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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.

Saturday, December 31, 2005

Advance Team on Alien World

Alien parasites on another world. They are small less than the size of a dime. They live in the water on the world on which we just arrived. I try to keep them away after discovering that they have 6 inch long microscopic tentacles that seem to be able to make their way through the mesh in our clothing. They sting and then I see the small sack below their tiny legs fill with blood. In a few moments the color changes and they inject one of the soldiers in my command. He becomes ill a few minutes later. The medic treats him and a couple escort him back to the quarantine tube. I command all my support team to get into their environment suits. A couple of soldiers poke the little critters with their bayonets, bad idea. They are filled with an acid that burns clean through the blade, leaving a melted looking puff of metal around a quarter inch ragged hole. We notice that the little critters seem to be very thick in a nearby stream. The beasties are swarming and one cuts its way out of the environment suit of one of my sergeants who'd been cooling her feet in the water earlier. I awake from this dream sweating and nervous.

Almost immediately I fall back into the same dream, only later in the mission. My captain gives me orders to take command of the forward recon group. Although I am a support team LT, not a combat officer, I comply. We head up the river trying to stay out of reach of the little alien bugs. They are unlike any other life form on this planet, and it seems to me that they are out of place here as much as we are. So far there have been only plant life, no insects or animals larger than micro organisms.
We move out and I slowly and gently as possible push the alien critters out of the way. I order my squads to treat them the same way. They are happy to comply as no one wants to see what happens when the alien acid hits the environment suit or flesh. On a hunch I follow the stream up to where it joins a lake. I see that the lake is nowhere wider than about 50 yards, so send two squads up to the top of a nearby ridge and two around the perimeter of the lake, I take the last squad along the lake edge, following one of the aliens, the one that had taken a sample of the sergeant. It looked like it was making its way along the shore towards a cave that over hung the other side of the lake. One of my engineers set up a sonogram and I had everyone stop moving. The sonogram was sensitive enough to pick up people's pulses through their shoes. The engineer slowly filtered everyone out. The device thumped, and the echoes revealed the lake and ridgeline. The lake continued under the nearby hill, and there was an opening into the hill a few yards away, and one on the other side. There were several openings also under the water. I gave to orders to take a hike up to the openings and give me recon information by remote drones into the openings. I heard the distinct sound of a gate opening. It was in a small valley across the lake from our current position. I ordered the engineers to track it and give me the position possibilities for the next several gates. I had a bad feeling when one of the possible gate positions was in the middle of the cave structure under the hill. I remembered our drop coordinator saying we opened a gate just east of where we anticipated. (Apparently gates would only arrive at a exact distance apart in an equilateral triangle shape.) My suspicion was that we were not the first gate opened to this world. I also suspected that our little alien bugs were more than they seemed. I was glad I'd ordered the troops to be gentle with them. I dodged a couple of tendrils from a bug in a gully leading to the lake and gently pushed it back into the lake with the end of my bayonet. The weapon it was attached to had three barrels, a grenade launcher, a laser and a flechette accelerator were the main weapons. The bayonet was also the tip of a taser type device. The Troops from the other side of the ridge reported that giant cats were coming through the gate. I took my squad in the direction of the gate as I had a couple of troopers who spoke the Cat language, and I understood some of it. We arrived on the hill overlooking them, I announced our presence. They were a seek and hold team and determining that they were outnumbered offered to engage in individual combat to determine command rights. I filled them in quickly on the alien bug threat. They offered back that they had encountered them before and showed me images of large spider like things fighting with Cat soldiers. It wasn't pretty. I relayed the offer of individual combat back to my commanding officer, expecting him to send out a combat specialist, instead he just said, "you take care of it."
My troops looked at me. The Cat looked at me. "You're only a Lt in the supply arm!" they all stated at once.
"Well, that's not good." I looked at the Cat champion, a large red Tom with a huge scar across one ear and the top of his head. I looked around. There was a thick branch just over my head. The Cat charged and I dropped my weapon. The Cat looked confused as I raised my arms. I could tell my troops thought I was surrendering. The Cat hesitated long enough for me to grip the branch then lunged. I pulled myself up out of the way of his charge and flipped over in the air, landing square on his back. His charge took him past my sergeant and I used her shoulder to push into the Cats movement. He stumbled and we went down. I drove the Cat's head into the ground and started looking for anything with a pulse near the neck. The cat struggled with me on its back. It couldn't reach me. I drew my hand stunner and set it low and shocked the knife like object. It dropped it with a violent jerk and long hiss as it tried to dislodge me. Its body armor prevented it from reaching anything but my legs, it began to tear apart my environment suit. The ceramic and kevlar actually tearing. Whatever the claws of its armor were made of it was tough. Finally I pressed long and hard on a throbbing, something. I figured at least it had to hurt.
The Cat passed out. The commander of the Cat Unit approached and said I had to kill my opponent to win. I had my sergeant explain that now that they were under my command, I couldn't kill him. We argued a bit and I got up when the Cat quit moving under me. I had one of my troops fill a bucket and dowse the Cat, soaking its head. "Treat this one as dead to you. I turned to it and told it that it was now my aide, and his name was Eric the Red. Because Eric is my favorite name."
That seemed to work for everyone. Eric tried to tell me his real name. "You've died and I've brought you back with his memories, you are now Eric."
He slumped. "Now, pick up our weapons and fall in behind the sergeant."
Again I woke from the dream. This was not as terrifying, but I did feel a little out of breath. I fell right back into the dream, this time I was with a mixed group of humans and Cats.

I lead them directly into the caves. Almost certain the bugs had gotten there with a gate before us. We arrived under the hill and made our way to their gate. We found a bug with a human embryo in its sack portrayed on the face of their gate. A layer of bugs floated between us and the gate. I held the Cats from firing on the half dozen or more giant spider like things clinging to the ceiling. We held a mere 10 inches from the flotilla, the spiders hanging over the gate. I watched as the embryo grew into a baby. Then I saw one of the frontline privates as the view widened out. She was disarmed but otherwise unharmed. She was only visible when she slept, each sleep period being about two seconds long and getting shorter. I knew we were watching a transmission from the wormhole as the alien ship raced away at near light speed. I knew odd temporal effects could be had by riding the outside of the wormhole beam. The baby was, well, born, and the woman reluctantly took care of the baby, teaching it when the bugs didn't have it. By the time they returned the private was now a middle aged woman, and the baby was in its late teens or twenties, an almost exact duplicate of the woman when she was abducted. The Private was now in a silky copy of her original uniform, she was nervously holding hands with her daughter, but keeping a distance at the same time. Just before they arrived the daughter turned to her mother and kissed her on the cheek. The private closed her eyes and returned the gesture tentatively. They stepped out of the portal.
"Please, listen to what my," the private paused, "daughter, has to say." Several of my troopers took charge of the private. She was very glad to be back with us, even thigh deep in water. The little swimmers made a path for her to wade out to us. I made a comment about making sure she got a promotion and twenty years of back pay. The captain agreed over the radio.
The young woman, beaded dreadlocks clicking in synch with her speech, apologized on behalf of the hive. The soldier bugs jumped back through the portal. The water bugs withdrew their thread like tendrils. She explained that their race was mildly parasitic, but could live in many worlds, where it was obvious that our races were not so fortunate. It would not colonize this world. They would, however, like to keep open relations with us. The young woman turned back to talk to a large bug on the portal screen. I really wanted to know how they did that. I moved closer. We were still sending radio waves through our portal.
The clicking noises were not beads. When the woman turned around I could see that her hair was not really in dreadlocks, she wore a cap made of living bugs, much like the small ones around my legs. They were thousands of tiny hive insects, their nearly microscopic filaments woven into the woman's hair and buried in her scalp.

