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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.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The Same as a Hundred Dreams Before.

        I woke up from one of those ultra convoluted, shifting location, morphing people dreams and the phrase The same as a hundred dreams before, going through my head.

        I then fell back to sleep and had a re-run dream. I was in a space capsule, we were all suited up, because the capsule had a 2 inch hole in it. The scary part of the dream was knowing that on re-entry the hole would become a jet of hot plasma filling the cabin, if we couldnt find a way to patch it and re-pressurize.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Hiking into Alligator Gulch

        Last nights dream was amazingly detailed, sight, sound and smell. Hiking and hunting with Dad and some others. Dad and I decided to press on as we could see the canyon in the distance. There was a small town there, according to the topographic map. The canyon was in very vivid layers of pink, brown, white and rust colors. Very dramatic and almost painted looking.

When we got to the canyon edge, we found a pair of speakers in a cleft of the rocks. They had some very inhuman sounding language coming out of them. When I pulled them out of the rock to try to trace where the wires were coming from, I discovered that their wires were all cut.

        Dad decided that he needed to go back at that point. SCV and MS helped me climb down into the canyon, using the cleft like a chimney. They did not follow me, though. I found myself in a garage. AH called me on my work cell to tell me that they were all headed back. There were more speakers on a grey steel shelf. Each of the differently sized and styled speakers crackled with the odd chanting inhuman sounds. A large green slithering creature oozed out of the shadows.

        I grabbed a couple of the larger speakers, figuring that as loud as they were, they had to be generating some electricity. I wired them up in parallel real quick and jabbed the wires into the blob. It jerked and quivered, the electricity generated by the haunted speakers trickled into it, shrinking and solidifying it.

        After much wrestling, I managed to get the garage door open. There were alligators on either side of the driveway. The gators seemed happy to chew on pieces of the green slime (now the consistency of fresh Turkish Delight) and I broke off pieces and tossed them away from my path so I could make my way out of the place. I regretted not taking more notice of the runic patterns on the surface of the gelled blob.

        I realized, as I faced several more of the alligators, that I was on the back of a giant alligator like creature. (It had thousands of tendrils rather than legs, though.) I tossed the gooey creature bits far enough away that the regular alligators wandered too close to the edge of the large creature, and were pulled in by the tendrils and consumed. The garage and the surrounding small town rocked and twisted as the beast climbed out of the canyon.

The haunting chanting sound from the speakers suddenly stopped.

I watched the sunset turn into a sunrise and the beast, with the town somehow still standing in place on its back, pulled itself up into the sunlight. I could feel the ground rounding out as the giant creature inhaled its first full breath in who knows how many millennia, or perhaps even longer.

It roared.

I could feel the shock wave blast back across the now shaky town. The remaining alligators in the town raced to escape. (It seemed an important detail that all the reptiles were a chalky light gray color as opposed to the rich dark red and smooth cocoa color of the head of the beast.) I thought that running away looked like a good idea, but didnt want to go anywhere near the tendrils, some as thick as redwoods, that lined the underside of the great beast. The tendrils again proved how dangerous they were, as they lashed about snaring the escaping alligators.

I looked around the town, trying to find a vehicle of some sort, preferably a small plane or helicopter. Unfortunately there was none to be seen from my vantage point.

By the time I found an old tractor, the layer of earth that was under the town was cracking and breaking up, the fuel tank of the small gas station, and some septic tanks, and a couple of stone lined basements broke through. The buildings of the town finally gave up and collapsed in on themselves like a bunch of cards. I couldnt get the motor of the tractor to turn over. Odd chanting noises started up again, but this time from very human throats.

The townspeople finally made an appearance. They were old, as in mummy state old. They were also encased in a bright green gel-like substance similar to the one I had shocked and dismembered. I found myself hoping that I hadnt killed someone. I released the emergency brake of the tractor and began rolling across the remaining patch of asphalt towards the beasts tail. I steered around the eerie townsfolk and aimed in between the rows of boulder-like tail spikes. I realized that if the beast were to swish his tail I could be thrown miles through the air.

