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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, September 29, 2010

Driving in My Car, Setting the Cat Loose, Sand Bags

        I dreamed one of those road type dreams where I am driving on a freeway, but not sure where from or where to. At one point N and I decided to get off the road to take a little break. Since we were in the desert I just rolled off the freeway, but for some reason we didnt come to a stop.

        I was standing on the brakes, but the car just kept rolling and I was frantically trying to avoid ramming into the stands of cactus and creosote. We figured it might be best to get back on the freeway, but by then we had no idea where it was. I figured we would just have to head at roughly ninety degrees to the direction we were traveling and we would have to cross the road.

        We did eventually reach a road, at which point the car started working normally, brakes and all. We arrived after a bumpy ride at a broken down house. For some reason we decided to stay, and had to coax Teddy out of the car. He wasnt really happy with the whole being outside bit, but I thought that would make it easy to get him back in the car when we were ready to go.

        I dreamed that there was a series of pools in the back yard, one overflowing into another.  As I was swimming I noticed that the volume of water was increasing. I climbed out to see that a stream above the house was overflowing its banks. N wanted to dig a ditch to the drain in our back yard, but I pointed out that we might want to sandbag around the back patio under the balcony, as it was even lower than the drain in the yard.

        I wasnt sure where to dig up the dirt to fill the sandbags, though.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Defending Dream City

              My memory of last night's dream begins with the slender brown-haired woman and I cleaning out the floor to ceiling debris in the back room of what it would be charitable to call “a shack.” In the process of the cleaning, we received what was a summons to adventure, really, a test.
              I realized that the fist sized spiders we'd been wrestling with were, in fact the first part of that test. Soon my companion had managed to lure them out of the house where a sudden rain squall, probably of her doing, washed them away down the muddy street. Unfortunately, she had been bitten in the process and was feeling quite queasy when we discovered the hidden portal to an under shack labyrinth of dark and must full of evil portent. I poured her an antidote and turned on the TV so she would rest while I explored the pit of despair beneath our feet.
              I grabbed the wind up flashlight and, mindful of the possibility of more spiders, laced on a pair of knee high boots and a leather workman's apron with pockets full of det-cord and other incendiary devices. I pulled on a set of chainmail gloves and a chain coif.
              “Aren't you going to take a weapn?” the woman asked, sounding drowsey.
              “Oh, okay, that might be a good idea.” I searched around and picked up a fly swatter. I looked at the carcass of one of the spiders, swished the plastic thing through the air a couple of times and set it back on the hook near the light switch. I went into the main room and picked up the coal shovel instead.
              “All right, I have something.”
              The woman nodded a couple of times, her head coming to a stop on her chest. I checked to make sure she was still breathing, and then, somehow, surrounded her with a crackling bubble of electricity.

