Dream City Amusement Park

       I dreamed I was running around the amusement park in the Dream City. This time it was before the park was scheduled to open. I was again up on the entry to the mostly underground "Haunted Coaster" with just a couple of other people.
       We were finally allowed in, and when we got into the car to make our first run the tops came off of my fellow riders. Only one of the three was wearing a bra. I was quite distracted for the run, and didn't see any of the supposed haunts. We made our way to the exit and poured over the photographs. No ghosts, but the drops did some interesting things to my companion's anatomies. I asked if I could take some photos of them, and they agreed.
       We made our way across the park and out a side entrance, there we stepped into a small train car and were whisked back to the outskirts of the city where I realized there might be a slight problem. My car was only a two-seater, and while we might squeeze three of us into the car, I certainly couldn't get all four of us up the hill. I ended up driving one of the women to their car, and then we caravanned up to the house on the hill.
       There's been a bit of work done on the old haunted mansion, the central room was still the main entry, but there was now a new kitchen, and an upstairs bedroom and library (Shelves mostly empty save for a bound collection of my journals, and some photo collections.) There was a studio just a few paces from the house, it looked out over a new pool with columns of stone supporting a curved set of lintels that anchored a dome made of some sort of filmy material, a perfect place for shooting in diffuse outdoor light. I didn't have time to get the camera equipment out before all three of the women were frolicking in the pool. I figured I would just shoot them getting dressed and put the photos in a different order for the photo book, which I somehow had already collected together in the library. I thought it odd that there would be a book before there was a photo shoot, but then again, stranger things have happened in Dream City.
       The rest of the dream was me setting up my digital, but still very large format cameras, tripods, lights and virtual photo-retouching software. The sleeping me would have preferred to watch the frolic in the pool.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Two Hours Of Sleep, Neither Happy

       I dreamed, over and over again, for the short time I was asleep last night, that I was climbing on some large pointy rocks. I kept slipping and piercing my hands and feet. I had shoes back down at the campsite, but I didn't want to go all the way back down to the campsite for some reason.
       There was no overtly frightening portion of the dream, but I still woke up sweating and anxious. Time to switch to the summer linens, I think.
       While I was drifting off from the previous dream I kept hearing people calling my name and shrieking in my ear, I would jerk awake and roll over, but not even the cats were around. Some mornings, I believe, my brain hates me. By the time I fell back to sleep, my mind was playing the same couple of lines of a song over and over again. "...I wanna know, Have you ever seen the rain?..coming down...in purple harmony?" I don't believe those are the actual lyrics of the song, but the music was accurate, and loud.
       The tune is still stuck in my head.

Code of the Haunted Coaster, SQL Interrogation

       I dreamed I was at the Dream City amusement park. I was there early, waiting in front of the haunted roller coaster, the one that dips down below the floor and picks up haunts that ride with you the rest of the trip until you come back above ground. N had gone off somewhere and I was on a landing overlooking part of the park.
       There were only a couple of other people around. One of them was talking to his son, telling him the ghosts on the ride weren't real. I thought about jumping in to set the record straight, but then thought better of it. I looked down at my feet and found a decoder wheel, similar to one I had hanging around my neck. The tin-like metal case had been broken open, the brass rivet that held the works together was missing. I scooped it up and re-arranged all the parts. It had a slightly different letter order than the one I was wearing.
       I got involved in a conversation with the man and his son about how the coding wheel works, and what sort of steps you can take to make the wheel useful even if you know your opponents have a copy of it.

       I was then in a small room, like you would see in a TV show where spies would be interrogated. I figured that the large mirror built into the wall was a one way glass and I was being observed. I sat down where there were papers, all blank and some pencils. I started writing SQL statements, trying to remember the syntax.

Almost Lucid Dream

        I have had my first full night’s sleep in a few nights. There were several tidbits of a regular work day, but the memorable dream was one I had shortly before waking. I was at a computer console, talking with Sarah Prim, I welcomed her back as I don’t think I’ve seen her for a bit.

We were looking at a person on a live camera feed. I explained to the computer technician there that because this was a dream, the person could technically be anyone we wanted it to be. I shifted the person through several people I know, and then the person landed on a curly-haired blonde with striking blue eyes. She was wearing a running outfit and a short visor cap. She was sitting on the oak floor in N’s office.

        “She’s a hottie,” the technician said.

        “Yeah, I wish I knew who she was,” I replied, agreeing with the technician’s assessment. There was that overwhelming feeling of total hopeless infatuation.

        “You will,” Sarah smiled at me.

