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Fermius Firefly

A Dream Log, whenever I remember the dreams I've had.

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Name:
Location: San Marcos, United States

Fermius is a pen name drawn from a series of short fiction I wrote when I published the small press magazine Stellanova (on paper.) I play RPG games to escape from my daily grind as a technology wage slave for the state of California. I eat out a lot in order to do my part in supporting our increasingly service level economy. I am butler to 2 feline masters. If you ask them they will tell you I'm not very good at it, late with dinner, don't have enough hands with brushes in them, and sometimes I even lock them out of their office.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Nightmare, Nightmare, Nightmare

On the last two nights I have been going back to school, unprepared. Almost eaten by Two-foot high ants saved at the last moment by time travelers, and finally small brown and black ants we're currently fighting got the best of us and consumed us all by following us back to the future.

Each of these three was a wake up in a sweat night terror, though in the retelling would not be nearly that horrifying. The second dream, with the large ants was creepy, in that we were using the little ants to create a defensive barrier around our island. About 250 people or so had retreated to an Island in a gulf somewhere in Mexico. There was no real shore of the Island, it was almost mushroom shaped where the ocean action had worn away the bottom of the island. Either that or the ocean levels had fallen. We had around the clock guards watching for the flying queens of the large ant species. Unfortunately someone must have missed a couple because we ended up fighting off hordes of the giant bugs. (They looked like the Jerusalem Cricket in their coloring. http://www.southalley.com/calif2.html or http://bugguide.net/node/view/10943)

Truly creepy when they are two feet long. Apparently they had been living under the Island and had been careful to only forage where we couldn't see them. They may even have been catching fish, because some smelled a little fishy when we killed them.

A vortex appeared over the center of the Island and we were shepherded off the island while the chrononauts fired the ants with flaming oil from weapons that looked like a cross between a propane torch and a heavy duty stapler. Later they only told us we were rescued because history showed that we'd all perished on the island, completely consumed by the ant creatures. We were now all indentured servants to some corporation, or they would send us back.  It was presented as an all or nothing proposition, so we did the last democratic thing we would do as a group, and voted on it. Only a handful of us wanted to go back and fight it out (being fairly certain that the reason history wrote us off was that we'd been taken off the island.)

Later, in the future, some of the little brown and black ants had hitchhiked or flown through the vortex with us. They started eating everything, having had months to grow in the underground algae farms before pouring out in force. It turns out they were under the control of the big striped ones after all. We ended up having to go back in time to try figuring out where the big controlling ants had come from. (Someone missed some eggs and the little ants had raised them as their own was my theory.) Oddly enough, the group that went back was mostly the same as the group that was saved in the earlier nightmare.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Friday, August 26, 2005

Flying with Dad as Wing man

Dreamed I was flying in a Star Wars B-wing heavy assault fighter, Dad was my wingman and I was trying to get him to take out the missile launchers on a star destroyer while I targeted the shield generators and kept the interceptors from nailing us. We were supposed to have a group of four A-wings as escorts, but they got involved in a dogfight with some TIE interceptors and had got pretty shot up. I was hoping we could get the star destroyer with Ion cannons to prevent it from leaving long enough for reinforcements to arrive to finish it off. We had to time our torpedo launches and turn away to distract the return fire from the incoming missiles.  Not to mention by firing without getting the missile lock we'd not alert their defenses until the ordinance struck home. Unfortunately Dad waited just a little too long and got a lock-on before firing. The SD scrambled a flight of 4 TIE Interceptors and a couple of TIE bombers, probably with missiles. Just then Rogue two reported in and shot past us to counter the interceptors. I radioed to go after the bombers, we could take a few minutes of attacks from the interceptors.

