jam, the answer to the clue of 13d, reminded me of a strange dream that I had one night some decades ago. The dream featured a night itself that was starless and the sky intensely black. I was standing on the terrace of a skyscraper, gazing at the vehicles flying in the air just above me. They were not illuminated but could be easily seen despite a black background. It was known to me that the whole world had become so densely populated that there were no roads or avenues left for the movement of vehicles from one place to another. Moreover, all the road vehicles of the world had already been dismantled and flying vehicles of different kinds had instead come to occupy as the only means of transport among places of short to long distances within each country. While most of the time they remained operational above the ground, they were not required to go as immensely higher as the aeroplanes did, but definitely their routes were above the tallest building of the city or town. The drivers and pilots were well aware of and used to all the routes that were themselves thoroughly defined and controlled by experts. On the ground, however, there were millions of specified places from where these flying vehicles could take off; each of them having a nearby place meant for their landing. While I was enjoying watching the flying cars and other vehicles plying on different routes in the air, suddenly, there was a loud siren and I could see vehicles of one particular route slowing down their speed and moving either left or right and stopping in the air. The siren made me realise that a minister would be passing through that way. He should not face any difficulty in reaching his destination in time and that was the reason why the vehicles started to clear the route for him. What followed was too colourful! A beautiful fleet of three vehicles passed that route; the siren still continuing. That led me to guess in the dream that the minister was travelling in the first vehicle and his armed guards were in the two vehicles that followed. The vehicles looked like mats woven out of plastic straws and exactly rectangular in shape, almost similar to the Pathfinder that went to Mars many years later, though the Pathfinder looked as if a big rectangular piece has joined a smaller piece at its one end. All the three vehicles had each hundreds of lights fitted below that were glowing and having one particular colour. Hence, the vehicles looked almost like three cuboid-shaped mats with glowing lights of three different colours. That really exhibited a spectacular view! But they were also soon gone! Now the road was clear for the halted vehicles to continue their journey. From left and right, they came to the exact route in the air and started moving ahead. Incidentally, three of the vehicles due to mechanical failure could not do so. They were tilting a bit left and then a bit right and again a bit left and again a bit right, but remaining where they were. There were no mechanics in the air who could repair those vehicles and put them back into operation. I was aware something terrible was going to happen, but all the more frightened seeing one of the vehicles right above me though at a height. Soon the vehicles started rolling and simultaneously falling down. There were explosions one after another. One of them fell on a far-off building; the second on a building not very far-off. I was experiencing death at that moment, but heaved a sigh of relief when the third vehicle fell on the building that was adjacent to the building of our immediate neighbour but on the other side. Then I woke up, but still felt tensed for some time.
Sunday Telegraph 3219