Soldering Wires in an Old Theater

I dreamed I was in an old theater, working on repairing an old plug to patch style lighting system. As I was working with the huge soldering iron I was wondering if I'd ever dreamed about working in this particular theater before. At which point I woke myself up.

This morning when I got dressed I made sure I put on the same plaid shirt that I was wearing in the dream. It felt comforting.

Superhero Show

        I dreamed that I was taking part in a sort of “reality” show that involved selecting the best superhero. The show had progressed to the point where there were four of us, two men and two women. Both of us men were strongman types, with my competitor being the much more macho looking one. (I looked pretty much like myself, the chubby white bearded grandfather sort.) The women, however, were as different as could be. One was a slender brunette Goth looking teen whose power was to be blindingly fast, the other was a buxom blonde with a true hourglass shape who had some as yet to be explored water based powers.

        Because of the standings in the last contest, the other man got to chose his partner for the “Mixed Doubles” event. Only one person would be eliminated in this round, and I wondered how that would be possible if the teams actually stuck together and voted for one of the opposing teams.

        He picked the Goth girl, saying “I’m not working with a cow.”

        An argument ensued and I ended up assuring my partner that I was happy with the choice and we would make a great team.

        The contest involved saving a group of people on a collapsing pair of bridges. We began, speedy girl racing out onto her span to get people off of the bridge, her partner struggling to hold the bridge together.

        I looked at my partner and realized that we could do the same thing, but a couple of their victims had all ready been knocked into the water, speedy girl wasn’t being careful enough.

        “I think I can hold it up from underneath long enough to get people off the bridge.” I dove into the water. I grabbed a beam and lifted the bridge back out of the water while holding my breath.

        The other man saw what I was doing and jumped into the water to follow suit.

        That’s when the complication occurred. A villain appeared on the bridge and began throwing people into the water. GG grabbed two kids from her bridge and ran, never to return. My partner started kissing everyone and tossing them into the water.

        She dove in after and changed into a large seal, racing to the others that had been thrown in the water. She even stopped to give me a kiss, and then I knew why. I could suddenly breath under the water.

        Now, I knew the villains were just actors, so didn’t want to hurt them, so I got the attention of the other man and tossed him up onto his bridge, then jumped up on mine. That was the point at which the contest was called.

        The other man actually apologized for calling my partner a cow.

        The voting was pretty clear. Three to kick GG. Even her own partner voted against her.

        Then the earthquake came and shook the whole studio down into the water. This was where I discovered that not only could I perform large feats of strength, but I could grow to enormous heights. I was a veritable Titan, at least thirty feet tall, holding back the building from sliding into the water. The other strong man and the Selkie started rescuing people so I could let the building go. Somehow I ended up carrying the Selkie up onto the shore, where she gave me a whiskery kiss. I asked for some towels and perhaps some spare clothing, as I wasn’t too sure that when she changed back she would have any.

        The host and the studio audience said that they should just call me the winner, but I argued that it should be a tie, because there were lots of heroes, including the people who didn’t have any powers who helped pull their fellows out of the water, or administered first aid even though they themselves might still be in harm’s way. The other man was in shock, he really thought he was the strongest man in the world. “Since I’m not sure I’m really a man, as such, you probably still are.”