This morning was driving something, too big and heavy for soft ground, in a swamp. Yep. This is sometimes how I see my life.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Corsair F4 and Ghost

Was flying a great big aircraft, landing in an airfield in the
dream metropolis (distant from my home like SF to SD) and taxiing under
the freeway to the fueling area. When I hopped out I was pleased to see
the navy blue, stars on the wings, Corsair.
I remember thinking I was lucky to have found it in such good
condition. It still had its guns, and even a half dozen rounds in the
.50 cals. I didn't intend to fire them off, who knows how old and in
what condition they were. I was just refueling until I could fly the
rest of the way home.
While I was in the snack shack the old war bird had gathered
quite a crowd. We chatted a while and I told them about the trip down.
In dream flashback of throttling it up and feeling the torque try to
roll the whole plane to the right. When the fueling was done I climbed
in and dropped the wings for everyone. They waved me off and some
followed along as I made my way out to the runway. I noticed on the
freeway overpass that there were even a couple of folks stopped to watch
as I rolled out to the run-up area and throttled it up. Everything was
good and I rolled out off the runway, not even taking a third of the
length to get airborne. I was up and out, looking back I could see about
a dozen folks waving as I pulled around the airfield and climbed out and
on my way. I waggled my wings as I flew past them.
It was quite the view out the cockpit and through the gun site.
When I got out over the desert I made a couple of dry runs on some
abandoned barns, just to put the plane through its paces. What a kick.
Rolling in at 100 feet off the ground at 300 knots. Nothing like it. I
wasn't even at full throttle (I wanted to have enough fuel to make it
home.) I did try some rolls when I had climbed out of my "attack" runs
and was headed home.

Later, events found me with a nun in an old run down apartment
in the city. There was a ghost that appeared. I shifted into the ghost.
The nun was still there. I touched her, we were shifted back in
time, she was young, topless. Long dark hair cascading in waves that
were pulled around in front. Her back was to me with her shoulders under
my fingers. The freckles were so thick from the sun it looked like she
had light speckles on darker skin rather than the other way around.
Shifted again. We were in an open roadster, parked in traffic.
Suddenly brass shell casings began to fall all around like rain. The
skyscrapers around us were wreathed with breaking glass at about the
18th floor or so. The shooting seemed to come from a nearby building.
The police arrived as I pulled the woman who would become the nun from
the car. "They're up on that roof," I shouted out.
The police began emptying their Tommy guns up at the roof line
while others broke into the building. Suddenly the brass was joined by
the cracking of bullets striking the cars and pavement. I threw myself
over the woman and felt hammering and ripping along my back and legs.
She was screaming in my ear. I knew she would be unharmed.
Shifting again, I was back in the apartment. The Nun was hunched
over at the small dusty table. I checked her, back in my original self.
She was dead. I held her hand a moment and called the local paramedics.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Friday, August 19, 2005

Furniture and Saving Leslie and a Kid

We were at Nan's old house and were going through selecting the furniture to move into our house because there was too much of my stuff and not enough of her stuff. We got to her old living room where there was a plaid Olive Green and Mustard wingback couch. We spent a great deal of time tugging on an old furniture cover, "I've got this much, how about you." Tug, tug. "OK, now I have this much." Tug back. "OK that looks even." Nan rolled up the cover and stuffed it in the old armrest. Now I know how big a cover we really need.
"Why didn't you just put it at one end and measure the gap the first time?" I asked.
"Because, if it fit, we could have just left it on." She pulled out an old sheet, "now let's finish covering it so it doesn't get any dustier."
We then went and looked at the carper, also green, but more of a true green with yellow and white flowers with a diagonal grid of 1/4-inch light tan lines through it. We decided to keep the carpet if it cleaned up all right. Nan decided to paint over the light avocado green walls, something more mint green and replace the wallpaper and chair-rail with a faux wainscoting. I guess we're keeping the whole room but only the couch. I really liked the full height hutch, but it needed much repair, new hinges, one pane of glass was starred with cracks, Nan didn't want to bother with it. I figured I would just send it out to have it done as a surprise, and if she didn't like it I would put it in my office in place of one of the particle board shelves.

