Alice buys a printer cartridge - or notAs the name implies the entire dream, at least what we remember revolves around buying a spare cartridge for my aged inkjet printer. And as you know, when doing so two problems you often face are
a) you have no idea what exact printer model you actually have at home
b) the cartridges are ridiculously expensive
The dream took place on the streets of an office district with skyscrapers. Most of the time we wandered on the street or waited at bus stops. 'We' were me and at least partly some unknown strangers. Sadly tupper was not to be seen but implied to be there most of the time. I was busy looking up cartridges in an 'electronic newspaper' which was a regular worn newspaper which could be searched like the web and displayed the results.
Wasn't something like this planned?.
I remembered it was a Canon 3something but first results were all vintage cameras in a catalog that looked like it was from the seventies. I found out this is what the inkjet cartridges actually looked like, the shape of an old SLR camera or vaguely like a model of the US capitol in faint red-green color. Looked bulky and big so might hold a lot of ink and could at least serve as a neat paperweight when empty. Less funny was the price at over 300€. This was discussed at length and while it was clear that something was off it was not nearly enough to recognize I was dream. We finally ended up with two options - 340 and 380 which was not only the model but also the price.
Tupper decided to go and look up our printer model which conveniently was in one of the office-skyscrapers nearby. From her perspective but without me being in even faint control she ran through the empty building like I had in a previous dream and at some point realized it was a dream but yet failed to become lucid. She just feared the dream would shift to something else but this was prevented with extreme prejudice.
While I often get lost doing something completely different or never find what I am looking for in dreams Alice remained focused on her mission - must find printer!
As soon as it was implied that some zombies / monsters / whatever could be in the building tupper went into rage mode with an outburst or radiation and metal spines from her body like in the hilbilly-monster dream. Like
’I don't have time for this crap, get out of my dream!’ Oddly this seemed to be enough to convince even the brain not to interfere and stabilized the dream to continue in a normal direction. More or less normal.
Not sure what happened next but it was assumed Alice had completed her mission and exited the building, forcefully landing on top of the bus station housing I was supposedly waiting in. A bus was just leaving and she tried to jump on its roof but it was faster and drove away so she fell to the ground like in some cartoon. Somehow this was the funniest thing ever and she kept laughing while racing after the bus at absurd speed up to the next station where I exited with the anonymous group of people advising me on printer issues. Strangely for a moment both me and Alice could be seen in a 3rd perspective and she was wearing a blue swimsuit. Tupper does not wear blue swimsuits but again while very odd I could not be convinced it was a dream. Alice was still laughing while telling me how she fell of the bus station roof but being no-nonsense tupper still remembered her duty and explained of course it was the 340 printer model.
With this mystery solved we walked back to the previous bus station - why? - and I remarked that 340€ for a printer cartridge was absurd. A man passing by and overhearing our conversation joined in and asked if it was even worth spending so much on an old printer and in the end we agreed it was not. Therefore the entire story was completely pointless even from within the dream but whatever.
Anyway now I knew I had a Canon Pixma 340.
mfw never owned a Canon printer in my life