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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.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Flood

       I dreamed I was with a group and we were in the way of a flood. The end of one of the great lakes had tipped up in a great seismic event. The water was coming at about 80 miles an hour. We had to get out of the way, and get to high ground, only, there didn't seem to be any. I managed to drive most of the way out of the city before the roads were jammed. N found a church on a little hill nearby and decided that she was going to stay there. I advised her to get to the highest point possible, and to take floatation with her. I noticed a forest along a hilly incline about 6 miles away, so decided that I could run to that area before the wall of water arrived here. I was hoping that I could get over the other side of the hills and that the hills would slow the water enough to allow the trees to be a refuge.
       When I had almost reached my destination I came across a school. It was not being abandoned, in fact, they hadn't heard that the flood was imminent. I stopped to help coordinate an evacuation. We emptied several large tubs to use as floats and rounded up all the classroom rope lines and jump ropes so we could keep everyone together. We then moved all of the students to the second floor and were moving them up to the roof when the wall of water appeared in the distance. We didn't look like we were above the height of the wall of water.
       The wall engulfed the end of the city I had just left 20 minutes ago. A few tall buildings stuck up above the water for awhile, then some of them fell, undermined. I could see lots of debris in the water, but at this distance I could make out no people.
       The water reached a river I had crossed earlier, it dipped into the little river valley and seemed to hesitate before rolling across the river plain, if anything, faster than it was before. Myself and some of the teachers took the ropes with us up to the tops of trees that grew over the school building. I really didn't think that was going to do much good, I was pretty sure I couldn't hold on to 10 kids on a rope in 40 mile an hour currents. All we could hope is that the water would be mostly diverted and slowed by the hills between us and the river bed.
       There was a huge turbulent crashing in the distance as the water slammed into the foothills, scouring them away, but I took some heart at the apparent slowing of the water. Some of the water did seem to be flowing south of use rather than directly at us. I was grateful that the school's designers had chosen to build on a hilltop. I didn't think it would be a tall enough hilltop, but it should help.
       The water was churning against the hills and the water behind it was piling up, using the turbulence as lubrication to avoid being turned back. The wave built into a massive curved wall that, cresting the first line of hills I'd already crossed, tumbled down into the intervening valley. The force ground a deep gouge out of the valley floor, houses and rocks flying in front of the wave as it churned up the hills on our side of the new canyon. The water had slowed, like I expected, but not as much. I could see other waves in the distance as the water piled up over now invisible hills in the distance. It looked like it was no longer headed directly at us, but the water began to flow, counter intuitively, until you noticed the waves building in the distance, up the hill towards our little school.
       I figured if the water continued to rise this gently, we just might be able to float out of trouble on the second or third wave through.

Oddly, I did not wake up with a full bladder.

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