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Fermius Firefly

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

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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.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Reading is Fundamental Part II of Part 1 which I will post this weekend.

Reading, that's what I was doing, only the words were random conglomerations of letters. I was sure there was meaning there, if only I could figure it out.

Later, I was rigging the ropes and leather seats for a glider made from giant winged seed pods. (Kind of a prequel to the dream a couple of nights ago.) We'd split the seed pod open and removed the seed leaving just a half husk on the end. We did the same with another seed that was the same, but leaving the other half. We stitched and glued the halves together and were rigging ropes to distribute the weight of a pilot at the balance point below the contraption. The wing span was about 40 feet total. We tested the thing like a kite, but about 6 of us had to hold it down.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Three of the Four last night.

I had Four dreams this morning, three that I remember parts of, there are snippets of images that remain for others, but they had no plot, no way to hang a memory of them in my conscious mind. I know I told the fourth one to Nan this morning upon waking, but I don't remember it now.

The first I recall is that Nan and I were at my Parent's house. I heard scratching on the dining room window screen. I looked out the window and was surprised by a racoon sliding down the screen. "Hey, get off of there," I said, not particularly panicked or worried.
Nan ran for the garage door to let Ralston in, as he was cowering at the base of the retaining wall. The racoon jumped down and grabbed Purina/Penelope (you know how identity shifts in the dream world.) by the tail and bit almost all the way through it then started to drag her off. While she was clawing the ground and howling to get away, I pulled the screen out of the window to climb out. I hoped to rescue Purina/Penelope. I pushed the screen down over the racoon to prevent it from escaping with our cat.

There was a Diablo III dream of sorts. My rogue character, a Rogue, was with a group trying to take out the blue dragon boss creature.
The Dragon confused the party and we ended up fighting one another, except me, I went and used my skills to hide from everyone. Finally there was one Ice-Mage left, a minion and I maneuvered myself so that my arrows, when they missed the Ice casting Minion, would hit the Blue Dragon Instead. The dragon didn't seem to like that much and so it killed the Mage and started chasing my character around. I didn't see a way out of the place, so was brought down. I watched as the Dragon place my character's body on the final altar to open a portal to another world and break his binding to this one. Unfortunately for the Dragon, I had an amulet of ressurection on my character. I waited until the portal formed, then triggered my revival. Sneaking down off the altar, I slipped through the portal. The perspective immediately changed, I was suddenly not running the game, I was in it. I was not my character, however, I was just a disembodied voice. The Rogue met some villagers who sniffing him began guessing what village he was from, because he didn't "smell like he was from around here."
The Rogue made his way to a small town and spent the night, I drifted about, but was unable to do anything more than talk to the Rogue and make suggestions. I could see some things around corners for him, etc. He was soon bored of the area, and desired to find a way back to his own world. The villagers had all informed him that it would mean banishment or even death to mess about with the temple ruins he's originally claimed to come from. Curiosity got the better of him and he headed back to the forbidden temple.
I tried to talk him out of it, but the place we were in was just too boring for him.
Once there, the Rogue opened the gates (Red and white enameled iron bars with a dragon theme relief across the top of the structure.) Upon opening them, the portal opened. Inside we could see the Dragon training a couple of new minions.
The Rogue pulled out a blowgun and loaded a poisen dart. Again, I warned him that he would give us away. A couple of Pfft! noises later, and the minions were lying unconscious on the floor of the Dragon's lair. The Dragon entered the room and immediately noticed the darts and looked back along their path to see the portal open again. I tried to get the Rogue to leave the scene, close the gates. But he just stepped back away from the portal a bit. The Dragon awakened his minions and charged the portal, grabbing around the corner to get the Rogue. Even though I tried to intervene, I was still insubstantial. The Dragon did seem aware of me.
He took a sword from the Rogue and turned back through the portal, "Keep this part of me alive on pain of your own death!" he roared at his minions, then lopped off one of his own toes. The pain of it made him drop the Rogue, in the lair side of the portal. The Dragon, now still technically bound to his lair was free to roam the countryside as long as the toe was kept alive. I could not trigger the ressurection amulet, as I was now in the game, not controlling the game. the Dragon reached for the Rogue, then heard bells from the nearby village and turned towards its new hunting grounds with a gleeful bound and unfurling of wings.
I told the Rogue that he had to trigger the amulet get up and throw the toe out of the portal, dooming the Dragon. I could get no response, however.
I drifted into the Rogue's body, and waited. The minions looked at me and decided to place me at the base of the altar. They then set the toe on top of the altar, and began to fill it with healing energies. At last, one of them left. I triggered the amulet and found myself in the Rogue. I grabbed the bloody toe by the claw and raced towards the portal with it. The minion cast a healing spell on it even while I ran. It twitched in my hand, bloodying my fingers by drawing the tip of the claw across them. On the other side of the portal I could see the Dragon gliding down on the hapless town, then the toe, and the Dragon exploded into dust that roared back towards the portal. I dove to the ground, then rolled over to the gates, drawing them closed as the blue sparkling dust roared through the portal.
I realized that I was trapped again on the boring side of the portal.