I suddenly felt a great consciousness turn itself to me. It was calm, I realized that the beast meant no harm, that it understood that we were intelligences (Perhaps far below its own, but intelligences none-the-less.) It lowered its tail to point at a freeway near the rim of the canyon, and I rolled with a rather large 8 foot drop or so at the end, out off the tail and onto the roadway. The front wheels of the tractor gave a loud bang, and the bearings shattered and the wheels collapsed almost tipping me out of the seat. I somehow managed to hang on.

The mummies waved as I rolled off, they were now fully encased in the green slime. Each was covered with runes. I knew that they were safe, and the slime that I had faced had been some sort of rogue intelligence bent on commanding the town and its large alien benefactor.

I felt a sense of loss at being left behind.

The beast inhaled and scales on its back and sides opened to allow the mummies to enter. Its tendrils withdrew and the beast settled onto the desert. Soon it was a shimmering gray black glass cocoon, and shortly thereafter it rose, with a silence as deafening as the roaring was earlier, into the night sky and away.

I knew there were others of its kind, scattered about the world, some similarly ready to shake off their oppressors (the first green slime and the alien alligators had somehow been part of that.) I could feel where they were, and I knew that I wanted to help free them.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Ghosts

              I dreamed I was lying in bed with a fever, when a chilled spirit approached. She asked to join me, as she needed my heat. I had plenty to spare, so agreed. The spirit climbed into bed, slipping under the covers and slowly expanding to take the form of a slender woman, one who reminded me of a post high school infatuation. She was cold so I wrapped myself around her and held her tight. Soon she began to warm up. The more I held her, the more solid she seemed to become. I was rubbing her arms and legs, more to get them warm than caressing.
              “I'm married, you know.” He comment seemed to come at great cost to her.
              “So am I,” I said, “We are just warming you, even if you remind me of someone who's memory is very dear to me.
              “Do you love her?” She asked, but I wasn't sure about which, N or my former infatuation.
              I realized that the answer was essentially the same, either way, just to different degrees and manners.
              “Yes, of course.”
              The spirit sighed and faded into nothingness.

              In the next dream I was working as an attorney in a court, defending a woman who was the target of commitment proceedings. The woman was famous, hourglass figure, dark brown curly hair, and a failed dairy farm that she claimed was haunted, and thus the commitment hearing. In this dream I started out not believing in ghosts (Pretty much my stance normally.)
              The first witness for her defense was a “Spirit Photographer” who had spent some time on the Dairy farm taking photos of the haunted areas. I must admit, I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary in those photographs, but soon the state attorney and the witness were circling blobs and making outlines. In short order the judge was also in on the game. I didn't object, even though I wanted to, as believing the place was actually haunted would help my client.
              At that point we broke. My client and I came to my house, where N was not really happy to see us. “She brought the ghost with her.”
              While I wasn't sure of the whole ghost thing, N and my client seemed fully convinced. I was helping mostly at N's insistance. N now seemed to be having second thoughts, as the client and I had become fairly close friends.
              Suddenly, my client began to act as if possessed. She fell to the ground, legs folded under her and legs spread. Her skirt vanished. Not taken off, vanished. Then her top and soon it was clear she was acting out the events of being tied up and molested. Soon she was completely naked. N was very upset, not blaming the ghost but the client trying to seduce me.
              I, on the other hand, saw it a bit differently.
              “We understand what happened to you, do you really want to inflict that on another person?” I asked the spirit.
              My client was released and her clothing all re-appeared.
              Back on the farm, the barn had collapsed. Again we asked the spirit to stop interfering. We wanted to make the place healthy and functional again. The second attempt to put the barn back together succeeded.
              The milk was all soured. My client had a heart to heart talk with the ghost again. We found ourselves in another hearing. This time the prosecution had video of my client going through the rape possession incident.
              I pointed out that even on the video, you could plainly see her clothing vanish, not being removed, but vanishing. I made him play it through to the end, where she was naked one moment, and the next fully clothed again. The detective admitted that the video was unedited.
              “I find myself having to rule that some form of magic exists and the client is not crazy. It goes against everything I believe to do so. Otherwise I would have to rule that the court's detective is guilty of perjury and evidence tampering, and that all of you are crazy.”
              “I don't like it either.” I said.
              We prevailed and the client and I went back to her farm. While we were chatting and making arrangements for N and I to come visit, an alligator stormed into the front room and lunged for my client's small fluffy dog. I snatched the dog away.
              My client, for the first time in all of this, was angry not frightened. “Laura, I've had enough of this. I know you were hurt, we are going to figure out what happened. Now you just stop this, it isn't helping you any.” My client chased the alligator out into the hallway and towards the front door. It shrank as she chased it, slowly becoming one of the dog's little stuffed toys. I put the dog down. The dog sniffed the small fabric green and yellow alligator with white cartoon-like plastic teeth, and ran yelping down the hall.
              It turns out the invitation to N and I was going to be about making sure my client wasn't alone. I wasn't sure this was going to fly with N. It would mean a 120 mile commute for her. “I can hire a pilot to fly her to work.”
              “N doesn't like to fly.”
              “A limo, then, she can nap all the way.”
              “I'll ask her, but it is far more likely that we'd ask you to come stay with us if you need company.”
              “I don't want to leave Laura.”
              “I'm not sure you can, at this point. She came to the house with you last time.”
              “Oh! Yes, she did.”
              My client wanted to hire me to find out what had happened to Laura, and to bring justice, if possible. She offered a pretty good salary to do so. I wasn't sure I was going to be any good at hunting down the perpetrators of a forty year old crime, but suddenly I saw Laura standing behind my client, expectantly looking at me. She faded in an instant, but I knew she was still there.
              “Okay, I can try.”
              “I'm sure if anyone can figure this out, you can.”
              I got a great hug, a hug that felt like I was being hugged by two people.