OK that was a creepy dream moment.

This was one of those dreams where I was really someone else. I had a history, I knew my role as the leader of a support team (Electronics and intel gathering.) My commander had decided, apparently that this was a milk run, nothing but trying to find the noxious plants to stay away from, so he and the "real soldiers" were taking the mission off. Even after the arrival of competitors, he was content that they should take the point on recon on the world, knowing that whatever they found, this world fate would be in the hands of diplomats. It was a little callous to throw me into a deathmatch. I can only assume that he knew that it didn't need to end in death, but still, I would have been made a slave of the Cats! Either that or he was planning on double crossing them and wiping them out after the contest. I don't think he expected me to win. I didn't either, as I told N, I only won because of a dirty rotten Monkey trick. There was also a strange image that I don't recall where it exactly fit in the dream, but at one point the old man (Captain) told me I'd won the crystal, and a couple of his soldiers delivered MREs on crystal china, cups, salad plated, fruit bowl, soup bowl and saucers included, it looked like it was service for at least eight. I think it was just after beating the Cat.

Friday, December 30, 2005

Twinsville

Every dream sequence I had this morning had twins in it.

The first was me in college dating a curly haired girl, who, I discovered had a naughty twin. The naughty twin tried to convince me that I'd rather be dating her than her nice sister. I was thinking it would be nice to date them both.

Later I was in a town where there was a local warehouse that, when flooded, was used as an ice rink. When the adults were finished skating, I started teaching the town kids how to play broom hockey. We didn't have skates for all of the children. When it came time to split into teams, the town immediately split up into two perfect halves, one twin on each team. That had to be really confusing, but only apparently for me. Since I didn't have a twin I got to be the referee. It wasn't long into our game when the floor began to melt. We were soon sliding around on slush. I guess all of the rambunctious activity was too much heat. We opened up all the windows and sprayed more water on the floor. "We'll have to come back tomorrow, when the ice has had all night to form. I bid everyone good night, and was only a little envious that I had to go home without a twin on my arm.

Even later I was in town working in the soup kitchen, dishing out holiday meals to the needy. One of the women was very interesting to me, she had a lovely voice, and I couldn't see but one eye through her scarf. She wouldn't eat while I was looking, but also didn't want me to go, as I was the only one who'd spoken civilly to her in ages. It turned out that the only needy folks in the town were people who'd lost their twin. There was something profoundly sad about this woman. Finally another woman showed up and gave the masked woman a gift. I thought her eyes were familiar. The woman was about the same age as the masked woman, and I finally put two and two together.
She noticed me looking at them and admitted, blushing, that she was indeed her twin sister. I tried to get her to stay and eat with us, but she had to rush off.
The masked woman pulled down her scarf to reveal that her face was three quarters ragged burn scars. "I wanted to be different from everyone else."
I hugged her and told her she was different from anyone else. I liked her more than anyone I'd met so far. She wanted to know if I were really a twinless one.
"Yes," I explained, "I've never had one to lose. No twins in my family at all."
I noticed when we began to eat that the burn scars covered her arm and part of the back of her hand as well.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Antihistamine Dreams, Possessed Car

Lasers in the Basement.
I was in a basement club where a Japanese man was using battery powered lasers to make a modern puppet show. I used my green light laser to pump up a performer's UV laser and he discharged it into a wall, setting the wood structure behind the plaster on fire. That was not good. We had to evacuate while I tried to find a CO2 fire extinguisher so we could flood the wall compartment and smother the fire before it burned up into the whole building. Several people would not leave even though the performers themselves decided that with smoke coming out of the 2mm hole it would be a good thing to pack up their stuff and leave. I found an extinguisher, and made it into a sort of elephant puppet as we lumbered over to the wall to put out the fire. No one had called the fire department at all. I had to use a chair leg to smash a hole in the drywall large enough for the hose of the extinguisher. I removed the flared nozzle earlier, that is what gave me the elephant idea.
Flying wing over City Street apartment.
Nan forced me to sell the house and the apartment was all I could afford after her retirement vacation and motor home. Nan was living in the motor home somewhere in an old avocado grove. I had a three story apartment with a homebuilt in the dining room. Dining and Kitchen on the bottom floor, livingroom on the second and one bedroom and bath on the top floor. I had a pile of sheet foam in the dining room. Later, I had assemble the foam into a flying wing shape, and two detachable winglets. Next time I was aware, I had twin tailerons and a dual canard. Finally I had a pair of jet engines and about 400 lbs of fuel. I had installed a pair of square steel tubes on either side of the dining room window. The window overlooked a long hill down City Street into the bay. (City street came to a culdesac on which the end building was my apartment.) One morning I opened the window, pulled the mile of surgical tubing taught around the front hook of the flying wing with a powered windlass. Climbe up onto the dining table and into the wing. I lowered the first third of the winglets into position and made sure the other two thirds would move freely. I released the catch and catapulted out into the street from two stories up. As I arched out over the street I fired the engines. Only one of two could be started at a time. While the battery charged I snaprolled the plane to swing the other two thirds of the winglets into the locked open position, by this time falling was slowly turning into flying. My gear touched the street as the second engine fired. I bounced back into the sky, barely passing under some power lines as I shot up past the buildings on either side of the street. I could hear the cars honking behind me as I shot over the bay on maximum burn. The solar panels began to charge the batteries and I climbed up to my cruising altitude and shut off the jet engines. They were a marvel of titanium engineering, each one weighed only about 15 pounds. The solar powered motors took over and I extended the middle winglets into full glide wings (also covered with solar panels.) I began to cruise in near silence. Spiraling in the occasional updraft and looking for the freeway that would lead me out to the airport in Palm Desert. I was going to visit my brother and his family before heading North to sister's place, then eventually up to Alaska where I had a commission to fly into an airshow.

Dead in the Desert
I found myself transparent and wandering in a vast desert, nearly featureless save for the small cactus and flowering ground cover. There were Vikings and Normans hammering on one another in silence. A pilot wandered dragging his tangled parachute behind him. It passed through the shrubs without catching on them. I made my way, no knowledge of who or what I had been, nowhere. I came to a road, something in me stirred to remember a road. I looked at the distant hills. st least they were not flat. I saw a crowd of shadowed figures in the distance down the road so I went towards them. More figures of the dead. This bunch was more animated but focused other than on themselves. I found them in a ragged circle around a pool of light in the desert. None would approach closer than about 40 feet. Being dead I had no need of caution, I reasoned, so strode up to the pool of light. It blossomed and a large Joshua tree sprang up from it.

The Tree of Life?
The Joshua tree was dead brown also. Covering the pool of light. Where there should have been spines there were bright spots of light, as though the pool filled the dessicated hulk of the tree. It grew in front of me. I longed to reach out and capture some of the light. When the lower portion of the tree began to dim I stood and hugged the tree. Needles of light pierced me and filled me with that light. It was painful and pleasant at the same time. I also began to become aware of a vehicle approaching in the distance, and aware at the same time of it's wrongness.