        I was thinking that Sarah is the one I’d really like to meet in person.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Shot in Little Red, Political Intrigue

       I can't stop Little Red, either she has no brakes, or I can't move my brake foot from the accelerator to the brake. I am rolling backwards, down hill, on a street where there is no parking left other than the space I pulled out of. I force her out of gear, and do a couple of donuts at the end of a street before heading up a short road on a hill, slowing the whole way.
       There aren't any places to park on 6his street, either, but I find a narrow gap with some bushes in front of a school and manage to turn in, craned around driving backwards seems to be hurting my lower back. The bushes and curb bring me to a halt. I shut off the engine and force the car in gear to keep from rolling back out into the street. I manage to move my leg off the accelerator by hand. That's when I notice the blood pooling in my seat. I seem to have been shot in the thigh, and can't move my legs. There is a dart of some sort, it feathered end just below the flesh. I yank it out with some effort, it seems to have been stuck in my thigh bone, keeping most of its toxin from being deployed.I roll up some newspaper and tie it over the wound with a plastic bag.
       I don't know who has shot me, and I don't know why. I want to get out of the car, figuring someone must be coming for me, unless they are expecting me to be dead. The numbness in my leg spreads to my hip and slightly up into my back. (Making the pain there go away. I accept the silver lining.) I'd love to be able to slip out unseen, but can't move my right leg at all. I lean over into the passenger seat, notice that the dart has delivered almost none of its drug. It must have been damaged coming through the window. I have no idea how I missed the window being shot through.
        I come to the conclusion (I don't know how) that the full dose would have killed me. While I was laying there looking at the dart I hear a car pull up. I close my hand over the dart and quickly pull my makeshift tourniquet off with the other. Blood squishes under my leg and seat. I hold my breath, but leave my air passage open so I can breath shallowly if needed. Shadows cross the window on the driver's side, then across the windshield.
       "He's tougher than I thought, but it finally caught him."
       "It was supposed to be almost instant. I don't like it, are you sure?"
       "Not moving, there's a lot of blood, looks like he tried to tie the wound off, that's what slowed it down."
       "Check."
       "Too much blood."
       "Shouldn't we try to move him someplace less noticeable?"
       "Too much blood."
       "Right, maybe we can push the car back into the bushes."
       "Dents and paint scrapings."
       "There's an old blanket on the ground here."
       "Alright, let's do this before someone decides to leave early."
       The shadows vanish and I hear their car pull away then a bump, not very gentle, as they use their car to push Little red the rest of the way under the brush. I hear the branches scraping away at the paint, irrationally, this irritates me more than being shot. When Red's front tires hit the curb we jerk to a stop. The bang of the the airbag and crumple of the bumper are simultaneous. From the swearing, I guess that their airbag also deployed.
       "Stop whining, we're going to ditch the car anyway, just push the bastard back under the trees. We need to get out of here."
       The driver said something, but I couldn't make it out.
       The other car's engine guns and I feel the front of the car grind against theirs, then Little Red bumps up over the curb and I roll suddenly back under the brush and down a slight embankment until the trunks of the brushy trees stop me. Again, the damage to the car is more irritation than my injury. (Perhaps because the drug has completely numbed the injury site. Or perhaps because a part of me knows that I am dreaming.)
       I hear the men pulling brush over the front of the car and then they just drive away. I still sit for a bit, the numbness creeping up under my ribs on the right side. However, I have pins and needles in my right foot, so figure I am going to be OK. I re-bandage my wound, even though the blood flow seems to have stopped.
       Only hearing their voices, I don't recognize them, and they have said nothing that indicates to me who they are working for. I cannot think of a single person who would hire people like these guys to kill me. Why a poison dart? That is a really odd MO, easily traceable I would think.

