Dreams: Wargames, Sexy, DVD

            I dreamed I was with a group of friends or squad mates for a training exorcise. We were gathered with about two-hundred other people. All of us were in black optical sensing suits with laser rifles or pistols. The setting was a moon-like desert area.

            The coordinators of this exorcise split us up into different factions by making our led armbands glow a particular color. They then gave us 100 minutes to set up. The goal was simple, take over the map, or survive everyone else. They demonstrated the suits. When hit, the suit would freeze the limb hit, on a torso or head hit, the suit would freeze completely and not allow the attached laser to fire. I was upset that my squad had been dispersed amongst the various factions, unlike all of the other groups, who seemed to be assigned all to the same factions.

            Oddly, the faction I ended up being in didn't have any of my squad. So I didn't fit into their command structure, and, therefore, they didn't know what to do with me. I spoke with my squad, and told them to do their best.

            "Aye, Captain!" echoed around the test area as the bell rang to send us off into our different starting areas.

            That was when I noticed that the group I was assigned to was about one quarter the size of any of the other groups. We looked at one another. We checked our map. We had no home base, either. There were several neutral checkpoints on the map, most in the central plains and with no cover. We found one, though, near the edge of the map and a corner, it had a huge moat around it and an earth berm, though only about 16 inches high.

            "Well, troopers, we only have about 90 minutes to dig in, let’s get to it." I suggested. The other officer was also a captain, but agreed and we took his platoons at double time over the plains to our new territory. The other captain wasn't willing to put any troops under my command, but was willing to listen to what I had to say about fields of fire and clearing out the few rocks in the plains leading up to us that might be used  for cover.

            At some point we found a bunch of buried glass bottles. I test fired my laser at one and it reflected back , fortunately bent funny, so we dug out more bottles and put them along the top of our berm. There was one boulder that I couldn't get moved, and it was pretty large, creating a cone in which enemies could approach easily. The other captain was unwilling to send out a group of snipers to try to make that approach invalid. I used a bunch of Lego men to illustrate the problem. One of the troopers made a little helicopter with a Dart Vader helmet over it and said if we had armored pullout maybe we could do it.

            The decision was made to hold the berm, we had a good command of the plains, and could snipe at other factions as they made their way across the map.

            Our exorcise started. I stood up and tagged all of the neutral markers on the open plains. One of my squad members raced over from the shadow of the boulder and shouted to us that they had received orders to take us out before completing the mission. He then fired the laser at the berm to demonstrate that their lasers were not set to low power any more. I fired mine; it was still at low power. I shot my trooper in the legs. His suit stiffened and he fell over.

            "Shall I contact the rest of our squads and pull them back to help?"

            I knew the carnage would be horrible if that happened. "No, But I'm going to use that boulder now, so come around this side and don't shoot anyone unless I tell you to." 

            I told the captain what I knew and told him to keep his troops under cover as long as possible and to sweep anyone crossing the plains.  I knew he and his troops must be spies or had done something really bad, but I know I hadn't, so perhaps the whole thing was some sort of screw-up. I jumped into the moat and climbed out the other side. Lasers were impacting the walls behind me, I could hear the sand fusing into glass and cracking as it cooled.

            I broke for the boulder as the troops behind me swept the first wave of attackers. I reached the boulder an pulled my trooper behind it. He offered me his laser, but I refused. I crawled around the boulder, pushing smaller rocks in front of me. There was a large body of troops approaching in the shadow of the boulder, just as I'd predicted.

            I swept my laser across them at chest level, I'd pulled my own helmet off and noticed that my own squad members were disarming those around them and ducking to the ground. Some of them began to crawl towards me.

            "You are not to fire on advancing troops unless your life is in danger."

            "Yes sir chorused back at me."

            This went on for what seemed like hours. Behind me, a small group had found a passage through the barrier mountains to the north of us. Their lasers had struck the bottles and enough had been reflected back to freeze nearly every attacker. But we had a couple of casualties. I was pinned down behind my makeshift wall and the boulder. I'd had my trooper stop a couple of hundred yards out so that they wouldn't become targets. I re-swept the markers and tagged them for our team. Pretty soon the time for the exercise was over, but there was no recall. All of my laser equipment stopped working, as did the ones behind the berm.

