Reality Show (Investigator) Convention Game Dreams

            I dreamed I was in a Small town, with really small buildings. N and I had lunch at an Arby's then N parked out on the street in front of some small buildings, about 3/4 scale old west style. She sent me in to get tickets and report to the nominating convention. I went into the lobby of the Dream City theater, and was looking around for some indication of what room I was supposed to go to. A Fat Albert sized security guard found me and walked me to a hallway which was mostly blocked by a large spiral staircase. I had to duck and turn sideways to get through (which is funny as I'm not sure that I'm any thinner sideways now-a-days) 

            The guard told me this was better than going outside the building and trying to make my way around the crowd. He regretted that there was no way he could fit through there and I continued down the hallway on my own. The hall was understandably empty, there was a similar staircase to navigate past on the other end of the hall. Just as I was reaching it, a picture screen flashed to life on the hallway wall. It was made of about 12 smaller displays that up to that moment I had thought were windows into the rest of the mall.

            A woman (who looked a lot like the redhead from Myth Busters) called me by name and indicated that I was agent applicant One Hundred, the final applicant.

            "N set me up for this didn't she."

            The face just smiled. "Your first question has to do with a governor named Ronald, Jessie or Arthur, or Aubrey, oh wait, I read that wrong." She turned away from the camera, "Is this the right question, it doesn't make any sense, what is this name supposed to be."

            I laughed. "Take your time; I'll play along when you figure out what's going on."

            "Thanks" she blushed, "Let me get the question straight."

            "Could you go to the second question? Or would that give the first question away?"

            She flipped the card over. "Gives the first one away."

            "Was the last name on the first card Arnold?"

            "Yes, I think it could be."

            “As in Schwarzenegger?  Say, Governors who used to be actors, or performers. From a usually Liberal industry who became conservative politicians.

            "Yeah, Ok, I think I can give you the first one."  She flipped the card. "And the second one, and the third."  She looked at the third card. "OK how am I supposed to explain this question?"

            "Cover up the answer and show me the card?"

            "Right."

            She turned to an offstage presence. "OK, sure." She carefully covered the answer and held the card up to the camera. It was a classic physics question that looked tricky until you realized it was an equal and opposite forces, a trick question.

            Since the forces are equal and opposite the answer is right in the question, 120 foot pounds.

            "You're in. I'm sure having a bad day on reading these cards."

            "Maybe your contacts have just dried out."

            "You can tell I'm wearing contacts?"

            "Your face is twenty feet high out here, of course I can tell. Besides, you can record your part later and edit it into the scene.” I waved at the hidden camera, having just figured out where it was located.

            "You should be one of our writers."

            "I'd probably like that better than whatever you're going to do to me."

            "Hold on a second, I'm going to rinse my eyes and I'll be back to give you your assignment, One Hundred."

            "Couldn't you just call me One Double O."

            "I like that," then as she was moving off, "Seriously, can we just hire him?"

            I still have no idea what this was about, but it was certainly N's doing, and very entertaining. I suspect the outtake reels would be funnier than the show. I don't know where the secret agent thing came from unless it was from the conversation last night with AH.

 

            A second dream was really just a snippet of images of dice rolling and counters being shuffled from sheet to table and then being put into an "injury" bucket. I think I was at a convention table with about 6 players and myself, plus a number of onlookers. I only recognized SCV among the cast for this event.

 

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Pending Disaster Forces us to Colonize the Moon

I dreamed there was some sort of weather/volcanic catastrophe approaching here on earth and many of us had been selected to colonize the moon until things settled down. I was selected to go, but N was not, couldn’t have babies. I offered to send sperm samples, but they wanted me for the computer help desk, and electronics, and photography, and puzzle solving skills (apparently I’d solved something online and that’s what got their attention.)

            There were tons of wind and falling ash images, trying to put filters up everywhere in the house and stockpiling cat food and litter so N wouldn’t have to try and go buy it if things got worse.

            I cleaned the water catcher for the dehumidifier so N could get clean water every day if the water delivery system failed.

            I was struggling with getting the second windmill up in position and clearing out the branches of the big trees so the fruit trees could get some more sun. I didn’t have any idea how bad things would get, but some were saying it could be really bad. I wanted N to be as independent as practical for our little bit of property. She wouldn’t take the rifle, though.