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Waves and The Simpsons

              I had two dreams last night that were at least partly memorable. The first started with N and I visiting the seashore. We were walking along the beach, greeting and being greeted by the other beach-goers, when we began to get hungry. There was a concrete building up against the cliffs a mile or so ahead of us, so we decided to head over to it, as there were people gathered around like it might be a restaurant. We arrived, and I commented on the large set of pilings out front with a watch tower on top. It made it look like it was tucked under some sort of pier.
              Sure enough the building had three counter windows about ten feet across each. Business was brisk, but to N the food looked and smelled a little bit off. I'm usually the one who can detect bad food, but it didn't smell off to me. It smelled like something out of the deeps and was oddly attractive. I stepped up and got a little oily fish taco. I noticed that the building was much deeper than it looked as it was built into the cliff face. It had ship style bulkhead doors behind the little shop areas, one of which was open to reveal a long copper verdigris lined hallway. I thought that was a bit odd.
              N squeaked out that the tide was coming in. I looked down the beach to where she was and told her there were stairs on the opposite side of the Under Pier food court here.
              It was too late. I saw a large wave surging ashore between her and I. It knocked her off her feet and pushed her back against the cliff, she managed to stand. She started running back up the beach the way we'd come, rather than towards me and the stairs.
              “Swim out and come back this way!” I shouted after her and headed out into the water. I looked back over my shoulders as I headed out into the waves; the other beach goers had all scrambled up the stairs and were also piling into the watch tower, having climbed a narrow ladder. Another large wave broke towards the shore, and N. “Dive under it!” I shouted and then did so. Even though I was under the wave I could feel it pulling me back towards the concrete building and the pilings. I managed to get myself past the uplift of the wave without being flung back, but just barely.
              I came to the surface and shouted for N.
              There was no response.
              I swam down the beach to where I had seen her last.
              The water kept rising and the tide was smashing against the cliffs. I bumped into a cooler and used it to haul myself up higher out of the water, trying to find N out away from the cliffs where the water was choppy but not surging quite as hard.
              The people in the watch tower had launched a large grey/green floating blob, and were helping pull swimmers out of the water. The blob had a large central floating mass that was hollow, and I could see people in there with oars and rifles. Every so often one of them would shoot at something in the water.
              One of them aimed at me and I dove just as the rifle bullet struck the water in front of me. I spun out of the way, and noticed that my feet were webbed with green and black scales. I noticed that I could also breath under the water. I could feel the salty dirty water flowing through my gills. I touched my neck and face, with webbed fingers, felt the gills flaring, the smooth scales replacing my beard. I swam hard and pulled myself to the surface where I saw a small figure like N's in the water. She was splashing towards a long floating green tendril. “N!” I shouted at her.
              “Don't touch it, it's not for us!” I warned her.
              She shouted something and scrambled to climb onto the tendril that would take her back to the main mass of the green gloop.
              One of the people in the central chamber raised his rifle to shoot her. I charged the base of the tendril hoping to knock off his aim. “Dive!” I shouted and slammed into the gloopy tendril, in an effort to shake the mass and save N from being shot. The central mass didn't budge, but the tendril whipped away from N and attempted to snatch me up out of the water. She turned to face me, a terrified look crossed her blue and green scaled face.