            The remaining few squads rushed us. About halfway across the plains, I ordered them to stop and surrender.

            "You're not armed, why would we do that?"

            I tossed a bottle at them. They fired at it. Again, the beam reflected back at them, bright enough to shut their suits down. I was glad the lasers they were using were tied into their suits. Soon, only my troopers, those who'd defected early were even still moving, and the platoons of my co-captain were able to move on the battle field. I had my loyal troopers pull back to the moat. I figured that we'd all be shut off and they would send in real troopers at this point. I have no idea why they wanted our little group dead, but I planned on keeping that from happening as long as possible. Sure enough, even my troopers’ weapons stopped working. I had them use glass shards to cut the training suits up and we managed to get the lasers working again as well. The only reason they didn't air strike us was that we were in a dome, and the entire training facility was beneath us. I sent a group out to pull in all of my troopers. Although, surprisingly, few of mine were disabled most had just been faking it.

            In talking with the other captain, I told him that we had to get back underground and on the base so we would have a fighting chance to figure out what was happening and to get clear of this mess. He wanted to know if I was going to be playing with the Lego people again.

            "No, not yet, I don't have a plan and I’m making it up as we go along."

            "Captain, we're getting messages..."

            I moved over to one of my sergeants, his wrist communicator was displaying new orders, to avoid hurting me, but to kill my co-captain and all his platoon. I pulled his arm in front of me and scanned my thumb over the scanner and asked if we could just arrest them and go through a real trial.

            "If you think they will come with you; that would be a good primary objective. Sorry about the confusion."

            I went to the captain and told him his choices. Die, or come with us as prisoners. I told him I didn't want to kill him or his troopers, they had fought bravely in an almost impossible situation, but I now outnumbered him, and I'd armed my soldiers first, of course. I also told him I would work to make sure that he and his troops were treated properly, because the way this all happened was not right. (I didn't like being made a target due to a "computer” glitch.)

            His troops looked at him. "Did you suspect us of something?"

            "Yes, but this is not the right way to do things."  I didn’t mention that I was still steamed that the orders had included me on the list of targets.

            They surrendered to us. I knew that the really hard part was about to start, dealing with an off-planet bureaucracy.

 

Sexy

            The next dream found me on the Futon with a charming firm busted (though smallish) young woman. She was N's build, and size but young and blonde. She began opening up her top and guiding me into fondling her. It was very odd because she wanted photographs. I didn't think that was a particularly good idea. So she turned off the lights. I still heard the camera going and knew she was just using the IR or night vision mode. I finally found where the camera was (by this time she was completely exposed if not fully undressed) and used a foot to turn it to the wall while she was distracted.

            Then I took advantage of the situation. Yum.

 

DVD

            The last dream before waking up this morning was of hanging with SCV and getting stuck on a freeway. We had to deliver a DVD to a festival, but before we could do that S wanted to stop at the printer's and get the labels re-done. There were some issues with the credits. I Zoomed off the freeway, causing several folks to honk at us as we had to cross the solid lines, and took us on a Mr. Toad's Wild ride through the very flat Midwestern town we were in. I shot us across the straight-aways at well over 90 MPH. I knew that if we didn't get to the printer before Noon there would be no way to make it to the festival, and it was 11:30 and we had almost 25 miles to cover.

            Somehow I managed to get us there with no tickets, and, more importantly, no accidents.

            "Messed up my gas mileage average, though."

            "It'll be worth it."

            Then when we sat down with the printer, the changes that we had to make were miniscule, and not in any way significant to the transfer of real information, it was all spacing, kerning and capitalization items. S then had to argue with the printer about the cost of the changes, as the printer had to do a whole new setup. Finally I asked if we could just get by with a color printout on a single sheet of photo paper for this ONE DVD. Then we could come back and haggle over re-covering the initial production run, after dropping off our entry to the festival.

            "We have to submit 5..."

            "Get printing," I picked up a pair of shears as the printer loaded photo paper in the slot of the printer.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF