This was a pretty long dream. I remember bits and pieces of some sort of post-disaster world, with ruined cities and various other things.

The bit I remember was at the end. I was investigating something or other, and I ended up at a technical trade show. A company was advertising their system for performing rapid chemical analysis of something-or-other in an unmanned environment (I think it was somewhere on the moon). They showed a demo of an existing space shuttle-like vehicle, and how their system allowed transport of samples without modifying the shuttle design. There was a CGI simulation of the process. As the simulated shuttle landed and the machinery went into operation, there was an explosion on-screen and the demo went dead.

I had managed to get into the good graces of one of the technical people (call them N), so I was able to watch while the various executives and directors frantically tried to figure out what had happened. It turned out that the CGI simulation had ended, the explosion had come from the next thing that was supposed to be shown in the video: an interview with the genius who developed some of the compounds needed in the process. I think they were called the HCL2020Z series, and they were very, very tightly kept secrets.

There was more confusing investigation, and I ended up inside the house/office of some executive, whose family ran the whole department (one of those cackling old women who issued orders from her bed). It turned out that their development process involved binding some kind of demon onto one of the employees. The HCL2020Z series was too complicated to be understood by a mere mortal. The current host was the "genius" who was to have been interviewed: his human part had regained enough control to attempt suicide just as the video feed switched.

At all times, there was a current host of the demon, and another technical worker selected as "acolyte": one named by the host at the instant of possession, who was next in line and was granted some knowledge of the technicalities. Control of both host and acolyte would allow one family branch to oust the others, and completely control the chemical department. I forget all the character names, but at this point, with the current host dying in a hospital, there were all sorts of Mexican stand-offs and double-crosses to choose the next host/acolyte pair.

After a shoot-out, my friend N ended up as host. As the last double-cross, I was named the acolyte without anyone but me and N knowing. In the resulting confusion, I tried to escape.

The last thing I remember was trying to board a moving freight plane that was leaving the research lab/mansion/factory/whatever. I pleaded with the pilot, who laughed and asked for some kind of bribe. I looked around for something, anything, and by the power of the acolyte, I scrawled the structural diagrams of the first dozen compounds in the HCL2020Z series, somehow in a Fraktur script, on the side of his plane, where his observation cameras could see them. Astonished, he let me on, and that's when I woke up.