Spit of the Red Ott

What a great morning. I had a long (several years passed during it) dream and got behind a pair of giant dump trucks being moved with a police escort! (I love dump trucks for some reason, and have even thought of buying my own.)

The dream started with me walking into a little Chinese cafe, and there finding a portal to other worlds. In those other worlds, I had various different and usually heroic identities. Over time a group of us "Dreamlands' Heroes" made the cafe a regular meeting place, and every other Saturday found the table waiting for us. Time passed, and the group grew and shrank variously through the years.

At one point, we were contacted and asked to appear at a banquet, as there seemed to be hundreds of other groups like ours and the powers that be wanted to recognize us. We, as a group, actually walked outside the cafe together for the first time ever. I told them that the cafe would still be here in the future, but the hotel next door would eventually add eight more rooms, and thus would expand into the courtyard space we were currently standing in. The group went their separate ways to prepare for the banquet. I heard someone call my name from the cafe. The villain from our last world was there in the doorway, evil villain hat in hand.

"You weren't a particularly good villain, but following us back is a first." I turned to face him.

"You would do so much better, have done so much better."

I admit, I was momentarily confused.  But then I understood. I was getting old and slow. Younger sorts were growing up into the hero spots, but his role was not one that needed a young musclebound type. No, it needed older and craftier, well experienced souls. He delivered his message and faded back into the cafe, "Think about it. You would be great."

I changed my appearance for the banquet, Going with dark red - brown short hair, and a close cropped beard to match. I had a oversized black double breasted coat with a wide high collar, further diminishing what little neck I already have. I went back to the wire-framed round glasses to complete the look. J was there as Fredigar, sitting at another table. I looked around, all my gamers from over the years were there, most at other tables, but all fairly close. I had several positive comments on my new look.

I headed back to the cafe, realizing I needed to recruit a replacement for my spot at the table. I found a strapping musclebound lad, a new hero, I could tell, and thought that would be good for my group to train a completely new person. The dream city came under attack as I was trying to convince him to sign up with us, and ushered him towards the cafe. It's safe in here, we are protected by the Red Spit of Ott. As I walked him up to the cafe I let him see the thick psychic red ooze that covered the outside of the building. A dream woman walked by and made a comment about how his glutes flexing made her all quivery inside. I realized that he was actually her avatar...and knew that she was going to be a perfect replacement. I shooed them both into the cafe. He immediately headed for a green jungle portal, that, with some training, would have been 'his' perfect hero venue.

"What is this place?"

"Meeting hall, training ground, portal collection to the various heroic venues. Chinese Cafe. Come with me." I guided the woman into the "Invaded High School" venue where there were monster and student cutouts. The game was to go through and shoot the monsters but leave the students standing. The tricky part was that some of the students were monsters, and some of the villains were human.

I made a little gun shape with my hand and blasted the first two.

"How...?"

"Just pretend you have a weapon and let's clean the place up." I didn't really look back to see what she was doing, but she was following along, zapping things as we progressed, with a wand or a spell I didn't know. We got to the end of the hall and there was Prestar and her Troll friend Wheels (one of my avatars,) from an earlier game. I fired a couple of shots at Prestar, just out of fun, but the little girl panicked that the score went down. "Ex wife's avatar, don't worry about the score, that's only for you and I to know about, and it won't count against you." I thought it was interesting that during the run we had both morphed. I was still in the thick overcoat, but my hair and beard had returned to their natural white/gray/brown color and, sadly, I was fat again. The bimboesque shape had thinned out and the woman had gotten much shorter, it was obvious that this was actually a child.

Judging by our score (even with my intentional misses) I knew that, even though her Muscle Man avatar had been chewed up by the jungle world, with the help of my current team, she would grow to be a great Dreamland Hero.  I felt that my group was going to be in good hands, even though I knew it would be a little odd for them at first to not have me there, but also knew that this new person would rapidly grow to be the new core of the Cafe group.

We stepped back into the cafe and I looked around at the shimmering portals, knowing that I was going to have a new role to play.

Some of the Venues were amazingly detailed, the Jungle with its muddy stream that emptied out over a cliff above the ocean. A desert world with ancient pyramids and monolithic ruins tucked into space oasis, complete with jackal headed monstrosities and undead mummy hordes. The Dream City itself, both a current day, fantasy future, post apocalyptic future, or past, it was hard to tell. A rocky moon or asteroid around a dead world with leaky habitats and a problematic shuttle to a similarly decrepit orbital station. A red and violet world of alien forms gliding past shiny wet domes of indeterminate origin. A smoke and fog filled Victorian wharf and wooden ships slowly rotting at the docks, the rat traffic more prolific than human traffic. A whispery suburban world with manicured lawns and quiet, ordinary people where the cracks in the floors lead to "other" Dreamlands. Every venue I looked at was a reminder of a brace of adventures, successes and failures, solo and team efforts, solid memories of past events and the shimmery ghosts of future efforts.

In those future efforts I could feel myself, more as architect than participant, truly an odd realization.