Later we were waiting for Leslie to show up outside of Killer_Pizza_From_Mars )when someone came hot-rodding around the corner out of Jack in the Box. They T-boned Les's Volvo. For some reason the smoke detector shaped charges that were in all of her doors and under the hood were triggered. All but the on in the driver's side passenger door. I ran out and pulled the door open. We managed to get Les out of the car through the back as the charges were set to go off if you opened the doors from the outside, a lethal "panic" anti-carjacking system. I thought it was a bit on the paranoid side. I looked over into the parking lot and found the location of the charge from the back door. A small kid was standing on it. I raced over before he could step off of it and trigger it. Flying tackle, turning my back to the charge as it went off. I was hoping that by already moving away from the blast we could avoid too much damage. The charge went off and my ears popped and I was slammed into the air by a fiery wall. I rolled with the blow to keep from landing on the kid. We rolled over about 4 times and I felt the skin abraded from my arms, like when I laid over the minibike avoiding the station wagon, an all too real, not dreamed, event. Somehow the kid was uninjured, his mother was ecstatic, I was in pain. "Cell phone, call an ambulance."
"Oh, oh, oh! Are you hurt?" she asked wide eyed.
I just looked at her, there was still smoke coming from my back and legs where my clothing had burned off and my arms were covered with blood. “Passing out from the pain now,” and didn't even try to respond further.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Photo Session and Nightmare in the Bleachers

The first dream of the night can only be described as a wet dream. I was living in an apartment building by myself, don't know how that happened. Across the hall was a photographer or erotic materials, as he put it. I had been helping him with his digital editing setup. One of my favorite women came into his place, wanting to have some photos made. Somehow it ended up being the two of us and things got quite steamy. At the end of it all my friend/lover said she would do more, but only if I was her partner. My photographer freind was miming "Please, please, please!" behind her back as she was leaving.

My dream before waking up apparently had to make up for the wonderfulness of the first dream of the night. I was at the pre school year startup fest, and in addition to the normal having trouble with the technology theme, my responsibility, of course, the bleachers broke loose and rolled, in three seperate sections towards the back of the multipurpose room. I tried to slow them down to prevent a major crash when we collided with the soffet in the middle of the bleachers. I had managed to slow my set of bleachers and most everyone was out of the collision area but several folks went tumbling down on top of their colleages. The people in the other two sets were also trying to slow thier sections down, but not as successfull (They'd rolled further and therefore were going faster. It was not a good morning and there were a couple of people who fell the 20 feet or so off the back. Several cell phones were out calling for ambulances. That one made me want to stay in bed this morning. Oh well, I'm off to set up the audiovisual part of the presentation. I just hope there aren't any rolling bleachers set up when I get there....

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Westys on parade, Red Nine

Nan called me late at night from my parent's house. I drove down, by the time I got there it was about 1:00 in the morning. Nan met me at the door and asked me to be calm. I was worried but when I got inside there were about a dozen people gathered in my parent's living room. All of them had little Westmoorland Terriers. Nan wanted me to meet them, the terriers, not necessarily their breeders. I laid down on the floor and met all of them, several were very sweet, burrowing under my arms and one bonking noses with me.

I was in the downtown area, staying at a small hotel, I was presenting at a conference, and one of the sessions was very early in the morning, and another didn't finish until 8:00, we then had an awards dinner of some sort. I spent the first night at the conference, and checked out in the morning. The car was packed up, my overnight bag in the trunk and the laptop and projector in the front with me, pretty normal and routine. I then went through the whole day, visiting various vendors, looking at software, presenting PC computer tips and tricks. I was enjoying dinner and a pleasant evening when I realized there was no way to safely drive home since I was a couple of hours away and it was already after 9:00 pm. I called and let Nan know I was staying another night.
I drove back to the hotel, giving a lift to one of the people I'd met at the conference. They'd never ridden in a hybrid before.
The night clerk pointed out that If I'd booked the two nights together I would have saved 30$, and did I want a Chinese luck bracelet. Feeling tired and just wanting to sleep I asked If I suggested I would buy a luck bracelet if he billed me as though I'd reserved two nights. OK, he said then went to prepare a new bill. While he was back there he started fitting a pipe with a coupler and added a new length. He then started flaring the end on a lathe.
A counter person, small, brunette, with a really cute haircut, came out from behind the desk to tell me something. I could not make out what she was telling me over the noise of the lathe the desk clerk was using. After asking to repeat herself a second time she pulled herself up on tiptoe to speak directly in my ear not to take the pipe thing, no matter what.
OK, I agreed.
She then pulled herself up and told me "Red Nine."
I said "Thank you." I was more than a little confused.
She then slid her face along my cheek and whispered it in my ear again, "Red Nine. Don't forget."