The dream I had just before waking was of the disturbing images kind. I was in the garage, feeding the outside cats, when they started to get agitated and went into hiding. I looked out of the side garage door, there a large German shepherd type dog was walking towards the back of the house. Its brown fur was matted and unkempt looking. It had a cargo net strapped across its back. Under the net were grey and black penguin carcasses. Another dog went past the door. It was also grey and black, its fur was ragged, patchy. The fur (about six inches long where it existed) was missing on the left half of its face and neck. I slipped out behind them, making sure none of the cats got out. I could feel terror radiating from the ragged dog as it turned its cataract covered gaze on me. Though terrified, I stood my ground and both dogs finally left the yard. How they fled, and what direction I don't know, they were simply no longer there. I pulled back the lawn, like a blanket, from the rosebush in the South West corner to the edge directly across from the West wall of the house. Arranged in neat rows were small shallow graves, each with the remains of a penguin or other small animal in it. I remember thinking, "What in my life makes me have dreams like this?"

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Office Chair Race, Cracking a Smile

These two were of the more surreal imagery and action variety. In the first, I was in an office chair and blindfolded. I was taking part in a race where I was to be pulled behind a bicycle while seated in the office chair. I don't know why I had to be blindfolded. More drama or something. When we rolled out onto the warehouse dock, I noticed that the blindfold was transparent, it was made of some sort of Mylar and functioned like very dark sunglasses. Someone remarked "Now I see why we're blindfolded." That got lots of knowing chuckles. We were each handed a rope and a co-worker guided us down the ramp into the parking lot where our teammate started biking like mad. There were checkpoints we were supposed to pick up as we swung by. Team members were thrusting them into our path and calling out instructions.

In the second one I was lying on my side looking into a mirror behind our futon. I couldn't move at all. I was stuck somehow, unable to make a sound or any gesture. I finally managed to smile, it was as though I'd forgotten how. When I smiled, the futon snapped apart and flew away. Most of the place was also gone, no wall behind me in the mirror. I could feel the air moving around me. The mirror revealed me full length, and suddenly I saw I was on my hands and knees posing like for an erotic photo. I am way to chubby for the desired effect. I still couldn't move or feel any of my body. There were mulberry leaves landing all around. I tried to smile again, figuring at least that would improve what I was seeing. No luck. The image cracked and the mirror shards fell in a pile in front of me. There was a photo behind the mirror of a woman in a similar pose, no one I recognize. Peroxide blond, shaped like one of our friends but for the face. At least the photo was smiling. I awoke just as I started to worry that I'd had a stroke or heart attack.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Video Game and Heated Caverns Adventure

I was playing a video game on a small hand-held device. The screen was about 5 inches by 6 inches and color, although the game itself was in parchment and a maroon/black. The game graphics were a top down view of a classic parchment treasure map, the player represented by a circle with a symbol in it as were all of the other living entities. I was stuck underground and kept circling back to a well. Finally I figured there was no other actions I could think of, so drank from the well. I turned into a swirling tunnel making icon and began to chew madly through the clear areas of the map, discovering tunnels and chambers I hadn't seen before. Rather than stopping and dealing with what was in the chambers I raced around the map trying to dig my own paths to as many rooms and chambers as I could. I noticed I was slowing down, and some of the creatures were following me, so I headed back to the well. I drank again, this time I became invisible (Just dotted lines on the map.) I snuck past the creatures that had followed me, and went through their chambers, taking the good stuff, I checked my inventory screen, a drawing of myself and my bags and packs with a list written in a fancy manuscript font. (One of my favorite oxymorons there.) I saved the game and immediately thought "I have to make notes about this, it would make a cute Flash game." Very Funny. I have no idea how to do anything in Flash.

