Hiking into Alligator Gulch

        Last night’s 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 didn’t 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 couldn’t 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 hadn’t killed someone. I released the emergency brake of the tractor and began rolling across the remaining patch of asphalt towards the beast’s 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 it’s 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. It’s 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