Bumpercar From Hell
The car careened around the corner under a stone arch. It bounced back over a berm onto the road and accelerated suddenly. A small child was thrown from the back window, she managing to grab on to the highly stylized spoiler at the last second. I flew after the escaped amusement car vehicle, it was open at the top and a family of four was strapped in with safety bars across their laps. Mom and Dad were glassy eyed in the back, a son leaned over the bar in the front limply twisting as the car bucked and turned.
A tyrannosaurus Rex rounded the corner behind the vehicle, causing the child to scream, a muffled weak scream.
A beam of light shot from the Tree behind me and the T-Rex vanished with a soft pop. A second beam passed my shoulders and hit the car. It slowed. I helped the child down and slid into the front seat next to the boy. The car took off again. Racing at impossible speed across the desert. In the car I could hear the parents screaming and the boy thumping unconsciously across the hood of the car.
We reached a deserted city, buildings fallind down and rusted sheet metal warehouses. The carnival ride crashed through a rollup door and rolled down a ramp into the entrance of the bumpercar arena. I flew out of the vehicle as it bumped down the entry ramp. The mom became aware enough to shout a question about her daughter. I realized I had absorbed her. "She'll be fine," I shouted out after them, although, I really had no idea if I could un-absorb her. I made my way down into the bumpercar track.
The track was laid out in a giant underground structure, there were disabled vehicles parked everywhere. Concrete bunkers filled the space. The ceiling was about 30 feet above and only about half the lights were working. I could hear tires squealing and the car bashing into things. I jumped up on top of a concrete bunker and inside I managed to drop off the child. She looked up at me and shrank back into a corner of the bunker.
"You're not too pretty either," I said and jumped out of the bunker as I heard the car roll past. It wanted the little girl back, but couldn't seem to get to them without damaging itself. The little girl looked out of the bunker and shouted to her parents. I jumped into the vehicle and absorbed Mom then Dad. The car raced away from the bunker as fast as it could. I couldn't stay with it without risking losing the location of the child. The arena was much larger than I thought possible. It was as the ramp had led not to a parking structure, but into another world.
I jumped from bunker to bunker, easily clearing the 20 to 30 feet between them. I noticed there were other bumper cars moving around the tracks of the ride. Only one was off the tracks, racing around and smashing into things. It was empty except for the boy. I wasn't sure the boy was even still alive.
The other vehicles were all unoccupied. I spotted the track to the exit and fixed its location in mind.
The family was reunited. I still don't know how I could unabsorb them, but it took some of the light out of me each time I did it. I didn't want to reabsorb them. I led them to the exit, hoping the car with the son would return to try to get them back. I suspected that the car was possessed by the boy. The family chose to run along the tracks rather than climb into another vehicle. I promised I would find their son as quickly as I could. They seemed to be resolved to the possibility that their son was gone. I think the parents suspected the same thing I suspected.
The possessed car didn't rise to my bait. Then I realized what had happened, he'd be driving out into the world and around to the exit. I swore for not having thought of that. I ran back to the exit area, leaping from car to car until I passed the family. I was beginning to fade already. They didn't seem to notice me. I took a car near the top of the ramp and revved it up and drove it off the track out into the carnival grounds, now dusty and deserted.
The other car was waiting, I charged it. It dodged me the first time, then swung around again and peeled out towards me. I crossed the gap between our vehicles just before the glancing collision. I could not absorb the boy.
Frustrated, I entered the boy. I was small again. I ached every where. I was cold, almost frozen. The light from my core spilled out into my new flesh. The car spun around and chased after the now driverless vehicle. I'd just been in. I slipped back into the seat, upright. I felt my lungs fill with air, the heart in my chest pounding. I stifled a scream. I offered to exchange places with the boy's spirit, which I now knew was animating the car. He didn't want to go. He slammed on the brakes and the restraining bar popped open, almost dragging me out of the car with it. The driverless car bumped us from behind and I tumbled into the back seat. Then stood and stepped over into the car that had locked bumpers with the kid's car. I slipped down below the dash and stomped the brake. We separated. I rammed the accelerator. Bumping the possessed car off the roadway down into a gully. I jumped out of the car and let it roll into the gully on top of the possessed car. I knew it would take a while for them to get untangled. I ran back to the family. I hated to dash their hopes so waited until after many tearful hugs to tell them we had to go back out the other entrance, this was still part of the other world.
Then I leaned up to dad and whispered in his ear. "I couldn't save your boy." He froze. He looked at his teary eyed wife and daughter, he took me by the hand.
"We have to go back out the way we came into the ride," he pulled me with him to the ramp into the ride, acting like he was leading us, but feeling for my indications of which way to go. "Lets get out of here."

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Zombie and Alien Mishmash II

My brain keeps revisiting the Zombie and Alien connection.
Little green Aliens from another world were poking around a dilapidated barn. The earth trembled. Shallow graves disgorged their contents; those contents rose and shambled aimlessly about, tripping over old tractor tires and bumping into hay bales. I, AH and SV hurriedly assembled a hay bale maze while N, C and C kept the Zombies away with broken farm implements. I closed off the last bale as A and S and their wives herded the last Zombie into the makeshift maze/corral.
I don't know why that worked. If they tripped they would be outside the maze, apparently the bales were large enough for them to not trip over them.
We decided to go into the barn after the Aliens, this being their fault and all of that. I changed into my surplus combat boots. N got out her wrist rocket. S had some sort of letter opener and CD had a large book which she held up over her head. A and C had to go and pick up J from work, then they were going to stop for dinner before coming back out to help, if we still needed it. I was thinking, "go, buy LARGE guns." I didn't tell them that, because I knew I wouldn't be able to make them work anyway. I also wondered if we should check them for alien implants like the ones N and I had pulled out of our own necks.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Telescopes and Time Travel

Telescopes
I had found a place out on a hilltop that had a wide open pergola of white columns with green vines growing on them. It was open to the sky, like a Victorian Hedge Henge. I had brought my telescope and it's broken parts with me. S arrived with A and his broken telescope. We managed to set A's telescope up without much trouble, and when we decided what we were going to observe, I managed to rotate the damaged part far enough back to give us the 40 seconds or so required for a good exposure. S and I looked at my broken telescope, as we were discussing strategy to repair the thing my former Astronomy professor from Palomar arrived. She was still looking quite the babe. I managed to pull out my PDA with its programmable nanites and with some inspiration I managed to program them to act on the subjective mount and reform the mechanism and lense to be a large light gathering area. Using software to decode the compressed image we were suddenly able to double the ability of the telescope.
Time Travel
Myself and the Nanite PDA are the only things that remained constant as I next found myself in an alternate time line. I had to make my way down to town from the Hedge Henge on foot. My home was not even built, there was a long tree filled valley where the development was in my home timeline. I made my way into town, reading as much as I could on the society I found myself in. There was Unregistered Alien paperwork to be filled out for the Hotel. I found that it was easier to let them think San Diego was a Mexican city as the paperwork was thereafter very light, I even got a greencard and a driver's license from the hotel printer. What I didn't get was a very nice room. The room was 12 inches wider than the sleeping cot. There was a flatscreen TV built into the wall at the foot of the bed. The foot of the bed opened up to reveal a toilet and popup vanity with a 6 inch mirror. The door to the room was a pocket type door that sounded like iron when it latched. I didn't sleep very well, so watched a lot of the government channels to figure out what was going on in this society. It seems that nearly every move a citizen made was monitored, licensed or fined. The list of activity fees was enormous. The list of fines was even larger. Undocumented workers had it much easier. I found that I would be eligible for better housing if I just went and registered in the city center.
Going through registration to stay a few more nights I ran into a long brunette haired Sex Permit gal, played by SP. She is very horny and needs to get a permit. "Lucky boyfriend," I observe, as she is quite cute.
"No boyfriend, yet," then, on a whim, she asks me to be her cosigner, solving her requirement for a partner, and mine for a place to stay. Turns out she likes older men, "they are so grateful," and I "had a really huge PDA."
While we are in her small rooms, she plays the state approved sexual dating guidelines. Apparently in this world EVERYTHING is monitored. There were even sensors on the condoms. At least she had a sitting room and a bathroom. After Our date, early in the morning, the city is locked down. "This happens periodically," SP explains, "while the government goes and rounds up illegal aliens and terrorists. You're not either, are you?"
"No, I have a green card, see," I showed her my documents.
"But San Diego is a North American City, how can you be an alien?"
"I'm a time traveler from another dimension." I was waiting for her to call the cops on me.
She picked up my PDA and looked at it. The desktop was as generic as anything, and the icons were all custom designed by myself, so it didn't look like anything. The English program names and such were very familiar to her. She clicked around a little bit and looked at my email programs, etc. The photos I had on the PDA were of a very different world than her own. There were almost no automobiles in this world, for example. Only government workers and transport companies could afford cars. That convinced her more than anything.
The lockdown lasts for three days. All permits for location and activity are automatically extended if not on the restricted list. "Please Comply" is the way that announcement ended.
Fortunately I had condoms. She only had the original 3 state approved devices, the ones with the tracking technology that indicated that they were indeed used properly in only the state approved positions for sex. I had the nanites locate and loop the video of our previous day's activities through the monitoring devices.
During the next three days we might have varied a bit from the state approved list of positions and probably topics of conversations. The fact that I was an alien terrorist made things all the more interesting for SP.
After our lockdown was up she hired me as a live in housekeeper. That way I wouldn't need to find other lodging, or real work. While she was at work I dismantled one of her PDAs and discovered, with the help of the nanites, several interesting tracking devices and software.