Back to sleep I found Nan and I in a large underground cavern following along a fairly well marked trail when we felt the ground rumble and shake. The floor beneath us opened up and we slid down about 50 feet of newly formed sinkhole wall to find ourselves in a large chamber with a huge angry and very injured white bear. It shuffled after us as we scrambled into a side corridor. I was trying to figure out where we were on the map, but nothing was matching up, I tried to keep an idea of where we were relative to where we'd last been, but as we twisted and slid then climbed I couldn't be sure of our direction or distance. It was quite cool as we went deeper. I shut off my flashlight to conserve our battery supply. I also had one of those wind up radio/light units in my bag, so brought it out and cranked it up. There was no radio reception except a hissing pulsation that seemed to be pretty directional. The light was irregular as the battery began to drain and the light was relying more and more on my cranking, which was start and stop as we needed our hands to climb over some of the rubble we found.
We fond ourselves eventually in a tunnel that showed signs of having been worked, pictographs on the walls, benches carved out of stalagmites, the floor leveled in most places. There were several tunnels leading away from the room. I turned the radio on and we chose the one that gave us the clearest reception of the pulses.
As we made our way up the tunnel, it became more obvious that it was worked, it began to take on a buttressed and arched look, the path seemed to slope slightly upwards, which we took to be a hopeful sign. Also the tunnel felt as though warm dry air was blowing through it.
We came to another large chamber, no doubts that this one was crafted. There were a half dozen three foot high ledges across the room from us. The lowest ledge had large vents in it about 2 feet wide, in pairs about 4 feet apart. The warm dry air seemed to be coming from them, there was a low orange glow behind them. The louvers kept us from seeing what was causing the glow. The ledge above that was empty, the rest of the ledges were filled with video monitors of all sizes, the largest being easily 12 feet across in the center of the top ledge. The monitors were all of the 50's rounded corner TV tube style, although they looked more like flat screens. The top ledge, in addition to starting about 18 feet above the ground had a huge wall of monitors with the largest in the center and a couple of other big screens to either side. The rest of the wall was filled with monitors of various sizes, the effect being a video mosaic. Many of the monitors were dark, a few were just showing static and the ones that were working showed various views of the planet, night and day, most from atop mountains or elevated locations of some sort. The top level was a single scene, but there were so many monitors out of whack that it was difficult to determine exactly where it was, except that it was overcast and dusk.
We were about half way across the floor of the cavern, looking around for other exits, a phone, etc when the louvers opened up and the hot air began to blow very hard. We ran to the first ledge, diving against the ledge when slots opened on the ledge above. Sheets of something whistled over our heads. The heat vents began to close. Nan jumped over to the gap where I was, one of the louvers next to me had failed to open so I had more space, less heat. We waited until I heard the grinding of gears below us, "Jump up to the first monitor row!" I shouted and leapt up to the next level with Nan right behind. We raced across the ledge, it was wider than I thought when looking from across the room. We leapt up to the first monitor row just as something whistled beneath our feet. The first monitor row was actually a wall around a seating area with control consoles. The monitors were bigger than I thought and about 12 feet away. There must have been about 20 consoles, two of them were occupied with short, large-headed skeletal remains.
"I hope this is a Halloween prank." said Nan.
I looked at the skeleton. It didn't look like a human skeleton, but it certainly did look real. I found a couple of spent rounds on the ground next to the bodies, and a couple of cartridges near the left wall. I traced out a doorway, a little shorter than was comfortable for me, but just high enough for Nan to stand upright in the doorway, if we could have opened it. The door was sealed around the edges, the stone melted into it from the other side.
"Lets start seeing if anything works on the consoles, I don't think we're getting out that way." Nan said heading for the first control console and pressing buttons. I went back to the alien bodies, looking on the floor again for any sort of communication device, or ray gun.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Churching Up and RC Flying Saucer

Nan dragged me to a church where I was the only one in a shirt and tie (at her insistence.) The service included this very long "musical" interlude where people were singing "Who's a blankity blank blank?" followed by a triumphant self assuring "I'm a blankity blank blank!" where blank was filled in with some sort of vaguely positive reinforcement. Some other long haired grey templed guy came up to me and suggested we sing "Who's a grey templed longhair..." I wasn't going for it.