       I am in a government building and people keep coming in and taking my friends away. I complain to a big red-haired Freckle Faced Woman.
       "There names are on the list."
       "How did their names get on the list?"
       "It doesn't matter."
       I put my arm around her and flirt with her. She becomes very friendly. I walk her back to her station. While I have been distracting her, some of my other friends had entered the names of all her station roster into the list. Beware the hackers when you get all technologified. Especially if you don't understand, or aren't willing to understand the science behind the technology yourself.
       Federal agents appeared to take her station mates away, just as her group had taken away my friends. I made sure her name wasn't on the list so she would be left behind to tell the tale.
       My hacker friends had changed the list to not include our other friends, instead placing them in protective custody, over night, for last night. The federal agents are opening their cells and letting my friends out, much to the RHFF Woman's surprise.
       "Who swore out the complaints against my fellow officers?"
       "I thought it didn't matter how your name got on the list?" I asked.
       The Red-Head Freckle-Faced Woman frowned at me. I pulled up the computer information for her. All of the citizen overwatch papers had been signed by "F. 'Fuddie' Fuddlesworth, the Fifth." I noticed that the signature was pretty much in my handwriting. I figured I'd better not tell her that part. I sat at her computer workstation and filed a story about the corruption in our local Government Watch offices, praised the RHFF to the masses, then slyly hinted at the corruption going even higher up the chain of the Government Watch (Which, contrary to its name, was not a group watching the government, but the government watching its citizens.)
       "That will never get published! You can't get away with this!"
       "Can, and have, listen." I turned a radio on to a local news station, my words were already being paraphrased on the state radio network. "You're a hero now. Better start getting your story straight, you don't want to end up on The List, do you?"
       RHFF pouts then anger crowds out her confusion. I adore the way her bright blue eyes tear up and her face flushes.
       "You're sexy when you're angry." I pulled her close and kissed her. "Even you don't deserve to be screwed without being kissed."
       The flashes of cameras lit our romantic scene. "I think you're adorable, smart and worth saving. Play along, you'll be OK."
       "You think I'll let you get away with this?"
       "Abusing the trust the citizens have placed in you to settle a lover's tiff? I don't think that will play well, do you?" I hug her to me again as the news vans arrive, they get great shots of us embracing. She relaxes and begins to play along, even kissing me back. I notice that she is about four inches taller than me when she stands fully upright. The news services are going to love that.
       I am a bit perterbed that I will appear on the News shows. Being identifiable will hinder my mobility now. I feel it is a necessary sacrifice, besides, my specialty in our cell is writing motivational words, not the hard skills.
        By this time all my friends have made their way out of the station. I am the only 'wrongly held' victom of the local corruption. I am warmly thanking my savior, who just happens to know that I am innocent, as she is also my alibi! I know the 'News' will eat this up, and thus the public as well. Our accusations of corruption will soon run all the way to the top, where we hope to shape the next government from the sidelines. As all this is unfolding I find myself making plans to run for office, using our impending wedding as fodder for generating publicity. I realize that I will be treading very dangerous territory, as the government has plenty of tale spinners of their own and I will need to stay under their radar for as long as possible.

Flight Prep

       I dreamed of a hotel with many cute women running around in jumpsuits. White with quilted details on the arms and legs, horizontal rolls about an inch wide in a stripe about 3 inches wide. The quilted sections were in a powder blue or a bright yellow. One of the women was a friend of mine, someone I don't recognize from my waking life, but I've seen her in my dreams quite a few times.
       My friend was sharing my hotel room and was worried that I wasn't dressed in my flight suit. She rushed me off to get ready for our test flight. I was going along, but had already slipped into the mode of thought where I was more observer than participant, so I didn't have any idea of what flight she was talking about.
       Back in the hotel room, which looked more like a rather spartan dorm room, I got into my flight suit. My suit was a little bit different, it was charcoal gray, and the quilted areas were actually some sort of pressure suit arrangement. I had electronic connections all over my suit, and was somewhat surprised that I had similar sockets all over my head and down my spine, at the back of my hands and the tops of my feet. The connectors were a little bit painful as I snapped myself into the suit.
       The suit filled with a warm pressure that took some of the pain away, and made everything feel snug and just a bit too warm.
       "I hope the ship is air-conditioned."
       "You're always too warm, aren't you."
       "Seems like it."
       "Well, maybe they'll let you open a window."
       I looked at the helmet that went with my suit, and guessed that was a joke as the helmet was designed to seal the flight suit up tight.
       I started to get nervous, this had gone on quite a bit longer than a dream would, so I was beginning to wonder if I'd just had some sort of stroke, as I still couldn't remember what I was supposed to be flying, and why most of the crew were short women. With a start I realized that the crew were all aliens, they just looked like short women. The revelation was so unexpected that I woke up.

Cats and Catching Up, Stranded in the Desert

June 9^th

        Went to LA to see ‘Wicked’ and it was delightful, go if you can. I have unusually vivid dreams when I travel (once I do fall asleep) and this was no exception. The trouble is, once I’ve gotten up and gotten oriented to the new environment all I remember is that the dreams were really detailed, and somehow - ordinary.

June 10^th

       

        There are new kittens in the house, so I’ve been too pre-occupied to make many dream annotations. I did dream of the kittens the first night they were here. I dreamed that N and I had taken them down to see Mom and Dad, while I was on the floor with the calico, who will probably be ‘Embers’, she learned to say “box” with a cute little lisp. I was hiding one of her toys in various items, trying to get her to learn “box” and “can” and “sock” so she could go to them when told to.

        “Where’s the toy?” I asked after putting it in a box from a deck of playing cards.

        “pboxth” she meowed back, rather than attacking the box, which is what her brother would do.

June 11^th

        The new kittens are still absorbing much of my morning energy, even though I don’t really do much other than talk to them in their safe-house, a four foot by 3 foot cage that keeps them safe from the currently disgruntled older cats. In another week, the grumpy fur children will have forgotten that the kittens weren’t always there, and they will start asking for them to be let out to play. Time not only heals wounds but indignities as well.

