One night, after reading another rave review of “The Hunger Games,” I fell asleep and received a powerful vision from the future.

The vision began with “All Along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan playing as I stood in front of the The Café, one of my favorite restaurants in Ames. The Café’s doors and windows, however, were boarded up. A sign was posted: “CLOSED by Order of the Dept. of Homeland Security (Expanded Patriot Act: 2020, Title VI, Section 6, Subsection 6).”

So as I looked for a way out of there, I noticed that everything was bathed in perpetual twilight. Somerset’s once quaint brick buildings and townhouses were mostly burned. I left Somerset, somewhat confused, and headed south toward campus along Stange Road. On the way I saw the moon cracked like a cracker in two above in the bluish-purple sky.

Schilletter-University Village apartments and Fredericksen Court both were one huge ghetto. Young people, mostly non-Caucasian, stared vacantly at me through chain link fences topped with barbed wire. An old CyRide bus, painted black, pulled up in front of a security checkpoint to the ghetto where men stood in riot gear and bearing assault rifles. “ISC: DPS” was blazoned in cardinal and gold on the side of the bus. On the other side of street, the Veenker Golf course was a graveyard, littered with bones.

Somehow I made it to campus came upon Hamilton Hall, which stood six stories tall with gigantic antennas and satellite dishes at its top. But the place crawled with vicious-looking foxes whose mouths foamed from their excitement. They eagerly shared their news with their cacophonous little voices: “ISU PREZ SEZ: Roosters and Owls in Iowa City dead. No humanity here.”

At that point, “All Along the Watchtower” faded into “Sonne” by Rammstein.

I left Hamilton and looked for Ross Hall. But Ross Hall was gone, so was Curtiss, so was Catt. They had been replaced by cheap-looking wooden army barracks. Soldiers, who looked younger than 18, marched across Campus Central in perfect formations. I hid from them.

Just south of the barracks, I saw an entrance to a mine or a cave. But steel doors with a huge padlock had sealed the entranced. An angry crone suddenly appeared. “Boo! Rubbish! Filth! Muck!” she cried out to me. Then she pointed to the Campanile. “The Beast has the key!”

Beyond the Campanile, Beardshear Hall had been replaced by some kind of factory with a skull-like front. I watched as the soldiers on Central Campus turned and marched in perfect step into the mouth of the skull. Two men flanked the mouth each pulling a lever.

Next thing I know I am standing on the Zodiac in the Memorial Union about to enter the Gold Star Hall. This was the most heartbreaking part of this vision. As I entered I felt a gust of wind and heard a woman sobbing. But I did not see the woman as I noticed that hundreds, perhaps thousands of new names had been added to the walls and columns. Each name had been written in pencil. The Gold Star Hall kiosk was gone.

Then this all crumbled away, and I found myself in the middle of vast and flat prairie, the kind you see in Nebraska. To the east was a mountain chain, and I saw the city I know as “Del Reloes” devastated by war, the Tower of Babel smashed by the great Leviathan. To the west, I saw a light, as if the sun were rising. The light came closer, and I could see it was actually three lights, which became three crosses upon three mega-churches built upon three hills.

The hills themselves were not made of earth. One was made of torn books and newspapers, the second of rotting and filthy money and the third of broken religious symbols.

Then I saw a man robed and hooded in white, riding upon an elephant, descend from the heavens above the churches. He landed in front of me, but I avoided looking at his face though I found myself paralyzed by fear.

“Your heart beats on the left,” he said as Rammstein’s song faded away. “But I see it on the right. Now look at me.”

I gazed into the emptiness where that man’s face should be.

I woke up seized by a deep fear.

What this vision means, I do not know. Like so many prophetic visions, the meanings behind the symbolism and imagery remain obscure. Perhaps I fear a totalitarian state awaits us in the near future if moderate forces do not establish a balance within our political system. Or perhaps not. I do know, however, that 2012 will be a pivotal year for either side. Vote wisely.