which causes them to look claw-like - and claps his hands together. Both men are teleported to that tunnel - this time around, the original teleporter lives, and the old man crumbles into dust.