              Later I found myself on the top of a hill with Bart and Lisa Simpson. Lisa was saying that Katie had been turned into a dog in the Under, and if we didn't get to her she was going to be taken to the pound and killed.
              “Or spayed and adopted out, how bad could that be?” Bart quipped.
              We raced down the hill, stopping at the library, which also served as the gateway into the “Under Springfield.” Lisa and I talked to the librarian, there was some sort of big Under Springfield secret plan, and we convinced the Librarian that Katie being a dog would undermine that plan. She gave Lisa a sheet of paper that would act like a pass that would allow us to get assistance from any citizen of Under Springfield who we happened across.
              Bart was anxious to be going and so we raced back the portal hidden in the stacks of the reference room. “Has this been here the whole time.?”
              “Yes, Bart,” Lisa started.
              “Good hiding place, what nerd would ever come back here!”
              “Who, indeed, Bart.”
              We jumped through and found ourselves on top of a large mountain. I could see a road off to the left, down about two hundred yard and a ridgeline, sort of climbable straight ahead. The road snaked its switchback self down the mountainside to come out at the base of a large lake and followed that around behind the foothills and eventually into the city. The whole thing was real rather than cartoon-like as was the hillside and library previously. Bart and Lisa were also now human looking teens. Bart saw me eying the route and shouted.
              “Take way too long, man! This way!” He jumped on his skateboard and headed down the stone cap of the mountain. “Kowabunga, dudes!”
              “Bart!” Lisa shouted.
              “Let's go,” I grabbed Lisa's hand and we ran after Bart, who, miraculously managed to survive not being a toon.
              There at the base of the rounded dome top of the mountain was a large construction site, It looked like a tunnel came out from under the granite dome, and a channel was being cut all the way down into the city.
              “The Under Springfield Viaduct! Brilliant, Bart!” Lisa shouted and ran down the center of the large cut.
              “Via duck? Don't you mean via foot,” Bart quipped in a really bad Groucho imitation and then raced after his sister.
              I took a deep breath, all this running was starting to make it difficult to breath. As I stumbled along behind them I searched my pockets and found an inhaler. I suddenly realized that I was Millhouse.
              I managed to tumble out of the viaduct as Lisa and Bart were arguing over a map of the city. Bart was arguing that he should just skateboard ahead and Lisa could ride with me. He took off and Lisa shouted after him.
              I puffed up and grabbed the paper from Lisa and waved down a cab. “What are you doing?”
              “This thing makes people help us, right?”
              “Well...”
              “Let's take a cab, all the running's killing me.” I took another hit off the inhaler.
              The cab ride was uneventful, and the cabby didn't even charge us for the ride. We got there just as Katie was being put in the cage to go to the pound. Bart was distracting the Dog Catcher, and a police officer trying to delay them until Lisa could show up with the document.
              Katie growled at me. I realized that she could tell that I wasn't really Millhouse. While Lisa was showing the paper to the dog catcher, I whispered into the cage, “Play along Katie, we're here to rescue you, once you're safe I'll be out of here.”
              She immediately calmed down and I hammed it up “Good girl, you're going to be okay now. Good girl.”
              The dog catcher let her out and I made a show of hugging her and scratching her behind the ears.
              Katie gave me the “you are so going to pay for this” look.
              We went back into the house and I grabbed a long coat from the front hall hangers and a skirt from the floor of a bedroom we passed. “You might want to put these on.”
              “What does a dog need with clothes?” Bart asked.
              I didn't hesitate, and left Millhouse and took on the point of view of the dog, then stepped out of Katie. Lisa had just finished zipping up the skirt.
              “Whoa! Boobies,” Bart whistled.
              Katie yelped and quickly pulled her jacket closed.
              Millhouse blushed and took another hit off his inhaler.
              I turned into myself, grabbing a pillow to cover up.
              “Who are you?” Lisa asked.
              “An old dude, dude”
              “You have asthma, too!”
              “Thank you,” Katie turned and waved to me.
              I started to wave. The dream ended before I could even say good bye.
              One of the delightful things about this dream was how normal the kids looked in the dream. You could still tell who they were but they were not cartoon like at all. Bart was a regular looking crew cut wearing blonde kid, Lisa had short curly hair (also blonde) with a button nose and a great smile. Millhouse looked like young Toby McGuire and Katie was a cute brunette with dark brown eyes and full lips. All of them except for Lisa looked like college kids, and she looked like she was in her late teens at least.
              The city of Under Springfield was interesting as well. It was connected to the city I dream about by its architecture, the long blocks of covered sidewalks and shops that came right out to the edge of the street, so you would have to walk through them rather than in the road. Even the winding road had similarities to the one in the mountains outside my dream city. There was an odd tint to the sky, a sort of darker than normal blue that colored the buildings and streets of the city a little bit on the cool side, even in broad daylight. All of the cities official vehicles, police cars, the dog catcher's Van, even the taxis, all had the look of the 1950s, streamlined, fins and portholes, but I also knew that they were in fact fairly new.

N Missing

        I dreamed N was missing, but somehow I knew to go to a large mansion in the mountains to the North to find her. N was chained to a desk in a study. She was only wearing her lace tights and a cut off t-shirt. N was very unhappy that I had to leave her there until I could find a way to get the car around, and to either unlock or cut off her chain. After sneaking around a bit and not finding either a saw nor a key I just decided to lift the desk and unscrew the leg where the leveling pad went through the chain. We escaped, but N was upset that I hadn’t brought her any decent clothing.

        I stopped at a store and bought her a blue denim jumper with Woodstock on the front. After she was dressed, she insisted that we go back and rescue the others who were trapped there. Somehow she had keys. It was late, so we slept curled up in the car. Somehow during the night, N vanished again. I still had the keys so let myself into the mansion in the early dawn hours, before the sun was even thinking of getting up. The women who wanted to be rescued also wanted clothing, but I didn’t have any for them. Fortunately one of them knew where the costume room was, and soon I had a car full of maids and nurses, as well as a couple of women who wouldn’t wear those outfits so just wrapped themselves in large fluffy towels.

        I still couldn’t find N, though. I raced back to the office where I had found her the first time. She was tied up on the love seat, so I grabbed her and carried her down the stairs to the car, only the car was gone. The women had decided not to wait for us and had taken the car. I didn’t really want to steal a car, but it didn’t seem like I had much of a choice. There was someone in the garage, though, and so we had to head back down to town through the groves, trying to hurry so we could beat the daylight.

        We came across the other women who were arguing about going back for us. They helped untie N while I drove us out of town. Some of them wanted to stop for a shower and a nap at a cheap hotel, but I told them that the mansion owner would know where they were if we did that. When we got to the intersection of two freeways, I had N toss a couple of coins and headed in that random direction. Though the car was big, having eight people stuffed into it was making it very small. None of the women knew how they had been kidnapped, so I really didn’t want to take any of them right back to their homes, as we had seen with N, they would just end up right back where I’d found them.