I had been in this dimension quite a while before I was able to access the sort of information I needed to figure out when the next time portal was going to be stable. I told SP about it. She was sad, but understood why I would want to get back. She thought my world sounded very exciting, but a little too lawless and wild west. For some reason my impending departure caused her to invite me out to meet her parents.
They threw a lavish reception for us, "Did you tell them we were getting married or something?" I asked her.
"No, they just never figured I'd ever have a boyfriend. Just go along with it I'll deal with them when you've gone."
So I played along with them. I had the opportunity to show them the simple OS I had found lurking in the background of their electronic notepads, amusing them with the on/off, 80 character display with greenscreen graphics mode and the virtual joystick controlling the VRML style browser. SP's Dad was very impressed with that one, not knowing that it had even existed. Of course they wanted to know why I wouldn't go look for work on computers and just wanted to be a poolboy.
"Butler," SP corrected them.
"Whatever," SP's mom said.
So I told them I was a time travellor, and would have to be going away soon. I didn't want to start working, and then leave my employer high and dry. SP looked at me on that one. Even the freckles across her nose and cheeks managed to look sad.
I got to give them the slide show from my world. I must say, it was certainly easier to convince these folks than I would have expected. They were gullible beyond anything I had ever seen. I think it had something to do with being part of a society where the rules changed on an almost daily basis. We spent the night in their home. SP sneaking into my room and sneaking out again just before daylight.
We took the bus out to where the portal was to appear, and there was much hugging. The portal opened. I was able to send and receive Email. S was home and said he'd drive out to get me.
SP launched herself at me as I stepped through. She didn't land with me, and I wasn't in my home dimension, either. The extra mass and motion had altered the portal somehow. The nanites had recorded everything. SP had gone to my world, at least I knew she would meet my friend S. I couldn't get a wireless signal on the PDA. The nanites were spinning about in a tizzy, they didn't like being dataless they seemed to have an insatiable curiosity and were massive stimulation addicts. They immediately set about making themselves into flying recon units, I had to set the PDA on the ground to let the heat leech out of it, and they were using the silicon and Iron to make more of themselves. The world looked pristine. There were no signs of vapor trails, and not a noise of non-insect or wind in the trees production. I saw no sign of a trail and none of civilization at all. I then noticed there were no old-world oaks, or eucalyptus trees. Only the native oaks, manzanita and creosote. No tumble weeds or castor beans, either. There were large deer prints in the soft ground at the edge of the forest. I shouted "Hello" at the top of my lungs. There was a muffled echo, and even the birds and creatures in the forest only looked over at me. They didn't even flap away in surprise. I suddenly had a lonely like never before feeling. Finding water and then shelter for the night became my immediate priority. I had the nanites alter their software with that in mind, the little buzzing fliers took off in every direction sending grainy scans back for me to use to direct the search further. Still no signs of radio noise.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Marooned, Dance Dance Evolution, Middle School, DD Evolution part 2

Marooned
Taking turns on the CO2 scrubbers as there were about 30 of us left alive. The ship had come down on a nearly desolate world. The sun was a distant red blob and the sky was deep blue, some of the brighter stars remaining visible even in the daytime. The atmosphere was thick enough, but mostly contained Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide and Argon. There was enough oxygen to allow you to suffocate only slowly, but the CO2 levels were high enough to make sure you were gasping the whole time. We had to keep in our suits the whole time, only taking them off when we took shifts at the galley and shower. We managed to hook up the ships CO2 scrubbers in a way that would allow us to recharge our air tanks in just a few hours, still, only a third of us could be active at any given time, the rest either out of suits eating or in suits sleeping while connected to the scrubbers. I'd been elected governor, and we'd had a small naming ceremony on the surface of the planet. In exploring I'd found a couple of yellow sparking creatures that seemed to be friendly. I'd also found that I could unload our colony's construction dome. If I could get that set up we'd be able to bring in the ships engines for repair, though I doubted that we'd be able to lift off the world. The static creature followed me into the ship, hitchiking on my life support pack. It seemed attracted to the vibrations of the electric motor. Once inside it raced around the cabin, checking everything electronic out, finally settling on the computer speakers. It made a connection with the ships wireless network connection.

Dance dance evolution
The AI made contact with a native life form, a static filled plasma creature that likes Boom diddy diddy boom music. Sparky starts dancing on the console until it undergoes mitosis and then there are two of them. They like us a lot, especially when we are playing music and dancing with them. The computer begins running a simulation set to disco music that sees biotic forms evolving and changing "They're dancing even before they're born?" the computer comments. I look into the simulation chamber. there are cartoon ameabae jiggling and vibrating to the music. Every so often one of them grows some limbs or flagella and swims off to explore new rhythms. The creatures join me in watching the display. It takes a day or two for the computer to figure out how to communicate with them. They are slightly intelligent, and have only recently acquired the concept of living beings other than themselves. It seems this world is a popular crash landing site. There are others they are helping. They live along huge quartz deposits where there is plenty of static electricity. The planet is geologically active but on a very subtle level. Our atmosphere doesn't seem to bother them, and there seems to be plenty of energy for them to use.

Middle school interlude. Noisy Chatty girl on a cell phone. Finally have to walk her up to the office to get her to be quiets. I notice there is a woman in a wheelchair out by the bus pickup lane and she had dumped her self over trying to get up the curve. I leave the child as her mother it yelling at her for not doing as she was told by me earlier. I manage to pull the woman up out of the road, but fall with her on top of my chest. I am struggling to get back on the sidewalk as a bus pulls in barely missing my head. Phone girl finally sees what is going on and runs out to help pull the woman back up into her wheelchair, though leaves me in the road to dodge another bus.