        I did dream, and it was a two part dream. I tried to memorize titles before climbing out of bed, a trick that usually works to recall the dreams. Unfortunately both titles were forgotten on the way into work. I do remember that the second dream took place on the water, in a sort of small houseboat about 12 by 16 with the pilot house and kitchen in the same place. In fact, I think the faucet was also the tiller. There was no entry on the sides of the boat, only from the top and from a four by four opening into the water in the center of the boat.

June 12^th

        Again with the memorization failure.

Today, June 13^th

        I was roasting in the desert; I was trying to make shade for myself and N under Little Red. I had the sun-shade closed into the hatchback and then held to the ground with some rocks. I’d turned the car so it would help provide shade in the afternoon. I’d pulled the seat covers off and had covered both the front and hatch windows as much as I could.

        N and I were sipping water, waiting for night to push the car up the incline in hopes of bump starting it. I still had lots of amps in the main battery, but the starter battery had died (lights had been on all night.) I don’t think the starter battery was bad, just drained. I was hoping the heat wouldn’t cause more problems.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

More Diablo III Dreams

This time the Diablo III game was a first person game. It had a sort of sensor hemisphere down in the corner with the life and Mana orbs. Essentially it was meant to give you a visual clue as well as the audio clues as to what was around you. The last 100 pixels on each side of the display was a peripheral vision squeeze, that, on a wide screen monitor, would expand some. Your racial type had some control over the sensitivity and range of both items, and there were items and spells that could affect them as well.
I was playing one of the "legacy" characters, a Necromancer. I had a giant bone golem, and the spinning bone armor was incredible, it faded in what ever direction you were looking in, and was able to be cast on other players. There were 'buff zones' that basically mirrored armor locations and the bone armor added to the protection from the body/belt/gloves sections, but not so much to the feet and head sections. (Which were left open for other buffs or curses that didn't affect the middle sections of a character.) Full voice interaction in the game with a headset microphone was a huge plus. (Perfect quality in the dream, of course.) The best part of this? I was playing on a Linux laptop attached to multiple monitors.

Last night's dream was recorded as an audio file, I don't have room to post it without cleaning my other web space.

Ad Astra per technica,
FF

Pool Party?

        I dreamed I was visiting Mom and Dad when I heard chipping and grinding noises coming from the neighbor’s back yard. I went around the side of the house and jumped down into their yard from the retaining wall. The neighbors were on their pool deck, grinding hollows in the stone decorations around their pool. D was grinding away with a roto-tool and R was staining the lips of the bowl shapes a dark red. I couldn’t figure out why they were doing what they were doing, but they were making rapid progress with power tools.

“We tried just using rocks, like our Indian ancestors would have used, but it was taking too long,” D explained. She pulled her hair back and went after another stone with the roto-tool, sending rock dust everywhere. I noticed that they had covered the pool with a clear sheet of plastic that was now full of rocky dust.

R showed me a drawing of what they wanted to do with the bases of the stone towers, essentially, carve them into a sphere.

        R handed me a drill with a large hole-saw. D asked R and me how that was supposed to work. I took out a pencil and quickly sketched out how the circular cut would be repeated from many angles to give an almost spherical shape. We would then use the drill to smooth the shape out from all directions. It wouldn’t truly be a sphere because we were going to leave a bit of the stone at the top and bottom to connect to the other stones in the stack. D still didn’t get how it was going to work, so R and I drilled a sample into a piece of scrap 4x4 they had left over from their deck construction. I was amazed at how quickly the carving went.

        I have no idea how I got sucked into helping with this project.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Broken Dental Floss

        I dreamed that I had a broken piece of dental floss (the wide type) stuck in the space between my right upper wisdom tooth and back molar. I hate that.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Convention, Hot Tub Surprise

I dreamed I was at a convention, just attending, sitting in a panel discussion, when a group of former students recognized me and started making a fuss about how I should be on the panel (A Discussion of Designing Game Worlds for Publication – Can Original Works Sell?) I pointed out that although they had played in my world for four years, it was not, in fact, published…

“It should be,” was their response.

“Thanks, maybe I’ll learn enough to publish it now,” was all I could say.

In a later dream I was in the hot tub with a slender blue-eyed woman I didn’t recognize. She couldn’t tell me who she was, or how she came to be in my hot tub. She also didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere else.

I don’t know why, but I was pretty sure N was going to be upset about this woman, even though I wasn’t the one who invited her. In the dream we hadn’t done anything for N to be upset about, and the woman was just a bit too waif-like for my tastes, but there was a sort of dread associated with her.

Ad astra per technica,

FF