I still remember this dream because of how offputting I found it, although I never told anyone about it at the time.  It just seemed like the events of the dream themselves were not that intense, but the feeling I had at the end of the dream stuck with me for awhile.  This image isn't really related to the events of my dream, but something about it just kind of reminded me of the way I felt at the end of the dream and made me remember the whole thing.

In the dream, Earth had been destroyed (I don't know the details, I just started out accepting that as fact without questioning it).  I alone had been saved by an alien ship that was passing by.  I start out by thinking I'm about to embark on a whole new life journey exploring space, meeting alien cultures, etc.  It's as if I'm in a Star Trek story, or maybe I'm in the Hitchhiker's Guide, or something similar.

So, wanting to meet some of my new friends, I put on a space suit to leave my quarters, and go exploring the ship.  The ship itself is huge, and it feels really chaotic.  I'm walking through metallic corridors full of machinery one moment, and then I turn a corner and I'm in earthen tunnels deep underground the next.  The first aliens I run into are a bunch of giant ant-like creatures, digging a tunnel out of the dirt.  As I walk up, they don't talk, but some sense of them saying "Hello" beams into my head (I don't seem to question this).

I ask them what they're doing, and there's this sense that they think it's a dumb question, and they tell me they're digging.  Again, they don't exactly have facial expressions or anything, there's just some notion of "body language" that gets communicated into my head.  I ask them why they're digging, and they reply that their work is done.  I'm obviously confused, this isn't work?

There's some more jumbled "communication" if you can call it that, and I eventually work out that this is recreation for them.  They're done working for the day, so they come back here to dig.  For fun.  They ask me if I want to join them, which I politely decline.  I spend some more time trying to figure out what other activities they're into, but it quickly becomes clear that all they do is work and dig.  They have all sorts of stuff they'd love to talk about in terms of digging techniques, and interesting tunnel structures, but these tunnels don't do anything and there's nothing else that seems to interest them.

This whole dirt section of the ship is just here for them to have "fun" digging in.  It also becomes equally clear that they're not interested in anything I might be interested in.  No media, no books, movies, games, or anything that we can talk about, unless I just want to go on and on about digging tools and tunnel patterns.  So I say goodbye and continue exploring the ship.

The next aliens I can remember are basically a lake of goo in a giant reservoir.  Like with the ants, there's no actual speech or body language, but somehow I just interpret the equivalent when I'm "talking" with them.  I say hello again, but can't figure out how to address them, I'm standing on a platform in the middle of the reservoir (not sure exactly how I got here), so it's not clear which way to face.

I tell them my name, and they just get confused.  Being pretty familiar with sci-fi tropes, I quickly catch on to the fact that they're a hive-mind, they don't have names.  But somehow it's not quite that clear, different parts of the goo do seem to think individually, but somehow they all still consider themselves the same person.

I spend quite awhile trying to understand them/it, asking questions about whether the goo on one side of me can see what the goo on the other side of me is looking at, etc.  To the point that I start to worry I'm being rude, or maybe wasting too much of their time.  But when I ask if that's the case, they don't seem to understand the question.

Probing a bit more, I find out that this whole reservoir is just one of many all across the universe, who are **all** one hive mind, and it's barely paying me any attention at all, our entire conversation hasn't even really registered with it on a conscious level.  I decide to leave, and it doesn't even respond when I say "goodbye".

Eventually, after a day of talking to all these aliens (the dream is too long ago for me to remember any more, but I know I talked to quite a few and they were all similarly weird), I go back to my room and realize that aliens are... alien.  I have made no friends, and never will, because nothing here can understand me on any kind of interpersonal level.  We're all just too different.

Even though they are all intelligent beings, there are few to no sensibilities we have in common, and I'll never be able to socialize again.  I am well taken care of in my quarters, so I'm not going to die, but I am basically doomed to spend the rest of my life this way.  I'm surrounded by a universe of sentient, living beings, and yet I am forever alone.

This AI generated image reminded me of a deeply unsettling nightmare I had long ago, though it really has very little to do with it