Back to the planet, the static plasma life forms have evolved to the point that they can scrub CO2 for us and we are able to move about the planet surface freely. We are working on converting our ships stores into a dome until the planet can be terraformed. The team has given up on rebuilding our engines, they are just too shot. We would need to revive our engineers to accomplish that task. We didn't have enough life support equipment for that yet. The indigenous life forms are not too concerned about the atmosphere, apparently, as long as we leave the peisio electric bearing rock layers alone, and keep playing music for them. I hear a commotion and a flock of 'Statics' come to get me. I run to the dance circle. On the way, there is a large Liger looking creature with an intelligent looking face. It is on all fours but is wearing a harness of some sort with tools in the belt. I can see it's face is framed with a black breathing apparatus which I at first took for its mane and beard. I don't have time to deal with it, so keep running, waving it off, hoping it is smart enough to understand. It also has an entourage of static creatures, shaped very different from my own but obviously related. Our swarms of Statics merge and split up between us. I reach the dance clearing accompanied by both static forms. Another ship has landed and set up an electric containment circle. I rush into the area, demanding to know what is going on. It is another group of humans, they have also been marooned here. "So you were saved by the asgard, too?" I asked in a joking manner.
This was a military group and they didn't see the humor in my question. Finally I come upon the right question to ask "who's in charge here."
A woman introduced herself as captain Black, I said hello and asked why she was detaining my people, they had very important work to do.
"They were dancing around like fruitcakes when we got here."
"That's because that is what we do to charge up the static lifeforms that are helping us weld together our dome." I gestured at the static crowd hovering behind me for safety. "We don't want to be stuck in these rebreathers the rest of our lives, do you?"
"Can you make repairs so we can get off planet?"
I looked at her ship, it was in better shape than ours, and the engines didn't look damaged from the outside. They were mounted high off her vessel and were not smashed when they landed.
"Help up get the dome finished, and we'll revive a couple of engineers to look at your ship." Most of my crew were in hibernation with the colonists, we had felt that was the best solution until the dome was finished. "I'm not waking them until we can either get back on course for our destination, or we can live here without the rebreathers."
Live here.
"Yes, the native intelligences have approved a change, adding 12 percent more to the oxygen levels of the atmosphere, that would make it just livable, in time, For all of us."
The liger people were back, leaping over the rocks running from something. A large dragon like creature. It stopped and I could feel it in my mind, a pressure on the language centers of my brain. It demanded one of us to eat or it would destroy the nearly finished dome and our ships.
Captain Black suggested one of the sleepers. I said no. I took a large wrench with me and walked out to the dragon. It lunged for me and I propped its jaws open with the wrench. I pulled a knife from my boot sheath and wrestled it up under a scale on its throat where I could feel something pulsing below the surface. The dragon got a lot friendlier all of the sudden. Like the Ligors and ourselves, it was apparently marooned here sucked in and damaged by some large spacegoing version of our static friends. It had depleted its food stocks. I promised we would look into finding a way to feed it if it would "just calm down, or we would be finding out what it would taste like." It calmed down. Our dome was flanked by several fruit trees. We'd had to use the grow lights from the colony stocks to supplement the worlds sunlight at first, but they'd adapted nicely and were already producing fruit.
The ligors advanced. It told me they were interested in what we were building. Translation was a good job for this creature. We'd been here half a year making trades with the Ligors, and growing some of their fruit trees as well as our own. Their trees did better, coming from a world closer to this one in nature. They needed slightly less oxygen than we did, so would be willing to help finish construction if they would be allowed to live in part of the dome with us. They had a large vessel with large food stocks, but very little space to move around. Their rebreathers were also powered by the static creatures, and were at just enough efficiency to allow our smaller members to move around quietly. They had extras, having lost several of their crew in their crash landing. They had not been as fortunate as we had been. The military commander tried to remind me that she was in charge because she had the weapons. I reminded her that she'd taken an oath, and I was the duly elected governor of this world. At least the human part of it, and couldn't she see we were outnumbered. I indicated the hills around us, all of them lined with Ligors, like something out of an old wild west movie. "I really don't want to start a war here, I mean, its only been 10 months."

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Napoleon and Me.

I was in a very plain hotel with a nice weight room and a small pool. I was sitting in the lobby with Napoleon. He was dressed in a dapper white coat that buttoned up the back. He was telling me he'd come back to take over the world. While I didn't approve of that particular plan I thought that he might need to be brought up to date with the way things worked in the world now. I managed to get us some time in the computer lab and fired up a copy of Warcraft, which he found very frustrating. I gently reminded him that this was easier than taking over the world. He quieted down and studied the game in more detail. I then introduced him to Sid Meier's Civilization for a more global approach. We also spent some time on CNN looking at the reports of confrontations happening around the world.
"You people have too much information, too fast. There's no mystery. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing." He sighed. "It's such a mess it's not really worth taking over, is it?"
"I don't really think so," I responded with a shrug.
"Feh!" he started up another game of Warcraft. "This is a challenge! I wish this was as big as all the world. I will be the undisputed champion, I will rule this tiny world! It has everything I could want, little people hitting one another."

Monday, December 19, 2005

On Ramp with no Good Options and a Police Job, Ninja Attack

I have a recurring dream where I am driving out into the desert, headed exactly the opposite direction than the one I want to go. Soon I will be arriving in a country or state that I don't want to hassle with visiting. I typically pull off the freeway at that point and find myself in a place where there a couple of freeways headed off into the hills in different directions, but no way to go back the way I had just driven. Last night I decided to head north along the mountain range and see if it would eventually lead to an interchange where I might head west again. I drove until I came to a town where three freeways converged. It was fairly good sized so I checked into a hotel and walked around the town. I put in my resume at a police station on a whim. They had a help wanted sign up for a computer support/forensics training position. When the desk clerk saw the position I was applying for she asked me to wait and called over her captain. The Captain looked over my resume, asked when I could start. I told her any time, really. I'd kind of like to see a map of where I was so I could plan to move my household.
The captain took me to their situation room and there was a map. I could tell I was never going to get to San Marcos from here by driving. I didn't say anything, but I think she could tell at least part of what was going on. She took me into the hallway to meet the other police officers, "We're in the middle of a shift change, this will be a perfect time."
We passed the women's locker room. "It's being renovated, we aren't really using it now." She opened the door to the men,s locker room. It was being used by the men and women. There were only a half dozen women in the department it seemed. They had one short row to themselves. Introductions were made all around. They greeted me warmly, a couple asked questions about their computers, I promised I would get back to them. There was a group of three black officers, and a couple of dozen white or latino officers waiting to greet me when we stepped out of the aisle. I noticed that everyone who greeted me seemed to see me as something different. I heard comments about that as I made my introductions. "Changeling and Computers, we hit the jackpot." A couple of the department chiefs started to argue, good naturedly, about who I would be assigned to first. The captain lead me away and we ducked into the women's locker room.
It was like stepping into the bat cave. I followed into an alcove that was like a vanity. We talked about a serial rapist case they were working on, and I pulled up the images of the victims. I found a photo editing program and started blending them together. The captain left the vanity and the system started making me up and altering me. Soon I stepped out looking like the most common elements of the criminal's previous victims.
The captain whistled. "If that doesn't bring him out of the woodwork, I don't know what will."
she offered me a service pistol, I declined, knowing that I could almost never make the darned things work in a dream. I took a stunner instead. "It would save the taxpayers a lot of money," she waved the pistol in front of me again. I pointed out that I wasn't rated yet to carry it, so we didn't' want to get the department in trouble. Besides, I think I can defend myself, I held up my hand and turned the fingers into long blades which I used to quarter a tissue box with a flick of my wrist. "I'm glad you're on our side." the way she said it sounded almost like a question.
"I wouldn't feel bad if there were a couple of armed officers close by, though."
"Let's go ask for some volunteers." She led me back into the office. There were plenty of volunteers, including one of the black officers, who refused to believe that Terry Fluckstien was a white woman when a few minutes ago I was a black man (as far as he could tell.) "Anything in my DNA past, I can look like." I took off my gloves and touched his hand. I could tell he could suddenly see me as the same black man he saw earlier, only in makeup and a long blonde wig. It was very funny to watch his confused look.

