C and I went to NYC (the version of NYC that exists in my dreams). Lotta subway stuff, most notably that they kept giving me change that looked and felt like American money but wasn't actually, like that Phillipine peso coin I got the other day. They tried to give me an Iranian coin that was something like a silver dollar, and refused to believe me when I tried to give it back to them. They insisted that all their cash control was done by machines which knew the difference between American and foreign currency.
Then we went to a sort of carnival/expo/mall. There was a bunch of shopping stuff I don't remember, and C and I split up to hit different sorts of places. I was all the way down to one end when I bumped into Rone who asked if I'd seen the rat experiments. I had not, but on my way back to meet with C, there they were: a series of large glass cases, in each of which some sort of experiment was being demonstrated on what had formerly been a normal rat. There was one whose hind legs had been attached to some sort of heating/cooling alligator clips; rapid temperature oscillation, it turned out, would make the whole back half of the rat writhe and twist as if it were spasmodically trying to walk; it just lay on its back squirming mechanically. There was another one who had been chemically treated so that it was entirely elastic; it had been stretched out flat like a piece of rubber, twisted and sproinging but still furry. I was horrified. But there was a store attached to the displays, selling books and such, but also a series of toys that looked like gummy worm material. They were all in various animal shapes (real and fantastic) and the rat experiments had produced the technology to create custom rubber forms which could exactly simulate pre-programmed animal muscle behaviors, so that there was a little seal that, when it was wet, would sit up and clap its flippers and bounce around, and another thing that was sort of octopus-like which, when heated, would rise up on all its legs.