This is as much a record for myself in case I want to clean it up later into something that's more like an actual thing.

The episode starts with the introduction of a new character -- two, actually, but one of them disappeared from the narrative almost immediately because of the limited attention span of my sleeping brain. (We're all familiar with that happening, right?) Flash is walking along in what I'm deducing after the fact was a (really tall) room on board the Justice League space station, when he gets this feeling, mutters some prophetic words about what's to come (something implying the beginning of a new big thing) and looks up. Someone materializes out of the air and falls to the floor, nearly on top of him; then, a robot materializes on the floor near them, also in a position as if having just fallen out of the air.

When I saw this robot, my reaction was akin to "Oh, so now they're introducing this well-known character". Except I have never seen this robot before, and the recognition was a false one -- ever get those in dreams? It had a design that's mercifully easy to describe (rare for my dreams): a head like a security camera, attached to a human upper torso, to which were attached two thin arms with elbow joints and ending in three prongs representing fingers, and, for legs, three thin Doctor Octopus-style mechanical tentacles, which walked with an interesting gait.

As Flash and this robot hurried along somewhere planetside to a high school or university for some purpose that would later become evident, and conversed, the robot spoke (at first) only in robot noises. Then when it turned its head and actually spoke in English to him, complete with closeup to emphasize the surprise, I cringed and thought to myself (composing in my head how I would describe it on EvaGeeks, because I do that a lot, even in my dreams) "Why did they have to make it talk?", and imagined how much cooler it would have been if they'd simply had the robot communicate with gestures and robot noises R2-D2 style, but then I realized how impractical that would have been given that there'd be no explanation as to why anyone could understand it so it would either have to play charades constantly or they would have had to have written in an interpreter character. One way or another it would have been extra baggage on the story so I forgave it.

Flash and the robot bust in through the doors of a dark classroom filled with students (teenaged-looking) all waiting for their teacher/professor. For some reason nobody recognizes or thinks anything strange of Flash, but they all notice the robot. The robot starts walking toward the head of the room, taking command of the situation by pretending to be a substitute teacher. As the robot reaches the teacher's desk, an exchange like this occurs:

"The robot's going to teach us? Is it even any good?"

"I am," the robot says, putting its elbows on the desk and perching its "chin" on its "hands" in a very human-like way. "-- for a robot."

The kids all just stare blankly, blinking.

Robot, very robotically: "Ha -- ha -- ha."

Written down like that I think it loses the impact it had on me at the time, but it made my dream-self laugh and changed my opinion to a more positive one in a heartbeat. This robot that had previously displayed no such human tendencies had not only just posed a very human pose but had just told a joke! It was the last thing I'd been expecting out of it, even after that opening one-liner that I couldn't remember because I was too busy cringing at the mere decision of having it talk. But even more hilariously, it was a joke that only it understood. I felt it gave the robot a unique personality, both "human" and robotic, in having the capacity to understand humor at all but also completely missing how normal humans do that whole joke thing with context and shit. The parallels to an autistic person telling jokes only he understands were not lost on me.

The robot continues teaching the class for a while, leading the children to an adjacent room where a holographic projector used for teaching astronomy awaits. (The actual subject being taught is biology.) As it teaches from the podium-like projector (based on my childhood memories of projectors used in school), it fakes its way through the lecture by using some sensor or other mechanism to read a student's open textbook in the dark. Unfortunately, this includes some words scribbled by that student in the margin, which the robot cannot distinguish from the regular text and thus it reads aloud an insult directed at another student which it thinks is part of the student's actual name, causing Flash (heretofore silent observer of the proceedings) to freak out in silence in the background comically, desperately trying to signal to the robot that something is amiss.

Soon the reason for them to break into this classroom and for the robot to assume the role of teacher becomes clear, as it starts using the projector system, hooked up to some telescope or other sensor array built into the school, as a galactic explorer, seeking out a giant space station or similar false heavenly body in the shape of a giant statue of a person somewhere out deep in space. Its analyses are presented in the form of a lecture (a student grumbles "Do we really have to learn astronomy too?", being that it has nothing to do with the actual subject the robot is supposed to be teaching), and by this time other members of the Justice League have discreetly shown up in the classroom to observe the investigation.

After the Justice League and the robot have learned what they were looking for, the robot turns off the projector and someone turns on the lights, blinding the kids.

Batman asks a question (which I forgot) of one of the students while the kid's still blinded and disoriented. Impatiently waiting for the kid to answer, figuring he won't until he can get his eyes open, he grumbles "When you see it..." And then the kid gets his eyes opens, sees it's Batman, and is star-struck. Incidentally, the child looked like he could totally be a teen-aged (John Stewart) Green Lantern, but I interpreted that as coincidence.

I woke up thinking it was an awesome episode with an interesting and promising new character, and it actually took a surprisingly long time for me to accept it had truly all occurred in my head and was not something I'd ever actually experienced.