 

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Super Summer Camp and Sailing Dreams

      At a strange summer camp. The counselors all had clipboards, really computer pads. They had some sort of checklist on them and they were always writing our names under on section or another.
      I got written up the first time for running on the pool deck. The counselor told me that was one demerit, and I didn't want to know what would happen if I got three of them. We were told to go explore the camp, and we were allowed on anything we found within the camp grounds, "Now, go have fun; away from the pool this time."
      I set out with a couple of others from the camp, but soon found myself alone as they went and played on a tree fort that really didn't interest me. I walked the narrow trails for awhile and finally came out on a real road that led down into a hollow. It looked like some sort of strip mining operation had started, but been suddenly abandoned.
      On the narrow road next to a shallow pit was a huge steam shovel. I looked around for the camp fence, thinking for a moment that I'd somehow wandered out of the camp boundary. I couldn't see it anywhere, I even went back down the trail a ways to see if the fence had been on either side of the trail. No sign of it.
      I raced back to the steam shovel and climbed on board. The control cabin was open, and very odd. There were no actual controls, just a couple of handles to hold on to. I grabbed them, pretending they would work the giant tread units below me. The shovel roared to life, I let go of the handles and jumped back, turning for the doors of the control cabin. They slammed in my face. I turned to the small windows, they shuttered up immediately. The steam shovel lurched and I grabbed the handles. They still didn't move, but I somehow managed to pull the shovel back from the edge of the road and drove up out of the pit onto the main road. It was difficult, as I couldn't really tell what I was doing as I had to stand on tiptoe to see out the little four inch high slit in the steel plates over the window. The earth moving leviathan started picking up speed and I tried to keep it on the main road. I couldn't figure out how to slow the darned thing down. I followed the main road, and through the gates that marked the boundary of the camp.
      "Crap, I'm in trouble now" I shouted to no one in particular. I wondered how much fuel this thing had and I suddenly had a display on one of the walls showing, not a fuel gauge, but a power gauge for a small nuclear reactor. "oh, shit!" I said aloud. I was distracted by the display long enough to miss a turn in the road and I went down a fairly steep slope into a ravine. I was about to panic when the steam shovel shuddered to a stop, but with the reactor and steam pistons idling. The doors popped open. I thought about running away, but decided to stay and face the music.
      Sure enough a counselor appeared. They lifted the entire digging arm and the control booth off the treaded unit, leaving me standing next to the control handles.
      "You left the boundaries of the camp, that's going to cost you two demerits."
      "But that makes three demerits, what's going to happen to me?"
      The counselor showed me his clipboard, "That one was in a different category. So you only have two in this category."
      I wasn't fast enough to read the sub category I had the two demerits in, but the main category was "leaving without permission."
      "You need to get this thing back to the camp in one piece. Here's a map. You can't go over any bridges and if you use a main road you'd better obey the posted speed limits."
      He showed me a topographic map of where I was in relation to the camp. It looked like I would be able to follow the creek bed I'd driven into around until I came across the main road again. Then it was pretty much a straight shot back into the camp. I noticed there was one bridge that I would have to get off the road and make my way around, but there looked like there was shallow canyon that allowed me make the side trip without too much trouble.
      I wanted to ask the counselor how she'd pulled the top off the vehicle by herself like that. Then I noticed that it wasn't really pulled off, it was on a set of really large lift hinges, like the cab of a truck. She told be I'd better be getting back, or I'd miss dinner. Then she was gone. I didn't see her go, there was no pop or puff of smoke, she was just gone.
      I turned to the control handles. The engines revved and the steam pistons filled I wondered how much water I had to make steam and I saw that the tanks were nearly full. There were hoses in the creek. They immediately withdrew when I thought about how was I going to get underway if we were loading water. I hesitated about lowering the cab, until the shutters all opened. The cab lowered, using the shovel bucket arm to push itself down by curling the shovel against the stream bottom. I went slow as I didn't' want to tear up any more of the countryside than I already had. I studied the controls of the shovel a bit with my mind, then figured out I could lift it almost straight into the air, allowing me to turn in place and head directly back to the road. I had to use the shovel to pull myself back onto the road, but after that I just rolled the couple of miles back to camp. Used the shovel to set the fence and gate back in place behind me, then drove out to the quarry. I actually dug out a couple of shovels full of rock and loaded them into the crusher, which I was also able to make run from the cab of the steam shovel. It seems the pit was a source of silver and aluminum ore.
      The smelting station had never been put online, though, so I couldn't smelt any ore. I promised the steam shovel I would be back tomorrow during my free time, I swear it purred. As I ran towards the dining hall I heard it give a couple of toots on the whistle. A part of me seemed to still be able to feel it working behind me.