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Long Week

Did have several dreams, but I am so rushed to get out in the morning that I barely had time to scratch out an illustration or a couple of notes. This morning had one cute dream with a women's restroom full of piles of clothing with calico cats lounging around all over them.

A couple of days ago I was back in a cliffside community, in a 50's style checked table cloth and bentwood chair diner. A furry troll cut loose and started tossing patrons all over the place. I jumped up on a table, I think I was the goblin blacksmith again, and taunted him until he started chasing me. I jumped out a ventilation opening and grabbed onto the 3 inch wide ledge a couple of feet below the opening. I knew the ledge was there from some previous adventure. The troll rushed out reaching for me, so I tugged just a little on his forearm, and over he went, down into the ventilation shaft, swearing in Trollish up at me.

This morning I was also trying to start a white convertible that had obviously been used to haul hay around. I got it rolling and bump started it, but the engine died and with it the steering and brakes. I managed to roll to a stop six inches from the neighbor's split rail fence after bouncing up over the curb. She was out there trimming the roses. "Do you need some help?"
"Just a little push back off the sidewalk." I figured I would roll back a bit then park next to the neighbor's yard. I figured I would have enough headway to turn (now that I knew how difficult it would be.)

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Minotaur Invasion.

I was living and working in exile on a Sky Island. The beasts that had driven me and my folk from our homes had managed to find a way to launch themselves from the world below up to the shores of the island. Much of the dream was spent running from Minotaurs and attempting to recruit Elves, Tree Sprites and Centaurs to repel the attack. We were not having much luck until I managed to recruit a group of dwarves to our side. They had put together several steam powered Iron Golems and went riding into combat on Golemback. I was able to create bone golems, which almost broke our alliance with the Elves and Sprites, until they realized that my "creatures" were animated by our fallen comrades (I didn't use their remains, however, that would have been an option if we were really pressed.) Nan was able to make a sort of windstorm and lightning attack that held the Minatours at bay while the golems did their work. The Elves and Sprites harrassed the enemy from the treeline.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Hodge Podge Dodge Ball, Writing a Novel

Dodgeball started at the old Elementary school Gym in Virginia. As the dream progressed the game changed locations and the team also changed. Started in the Brookwood Elementary school Gymnasium, where I first learned the game. We then moved to another gymnasium not unlike the Mt. Carmel High School Gym, then to an outdoor stadium with astro turf. Finally we ended up playing in a ball court with high stone walls, like the Central American ball courts of the Incan or Mayan civilitations.

Later in the morning I was working on the first paragraph of a novell. The dream evolved out of one of those wheel spinning sleep sessions, I kept going over the thought of "How long do you have to live to see One Thousand Rainy Days." If you live where there are only 20 or so a year, you would be around 50 years old. I think I have a character and a situation here, but am not certain what the story is. Yesterday I began to re-create that first paragraph, and am thinking of using it for my November Novel writing project.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Roadside Attack

Had a night terror, I was up on a hill and watched a group of camo wearing, masked bandits pull a family out of a brown suburban and march them over to a ditch and then kill them. I didn't have any weapon or a cell phone or any way to help. Very disturbing. It pretty much blew out any chance of remembering the nice but weird dreams from earlier in the evening.