Climb to Danger

              I dreamed I was climbing with three other people, our guide was a native of the region and there were two other women with us. The rocks were a most amazing granite that had hints of some cobalt stone flakes in it. The cracks and shady parts of the rocks were filled with dark brown soil and thick-leaved dark green vine plants. We kept climbing higher and higher, and moving around the face of the almost peg shaped mountain we were on. The holds were getting smaller and shallower. As we turned around a particularly large round rock, almost an overhang, the guide turned and said, “This is as far as I take you, infidels!”
              The guide let go and was lost against the greens and golds of the forested mountains until I saw his powder blue and white parachute open just above the jungle canopy far below us.
              “What are we going to do now?”
              “Find someplace level where we can rest and figure out how to get back down,” I said and began looking for a climbable path that would lead us to someplace like I described. I knew that we wouldn't really be able to retrace our steps, especially the last overhang.
              Somehow we managed to climb around the outcropping and I found a narrow ledge that seemed to lead a long ways down. Though it might be a dead end, it was wide enough in a couple of places that I thought that we could sit on it. Neither woman wanted to sit, however, as you would have to dangle your feet out over the edge. They both insisted that I find a better place to stop.
              We continued along the ledge until it petered out in the midst of an other outcropping of round topped stones. I spotted a fairly level v-shaped valley that was just a hundred feet or so across from the stone spires. I jumped out to the first one.
              “Where are you going!”
              “There's a valley on the other side of these spires, we can use them as stepping stones to get there.”
              The women looked unconvinced. I used a rope by running it around the top of the spire and tightening it up. I tossed them the free end. “Hold on to that, in case you miss, you can pull yourselves up.”
              They jumped over without incident and I untied the rope, repeating the process for the next half dozen jumps. At one point I had to tie the rope off and climb down and across about thirty feet of gap. I then climbed the other spire and tied the rope off like a zip line. I then had to repeat the climb to untie the rope from the first spire. (It seems I had the only climbing rope left in the group, which made we wonder what was in their packs.) The free climb down the spire was difficult and the two women had to haul me up to the second rock. As I sat there recovering, I spotted a path a few feet below where we were. I didn't know where it went, but it was obviously well traveled by fairly large animals, meaning sheep or goats, I supposed.
              The path took us right into the hidden little valley, where we knocked some rocks loose jumping onto some boulders overlooking the valley. The ledge was only about two feet wide that we landed on, with a rocky overhang. The rocks pattered against the stones below us, and two tiger cubs burst out of the rocks below and scampered into the forest, followed shortly thereafter by their mother. She looked back at us, not the least bit frightened or concerned. I made a chuffing noise and blinked my eyes at her. She chuffed back, after a moment's consideration, and vanished into the underbrush behind her cubs.
              “Oh, great, now tigers.” One of the women said, hugely disappointed.
              I was thinking that tigers were a good sign, it meant enough game to support top predators, and a usable path to water, and therefore the possibility of escape. Tigers could climb, but not really much better than people, faster, but not better, so I knew there had to be a path down to the valley below, and likely back to civilization. I was glad that none of the tigers looked thin.

              That was the last one of a series of three dreams I had, I tried to remember the first couple of dreams, even using the strategy of giving them titles. It didn't work. By the time I finished up my work day, even the fancy titles were forgotten. I know the first dream had a science fiction, distant future feel to it, and that Little John figured prominently in the second dream, but other than that vague bit of recollection, nothing. I am sure that if I could remember the titles I would be able to recover more. If I remember before falling asleep tonight. After that, not a chance.

Shark Attack.

        I was wrapped in a chainmail suit and tossed off the edge of the ice shelf into freezing water. Even though I had a neoprene suit on underneath I was still freezing. Water was leaking in around the edge of my face mask.

        As I sank deeper the colors all faded to a grey blue and the sun turned into just a set of random sparkles and rays above me. Suddenly a large shark blotted out the sun and dove down on me, catching me by both legs.

        The chain held, but it felt like both my ankles were broken. The chain was too heavy for me to swing around and hit the shark in the nose. It dragged me deeper under. “Well, this isn’t going as well as we’d hoped,” I thought as the ice ledge faded into the gray water.

