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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 30, 2008

Green Colon Slime

              We've been back two weeks, and I still have trouble getting up and out in time to have some writing time before work. Dreams are sort of lost by the time my first break of the morning rolls around, if I can even take a break. This seems to continue even on the weekends. I did have a dream this morning that I remember parts.
              More of a nightmare, really. N was visiting with J, when she began to experience severe lower GI discomfort. We rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with green slime in her colon. (Obviously been playing too much WoW lately.) The hospital doped her up so she wouldn't mind the pain, and that's all they said they could do for her. The EMT said that she needed a druid to dispel the magic, a de-curse wouldn't do it, so I couldn't help her.
              I didn't know that I could de-curse in real life. Figuring that if I could remove curses, perhaps N could heal herself.
              “She's not that kind of druid.”
              Yes, like I said, perhaps a little too much WoW.

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Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Undead Nerds, Ponies and Robots

        Last night I was chasing basement dwelling undead nerd cannibals, and it was one of the most frightening night terrors I think I have ever experienced.

        This mornings dream was much more pleasant. I was running across a meadow filled with wild flowers and large paint and pinto draft horses. I herded them into a corral, or mostly led them, they seemed content to follow me. I  closed the gate and they all took turns coming over and letting me scritch their ears and rub their muzzles.

I made my way into the nearby barn, which had been converted into a bar with a stage on one end. I was watching the singer, and trying to sit on the world’s most uncomfortable bar stool when the woman who owned the horses slipped out behind the curtain and came down to the bar. I introduced the woman to N, and asked her not to buy a horse while I was gone.

        I made my way to a nearby warehouse, it had our loft on the third floor. The warehouse floor was full of old machines, robot work machines in various stages of repair. I was apparently running an AI salvage operation as a sort of hobby. I could only charge a couple at a time, so most of them were sitting idle, with just their AI communication functions active. They all said hello, except for my latest acquisition. It sat, uncommunicative in the middle of one of the lifts. I had taken all of the body plates off and had removed the tracked units, as I didnt have the sort of parts needed to replace them. I was in the process of converting the drive units to a regular four wheeled undercarriage, having the wheels mounted and connected, but no tires on yet.

        The unit lurched to life and began smashing its way around the garage.

        Predator, interdiction, please.

        By your command. The highly illegal Predator lifted up on its six ducted fans and shot across the garage, deploying its electronic anti-robot gear to rein in the renegade robot. There was a cacophony of AI voices, some very afraid.

        You know the Predator, hes on our team.

        More complaints and concerns.

        Predator, transmit your load out to the team, please.

        As you wish.

        There was a very modem like sound and the rest of the team got quiet. I knew the Predator was only armed with ECM and nothing else. I had removed all of the lethal ordinance and reduced the anti-AI gear to levels that would only incapacitate. I know there were a couple of AIs that were still afraid of the Predator, as I had left its autonomous personality traits intact. (Just as I had done for the rest of the team.) I had, however, completely removed the government back door override and replaced it with one of my own. I was proud that I had never had to use it.

I liked being friends with a giant flying scorpion.  We treated one another with respect, Me because I knew how dangerous it could be, and it because I had rescued its brain from certain destruction, and then carefully looted several battleground scrap yards to rebuild him into something very much like his original body. I also had a tank AI, now working as my salvage truck driver, and very happy in his retirement. I swear that sometimes I caught the Predator checking its sleek black and violent paint job in the windows of the warehouse.

Back to the renegade robot, I disconnected it motors and apologized. No running for you until you get a chance to talk to the team. I began working on repairing the network connections on the AI, hoping the team could convince it that it was not in the hands of a Luddite dismantler.

Any contact yet, is the personality intact? After getting a positive response from the warehouse brain, I removed the robots crushed manipulators and connected him to a VR simulator to determine what his manipulators were for. There really wasnt enough left of the arm like structures to tell, but I was assuming that it was an engineering or mining robot because of its original treads. The warehouse projected the VR simulation on a large empty wall. I watched as several others of the team connected in and began to interact with our guest. This was where the team spent most of their time, as I didnt have the power generation  or storage capacity to allow them to run in meat-space all the time.