The ninjas were back, they broke into the house through all the glass sliders and the front and back door at once. I tucked N under the headboard and climbed the wall up into the corner of the room, one foot on the door sill, and one on the top of the door. My hands applying pressure to the wall and ceiling to hold me in place. The beeping of N dialing attracted the attention of a couple of them. When I saw the shadow of one below me in the doorway I leapt from the door, slamming it shut on him I cold hear him crash through the closet doors on the other side of the hallway. I landed on the one who'd come in from our slider. I could tell he didn't know I was above him as his arms were out in front of him. He fired a couple of rounds before I could topple him over backwards and disarm him. I could tell he was wearing body armor. I turned his helmet around backwards blinding him and breaking his nose. (I've heard that crunch before, only on my own face. Ouch.) A dozen rounds came shattering through the door. I caught a few of them before rolling the ninja in front of me.

Naptime Yesterday

In a drama class. We were doing improv and I kept getting moved to the back of the line. It didn't look like I was going to get a chance to go. It seems the instructor was very worried about what I might say in front of the audience.

Later I was outside in a cafe. All of the tables and public sitting areas had display lights that indicated the "Appropriateness" of the conversation. If there was nothing offensive no lights would show. If there was potential illegal content, or "lies" detected or proposed, the light would be green. Lies of course defined by our government. If there was building issues, or potentially dangerouse talk, the light would be amber. If the talk was ruled illegal or seditious, it would turn red. Every where I sat the light would immediately turn green. I was on probation for a "Parking" violation. I had let my car's bumper overlap the sidewalk in front of my house while I was unloading long shelves out the back. The judge had given me 5 years probation! It was very clear that the probation was not for the "parking violation" the government really didn't like Stellanova News. Since I knew that, everytime I told someone I was on probation for a parking violation, the light would immediately switch to amber, after all, I was lying. All I had to do was insist, and then the light would turn red. Sure enough, everyone at the table would be brought in for questioning. Eventually they would have to be told, yeah, "there was a glitch," he really is just on probation for a parking violation. The result being that a few more people would know that the government was hiding something. I would, of course, insist on a public hearing, where indeed the result would be that I was telling "the truth" and therefore it had been a wrongful arrest. Nothing would happen, of course, other than the state would pay my attorney's fees. I got to write it up as it was legitimate news, and of course, I would get myself into further trouble with the unseen rulers.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Fresh Cut Tree Full of Surprises

This is a dream easy to trace its root. We bought our first ever cut tree yesterday. We use N's Dad's fake tree most years. Even though I never met N's father, it makes me feel a little closer to N's past to help set it up. It is a very well made artificial tree.
A couple of years we have gone for the living tree in a pot. They don't typically survive more than a couple of years in the ground. The longest was a small stone pine we managed to keep alive for almost three years (Mostly because we set it in a protected spot then promptly ignored it except to water it with the rest of the jungle.) The pine gave up looking much like a Christmas tree after its first growth spurt.
N wanted a real "Sacrificial" tree this year, so we made the pilgrimage to Home Depot and looked over the rather thin picking. We walked around the lot a couple of times when I spotted a fresh looking one. I could tell by how it smelled and by the brighter green of its foilage that it was very fresh. N ran her hands through the bracts. They were soft, like fur. Every other tree around it was like a porcupine. IT had to be ours.
We brought our fist ever cut tree into the house. I cut the twine off its branches, and along with the needles, a whole ecosystem fell out. Small round shiny black mites, silvery transparent long legged insects, and a tiny black jumping spider with white eyes and light brown fuzz on its adomen. They all looked up at the giant ape shaking their former home and scurried to find new lodging under our moldings. More cat toys. Christmas comes early for the fur children.

The dream found me watering the sacrificial tree, (we rationalized having a dying tree in the house by telling ourselves, it was already cut) and checking the condition of the needles and bark. I noticed a light green leaf, not like any ornament or pine needle. I gently pulled the branches away with one hand, and opened the curtains behind the tree with the other. There was a staghorn fern baby attached to the trunk. Its little bifurcated leaf was all of two inches long. I called N out to see our early Christmas present. While I was waiting for her to arrive from her office on the other side of the house, I discovered five more baby staghorns. Climbing the trunk were also two little frogs, and one large one, the large frog was colored blue and green with orange around the lower eyelids. It filled my hand it was so huge. It tucked its legs under itself and laid its head out along my wrist, soaking in my body heat.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Cable TV Awards and Mystery Cruise

Scott and I at the Cable TV Emmy Awards. I won one for portraying a character in one of our series of half hour programs. The character was a short wide re-bearded, thrench-coat wearing brute who talked in grunts and whistles. Sort of a throw away character who became a major part of the plot. A scene played where I was shuffling down an alleyway picking things up out of the trash and rambling non-stop about the people who discarded the item, what they were thinking, where they lived, what they were wearing, how many pets they had, weird habits,"oh, this one pees her bed," etc. I then stopped and found the evidence the detectives who were with me were looking for, it didn't belong in the normal trash of the buildings. There was quite a bit of laughter as I continued down the alleyway past the camera, even though the detectives had what they wanted and were leaving. You could see them get in the car and drive off. The shot changed and I stepped out of the alley into the sunlight. I looked around. The detectives drove up and I climbed into the back seat, talking as though I'd never missed them.
We had several nominations, two for writing, one for editing and my acting nomination.
I was so surprised to win that I didn't really have anything prepared, so thanked SCV for writing such a great part and fixing me in post, and to the person who added all of the whistles, as I can't really whistle myself. Several people commented on how articulate and unlike my character I sounded. Also, how much taller I was.
"Television magic," was my comment.

Cruise Ship Mystery
I was at the Libertarian Party nominating convention in California, on a cruise ship this year. (I've already said I wasn't going, but after this dream may reconsider.) In the dream there were only about 60 of us left on the whole ship, and all of our candidates had vanished. Most of the Decks of the ship were dark as they weren't occupied so we were making our way from cabin to cabin by flashlight. The darkness combined with the motion made for an intense sense of dread. We would step out of the cabins into the daylight on the outer part of the ship which would ruin our nightvision for re-entering the interior cabins and the ships service passageways. Finally we agreed to leave some of us to do the outer cabins and others with good night vision to do the inner cabins. I was on the inner cabin and serviceways group. We searched a large part of he ship when we came across an abandoned looking lounge deep in one of the service areas. Even the crew members that were with us didn't recognize the place. The lights ala 70's disco came on as we entered the place. Dancers took to the stage, they too in very 70's garb. The seats in the club began to fill with the shades of our missing members. I made my way over to the jukebox, knowing, somehow, that if I could bring up a modern tune, the group would be returned to us.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Closed Captioned


Dreams this evening were closed captioned. I was so hard at work trying to read the captioning that I can barely recall any of the images or action. "Scoffs" should be replaced with "Feh!" kept going through my head like a post phenomenalist mantra. There was a lot of scoffing going on. My take on the world was not being well received by the crowd in the underwater bar.
 
I wanted to know how the underwater drinkers were keeping their drinks from mixing with the surrounding environment. I asked,
(CC) "Scoffs"
 showed in the CC box. Pretty much the same as anything I asked the underwater drinkers. I tried to get the CC to show "Feh!" but everytime I tried it just "Scoffs" at me. Harumph!
(CC)"Scoffs."
 
I tried to ask the people around me if they could make the (CC) display "Feh!" (CC) "Scoffs" and of course they would look at the CC and (CC) "Scoffs," would result. I finally had to spell it out. It still didn't work even when the others tried to say "Feh!"
(CC) Why would I say (Scoffs) it's just stupid!"
 
I tried whispering to the woman next to me, but the CC showed everyone what I was saying anyway. That was really irritating, too.
 
I made my way out into the night, where I fell into a deep dark hole. There was something soft and sticky at the bottom, like a venus flytrap. When the (CC) "Slurps" indication started I knew I was in trouble.
 