      Sailing ship picking up women (Shanghaiing women?) at the dockside pool where we stopped so we didn't have to sail against the incoming flotilla of pleasure boats. We were leaving with the tide, but it was coming on evening so most of the smaller boats were motoring in for the night.
      The ship was a three masted sloop of some kind and the crew was just myself and a few others. That is, until we offered a bunch of bikini clad women a ride. What we didn't tell them was that we planned to sail all the way to Hawaii, about a three month tour.

Floating Car Nightmare

            Couldn't really sleep last night, but I did have an interesting nightmare before I woke up for good at 1 AM.

            I was driving Cecil to a show. I'm not sure what type of show, trade show, theater or movie, just "a show" of some sort. It didn't really play into things as it would turn out. I stopped to pick some friends, and they had some friends with them. I looked back to see 6 people trying to squeeze into the back seat. After a few minutes of watching them struggle to get situated, I "ahem" ed and pointed to the two empty seats in front. Instead of two people moving to the front, there were four thin people across the bench already, three of them tried to move to the front. I told the thinnest to go back to the back, but she didn't want to go, so the largest got out; making all the others get out as he'd climbed into the center seat. As they were complaining in the back about having to squish again, I suggested that maybe we could take two vehicles.

            It got very quiet, then "No, no, that's OK, we'll make room."

            It was about this time that I realized that I didn't know any of these people. Two of them were still hanging onto the doors when gravity went away.

            We were suddenly weightless. "Don't panic, and you guys, get in the car without pushing against the ground."

            Of course, the first thing they did was push against the ground. In horrible, but inevitable slow motion Cecil lifted off the ground and began to rotate. I quickly shut off the motor, but the damage had been done, even just spinning down, the car began to counter rotate, bouncing the driver's side tires hard into the ground and causing us to rebound even higher into the air. One of the passengers let go of the door and began to drift from the car.

            The screaming and shouting began, and then another passenger leapt out after their drifting friend, causing us to head even higher into the air. I strapped myself in, as did a couple of the smarter passengers. I started the motor for a second and let it counter most of our rotation (which had reversed due to our rebound.)

            More passengers bounced out of the car. I was left with a couple in the back seat and a woman buckled in next to me. The screaming finally stopped. I got everyone to close their doors and roll up the windows, not that I knew what good that might do. I just wanted to be prepared when the gravity came back.

            We drifted a little higher, and I noticed we were also moving a little bit sideways, wind. Soon we were about thirty feet above the road and headed out over a small valley. The apartments were on a hill. I then noticed that none of the other cars or people were floating. My passengers realized it at about the same time.

            The shouting started again, this time at me. We were approaching a tree so I told them "This is your last chance to get out without falling all the way to the road!" The couple bailed out, causing us to spin. I'd wished I told them to go out the other door. They yelled all the way into the tree, and then, as soon as they contacted its branches, they regained their weight, crashing through a few layers before catching up on larger limbs.

            "I knew that would happen" the redhead next to me stated, "I'm staying right here in the center of this car until you put us down safely."

            "I have bad news for you. I'm not doing this, and don't have any control."

            "But you're at the wheel."

            I grabbed her hand and put it on the wheel. "There, now you've got control."

            She spun the wheel, nothing happened, except pouting.

            We drifted on the breeze, I was glad it was slow. The car rotated, causing her to press against me, which I noted was weird, as we should also be weightless in the car. I was pressed against the driver side door. I reached over and pushed the lock down. Thinking it might hold the door closed better.

            I heard a heavy thumping, and we were suddenly lit with a spotlight from above, "Pull over, or land!" over a helicopter megaphone.

            I rolled down the window, "I can't."  The officers couldn't hear me, of course. I held my hands out the window in a shrug. We started to roll upside down; weight finally vanished inside the car as well.

            The redhead started to vomit, I handed her a plastic grocery bag from under the car.

            Not in time.

            Now I wanted to hurl, I leaned out the window, the fresh air helped, but I was still being peppered with hot liquid bile and bits of the redhead's dinner.

            She clutched at me, her nails digging into the flesh of my underarm. The helicopter moved closer, causing the tail of the car to be pushed down in the downdraft. We were now spinning all three axis, and some I'd never thought of.

            The helicopter backed off and the officer repeated his order to land. I tried to indicate that I couldn't and turned the hazard lights on in desperation.

            Bullets started ripping through the bottom of the car. To be fair they were trying to shoot the engine, and tires, it seemed.

            More redhead screams and barfing, not even trying to get it in the bag. I tried leaning out the window with my hands in the air like I was surrendering, but was below where they could see me. The glass on the rear passenger window exploded, fragments of safety glass knocked my own glasses off my face. They floated above and below my head for a second before suddenly becoming subject to gravity and climbing--falling out of sight. I ducked back inside, wondering if this nightmare would ever end.