Ant Farm

              I dreamed we were getting rid of the large potted palm tree. (A tree which we don't actually have.) The two large ant colonies were somehow warned that we were moving and decided to move out. The small black and brown ants streamed out in a single file line, carrying their eggs and larvae with them. The larger red ants (just recently making a comeback in this part of California) piled out in a large sheet of red. The sheet filled the table they were on and then stopped, keeping a respectful distance from the line of escaping Brazilian ants.
              I could tell that they were a bit stymied. They didn't roam much out of the tree, using it not only for a home but for sustenance as well, they had aphids or something they farmed up in the crown and scavenged the leavings of the ravens that nested in the dead fronds. I asked them to wait a second and went and got a sheet of 17x22 inch paper from my office. I ferried a bunch of them to the edge of the patio and then sprinkled a line of them back to the leg of the table so they could create their own escape route away from the smaller black and brown ants.
              I believe the red queen waved at me as she and her attendants made their way out of the trunk of the dying tree and off the table out into the yard.
              “Stay out of N's roses and you should be all right.” I told them and went back into the house to let N know the tree was almost ready to move. I didn't tell her about the ants, as I didn't think she'd understand.

Axelkite

              I dreamed I was playing Axelpyre, Gnome mage, when suddenly I was not playing anymore. I was on the beach, a strong wind was blowing and I was unfolding some sort of silk kite, to which I was attached by a makeshift harness. I had a long cord run out along the beach and a young paladin was on the other end.
              I started to shake out the silk, to make it fill with the breeze. I shouted out to the paladin to take up the slack. He started running. The cord tightened and pulled me off my feet. I scraped along the ground with the unfilled kite twisting behind me. I bounced, sand flew as I dug in trying to right myself. I finally managed to get the Paladin to stop. I walked back to my starting area, a low dune on the edge of the beach. I tried to explain that he wasn't to run unless I told him to.
              The wind picked up over the lip of the dune and I began the process of filling the kite again. I had it working fairly well and it was strong enough to start pulling me, so I shouted at the Paladin to “Take up the slack!”
              In the wind, apparently he didn't hear me too well and started paying out the line instead of reeling me in. The kite even though it was not quite full, pulled me over the lip of the dune. As soon as the kite was on the lee of the dune it deflated and I plummeted down the slope tangled in both the kite and the cord. I called in the Paladin and bundled up my experiment to head to the watch tower along the bluffs overlooking the beach.
              “Take the cord, mount up, and just stand here. Don't do anything!” I instructed, looking up at the Paladin who was at least three times my height, perhaps more. I climbed up the scaffolding a sort of ramshackle wooden structure around an unfinished stone tower. At the top of the tower there was a good wind blowing, but the kite was terribly tangled.
              A gust of wind pulled the tangled kite out of my hands and rather than be pulled into the on-going construction, I jumped out into the wind, hoping against hope that my weight would pull the kite into shape.
              No such luck.
              I landed with a wet smacking thump at the feet of a blonde Stormwind Guard. She made a small yelp and watched as I struggled out from under the kite.
              “Are you all right?”
              “Yes, yes. The ground broke my fall.” I managed to sputter.
              The guard's eyes narrowed, hovering between a matronly concern and anger at having broken her stoic guard face. She started to extricate herself from the coils of the cord that had fallen around her.
              “So what time are you done here today,” I asked, looking up over her rather large chest plate.
              “Not soon enough.” The guard's “all business on the round end of the sword” attitude was back. But I'd seen her soft feminine side and decided that I liked the look of it.
              “Seriously, I'd like to buy you a drink for the trouble I'm about to cause you.”
              At that point I heard the clopping of hooves and looked down just in time to see my Paladin racing down towards the beach after a Troll. The troll was mounted on raptor back, and had a string of footmen getting further and further behind. The Paladin charged into the fray, his part in my great experiment forgotten. I watched in horror as the cord between us tightened. I shouted “Get back!” at the guard, but the cord tightened around her boot and yanked her off her feet. I hit her with a slow fall spell just as she went off the bluff, and mere seconds later I followed, my harness yanking me out into the open air. I fell, but while looking up into the billowing kite, I was struck by the idea of light wooden cross braces to hold it open, rather than relying totally on wind power.
              Soon the guard and myself were dangling a few feet apart. She pulled her sword and before I could even shout “No!” she'd cut the cord.
              I plummeted past her, silk kite rippling behind. She gracefully righted herself just before the kite blocked my view of her.
              About halfway down the bluff, I bounced off a rock as the kite snapped fully open. I shot back up into the air past the drifting guard. Bouncing again against the side of the bluff. “That's going to leave a mark.” I muttered as the kite dragged me back up over the edge of the bluff and then impaled itself on a protruding part of the scaffolding. I smacked against the base of the watch tower, missing the slender (and probably more forgiving) legs of the scaffolding by mere inches. I dangled in the air, watching the guard land gently on her toes along the beach. She really was a graceful thing, I thought to myself. She glared up at me. I waved and flashed her a big grin.
              “How about two drinks?” I shouted down at her.