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Monday, May 04, 2009

Carpool, Visiting the Middle East

              I dreamed I was driving on a long trip with MS a choir director friend. We were apparently attending the same conference so decided to carpool to save some expenses. In the dream the car kept getting smaller and smaller, until the steering wheel was jammed in my tummy and I had to open the windows and sun roof to have room. Eventually we were riding is a tiny version of Little Red. Then, to make matters more interesting, we stopped at a fish place for dinner, and discovered that there was no entrance back onto our freeway at that point. We had the option of going back several miles, or trying to follow the frontage roads for several miles up to the next town.
              I had a brilliant idea. I drove up to where the frontage road was closest to the freeway, then got out and levered the now tiny car over to the freeway. MS had to help lift the front of the car, as it was just a little bit too heavy to lift by myself, but I was able to pick the back end up and swing it around and over the barbed wire fence.

              In a later dream I was in the Middle East. In order to beat the sun I had donned the headdress worn by many of the locals, but without the expensive gold braid. Oddly, wearing the headdress not only made me cooler, but I was suddenly not being treated like a total stranger by the locals. Some of my friends poked fun at me, however I found that I seemed to get better deals at the food stalls and was able to convince several of the local men to allow me to photograph their market stalls without complaint.
              At one point there was a procession of folks wearing the same colors as I. They were passing a bottle of sacramental goat's milk when a tourist grabbed it and spit in it.
              “Why did you do that?” I asked, while pulling the tourist away from almost certain doom.
              “They killed my brother.”
              “Those people personally? Isn't that an issue for the police.”
              “No, people of their faith.”
              “Ah, so if people of your faith killed someone I was related to, I should spit in your cheap plastic water bottle?”
              “No, it's not like that.”
              “Isn't it?” I pulled them back into the crowd away from the procession.
              When I turned back the procession had moved on, having poured out the goat's milk and replaced it with a fresh bottle.
              “How can you defend these people?” The woman asked, more that a bit angry.
              “You misunderstand, I am defending you. They don't need to be defended.”

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Saturday, May 02, 2009

It's My Party

              And I'll fly if I want to, fly if I want to.
              If it was your party you would fly, too.

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