At Least Alice Got To Be Queen

The other night I dreamt I was climbing down into a sprawling subterranean cavern all lit up like a convention hall bubbling over with voices but with nary another person in sight. I wandered over to the nearest grotto-stall, which contained a chessboard whose king-pieces were arguing.

The standard layout, they maintained, was a lousy simulation of actual battlefield situations because you couldn't, for example, carry out a simple flanking manuever on a chessboard.

Good point, I thought, and promptly woke up.

Whuh?

This was the layout, or very near it, that the quarreling kings were working on.

I never have normal dreams - there's either bodies decomposing in department stores, or Oscar Wilde and his literati pals are saving the world from alien invasion over a cup of tea, or skribe turns out to be a turquoise kingfisher.