Robotic power storage cores were in high demand for homeowners in the area. It was my dream to be able to find the means to begin making solar panels and hydroelectric generators, and ultimately to make more power storage cores. I didnt have the materials or tools access yet, but hoped to salvage enough some day. After I got the robots going on their rescue chore, I powered up a carpentry robot and we went to work on a horse carriage we were making for a customer. Time to earn our keep.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Monday, August 18, 2008

End of the World, Again.

        I dreamed, again, of the end of the world. There was a planetoid approaching, and the world had worked like crazy to prepare for it to arrive. It was predicted to slam into the moon after grazing our atmosphere, and the nature of what we could expect after that was uncertain. Our attempts to nudge the planetoid off its course were only partially successful.

        I found myself part of a survival team packing up information and preparing it to be sent into space with the people of the space ark. The plan was for the space ark to move into an orbit where they could keep an eye on earth and eventually return if there was something to return to. If not, they would attempt to keep their biosphere going as long as possible while working to make mars habitable. There were teams also headed out to the asteroids as well. We had also broadcast a distress call into space

        I was with M and S as we finished our Save this contribution. A helicopter, heavily armored, flew in with a long line to a pickup hook designed to connect only to the large orange Save This box. The box and its contents, documenting our lives and containing things we would want if we should survive, was keyed to an implant. If we didnt survive, the contents would become public property, to be divided up amongst any survivors, or to be used by the ark inhabitants or their descendents.

        I knew there were hundreds of similar depositories being created all over the world, only select few people were allowed in those areas, any one not properly chipped and identified would be killed on sight. Four of us couples had arranged to put our writing and favorite texts, games, etc into the Save This cube. I had placed tree seeds in as well.  Really, there didnt seem to be much point in anything else. Our lives were documented there, but I didnt really know that we added anything that our descendents would actually be interested in. Their world was going to be either very much like ours now, or so different that they wouldnt really have time for nostalgia. Getting plant life going again would be a pretty good thing.

        It seems there were news reports of mass suicides, and several smaller armies had formed and were trying to right ancient wrongs, or to take over fertile ground in potentially stable areas. We had secured about a year’s worth of rations, and seeds for grain and vegetables. I had my rifle and almost 3000 rounds of ammunition, for hunting or protection, we werent really sure. Our government had tried to disarm us, to the rifle an ammunition was buried in the back yard under a concrete slab, under the hot tub full of fresh water. I had invented a Digging Room and we planned to take refuge in that during the event.

I had built a cylinder with electric powered shovels that were designed to pull debris from the top and deposit it underneath. I remembered testing it and it essentially swam through loose rocky debris. It only had enough power to run for about 3 hours, so we didnt have a lot of time if we ended up buried. It was also air tight, so we had about 12 hours with the eight of us inside. I had somehow acquired eight rollercoaster seats for furniture and they were in the crew compartment. Everything else we planned to take with us was packed in foam in sealed off sections of the room. I didnt want any debris flying around if we got banged around. We were only waiting for the search team to allow us to go back inside the house, where I planned to dig up my rifle and pack it away. We had Ns computer hooked up in the digging room and planned, after watching the planetoids shock waves ripple through the upper atmosphere, to race to the room and seal ourselves in. We had talked our breeders into staying in the room as soon as contact was reported. Us non-breeders were planning on staying topside for at least part of the show. My real worry was that the debris from the moon slam would cause so much damage to the atmosphere and ocean that the planet would not be habitable, even if we survived.

        We all had our government supplied suicide tablets, just in case. I knew that I would never use mine. I was trying to be optimistic about seeing the fireworks when the planetoid struck the moon. We were on the opposite side of the world from where the atmosphere rub was going to take place. But I figured wed be feeling the heat from that if the shock wave didnt kill us outright.

        The video feed of the atmosphere collision was amazing. The planetoid was oblong, and drag caused it to start spinning, making less of a gauge in the atmosphere than was expected. We decided to high-tail it to the digging room when the video blanked as 200 plus MPH winds were being reported around the world.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Broken Wind

        Dreamed I had to break wind, but it was solid instead. I had to waddle to the restroom at work, hoping no one noticed. This dream makes me wonder what I did or said that I will someday regret.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Shift Happens.