I unlaced my shoes and pulled myself out. The street was empty, the bar, and its underwater patrons was gone. There was no traffic from any of the three long flat stretches leading into the intersection.
(CC) Eerie wind across crossroads.
 
I buttoned my shirt all the way up. It didn't do much good as it was so short it kept coming untucked from the back. I turned to go get my sweater, but the bar was still gone. Since I couldn't see around the forest of the curved road, I headed down that way.
(CC) Rustling in the brush.
 
OK, perhaps this was a bad idea.
(CC) Werewolf howls
 
"Were wolf! Doesn't that sort of spoil the surprise a little bit!"
(CC) Inarticulate shouting.
 
"Ha ha, very funny."
(CC) Sarcastic laughter.
 
I kept walking and reading the sound descriptions in the CC box below the dream image. At one point the camera shifted to a long shot of myself walkin out of the forest on the road. The dark shape of the forest menacing against the cobalt blue of the (rather fake looking) night sky. The full moon overhead. Very much like a photo I took earlier this year. (Only without the house.)
 
There were then puddles in the road. My socks were soaked. I was worried about leeches. I checked the (CC). Nothing. "Feh!"
(CC) Scoffs.
 
The whole thing started to remind me of the playing with the echos bits from the early Warner Bros cartoons. I kept checking, but there didn't seem to be anything in the CC box that wasn't directly in the dream.

ad astra per technica,
FF



 

Monday, December 12, 2005

Back to School, Winter Solstice with Cats

Had the back to school dream. This time with a twist. I was not
without socks and shoes this time. This time, I didn't have any pants.
At least I wasn't wearing the holey underwear, and they were black and
grey stripes so I could almost pass them off as shorts. Most folks
were ignoring me, but there were a few who seemed to not be fooled.
What I was really worried about was that I didn't have a pocket for my
wallet.
Also had a housefull of Winter Solstice Guests, and they'd all brought
their cats. There must have been thirty cats in the house with
everyone. I had to add a half dozen litter pans to the collection and
I was cleaning them for the second time in the evening.
One of the cats walked across my face again this morning. Ouch.
Backless Gingham dresses, no other clothing, about a half dozen and
two dancers. I had the job of photographing them. Sadly, I had to
spend more time setting up lights than playing with the models. Still
I wonder: Where can I really find work like this?

--
ad astra per technica,
FF

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Video Game

Black screen with vector looking graphics that gave way to 3d renderings when Zoomed in close enough. It was really a sort of heads up display. I was using a lot of blue energy and the enemy was hitting me and draining my red Life orb, kind of like Diablo II. My side of the combat was flying batmen, giant scorpions, foot soldiers firing some sort of bio weapon that melted the armor and arms of our opponents. My main tank was a giant skeleton that fired bolts of lightning and swirling kinetic energy.
 The enemy was rifle carrying soldiers, grenade launchers, mortars, and two tanks. The skeleton was able to smash the tanks with lightning, and  that seemed to disrupt them long enough for the ground troops to soak them in acid and melt them down. The mortars were giving us the most trouble, at least until I tasked the batmen to dive bomb them with bio grenades. That kept them down long enough for the scorpions to burst from the ground and overwhelm them. The battle ended just as my life orb was about to empty. I had emptied my magic pool as well. It was a costly victory. I raised up several of the dead enemy and they took up their former weapons and some from my fallen soldiers, as their own had been melted.
 I checked my heads up display for my troops, they were in pretty bad condition. I was checking the map for a location to withdraw to, as my group had penetrated more deeply into enemy territory than the rest of the line. We decided that our hill was the most defensible position around, unless the enemy moved mortars into position. I prepped my troops to pull out and sent the fliers up again to keep tabs on the location of our support and the enemy. It was my intention to withdraw if the enemy even feinted towards our supply line. Every time my energy recharged enough I raised up an enemy trooper as my own.

There was a snippet (far too short of another dream) Strawberry blond "teacher" gal with some, uh, interesting, teaching aids.

ad astra per technica,
FF

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

House on the Hill, Braiding

House on a hill. About 11 years old. Mom had me connect an extension cord to the RV. It was connected to about three other extension cords, all of them at least 200 feet long each The RV was slowly driving away and the cord stopped feeding smoothly. I jumped aboard, while mom was yelling at me to get out, I untangled the cord. I jumped out just as the RV headed down the hill.
 There was something shaggy and black in the driver's seat that was looking back at me.
 The RV rolled down to the end of the street and off a pier into the ocean. There was a lightning strike on the house from where the cord was going into the ocean. Mom dragged me off into  a spot behind a retaining wall and there were several more lightning strokes, I could see the charges roaring up through the extension cords from out of the ocean. Finally a loud explosion rocked the hillside and knocked me to my fee.
 When we stood up there was no more house. Only the opening in the ground where the basement was.
 I advanced to the edge to look over into the smoking pit. The basement wasn't full of debris like I thought it would be, instead there was a pile of rubble that used to be the stairs, and an open archway over a tunnel leading down a long hallway with shallow shelves carved along each side. I'd never seen that before. An Ossuary, I know, but the me in the dream didn't know what it was. There was a glowing golden alter at the end of the tunnel in a room that was likely to be circular. Just an assumption from what I could see from up above. Thankfully, there were no zombies walking around in the basement. I looked real hard for them, for some reason expecting to see some wandering aimlessly around.
 "Dad is gonna be really angry." I thought to myself.
 Mom took me over to the tennis courts, the chain link fence on the house side having been burnt and the plastic shade cloth was all black and melted. She made several phone calls while we waited there for Dad to come back home. She had to pull me back from the fence a couple of times as I was trying to see what was going on in the basement, or if there was any indication of what happened to the RV.
  He didn't come for us, though. A helicopter finally arrived to pick us up and take us away, but Dad wasn't in it. Mom gave me the option to stay or go. I wanted to stay, and find out what was going on below the house. I didn't tell her that part, of course. As we turned to leave, armed frog-faced men jumped out of the helicopter, I thought they were armed with spear guns, tridents in them, and Mom shouted at me to run. I ran. The frogmen got mom and the helicopter took off to try to follow me.
 I had an almost overwhelming urge to leap down into the tunnel and run to the altar, but it was too far to jump and I came to my senses at the last second. I took my jacket off as I ran into some bushes. Wrapping it around a stone like my friend EA had once done, I tossed it down the hillside. The helicopter followed it. I snuck back up and over the other side of the hill. I picked up Mom's purse. It had several hundred dollars in it, and lots of expensive looking jewelry. I took the whole thing with me.
 On the other side of the hill I ran into Raven, from Teen Titans. She wasn't really Raven, just looked like her. She started to teach me how to manipulate the shadows and to find the fear in mortal minds. Suddenly Mom was back, inside my head, telling me to turn away from the Dark Side. I thanked Raven for showing me her skills, said I didn't know if they would be useful to me and wished her luck. She kissed me on top of the head, having to get on tiptoe to do so. I hadn't realized until then that she was actually shorter than me. It was weird to realize that there was an adult, shorter than me (meaning that there may have been more than one.)
 I continued down the far side of my hill until I made it into town. I found a small hotel with no one parked outside. I conned my way into a room, saying my mom had given me her credit card and wallet to reserve us a room while she was interviewing for a job. I used the card to reserve the room and went and let myself in. I spent the night frightened and jumpy. I awoke just at first light. I left, without checking out. I just wrote a note saying we had to leave in a hurry, and carefully forged my mom's signature from her driver's license. I didn't want to use up my cash. I made my way back up the hill. Dad was at the top of the basement. No sign of any helicopters. He was very sad looking, and his face was puffed up in a way that made him look a little like the frogmen. It was obvious he'd been crying, a lot.
 He spotted me and signaled me to stay hidden. He opened his wallet and dropped all his cash on the ground as he walked past where I was hiding. He also dropped a pair of tickets for a train to Denver.
 "Run away, far away." he croaked through his tears. He then jumped down into the basement. I grabbed the money, but couldn't run away yet. I made my way over to where I could see down the tunnel. Dad vanished into the room, and the altar flashed.
 The room vanished, the basement wall back to what I'd remembered, though strange for being sunlit. I suddenly knew I wouldn't see either of them again. Dad's wallet was laying on the ground near the edge, like he knew I would follow rather than running away. I scooped it up and ran down into the town, planning on buying clothing and jewelry with the credit cards and then destroying them before getting on the train. I knew, however, that I would be back to find out what was going on with the altar and the hidden room.
 
