Morning of April 7, 1973. Saturday.

I have come to realize that even this (much older) dream had at least one precognitive element; that is, a tag on an item when in a store to know when someone has stolen (or is trying to steal) the particular item - although the first time I saw something similar in real life was years later at the main library in Wisconsin, and later on, the usage of such a device in record and video stores and finally grocery stores (regarding my own experiences, anyway).

In my dream, I am in some sort of science-fiction movie called “Homing Magazines”, which is a play on “homing pigeons”, I take it. My dream features a “ridiculous” (at the time, at least to my family and me) idea that stores, including grocery stores, could tell when someone was taking something by causing a simple beeping (several years before it happened in real life, at least seemingly where I lived in a small rural area) by having some sort of tag on the item that can be activated or deactivated or have something over it (like a tinfoil sticker or some such) to “turn it off” - a sort of “scanner”.

There were a few versions of this dream. The first one was a mix of science-fiction and crime drama, where the store (similar to something I saw quite later in real life, so that is another precognitive facet) made a claim that their prices were much higher due to shoplifting, which seemed obnoxious, kind of like the mentality of when the activities of one “class clown” results in the whole class being punished.

The device also acts as some sort of homing beacon, which then actually causes the items to somehow fly back to the store or warehouse. Magazines move through the air late at night like magic carpets. A box of tacks opens, and with some sort of magnetic pattern, causes each individual tack to fly in formation like a large number of airplanes (or a flock of geese), point first. However, action figures only walk (not fly) back and toy cars drive back. Certain food items, like milk cartons, do fly back to one store, though. Pink-frosted doughnuts move through the night sky like miniature UFOs.

Eventually, it comes to the attention of the authorities that one store is taking everything back, but when people finally go to investigate, the store has moved to another location. I see various items moving through the air late at night to the new location. The new technology even senses people and their movements and speech and deliberately leads them to wrong locations. There is then a special crime lab that studies the “rogue technology” as they call it, although I am vaguely aware of the term “maverick tech”, possibly the name of the business that makes the illegal technology. This eventually causes all stores to drop theft-related technology and offer higher competition in their “loss leaders”.