Mars Discovery

              I dreamed I was on Mars. Terra-forming was in progress, and I was outside to check on some of the water flow issues that had been identified. In other words, I was wearing an oxygen mask and carrying a shovel. In my dream memory it was only a few weeks since the last several large cometary bodies had spiraled into the planet. We'd only been back in the habitat for a couple of days when some leaks were discovered in our exterior waterways. I trudged out to the hillside to repair the troughs that carried the water from the top of the hillside down across our little test garden and finally into the algea ponds that were busy converting carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen.
              As I pushed the low viscosity soil around with the shovel I unearthed (un-marsed?) a small group of what I thought were figurines, until one of them opened its eyes. I called back to the habitat and excitedly showed the critters on my cellphone camera. No one believed they were really alive so everyone voted to bring them into the habitat.
              After they were brought in, everyone blamed me for violating the quarantine rules. They were cute little round faced critters, mossy green in color with little black eyes and tiny peg-like gray teeth. While they didn't seem particularly dangerous, I had thought that we should have used more caution. I mean, discovering multicellular life on Mars was a pretty big deal and all.
              For some reason, one of my least favorite mission specialists, a nurse who was forever using his position as an essential healthcare provider to get out of hard work, was decidedly jealous. He'd talked his way out of toting a shovel outside and out of being the discoverer of these little guys. He threatened to pick one up and eat it because “They look like little marshmallow men.” I tried to protect them, but he managed to get one of them from me.
              As soon as his mouth opened the little guy he was holding screamed and struggled to get away. At the last second, the creature changed into a miniature copy of the nurse, clothing and all, and the nurse collapsed. The creature ducked away under the tables in the examination room. Which was sealed shut with me and the other two critters who someone outside of the room was now calling “Eatems” as a joke. The two with me morphed into little copies of myself, whereupon I began to feel faint myself.
              They assured me that I was in no danger, but made it clear that wasn't true of my colleague. Nor theirs. The mimicry they engaged in was instinctual, as most creatures won't attack things that look like themselves. They asked to be put down to try to round up their companion, as they were worried that he might cause harm in his current state. Apparently they were also slightly psychic mimics, as well and the nurses jealousy and rage could be a harmful combination. Everyone outside the room had their personal recorders running as the search for the miniature nurse continued.
              One of the little me critters squealed as the nurse critter jumped out and bit it. The victim transformed immediately back into the green puffy form, and I slid under the table to grab the small nurse. I had put my gloves back on and though it was trying to bite me, it didn't get through the thick material. I brought it close to observe it, and noticed that it was a lot like an action figure, the clothing was really just a visual presentation, and was part of the actual creature.
              I stood up and brought it close to the video camera, telling the outside operators to turn it to macro mode as I brought the nurse shaped Eatem close. While he was trying to get away at first, eventually he calmed down and shifted forms, into another mini me instead of the green form. He stayed that way for a while, actually turning all around to show himself to the camera. After a short bit he transformed again back into the form in which I had found him. I felt a tug at my cuffs and looked down to see the other two critters. I re-united the three of them and they all three curled up in my hands, looking up at me expectantly. That was when I began to wonder exactly what it was they could possibly eat, and whether we would have anything even remotely digestible for them. They all curled tightly together and went still.
              I was frightened that they had died in all of the excitement, but one of them opened his eyes and I was reassured. After the commotion died down, everyone wanted to go outside and see if they could find more of them. The habitat commander pointed to the still unconscious nurse and forbid anyone from traveling outside until we knew more about what we were dealing with.
              I put the three little guys into a tray with a recent soil sample. I then stepped over to the nurse and after a bit of wresting with him, got him upright and awake. He started to rave about bringing dangerous lifeforms into the habitat, so I called him a moron, and told him he was the only one who exhibited hostile behavior. While not strictly true, it did shut him up.