Later I was flying an RC airplane with a circular monowing design, it was red and white with the engine in the center of the craft. It was very agile and had a couple of small cameras mounted on it so you could fly it by sight from the craft if you wanted. Normal focal length in the front and wide angle to the rear and sides. We were flying along a boardwalk from a private patio overlooking the thin rocky strip leading to the ocean. One of the controllers gave out and I ended up stalling out just as I would have slammed into a light pole, but the center lift motor provided enough braking that the craft only slid down about 8 feet or so slowly to the ground. It was a survivable crash, no further damage other than cosmetic. We jumped the wall and recovered the craft, I didn't actually see anything but scratches on the wing surface. Both cameras worked and the servos all seemed to be fine. It really was the controller. I suggested that we needed something more robust, like a computer game controller. Especially if we were going to fly from in front of the monitors.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Quintet, Domino and Annie come to Visit T-Rex

Was performing in a quintet, cool silver on black tuxedo jackets with a Floral cummerbund and tie. We were doing a sort of vocal rhythms gig, with lots of humor and we had poetry as well as audience participation.

I also dreamed I was out in the front yard with T-Rex when Domino and Annie (Domino recently passed and Annie was hit by a car a few years ago) ran over from across the street. The cats all bonked noses and T-Rex looked at me as though asking for permission to go with them. I awoke in a sweat and immediately checked on T-Rex. He's wheezy but O.K. I made sure he was in before I left for work this morning. I am still feeling that heart-in-the-throat eyes-welling-up emptiness and loss.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Diablo III and Going to School Unprepared

Both of these are recurring themes. The Diablo III game came about as I was talking to a couple of my friends at work. We hadn't seen each other in a long while, and found that we all had the game in common. They were both having difficulty with a certain quest, on which I had already passed. We agreed to connect up and run a LAN party quest just to get over the bump. When I got home we connected up, and I found that I was about level 33, and they were both already at 50. They wanted to know how I had been able to beat the quest with such a "low" level character. I was a little concerned that we weren't talking about the same quest. It turns out that we were, and my "legacy" style assassin (with the addition of the traplike skills from other classes, and no martial arts, had just the right set of skills to keep the mobs at bay while freezing and frying them with fire and ice traps, not to mention that the layout allowed characters who could leap or teleport several areas of relative safety. I would leap to such a location and pop a town portal, the others would go back and then come out of my portal, and we would fight off the flying mothmen creatures while my traps dealt with the Yeti-like creatures and Ogre Magi. Certainly had a bunch of cool new effects and a wider variety of character skill trees. (More or less open selection of various trees.) I was able to make a decent hit and run assassin, much more in line with my own play style than even the legacy character (Which were still available.) Having a couple of hulking tanks to keep the flying creatures away made the quest much easier than the first time I'd tried it. When the mobs thinned out a bit my tanks hopped back through the portals and waded into the fray to finish off the stragglers, ten times faster than my method, even though there were three times as many creatures and more champions (who were immune to my "shadow" skills I'd just outrun them last time.) Everyone leveled by the time we were done, myself about 3 levels! I'd not even leveled the first time through, because I'd slipped past 4 of five champions and completely eluded all but one or two mobs.

After the excitement of the game I was back in the person of Bink the Goblin Blacksmith. I was headed to High School, and was completely unprepared. Imagine my surprise when the campus security took me to the Dean, who confiscated my hammer and tongs, a dagger, and 4 throwing shivs, and a scribing tool (Now just how was I supposed to write on my wax tablet without that!) When he got to the point of asking me to take off my hobnailed boots, well that was all I could stand. I wanted to jump up on his desk and smash his head, but I remembered that I was some sort of good will exchange student, so politely kicked him in the knees. I can't imagine why he was howling so much, it wasn't that hard a kick. The second and third ones were even milder. "I'll find out what I need from the counselor, and we'll try again tomorrow." I picked up my stuff and made my way back out of the school. No one bothered to stop me. I couldn't help but feel that somehow the modern system of education had somehow failed me. I was resolved to make an effort to conform, tomorrow.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Motherless Lambs

I was helping feed a bunch of motherless lambs, finally we found a rubber glove and punctured a tiny hole in each finger and filled it with goat's milk. About the time we finished this process we noticed one of the lambs was missing. We smelled cooking from a camp nearby. You guessed it, someone had taken one of our lambs and was making stew out of it. Very sad.

Ad astra per technica,
FF