            More bullets. More screaming. More vomiting. More spinning, the bullets adding even more motion to Cecil's increasingly ill advised flight. I heard the trunk pop open behind me. The spare was loose, as were the two jacks. They rattled around a bit before flying off in three different directions. I could hear more shouting from the helicopter, sirens approaching from multiple directions. I struggled to keep my hands up where anyone with binoculars could see them.

            More vomit. "Aren't you empty yet?" I shouted in frustration.

            Now there were tears and bullets and sirens and flying glass and more vomit and still all the shouting. I just started swearing under my breath.

            That's what I was doing when I woke, oh, and sweating, lots of sweating.

 

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Civil War (Reconstruction) Era Dreams

            Yesterday morning had a Civil War era dream. A young Union officer came to a large plantation house and the owner, an elderly man who was versed in "Things Man was not Meant to Know" greeted him. They argued a bit, then the old man challenged the officer to a duel on the condition that he read a scroll first. The officer wanted the house, so agreed, figuring there was no way he would lose a duel to the old man.

            The scroll contained a lot of information about the nature of reality, the spirit of man and places being the same. Lots of highly condensed newage plus creepy stuff.

            The men met in front of the town in the field of honor, and the old man chose to dual with knives, even though he knew the officer was an expert. The officer wins in a couple of seconds, but is disturbed that the old man's soul will now become the soul of the field of honor. He tries to use what he read in the scroll to protect the field and the town, which works, but leaves his body empty for the old man.

            This, of course was the old man's plan all along, so he now walked back to the plantation in his new, young form. He buys the field outside of town and turns it into a graveyard for the unknown and indigent.

 

            This morning, more weird dreams. Somehow I found myself and my brother in a post Civil War era city. My Brother and I were on the lamb for a murder. Not really something that either of us is likely to be involved in. Not sure who we were supposed to have killed, either.

 

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Stove Portal Dream

N and I brought home our new stove. It had taken months to find just the right one that would go with our kitchen and also didn’t have the control knobs situated that you had to reach across hot pans to adjust the heat. While it was sitting in our kitchen, waiting to be installed, a portal opened up through the stovetop. It descended into darkness. I went and grabbed a rope and a large carabiner. I carefully tied off one end of the rope and then hooked the carabiner onto a metal grid about arms length below the top of the stove. N looked in through the oven door. Just an oven.

             I climbed over the top and lowered myself down into the darkness using a couple of turns of rope through the carabiner to help keep the speed down. I managed to swing out and contact a metal beam after a dozen feet. There was light filtering in through holes in the ceiling of the old gymnasium.

            My Monkey (!?) and I made our way down the pipes on the side of the gym to the floor. It was dusty and unused looking. The doors were off of it, no sign of them anywhere. There was some evidence of birds or bats roosting in the rafters over the doors. We stepped out into the hazy daylight. The sun was out, but the whole sky was dim like a cloudy day, even though there were no clouds in the sky. The monkey took my hand and “ook ooked” in confusion.

            We headed off campus, all of the college’s buildings looked empty and unused, abandoned to the ivy and climbing roses. I found a street that wasn’t torn up looking and headed into a small strip mall.  There was a café, empty of customers, one waitress behind the counter, mindlessly wiping the chrome surface of a cake cover. She didn’t acknowledge us as we passed through. Inside the small mall we stopped a moment at an arcade. There were more people here, all of them stooped over their game consoles, also oblivious to us.

            We came to a bookstore, the monkey climbed to the top of the book cases and hopped from one to another, shadowing me as I walked through the store. I couldn’t find anyone, and the books were all printed in a language I couldn’t understand. I didn’t even recognize the letters which were printed on the pages. The monkey jumped down and I carried it for awhile; until we were out of the mall altogether and back in the sunlight, what thin light there was.

            I was attracted by the sounds of construction in the distance. We came to a bridge across a ravine. A sort of drawbridge that overlapped the side of the ravine we were on by a good 10 meters or more.  I walked out over the bridge, the monkey clambering over the superstructure. Down below, the ravine was filled with a roiling pink and red liquid with fatty white or yellow chunks floating in it. It smelled like a septic infection.

            There were construction workers, some on the bridge, some working on heavy earth moving equipment. All of the activity seemed focused on bridging the crevasse. They were not having much success.

            The crevasse widened into a ravine. The monkey was getting nervous. The bridge behind us was being pulled away from the far side; the gap had already widened that much.