Braiding Hair.
I was at a Fantasy Faire event, SO was there with her curly shiny coppery hair. She wanted me to braid it on one side only. Three strands, 60, 30, and 10 percent. OK. It made for a sort of chunky looking braid, but it did work and looked pretty cool when it was done. Sort of Sci-Fi. Later I ran into her and she'd asked N and CH to make little braids from the other side to sort of hold up the left hand loose hair. She'd come back to me to ask me to make them connect in to her big braid to act like a sort of hair net. Somehow I managed to make that work. By the time the dream was over I was wishing I was about 20 years younger.
 
Ad astra per technica,
fermius

Friday, December 02, 2005

Watery Randomness

Friday morning and the dreams were not sequential, nor story like in any way. People kept changing identity, the scenery shifted every 10 seconds or so. Nothing seemed to be stable in the environment. If I went to sit on a chair I was just as likely to find myself falling through a floor or sitting on horseback.

 

I do know that just before I awoke due to bladder pressure the scenery was slowly flooding. My brain is so subtle sometimes...

 

Ad astra per technica,

Fermius

 

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Stone Poppas

Stone Poppa:
Weathering the Hurricane. I was a disembodied presence in this dream. I found myself in a two bedroom apartment. Well maintained. One woman and one large stone like being, about 18 - 24 inches in diameter, just over 6 and one half feet tall. It had carved looking areas on it that could have been some sort of features. OK, very phallic. The woman referred to it as "Stone Pappa."
Her room looked like an ordinary bedroom, book cases on the walls. She had a small radio/tv/dvd player. There was no broadcast signals, but she had several shelves of DVD's. I did notice that there were no phones or computers in the rooms at all. A hurricane was blowing outside, Stone Pappa announced. He seemed unaware of my presence, but the woman seemed to be able to sense me. She wanted to run away, use the cover of the hurricane to escape.
Outside on the open walkway between her place and the empty place across the hall, there was a large ceramic pot with a sickly looking banana plant in it. I swooped over it, the wind was blowing harder every second. The rain fell in a blast, it was warm but cooled rapidly, leaving a blowing fog like layer so thick the woman didn't see the potted plant break loose. I managed to get her attention enough to move out of the way.
Stone Pappa glided out onto the balcony as though unaffected by the wind. It provided a wind break and the woman made her way back into the apartment. It seemed to communicate something to her that I couldn't catch, and it retired to its room. The floor was covered with a thick layer of white gravel about the texture and size of aquarium gravel. All around the room was a 24 inch wooden framed tank of water that was flowing with a fairly good pace. There were some low green plants visible on the surface waving in the current, and occasionally I caught the impression of something eel-like just below the surface. Stone Poppa floated just above the gravel into the center of the room and I could hear the crunch of gravel as it rested its weight there. The woman turned out the lights, revealing that the Stone Pappa glowed slightly, as did numerous UV lamps around the rim of the tank.
She closed the door and stood facing a full-length mirror at the end of the hall. She looked at me behind her in the mirror, I could tell that she could see me. She retired to her room. Getting into bed with her clothes on because of my presence. I left the room and came back the next morning.
Train-ride
The trip to the train station was in the cold, the woman barely had on enough to keep warm. All of the other travelers are like Stone Poppa, or myself. There are about a half dozen shades like me, we greet one another, but each has a mission, I realize, and we are focused on that goal. The seats have all been altered, only the backs remain, the seat and cushions removed. The Stone Pappas were standing in rows, not really touching the seatbacks unless the train lurched or slowed, which it did frequently. No other humans got on the train. The woman stood most of the way, until the car emptied enough for her to sit on the floor. The Stone Poppa broadcast disapproval, it was echoed by the others in the car. She just gave them a pained look and closed her eyes. All during the trip she was careful not to pay direct attention to me. Just as we were pulling into the dream city terminal one of the Stone Pappas lurched out the door and was slammed into by an oncoming train on an adjacent line. The woman's eyes flew open. She looked at the mess in a near panic. Stone Pappa was upset, a subtle but noticeable change in the carved features, I made a quick sketch in my mind. Stone Pappa, despite his dis-ease, broadcast calm at the woman. I then felt him denying that it was his charge who'd killed the other passenger. I reinforced his denials, and pushed some of his nearby riders to echo it. That seemed to have the desired effect.
"Good luck said the other shades as I followed my Stone Pappa and his captive off the train.
Missing Time.
I don't know how it happened, but the woman and Stone Pappa found their way to the cave of the ancients, as myself and several others were calling it. We needed another couple of us to arrive.
Cave of Ancients
Inside a cave, feels like in the southwest US in a hidden part of some natural caverns, is a massive alien machine. Not made by the Stone Pappas. In fact, I can't think of a single bit of technology I'd seen that could be attributed to them. Human numbers had been so depleted, and in deference to their own ability to communicate by short distance Radio, they kept the remainder of us fairly separated. I could not see the rational of keeping any of us, but was glad they did. I was now in my physical body, by backpack with dice in the tupperware container bumping against my kidney as I raced up to the entrance to the cavern. The woman, and two others arrived. The Stone Pappas with them looking confused despite their immobile features. We all raised slingshots or swirled slings around our heads. Broken shards of ceramic sparkplug sleeves sang through the air. The sharp ceramic projectiles cut into the hides of the Stone Pappas, they fled in terror, silently (to us) shouting for reinforcements, which would not come, as they were out of radio range this far under iron rich ground. (One of our group had discovered the ceramic trick, as bullets of any normal sort didn't seem to have any effect on them.) The woman and her companions were also confused, but upon seeing us in person, and on seeing the alien device, I could tell that memories were flooding back. At this point I knew there were enough of us to activate the machine and send us back to 1953 (or like myself, as one of the youngest of the bunch to 1961, where I would have to grow until puberty to fully remember what had gone before.) I felt the currents of time rising around us, and set the backpack in a safe crevice in the rock, just as I had over a dozen times before. I hoped one of us would know what had triggered this strange invasion, and we would be able to stop or avoid it this time around.

The cavern in this dream was the same as the one that appears early in the latest sketchbook I'd started, just before beginning this Drog. I will have to pull it out and scan it for this story, since it was the same place.

Zombie and Alien Mishmash

I made notes about this dream from the 29th, but can't find them. When I do I shall have to update this placeholder.

I just can't remember much without them. (Other than Sinkhole, Maggot head, rotting guitar, fleeing the city, house of sisters, aliens with Disrobing ray; the oldest sister had white bra and panties with red roses like polka dots on them. Saved the youngest sister by guiding her out of trouble. There may or may not have been a train trip in there somewhere. And a curtain rod; used to knock an Alien off of an interdimensional ladder. I still think the Aliens were responsible for the Zombies, but my female companions were willing to call it a coincidence.)

OK, that's just so weird, I don't really want to go look at the notes.