Family Time, Sexy Letter

              I dreamed that I was at my parent's house. We'd converted the dining room fan into a four seat bably merry go round, hooked up the little car seats in three of the places and E's seat in the fourth position. E's sister S was griping that she didn't get to ride.
              "You weigh more than all four of them combined, we're straining the motor as it is now." I explained.
              "I never get to go for a ride."
              "Oh, I'll send you for a ride," someone started to say. I think the speaker was one of my sister's in-laws, the comment had a sort of unattractive leering overtone.
              "You can come with us to Lego Land and ride with your uncle, L can't ride the rides and your Grandma and I won't. We have extra tickets," N offered.

              The dream then shifted to a completely different location and cast of people. A very sexy hourglass shaped petite woman with a pixie style haircut was reading from one of my dream blogs. An entry in which a elderly gentleman was sporting a rather large cartoon like erection and a short sexy hourglass woman with a bobbed hair cut offered to "take care of that for you, like this morning." While she read the entry I was able to visualize the dream exactly as I'd seen it. While the woman did look a lot like the dream woman in shape, the face and hair were not really the same. I remembered another little detail, the dream had taken place just before a dinner gathering and the old man had been led off out of site by the short-haired libido. The current woman hadn't bothered to read the whole entry either. I didn't recognize either woman, however, but decided that I'd better start describing the dream characters in a little more detail so that people wouldn't read themselves into them.
              She complained that everyone who read that was going to know it was her. She flipped what little bit of her hair was left out of her eyes and laid down on the kitchen table on her back with my book held up in front of her.
              "Would that be because you're the only hourglass shaped woman with short hair that I've ever known?" I asked, not really expecting an answer, because as far as I knew, I'd only recently met this woman.
              "Are there any more sexy dreams with me in them?" She began to flip through the pages of the book, using the motion of her arms to puff up her breasts and create a rather large amount of cleavage to look at. Especially when she arched her head back to look at me upside down.

Static Cling

              I dreamed that I was wearing new dark brown pants that not only were way to short, but were so full of static that they kept bunching up around the tops of my white socks. I desperately wished that I'd worn black socks, and that I hadn't walked through whatever it was that had all of the little white bits of fluff sticking to me. I kept shaking my legs to try to get the pants to straighten out, but that just made the static cling problem worse. (I knew it would, but couldn't stop myself from doing it.) I loosened my belt and pulled my pants down onto my hips more, but that really only gave a couple of inches, and because of the static cling, you couldn't really tell.
              The funny part of this dream was that the view never shifted from looking down at my pants and feet, so I have no actual idea of where I was, except that the ground was a concrete walkway.

The Universe is not What You Percieve it to Be.