            We raced up a hillside, trying to get to where the crevasse was narrower. After much running, we came to a point where we were ahead of the rip in the ground and I grabbed the monkey and leaped across the gap, which widened below me, fortunately I had made a running leap as I somehow knew the gap would do that. We landed with a loud thud on a piece of crumbling asphalt. We were behind the strip mall and I could see the campus gymnasium rising above the vines.

            The monkey went up over the vines. I had to push my way through them. We made it back into the gym. I started climbing up the rope. Lifting myself up was much slower than lowering myself. The monkey climbed back down and took the end of the rope up and over the carabiner then back down to me so I now had a kind of pulley and loop arrangement to work with. I could pull just the weight of my legs up, then stand up in the loop. As I approached the stove top I could see the portal beginning to close down. It tossed the end of the rope to the monkey and told him to “find N.”

            The monkey shot through the portal with the rope. The rope remained slack, however. I started working faster and managed to reach the portal just as the monkey shot back down out of it. I told him to go back but he just started climbing down to the beams of the gym. I climbed out and barely made it. The glasslike top of the stove had a chunk of the bottom of my shoe and part of a rope fused with it. I found myself hoping the monkey would be OK, and then wondering where N had gotten to.

 

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Flying Cars, Drafted

      Earlier in the night I had a set of powerful images and sounds, even woke up. I was too sleepy to get the sketchbook out and make notes, so the details are gone. I've always wondered why it is easy to remember that I woke up from an interesting dream, rather than to just remember the interesting dream. "It's the End of the World as You Know it" was blasting through the dream, and there were large chunks of planet floating everywhere in a sort of Flash Gordon universe. I was driving a Muscle car like my old Plymouth, but it had all electronic instrumentation, and it was able to jump from one chunk of planet, across the space to other chunks of planet. There was some sort of problem in that there weren't roads on every chunk, so sometimes we moved just by jumping from spot to spot.
      I was certain that all this jumping was bad for the car, as it was already at least thirty years old.

      I dreamed N and I were working on the back end of a car. I was trying to put stuff back together, and N was taking the bumper off. I don't think this was the same as the car from the earlier dream. There was also a different sound track playing along with it.

      I was playing a 3d Holographic game with several friends. The images were in a four foot cube in the center of my living room. We could reach into the cube with a wand and click on our pieces and then move them where they could legally move, clicking again to release them. I was able to control the lighting and the structure of the game board. We RP'd a little yesterday, and this is the sort of thing I'd really love to have. Virtual Miniatures.

      Again with the car stuff. This time I had myself and three other stuffed in little red. (A Honda Insight - two seater.) My passengers were stacked two on the passenger seat; a woman and her pre-teen kid. The woman's teenage daughter was curled up on the back deck and she kept hitting the back of my seat with her knees. I knew the weight limit of the car was dangerously exceeded, but didn't seem to have a choice if we were all going to be safe. I was a little ticked at N for only taking 3 other people in her car, when it can actually seat 5 and still have room under the hatchback. She'd evacuated with the neighbors several minutes before I even started loading people into my car.
      As she was driving away she said something about meeting in Wisconsin. I didn't think we'd have enough gas to get there, and we were supposed to stop at the local HS to drop people off for shelter until the helicopters could lift them out. Why "they" wouldn't lift us out, I don't know the answer. I knew we were on our own for getting out. I planned on going back for the cats, as there wasn't anything happening right away. (If at all.)

      The shadows tried to sneak in through the back yard, again. The black leopard intercepted them, it had help from three or four other cats this time. I was a little bit worried for the smaller cats, but they suffered no injuries.

      Took a nap. I dreamed I was drafted to work on computers and was sent to Saudi Arabia. When our bus sailed into the harbor we got off and joined a local game of Over the Line. Our Lt kept reminding us not to insult the locals and not to stick our left hand on our face. The women on the bus refused to be left out and one caused quite a stir when she hopped off the bus in her modest (for our country) swim suit.

Abduction Dream

            I dreamed that SCV, MS and I were in a large round room with beds that slid out of the walls. We didn't know how we got there, or why we were there. One night while we were sleeping, all our beards were shaved off. There was a poster on the wall that showed a cow face with a curved dashed line through its lips, and, just below it, a graphic of a human head with the same curved line just above its lips.

            We took turns staying awake after that. During my watch there was a bright blue flash and we all woke up out in the middle of my front yard. All of our facial hair was gone. I was really ticked off, I've never shaved my mustache. We went inside, where N told us we'd been taken by a UFO.

            "Right."

            We looked at one another, and noticed the other two had a curved line just above the lips. It looked like it was drawn on with an ultra-fine brush. None of us could find anything to take it off.