Ug.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Sky is Churning, Cute Shorts, Underground Cavern, Chad and Serena Fighting, and Dodging Space Debris.

Very busy dream night, but nothing with much of a plot.

I was at my parent's house, looking out into the sky at the thunderheads climbing up over the hills. I decided to lay back and watch the clouds with Nan. As we watched, suddenly I noticed lots of little shear indicators, then the clouds began to be ripped apart in an almost cyclonic fashion. I could almost see little vector arrows on the wind as the clouds began to tear themselves into thin wispy streamers.

The dream shifted, I was lying in the garage with my legs tangled up with Nan's. I rolled over and noticed she was wearing a cute pair of short cargo shorts. We were both about 50 lbs lighter in the dream. "Silky" I said as I tickled her thigh.

Next thing we are in a plastic miniature box on an island in the middle of an underground lake. Nan and my miniatures have small shark tooth-like daggers that suddenly begin to glow yellow. "Undead approaching!" I try to wake everyone up, but only Nan, who is now a 90 lb elf babe, and myself, a very tall dwarf, are able to rise. Every one else is sound asleep. I pull a small dart out of my thumb, I see ones just like it in all of our companions, and on Nan's Knee. We are no longer in the miniature box, and the view becomes POV. Nan and I move back to back, she with the dagger and a small shield, and me with the dagger and an axe that surely wasn't meant to be used one-handed. I begin to drag our companions in closer so we will have a chance to defend them from whatever is walking up out of the water onto the island.

Lastly, I am in a small cockpit with many damaged displays, smoke rises from behind a couple of dark indicators. I have sharp pains in my left hand and am partly blind on the left side. The craft I am in is responding slowly if I try to bank it left, but snappily moving to the right. I begin to weave in order to avoid being hammered by the debris that is racing towards me from I don't know what. I cannot remember what I am doing here and what just happened. I clear the debris field and begin to roll the ship to look for other signs of life. There were flashes of maneuvering jets in the distance, on the other side of the debris field. Nothing like radar or communications seemed to be working. I began to rotate the ship, firing the thrusters in an SOS pattern when they were in view of the debris field, in hopes of attracting rescue rather than destruction. I had the feeling that we had won, but could not really rationalize why I thought that. I hoped someone would find me before I got really sick of spinning, at least I was able to reverse directions with each three shot burst.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Monday, August 01, 2005

Bond, James Bond

I was forced into playing the role of James Bond in a play *Before I kill you, Mr. Bond…*,  when the actor who had the roll turned up in the hospital with broken collarbones. (Auto accident, fell out of the back of a pickup truck.) I had been the movement director, fight coordinator and had been at all of the rehearsals so knew most of the lines and blocking. I had to cut my hair and shave the beard, then we had a talk about dying my hair black, but decided just to spray it for the performance. I got to keep the mustache, just trimmed to a neat thin line (which we also sprayed black.) I made it through the first act with only a couple of flubs. It turned out that I was a better singer than the original actor, we'd re-arranged all his parts to allow him to almost speak his way through the songs.

During Intermission I had to have my hair resprayed. The Director indicated that I would be doing the roll for the next three weeks. (Tonight was supposed to be my last night.)

I had to begin the second act by running around the outside of the building and having a couple of fights (which I'd choreographed during the intermission) outside the building. There was a security guard who almost stopped us, fortunately a production minion was able to point out the cameras. We were only doing it live this one time, the rest of the shows would be on tape, we just couldn't use the tape of the original actor, as I didn't match him physically. (Being a bit shorter and somewhat rounder in the middle.) I completely forgot one of the verses in a second act song, but fortunately the conductor was prepared and hardly anyone noticed but us.

By the time this dream was over, 1:30 am, I was exhausted, like I'd really done a three hour performance.

This one was followed by other less plot oriented dreams with multiple catlike viewpoints.

Ad astra per technica,
FF