What I dreamed last night.

I was back on campus, walking late at night with an unspecified acquaintance across the plaza in front of the chemical engineering building.  Suddenly, several yards away from me, a crazed man attacked a passerby, causing him great injury, and then ran off.  I ran toward the victim lying on the ground, dialing my cell phone, and the attacker turned to come after me.  The scene ended with me trying to decide whether to keep running or whether to stop calling for help and to pretend I hadn’t seen the attack in the hopes that the pursuer would leave me alone.  That’s when I woke up.

I don’t think this is just a run-of-the-mill nightmare, though, because the weapon used in the attack was a moderately common piece of laboratory equipment.   Anyone want to hazard a guess in the comments what it means?

N. B.  Although it’s been many years since I used one of those things, I don’t remember it being cordless.  Probably running away in a straight line was a decent strategy.