The dream (or at least this part of it) started out with me viewing the action in some sort of smallish movie theatre. The camera was following a large helicopter that was flying far above a futuristic metropolis. This metropolis had large, extremely elevated (as in over 50 stories high) highways and, more notably, had I think four immense stone statues of people that were absolutely incongruous with the rest of the city. It appeared as if the city was built around them, however, even the tallest of its skyscrapers were dwarfed by even the shortest of the statues.



Anyway, there was a small group of friends (four, I think) in the helicopter. The 'leader' among them was talking about the city. Apparently, the people depicted by the stone statues were paragons from the city in its very earliest days, and they represented fundamental human values and abilities, such as honesty and individuality and beauty. I don't remember if the next part was explicitly stated or made known by some kind of demonstration, but apparently the society had devolved into a consumerist wasteland in which citizens went to work every day performing tasks only devoted to keeping the city intact, and then bought various useless trinkets to entertain themselves during their time off. There was no art and no beauty, and the people valued only the spread of their society and continued reproduction. Another important bit: no government. The people were so set in their ways that nobody did anything unusual that might be regarded as criminal, and those that caused chaos or got out of line were actually shot by random citizens acting as vigilantes (I think here I saw a thief getting gunned down by a random bystander).



At that point, I think I was leaving the theater and ended up outside on this large beach with a single road to the south separating me from the ocean. Somebody nearby said something about an army from the city coming this way, and when I turned back the ocean was actually a vast desert. Large numbers of seemingly ordinary people with guns were running north, firing at us. Obviously, we began to flee. There were a large number of apartment buildings across the beach to the north, so I ended up fleeing through them (occasionally, they would change into other settings like department stores or bunkers, but I think they were pretty consistently apartment buildings). Despite my nonstop running northward, the army was keeping up with me, although they were running up alongside the apartments, and not in them. I stopped for a breather and decided to hide, with the hope that they would advance past me. I ended up in a sort of cat-and-mouse chase with one or two of the soldiers. Eventually I escaped them. I was then hiding at the northmost end of the apartment block, where a bunch of random people with guns were milling about. These were apparently members of the army who had advanced outside the building. Somehow (I forget if one of them said it or if it was the disembodied voice of the helicopter guy), I ended up discovering that this army of people were attacking this apartment area because it was beyond the metropolis' borders and they wanted to expand the city here. Also, apparently, these people were just random militia members that had grabbed/bought guns and just ran out into this area in unison to attack people (I'm guessing dissenters against the city, but it was never explained in the dream, so that's just my explanation).



Somehow it fades back to the chopper. These people in the chopper seem to be the only people in the city that actually care about the old 'dead' values, so they hatch a plan to shock the citizens of that place back to 'humanity.' They conspire to begin blowing up the statues, starting with the smallest, creating chaos and (I guess) making the people of the city very forcibly aware that they had violated the principles that the city was built on. I don't remember what happened next, but the next thing I know, the chopper had landed somewhere and the people from it were planting explosives around the base of one of the statues. Random citizens were showing up with guns (including young kids and the elderly), and the chopper guys ended up having to shoot them (with regret) to protect themselves, though the attackers showed no emotion or concern, they just dutifully showed up and fired at them. Anyway, they detonate the first statue, and it crumbles, unrealistically sending its smoke up in a plume instead of outward. The helicopter people fled and observed it from above. There was panic for a while, but then everyone began to gather and the citizens were just calmly removing the rubble. Nothing much happened afterward.



I don't remember what exactly happened next, but I think I was being chased again for a while and there was some sort of montage-esque thing running through my head while I did it of the statues blowing up (again, my dreams are weird and hard to follow). The chopper guys justified it by thinking to themselves that the people needed to be brought to their senses or something. Their leader, the guy who was narrating it before, was just silent, acting more distraught with each statue demolished. At some times, I think I was on the chopper with them, but that was never explained or made logical.



So anyway, they detonate the last statue. Then everything kind of slowed down as the plume of debris and dust began to blast upward. I was behind the group, and I could hear them thinking to themselves about it. One of them started yelling (in his head, I think) to himself about how it was no good, and that by destroying the statues, they destroyed the last vestige of 'decency' in the world or something about them making official what the people had started (I don't exactly remember it, but the reasoning basically went something like that). So anyway, as they did that, their leader began silently crying (presumably for the same reason) and became even more distraught. So when the thrown debris reached its zenith, the leader walked slowly forward into the dust and disappeared. Then all of the rubble came crashing down and all of his men began weeping, and I think I did too.



Then I think I was being chased by something again, but I don't remember why or where. I think it was more of the gun-toting people from before. At some point the dream transitioned to something unrelated, and that was the end of that part of it (or, more likely, I woke up then, since I usually only remember the latter one or two dreams I have in an evening).



So, yeah, that was one of the coherent ones, which for me is a rarity. Usually they're completely zany and illogical, but at least that one made some sense.