              This morning, most of last night, it seems, I dreamed a very frustrating sort of dream. The universe is not really what we perceive it to be. I was playing, or creating and testing a sort of simulation. The interface was beautiful, all semi-transparent sepia and gold cubes with three dimensional icons in their centers. The options which were available to you were in color, faded, at first and then becoming more “real” according to some hidden formulation. For the first part of the simulation I was creating a world, a fractal expanse to be later explored and filed and manipulated by potentially millions of players. Every option led to a swath of verdant green and azure oceans that crashed their foamy waves against jagged self-similar shorelines until one or the other gave way. What was frustrating was that the same sequence of button presses could somehow produce wildly different results. (Ah! Thank you, so much, Gleik and Hofstader.)
              After moving around on the worlds for a bit, I realized that they weren't all that wildly different in many fundamental ways. Similar choices did produce similar results, and sometimes what I thought were the same choices were obviously not the same choices. I knew I was missing something about that, but couldn't, for the moment, figure out what it was.
              I engaged in a series of semi-controlled experiments, finally settling into a sort of rhythm of button pressing and moving about, suddenly the results started to look and feel much the same. I pulled back out of the world, enhancing the contrast, revealing hundreds of cubes with choices that were altered, created or eliminated in the background. I was nearly overwhelmed and had to take a break.
              It turns out that I couldn't escape the interface so easily. N and I went to lunch, and the cubes floated along serenely, just at the edge of my vision. I could see the icons inside growing and changing, even without me pressing on any of them. Just my location and the time made the changes, most subtle, but some glaringly not. I resisted the urge to randomly start pressing the buttons, and tried to concentrate on N and our lunch companions. As I sat there listening, I turned my mind around inside my head, and the whole of the universe stretched out behind me. This was not in the usual sense of behind, it was more dimensional than that, and it was filled with a series of bright icons in their sepia, cream and gold boxes, around them was a haze of other less brightly colored boxes, and stretching in all directions the boxes faded all into like colors and hues, but each still somehow distinct, and then, I noticed odd little islands of bright color amidst the amber-brown sea of multiple boxes. They seemed to have no causal connection, in terms of buttons to press, that would indicate why they were so bright.
              Unable to resist, I reached back, into the space behind me that was so much deeper than just the space behind me, and pressed a couple of buttons.
              The universe shifted, M and S were standing in our bedroom, naked, stepping out to use the hot-tub. I told them I would get us some towels and turned around to find N getting ready for the hot tub, apparently unaware of the changes that had just occurred. I noticed that my flu was completely gone, a welcome outcome.
              I struggled to keep things on the rails, there was something unstable about this...reality, if you will. I was looked back behind me, into the interface and try to figure out what had just happened. I could see the line of bright icons off in the distance, and a new line was forming stretching and growing. M dropped the hot-tub cover to the ground.
              “We need to stand that up, the neighbors have children who play on the hill.” I pointed to the child sized tea set on the top of the neighbor's bank.
              N piped in with “Please help, the cover is heavy.”
              “Just a moment, I need to go get some towels for everyone.”
              I was so distracted by the universe full of sepia cubes, that I barely noticed the naked bodies waiting to get into the hot tub.
              I stepped out of the room and noticed the cubes beginning to crowd the interface. “That would certainly be confusing to most players,” I said aloud. I wanted to have four almost matching towels for us to use, a more elegant solution. I had once, long ago purchased two towels that were very similar. Both had black fractal looking filled stripes alternating with stripes of a single primary or secondary color. I always thought they were very striking. In the main world, I had purchased two, one for myself and one for my current girlfriend. Things hadn't worked out had I had been left with two similar but obviously different towels. I had always regretted not purchasing all six of the towels, even though the colors would have all been different, it would have been an obvious set, because of the rainbow thing. I knew, in this realm, by looking at some of the floating controls, that I easily could have made that decision. I really was struck by the idea that the controls in this simulation were also a sort of indicator. I stepped out of my front door and into my parent's garage, where the other four towels were folded up or being used to cover other items. I gathered them up and went in to ask mom if I could use her washer. (She doesn't really like me to use her appliances as I like to experiment with the buttons.)
              There was no one home, and from the looks of things, they never would be. I didn't like that, so turned to look back at the interface.
              The bright line that was my world was gone, the island I was on was filled with much fewer active options and its island-like nature was becoming disturbingly clear. I was back to feeling the same frustration as earlier in the dream. I pressed the buttons to try to get myself back to N and our friends, taking three of the four towels with me. The green one was full of holes so I left it, even though I knew it would have been N's favorite. I tried a few options to get it whole, but then I never ended up with enough towels for everyone.
              I finally stepped through to my own garage and dumped the towels into my own washer, as they were filled with the dust of years. “They've been sitting a while, I'm just going to freshen them up. They'll be nice and fluffy and hot by the time we're done.”
              M and S had been replaced by S and C, not naked. As I entered our bedroom, N came out of the bathroom in her bathing suit. I handed her a bunch of the small white towels, “for faces and hands,” I explained, then went to round us up some drinks. The island of options was mostly sepia at this point, there were only a few icons with color, and none of them were very bright. I brought back a tray of glasses, two with ice, two without, and several different drinks. I noticed that I had some chest congestion.
              The world shifted a little, and I realized that there were other presences pressing the buttons. I looked “behind” me and realized that we were merging back with an altered but very similar line of bright icons to the ones I had left earlier.
              “The universe is not what you perceive it to be.” I heard a voice say.
              As I woke I realized that my interface testing had been working completely as intended, the results were different because I had not taken several variables into account, the primary one being - time. The initial conditions had not ever been identical, that the feel of the worlds was so similar was a testament to the robust nature of the application's algorithms.
              I fell back into a dizzy dream of clicking on cubes as they floated into my perception, trying to make the world work the way I wanted it to, frustrated that each press of the same icon could yield widely varying results (all of a kind, I could see, but not really what I was looking for.) The world shifted below with every press, I shot across fractal landscapes of black on even darker black and seas so startlingly blue that the color hurt to look at it. Each shift of location and time created a slightly different set of options. “This is taking emergent behavior a bit too far, perhaps.” I said to no one in particular. I wanted desperately to get back to one of my earlier test worlds, but knew that would be nearly impossible. The best I could hope for was a world that had that flavor and texture to some large extent. I promised myself that I would save this time.

              Happy Birthday N!