 

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Substitute Coaching, and River World

            I dreamed I was back at MCHS and was asked to take over the cheer squad supervision for a "short time". That "short time" ended up being all of football season, including our playoffs. In the dream I got to meet a lot of hot moms, as they had to be part of all our trips as chaperones. The cool part is that we had lots of spirited cheering from our crowds.

            We didn't win our playoff games, but they were close.

 

            In another dream I was in a small boat with N. We had oars, but that wasn't getting us anywhere very fast, and N was getting very tired. I found a long fairly straight branch and used a tarp from our equipment to make a sail. Although the rig was far from being the most efficient mast and sail ever seen, N didn't have to row any more, and I just had to drop the oar into the water and hold it as a rudder, not something I'd want to do for hours at a time, but every so often we would take a tack that would allow me to relax for a bit.

I figured that when we stopped for the evening, I would be able to pull ashore and we could make a keel board to attach to the side of the boat. There water wasn’t salty like an ocean, and sometimes I could see shore to the left and right and sometimes I couldn’t. It was like we were on some massively long and occasionally wide river or lake system.

 

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Under Water Tunnel Town, JT on Drugs, Duct Tape Wet Dream

      I dreamed of an Under Water Tunnel that contained an artificial Beach, visible just as N and I were coming down the ramp. Somehow our car vanished and we were on foot. Supposedly we would connect back with it when we climbed up the stairs on the other side. In addition to the beaches with their brightly lit blue domes and wave machine surf there were several restaurants and some rather seedy looking hotels and shops. There were only a couple of public restrooms available if you were just passing through, so they were an incredibly filthy experience. N somehow lost her coat, and thus the car keys while visiting one.
      "You try to hover while honey-coating someone else's dookies."
      That was not something I even wanted to imagine. I went to check on the kids while she worked on getting her coat back from the bathroom attendant. The Kits were former students who are all now adults, I wasn't really chaperoning them, we were all on this trip at the same time, so it was really more of a visit. M and E were in their room whining about JT taking too much time in the bathroom. Because of the nature of the public restrooms, it was somewhat of an urgent issue. E is just a bit too big to be "hovering" at this point in her life.
      I turned the door latch and opened up the door. JT was shooting up. He was not happy with being interrupted, and really not happy that it was me that had discovered him. I made him get out of the bathroom, telling him he was being selfish. He came at me with the needle, not intentionally, it just happened to be in his hand. I managed to get out of the way and tumbled him out onto the comfy chair in the room, getting only a slight scratch. I told E and M to use the bathroom quick as JT might need it again soon.
      E and M rushed into the bathroom at the same time, grumbling about it.
      "Run some water down the tub drain, it all goes to the same place." I advised them and pulled the door shut.
      JT was up again complaining about how I had no right to interfere in his life. I just pointed to the bathroom. "I agree, so try to minimize your interference with your room mates."
      That caught him up and caused him to start stumbling around the room. He found the needle again and threw it at me.
      I managed to duck, catching it by the plunger. "No interfering in my life, either, then." I shoved the needle into the shag carpet and through the pad until I felt the tip scrape the floor. I jammed it down as far as I could and broke the tip off.
      "That's my only needle!"
      I tossed him the remains of the needle. He stared at it, crying, and rushed out of the room. S the lovely redhead stumbled into the room. I was concerned about her being doped up as well, but she was just tired and flopped on the bed. She looked like her makeup was smeared and her shorts under her skirt had been fixed with duct tape.
      I poked at her tummy by way of saying hello, but she sat up at the same time so I got her on the bra strap. She flopped back down.
      "Ah! Rape!" she said flinging her arms to the side.
      "Sorry, that looks more like an invitation than a resistance."
      I didn't make any move towards her, so she pouted.
      "Oh, that's really attractive. What's with the duct tape?"
      "Why are you looking at my crotch?"
      "Us rapists are like that."
      She kept pouting though.
      "Can you help, I'm afraid I'm going to rip my lips off. I was thinking a hot bubble bath."
      It seems S had repaired her shorts in a hurry, and had taped herself.
      "I that might work, but N has some suntan oil, that might be more effective. I know some duct tape adhesive is waterproof."
      "I have to pee."
      "Seems to be a theme here tonight." I pulled up her skirt to look at the duct tape. It went up onto her spandex shorts, so I figured out that I could start a tear with the grain and take the tape off in small strips. I explained that to S and she liked the idea of taking out a tiny strip from the center in both directions so she could pee.
      She handed me her leatherman out of her clutch-purse and I was searching for the short blade when E and M looked out of the bathroom door with great caution.
      "J's gone?"
      "Yep, for a while. I'm worried about him, though."
      "Yeah, well. We see you're busy here, so we're just going to step our for a bite to eat. Bye."
      I turned to say good bye but they were already slipping out the door in a big hurry. I looked back at S on the bed, spread out with her skirt up over her tummy and one hand holding up the top of her shorts.
      "Oh, great, I bet they think..."
      "Doesn't matter, I really have to pee!"
      I started to work on removing the center of the duct tape in a strip about a 16th of an inch wide. Unfortunately, the center of the duct tape wasn't lined up on her center, so I had to take several more strips on each side of the original.
      About the third or fourth slow strip of tape tearing in slow motion so as not to hurt her more delicate bits she said "I'm getting aroused."
      "You don't think I am? Do you want to finish on your own?"
      "Hell, no!"
      I peeled back a couple more and was unable to resist opening her a bit. Her clit was indeed a bit swollen and she was moist and scent of feminine arousal hit me. "You can pee now."
      "Don't go away, I'm not done with you yet." She rolled off the bed and into the bathroom. A small tinkle soon turned into a torrent.
      "N's sunscreen would probably make this easier," I stood and turned so she could hear me better. I started to walk to the door to wait for her to finish. Her skirt was on the floor, the door was open and I could see she was unbuttoning her top to reveal a white lacey demi-bra.
      