              The under shack labyrinth was much larger than the shack itself. The denizens of the place were none to happy to see me, and the coal shovel saw lots of action. I really tried to talk my way out of trouble most of the time. There seemed to be no negotiating with any of the beasts of the Under Shack.
              The dream shifted and time raced past. I found myself the owner of a floor length hooded chain robe, enameled black, and had replaced my leather apron with a large multi-pocketed duster, with orange-brown leather back, collar and cuffs as well as elbow patches and hem. The plackets over the breast pockets were also leather. When we arrived at the restaurant built into the hillside, I put the outfit on as we climbed the stairs to the ocean side of the place.
              There were a dozen other adventurers there, and they each greeted me with variations of: “Now, that's a proper outfit, truly fitting of the name...”
              And I cannot for the life of me remember what it was they were calling me, as the words were not English. I know what it translated to, but could not tell you the actual words.
              “Servant of the storm.”
              I seemed to be the only one who didn't really know exactly what that meant. We chatted in the bar, more regulars greeting us and then hurrying away, as though they knew something big was brewing.
              I spotted a young man with four nostrils and knew that I had to talk to him. When I got close, however, I could see that he was not who I expected.
              “I want to join your team, defend the city,” he said, almost pleading. I looked at him, we were few enough that we could certainly use the help, but it didn't feel right to ask him. I spotted the person I was looking for.
              “You brother,” I pointed to the other young four-nostrilled man. The young man nodded, my brother. “We need to talk to him.”
              “He doesn't really talk,” the young man started to explain. But I knew the boy, and his power, and its strength.
              I walked up to him and we greeted one another warmly. I took him around to each of my team, and those we got the vibe were doomed if they stayed, we sent to monitor events from the top of the ridge over looking the bay. “Observe and report from the high ground. Withdraw if we cannot hold.” And with those instructions the psychic boy and I felt the doom on them lift. Finally we came back to his brother.
              It came down to him or me, we couldn't both go away, so I decided to send the brothers together to the fortress at the top of the hill.
              The psychic boy hugged me. Then he spoke for the first time I was ever aware of. “You will die. Only you.”
              I looked around the room at the nearly twenty people gathered around. “Perhaps, but how many if I don't?”
              The psychic boy looked one last time around the room and his eyes grew wide and his mouth fell open.
              “I thought so, to the fortress with your team. Now. It's time.”
              While I'd been reviewing my teammates I'd seen the first glimmer of the ethership borne invaders.
              I strapped my duster around my waste and pulled the chain hood up over my head, closing the face shield and quickly lacing it shut. A pair of goggles finished the look and I began to summon a charge of freezing lightning in my hand. It arched from the balcony of the restaurant down to the surf line at the beach. I grabbed on and was transported to the surf. I could just barely feel the cool water around the ankles of my boots, though no water actually entered them.
              I could hear my team making their own way down to the beach, spreading out across the shore, each prepping their own ranged attacks.
              “Move back out of the water.” I shouted. I waited for them to comply.
              More blue-silver streaks burst into our reality and splashed down along the beach. Each streak revealing a sort of pod that opened up into a glittering war machine of some sort. The ocean life, that which could swim, fled the area at the command of one of my companions. She nodded at me, a dark maroon streak, twice as long as the rest of her bob, flashed across her eye, hiding the glistening tears.
              “It's only temporary.” I said quietly. “It's time to send up the closed sign.”
              I once again charged up a combination of ice and crackling lightning. Oddly, I could tell that the robe and duster were helping focus the energy, amplifying it. Others were calling in the clouds. The starry sky became obscured by sudden weather and the water became choppy. I could feel the power of the storm, not only in this world but across the ether, all the way back to the invaders staging area. Soon the invaders were all beginning to approach me and the arc-light orb in front of me.
              “Bait boy, you should all call me bait boy.”
              Their munitions spattered against a shimmering violet shield held in place by twins hidden in the brush on the cliff by the restaurant. I know that every blow absorbed took a toll on the boys, so didn't want to wait any longer. I looked once more to make sure there was no one of my team left in the water, and certain that there was only myself and the invaders, let the ball drop. My only regret was that this was the first time I got to wear my chain mail robe and leather trimmed duster. I wasn't sure they would survive.
              I was instantly pulled out of the dream and awake.

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Friday, September 03, 2010

Manufacturing Mayhem

        I dreamed that I was visiting some sort of steel fabrication plant. The machines were all powered from a central pair of drive shafts that ran the length of the building. There was a huge spinning power coupling along a large catwalk.

        The coupling was a pair of worm gears that were so hot they were glowing orange. The sprockets that engaged them drove some belts and such far below. Large bricks of steel about 800 pounds each were bouncing along a powered conveyor belt. The worm gears were so hot that parts of them slumped and the belts began to buck and shimmy.

        I grabbed a sledge and climbed up to the power transfer station. While I was climbing, two of the steel bricks flew off the belt and smashed into the concrete in front of the foremans office, leaving eight to ten inch craters in the floor. The concrete looked like a large spider web for several feet around.

        I reached the platform and used the sledge to smack the set pins out, and then to punch the transfer sprocket away from the drive shaft. Before I could finish three or four more steel bricks jumped off the conveyor, smashing into equipment below them.

Ad astra per technica,
FF