If half of it happened twice, it must mean something / two halves make a whole lot of crazy!
So start by placing yourself in a state of bliss. You're swimming in crystal blue water. The sun beats down, the sea catching its glow from every angle and illuminating itself entirely. As you swim along, you daintily disturb the sea's surface, sending infinite ripples out into the universe and playful droplets dancing through the air, the sun's rays exploding each one with a rainbow of color as it falls back into the abyss of its own existence. The water is cool and calm, gently lifting you to its surface as you swim along as though on a cloud.
Cut to: one big fucking tidal wave.
Suddenly you realize that you're not actually cushioned in perfection's bosom; nay, you are in fact swimming in the Hudson, where all good things in Nature go to die. But that's not important right now. What is important is that big fucking tidal wave.
You start free-styling towards the shore, cursing your decision to quit your community pool's swim team when you were ten because you were a friggin' individual and couldn't stand the sound, sight or smell of stay-at-home moms and their brood of upper-middle-class, entitled-to-it-all (including but not limited to cutting ahead in line for the ice cream truck, thereby obtaining all of the chocolate fudge pops before some of us politer kids were able to get one) "children."
You feel the water swell up beneath you, and as the currents complicate themselves and start to pull you under, you wonder exactly how so much water can exist in this one spot of space/time while in Atlanta, a metropolis of 4+ million, people are worried about having enough drinking water. You then start to reflect on how life is pretty unfair. Then you remember that you've been sucked beneath the angry waters and will probably die, so you feel less bad about stupid Southerners not coming up with a comprehensive plan to deal with the growing population and the environmental pressures this growth will inevitably cause.
So now you're underwater, right? You get pulled and tugged, nearly split apart it feels, and try to curl yourself into a ball with every fiber of your strength. You then brace for some unknown yet inevitable impact that will in all likelihood kill you, but if not will hurt a whole whole lot.
Then, an eery calm. Absolute, deafening silence. 'Isn't absolutism crazy scary?' you ask yourself. Then you realized you just survived a tidal wave. So you start swimming towards shore. After what seems like decades (you're 22 now, you're allowed to say you know what 'decades' feels like), you finally reach land.
Cut to: you have learned in a literally unbelievable amount of time (dreams last like 3 whole minutes in life-time!) that this tidal wave has resulted from a scientist definitively proving global warming exists. You understand that there is a disconnect in logic here... I mean, global warming wouldn't suddenly and dramatically manifest itself just because empirical proof was finally presented substantiating its existence, right? Right?! But you're dreaming, so it's ok if your mind takes a few leaps you wouldn't otherwise condone. The tidal wave has caused the water around New York to rise 45 degrees. You, again, understand that this isn't how water level is measured or how an increase in water level would be expressed. You are OK with this. You are not bothered by what this might imply about your essential understanding of mathematical and physical phenomena.
You have also learned that the world population in its entirety has been reduced by a significant amount, and those remaining are now being controlled by a coalition of men wearing camouflage combat gear and bright red berets, carrying around ping-pong paddles covered with the same bright red fabric. That's right; it's a regime of vaguely French troops à-la-1998-Godzilla-blockbuster (starring Matthew Broderick of The Lion King and The Producers and other Broadway musicals fame). It is the new French Terror, and the neo-Jacobins dominate the masses by inducing an unconscionable fear of the paddle. What used to be part of a generally light-hearted pastime (although occasionally becoming an epic battle of wills) has been turned into a tool of destruction and violence to enslave the people and suppress their spirit. And only you - swimming back to shore while this new government took shape and thereby avoiding indoctrination - have the power to fight the politics of paddle-fear.
What will you do? How will you survive, thrive and save the world from an abundance of fraternité and paddlephobia? Tune in sometime in the distant future when you've worked through your shit and the dream comes to an exciting conclusion.