      And then a cat jumped on me from the headboard and woke me up.

Gilligan's Island; In Space

I had an incredibly vivid dream this morning. I was crewing a broken down space ship with five passengers. We were out on a tour, when the hyperspace weather started getting rough. If not for the courage of the fearless AI and my speedy repairs to the hull and engine leaks, the Space Minnow would have been lost.

            I had found us a world; not very spherical, in fact sort of chunky and holed like Swiss cheese (perhaps it was really a moon.) I discovered a thick atmosphere in some of the deeper canyons and valleys. All of them were full of insects and plants, with no signs of land animals any larger than a cat. Almost all of the scans indicated that we would be able to eat the fruit and animals or fish. I secured the ship for a crash landing in one of the more fruitful valleys.

            The captain of the ship was the ship's AI. We unloaded our castaways near an old abandoned survey station. I got the base beacon working. I suggested we use this as a temporary home until we could summon help. I then explained that I was taking the ship back to orbit and to please leave the beacon on, I wouldn’t be able to find the base again without it.

            Before I could head back to repair the ship, I heard the group already discussing building more shelters so they could have their own quarters. I seriously hoped we wouldn't be stranded here that long. The Space Minnow and I limped back up into a stable orbit and deployed the subspace distress beacon. I loaded all of the ships emergency food supplies into a shuttle/helicopter type vehicle and dropped back down to the planet, landing far away from the group in hopes of keeping the shuttle’s cargo hidden until we really needed it. Because the Space Minnow had an engine leak, we knew there was only limited power, not enough to jump anywhere safe. We needed to be rescued if we were going to get out of here; unless I could actually find and refine fusible materials on this small light world.

            Even during the dream I was calling this "Gilligan's Island, In Space." The passengers didn't seem to get the reference. I remember thinking that a good thing, because I was the obvious choice for Gilligan.

There were other dream images, but the dark red-brown lava rock looking surfaces covered with small lakes and forests and huge soaring arcs of pumice stone making each bubble of life an almost separate environment was the most vivid. The planet was so lumpy that a couple of those arcs of stone reached almost up out of the thin atmosphere.

The Space Minnow had a display screen that showed the wacky magnetic field that surrounded the planet. We were able to set the ships orbit to take advantage of that to keep the beacon and computer core charged up even if the engines completely failed. From space it looked like we were living on the universe’s largest air garden.

The plants on this world were quite varied and non-earthlike. I knew that the data from the survey mission was going to be invaluable; the survey had catalogued nearly half a million different plants and animals, almost all of them edible, or at least harmless. Except for the thinness of the air, the little pockets on this world were miniature garden paradises isolated from each other by hundreds of miles of pockmarked and holed pumice stone. (I had flown over it on my way back from orbit and seen that it had its own harsh ecology, not one I wanted to try any time soon.)

