Lost in the gutter

On the main town square was a large mound of sand, around it were roads and buildings. I was invited inside a science vehicle named Krot, on surface it drove slow but inside ground or sand it was moving as if thru water.

Inside were 4 people besides me and loads of instruments for monitoring ground and skies. Each drum beat I could see an echo of all the vehicles outside of sand mound. When I looked at the skies, besides normal stars there were strange new consolation of much brighter stars, when I asked about them, one of the scientist told me they were artificial and made with one of the instruments.

It was a kick drum with coke can cut in half with large hole pointing towards the drum and small hole that you drink out of towards where you aim. Each time a drum was kicked it would send out a pulse.

I find myself in the dry city river gutter, my computer is setup on the right of the crossing stream while I am looking for something on the left. Stream in the center was very small and lead up the tunnel and one perpendicular to it ran mostly dry except for some that came from the right and joined in the center to flow down into city.

A group of workers showed up, one went up the tunnel carrying large suction hose. After few minutes he was finished and went back down to the city. I started noticing flow of water was increasing and realized they've just cleaned out dam at the top which was built to restrict the flow.

I tried calling him back but instead he just took off running and I jumped over a much larger stream to the right of it to save my computer. With each step I took, flow of water increased 2x. After few more steps a giant wave flushed me and I barrely was able to escape by going into an opening in the wall.

I went around from inside and go back onto a road that lead to a city trying to find my friends, it was already dark and streets were empty. I screamed; "I AM LOST", but no one replied, I did it few more times and all I've got in return were echoes.

I kept walking down the hill until I hit main road and on the corner some guy approached me asking me about Ushanka I was wearing and that it was mid December. He kept on asking to try it on but I was wary thinking he was trying to rob me. After taking it off I told him it was made of small animals and then asked him where was the bus stop for San Jose.

He told me that busses were crowded and that I should go with him instead. While walking towards the bus stop he mentioned about smoking lights and that's when I realized I knew him from before and that it was Frank.