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Fermius Firefly

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

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Location: San Marcos, United States

Fermius is a pen name drawn from a series of short fiction I wrote when I published the small press magazine Stellanova (on paper.) I play RPG games to escape from my daily grind as a technology wage slave for the state of California. I eat out a lot in order to do my part in supporting our increasingly service level economy. I am butler to 2 feline masters. If you ask them they will tell you I'm not very good at it, late with dinner, don't have enough hands with brushes in them, and sometimes I even lock them out of their office.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Convention, Truck Bomb

       I dreamed I was at a convention (ComicCon starts tomorrow, so no surprises there.) The convention hall was small, much like it was when we only took up a half of the civic center for the Comic Convention. Like then, I was traveling with a woman who was only interested in the movie memorabilia. While I did have some interest, it exerted a lesser pull than the games, books and comics.
       In the dream I found a dealer who had comic versions of Fudge, Call of Cthulu, and Spare Parts. He recognized my name and wanted me to stop and sign copies of the Spare Parts rules for people. I said I was happy to sit for a while, my feet were in more pain than usual, and sign copies for anyone who purchased on. Pretty soon there was a small crowd around the table, people asking about other rules supplements, and how soon they would see them.
       I didn't really have a good answer for them, as I still had to go to work every day to pay my bills, Spare Parts wasn't able to do that. They were excited when I told then that the artist and colorist were here as well, and they would be quite the catch as they didn't attend many conventions, and weren't really industry artists (as they both worked for their own commercial art companies.)
       My companion was getting bored, and a little jealous of the attention I was getting, so she slipped off to the Hollywood Book and Poster booth along the back wall. That was fine with me, I'd realized much earlier than the dream's time frame that we weren't really suited for one another.

       The dream that woke me this morning featured a couple of backwoodsy sorts picking me and Little John up in their stake bed truck. They drove me to my temporary home at a motor hotel, the parking lot of which was full of running shouting children. While I was cramped in the back of the truck, I found a copy of the Unibomber's Manifesto, and the writings of the pair who'd blown up the Federal building. I remembered smelling diesel and fertilizer when I put Little John in the cage on the back of the truck. I got very nervous. I found a remote control with a single red button on it. I quietly slipped it into one of my cargo pockets. It looked to me like the receivers and detonators were actually stored under the front seats. I toed the switches on them and they flickered to life, fortunately there was no beep or anything other than a small LED on each of the four detonators. The driver and his companion kept yakking about the horrible state of the nation, and how our colleges were all to blame. I saw an invoice in the back where a delivery was listed for our local university.
       We arrived at the hotel complex, with new dormitories, under construction along the road in front of it. We had to drive through the site, and it was a bit bumpy, worrying me that if the bomb was too unstable it could be jarred into going off. I pulled the outside of the cargo pocket well away from the button on the remote, wishing they had built in an arming switch on the remote as well as the bombs. Before I thought to turn off the receivers we'd arrived. I thanked the men, jumped out and opened up the cage to let LJ out, he ran into the hotel room when N called him, the kids in the parking lot distracted by his long fluffy tail, stopped their game and ran over to N to ask if they could see him again. She started to say "no" but I stopped her and told her to let them in and just make them be quiet, LJ would come back out to see them.
       I didn't know I was going to do it, but as soon as the truck turned to go through the empty construction site (it was Saturday or Sunday no work was going on) to get to the road, I reached into my pocket and after the truck passed the manager's office I pressed the detonator button.
       There was a rapid ripping under the front seat, four bangs almost in unison, then one large bang that knocked me to my ass.
       Unfortunately, the front seat was apparently close enough to the home-made high explosives, and they went off anyway. The whole front of the manager's office was blown out as were all of the windows in the hotel. On the good side, the children were all with us, and the manager's office was empty this time of day. Except for the possibility of the Manager being there.
       I ran over, but couldn't get in the managers office. I sprinted out to the street to help with anyone who might have been driving by when the framing members of the construction site went flying. I was bleeding and the kids were shouting, running around. N grabbed the phone and called 911.
       I'd realized, as the truck was turning to go through the construction site, that I might not be able to get to the police before they actually killed hundreds of people. I felt bad about the damage, and worse about killing the bombers (they might not have been acting alone.) But I really couldn't convince myself that there was anything else I could have done differently.
       N caught up to me.
       "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"
       I didn't deny it, nor confirm it. "They were mighty suspicious characters. I could tell they hated the University, but I didn't know this would happen."
       I did know that I would be spending a lot of time with the local police and the FBI. I hoped there was enough of the papers from the back seat of the truck to back up my story. I didn't yet know if I was going to tell them that I had the detonator.

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