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Forging Copper, Doe Escapes from Lion, Chaos in the Brain

      I dreamed last night of forming copper wire into a couple of shapes, then placing them in a sandy substance on top of the coffee table. The sandy substance was thick and damp, I was trying to smooth the top of it to reveal the copper shapes (one a pentagram and the other a five petal flower I had forged out of another pentagon.) The sandy stuff was damp enough that if I vibrated the surface it would liquefy like beach sand sometimes does. I then tapped the surface to smooth it down to where the copper designs would be partially revealed. Unfortunately the copper was heavier than the gritty black stuff, and kept sinking further into it.
      In another part of the dream I was casting my own anvil in the back yard. I had made the form from clay and used more clay to make the mold. I was melting iron and pouring it in the back yard. I was using some sort of brick furnace that I'd built myself as well.
      I was researching blacksmithing last night, so I have a pretty good idea where this came from. While I haven't actually done any blacksmithing, I have done some coppersmith and silversmith work on jewelry items (lost wax casting and hammer forging).
      I was also back at the lake (Bear Lake) where N's family reunion was held. This time I was out on the dock watching the wind come across the lake. There were no clouds and no other indications of weather, just a strong swirling wind.
      There was a large doe in the water, she was struggling to get across the lake ahead of a lion. The doe being taller managed to get to the shallow part of the lake and was able to push off against the bottom. Half swimming and half leaping, she managed to escape up the shore beyond the dock between the cabins. The lion finally gave up chasing the doe, but found itself tired and in the middle of the lake. It looked around, unsure of which way to swim. If I'd had a boat I would have helped it back to the other shore. I sure wasn't going to swim in after it. The lion finally decided to head back to the hilly forest on the far side of the lake. In the dream the far side of the lake was a lot closer than in reality. I watched the lion drag itself up the slope and vanish into the woods.
      There was another dream that was all swirling colors and ringing tones, random emotions, but nothing concrete or identifiable. The sound, though chaotic on the surface, still moved with a complex underlying structure and rhythm that lived more in the silences than in the sounds. I wondered if this was what electrical interference in my brain would feel like. I checked for headphones and didn't find any. (I don't have headsets in the bedroom, perhaps one of the cats was curled around my head again.)

Last Few Vacation (Fever) Dreams

Bolted Down 20060730

      I dreamed an uncomfortable dream, reflections of the cold I picked up on my vacation. I was stuck flat on my back by two long bolts through my shoulderblades. Each bolt stuck up through my chest by a couple of inches and was held in place by two large silver/chrome nuts. Each nut was about two inches across. There didn't seem to be any sign of blood around the bolts, but I was worried that there could be because there weren't any washers between the nuts and my flesh.

Venus Flytrap 20060831

      I dreamed I was home from vacation, which was indeed the case, and someone had sent me a potted Venus flytrap which had two stems with three hungry little flowers on each stem. I couldn't seem to find any care instructions but seemed to remember that it would eat flies. I tried, unsuccessfully, for some time to find some flies to feed the plant. Finally N suggested that it might like some lunchmeat. We didn't have any meat in the refrigerator though. I wondered aloud if it would eat mosquitos. I didn't get an answer. It got me to thinking, as I awoke, are there any vegetarian plants?

Lumpy Pillows 20060801

      Another example of the dream theme that will not go away. I spent another night dosed on NyQuill, and I kept waking up in a sweat from the same dream. My bed suddenly seemed to be made from lumpy little pillows about 4 inches by 3 inches. Each pillow contained some packet of my life, or at least information about my life. I was trying hard to keep all of the packets going in the same direction and corralled beneath me. I didn't want any strays. I realized some of the pillows were thinner than others, and some had drifted to the bottom of the bed and were in danger of falling off.
      Even though I would wake up, one time enough to go and get more medicine, I would fall back to sleep and begin the process of gathering in the lumpy little packets. There was some frustration in that I knew some of the packets were really important but I couldn't seem to recall what was in them. I either knew or didn't know the contents of each pillow as I rolled over them and smoothed them out, there was no halfway. I found myself wondering if there were packets from other sleepers mixed in with my packets. I wasn't sure how to tell.

Naptime Packets

      I have still got the cold, it has worked its way down into my chest. I napped again this morning. I had the Lumpy Pillow dream again, only this time, perhaps because it is daylight, I could see that the pillows are all made of the same sort of smooth linen, but in different pastel shades, most plain, but some with intricate patterns on their surface. Still, each is an individual packet with some small connected communication or thought. Some are missing, but I find myself wondering if there is a way, if I can just get them in order, to recover some of the missing packets, or at least have a sense of what is missing.
      I spend my entire nap, it seems, sorting packets, first by color, then by size and finally by detail. As the process nears completion I realize I have just put them horribly out of order, but now have no way of disorganizing them back into their original but apparently not chaotic pattern. It was somewhat like finding a really long scrabble word, then discovering that it doesn't get as many points as the shorter word you tried earlier, but now can't remember. The letters are the same, but you have to start shuffling them around again until you find your original word.