        I dreamed I was changing to go out to lunch with N. While I was looking out the back slider, the world was suddenly filled with hot pink commas with white highlights. They filled my field of vision, and when they were gone the backyard was a meadow surrounded by tall elms and oaks, the hill of ivy completely gone. The house looked the same, but the world was different looking. I went out to the drive to take little red up to the restaurant, but the car was now a sleek little three wheeler (tail dragger) very nice, but not what I was expecting.

        All electric whine and goodness, I sped to our meeting. While we were eating I described the swirling purple commas, and N said she had them too, but they were usually followed by a migraine. She steadfastly denied that the world had changed in any way. Little Red had always been a tripod, and I had always worked from home doing game design and writing articles for gaming publications.

        In a later game/dream, I was talking with a large person who I knew was an alien invader. We managed to get into our safe room, but not before I had so angered our alien overlord that an orbital bombardment had commenced. We then shifted back in time, and I tried some different conversation. At least there was no bombardment before the alien invasion started.

        We shifted back again, barely making it into the safe house. I had rescued a very pregnant woman. Her child was alien. The next set of meetings with the aliens were a shocker for them. They thought they were related to us, as the child was of their DNA. They still invaded but were somewhat polite about it.

        We shifted back again, a couple of tries, some with better and some with worse outcomes. In one we were all dead and the dead-man shift brought us all back. Oddly, only myself and the alien child remembered being killed. We managed to convince the powers that be, at last, to send us out to meet the first alien infiltrators, and from there managed to get a high level meeting, and from there, information on how to create a shift in the weather and biology of the great deserts to make room for the alien fleet. Sure enough, that last time, we were able to negotiate a peaceful integration into the world. Many aliens chose to stay in the desert areas created to be home-like for them, but many others eventually made their way in our society.

        We raced to the safe house to turn off the wayback machine, deciding that this seemed like a great outcome compared to everything that had come before. In doing so, I ran into an alien who was like myself and the child. She remembered the time shifts, the conflict.

Unfortunately the alien preferred the timeline where they slaughtered most of humanity and took the whole world for themselves, forcing us to live on the ocean or in the desert areas of the world. I certainly didnt want to end up in that world, but could see that I wouldnt have time to shift us out of the matrix, if she went, we would go, as well.

        I managed to hook her by her horns on a low electrical conduit, just barely keeping her from triggering a backwards time jump, one where she knew who we were and where we were.  I managed to disarm her as the rest of the team dismantled the time shift device.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Swimwear Animated

        I dreamed I was judging a bikini contest. Whoo hoo!

Shortly after we got everyone a number to wear, the women turned into anime style women, some with rather powerful special effects. The pool and the trees stayed realistic, just the people became anime style. Even in the dream I thought it was odd. Especially when I realized that I was animated, too.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Monday, August 04, 2008

I'm Unsuited for VP

        I dreamed I was asked to be the vice presidential running mate for the Libertarian Party. The scene was set in a small convention center of some sort. Id been giving a huge rant, one that had attracted a small crowd. (I dont even now remember what it was about.)

Mr. Barr heard me and asked me to run. (Not to cast aspersions on Mr. Root.) My main concern, and the apparent focus of the dream, was that I dont own any suits, and dont really have the money to buy any. This was a huge obstacle, I had to have a suit in order to have a jacket lapel to put my lapel pin on. I tried to convince the powers that be to allow me to wear a kilt with a nice shirt, tie, vest and jacket. The vest had to match the jacket, so I was going to have to buy a suit, anyway.

I didnt want to buy a suit, and I didnt think it was proper for the campaign to buy the suit. It looks like my candidacy is doomed. I cant afford to buy a suit. (Not to mention that I didnt want to become a suit, either.) I tried to talk them into just making me part of their policy board, and perhaps I could work with their speech writers. I wouldnt have to wear a suit.

N told them that she would buy me a suit. With then settled they then said I would need to cut off my hair.

Yeah. Right.

That was a complete non-starter for N. The world isnt ready for a longhaired leader.

Yeah, that Jefferson guy had all sorts of problems with that.

Ad astra per technica,

FF