Dreamlands Zigzag

Particularly convoluted would be two words to describe this morning's dream. Started in the Hill House, reconstruction appears, for now, to be finished. The house is much smaller than it was, though it is still three stories tall. It also appears to be far less haunted, and the carriage house is much more modern, with electric lights and charging stations for vehicles as well as a three hundred gallon gasoline tank. (Elevated and behind a bunker.) The various ghosts and other haunts seem of a much milder variety than in previous years.

I rolled out the electric car, pushing it out of the carriage house rather than driving it. The vehicle had very narrow tires, and a steering bar, or tiller, that thrust out from under the nose of the vehicle. I folded the tiller up and disengaged it before climbing up into the driver's seat, releasing the hand brake, and then rolling down the hill, topping off the high-speed capacitors all the way to the bottom of the hill. I could see the gauge that showed the capacitors charging and then discharging as I accelerated up the little ramp that took me onto the elevated "Overway" that crossed most of the valley before breaking into a series of little off ramps all over the Dream City. I took the off ramp to work.

There I found that my office had been moved back to the old District Offices. I had a box of my few personal possessions and arrived at my old desk. I opened the drawers and discovered that I had left some things behind eleven years ago when I moved to the new offices. We'd only been allowed to put up two personal items in the new offices, as any more would break the illusion of "efficient conformity" that was one of the goals of the new administration.

As I opened the various drawers I found several articles of clothing that I had long forgotten. One of the denim shirts and a pair of genes were turned inside out, and had alterations marked in chalk. The alterations would have turned the the items into something much smaller, and cut in such a way as to flatter a feminine form. I wondered if they would fit my new girlfriend, so folded them neatly on top of the desk to take home. I also found about a half dozen toys I'd somehow collected over the years and immediately set them out on the desk and nearby book case, as there would certainly be plenty of room for them now. I did unbox my inbox, and sorted through the mail. All advertisements, only a couple of which even pertained to my new job. I tossed them into the shredder, then bagged the shreddings to take home to the composter/pelletizer. I wondered how many more mailing lists I'd have to be on if I'd had the Hill House fully restored to its former size. (Apparently the house was powered by a combination of solar and a pellet burning furnace. There was a gasoline generator for emergencies, but it was only used once a month or so to power up party night, and to make sure it stayed in working condition.)

At the end of my re-decorating, I headed out of town and up the ramp out of the dreamlands.

I was then visiting my parent's house. Mom and Dad had been clearing out the garage and had come across a number of papers in some foreign language. I agreed to look them over, figuring that they were likely my sister's old homework, as she is the polylingual one of us. The pages, however were not homework. They looked like some sort of immigration forms, or applications and they seemed to be filled out in Latin rather than German.

The handwriting was unfamiliar, and wildly different. Some of the newer forms had even been typed onto directly, I could feel the texture of the letter strikes on the back of the form. I sat down on the end of the couch best lit by the light from the sliding glass window.I tried to make out the words, "Hodi Doxi" were the only things I could make out, as they were in a box much larger than the rest of the text, when the light failed, becoming almost pitch black. A large raven flew into the sliding glass door with a thump, Then cawed and came in through the cat door. That made me wonder why the door had been unsealed. Mom and Dad haven't had cats in several years now, and Mom is terrified of birds, so certainly wouldn't have opened up the door for the raven.

At that moment I realized there'd been a big black raven in last night's dream as well. That, of course tipped off that I was dreaming and I struggled awake.

The Latin looks like it could be today(currently) "hodi" is technically an adverb (just looked it up, it can also be an adjective) but I didn't see a verb. Doxi  is less certain as it is not a form I have ever seen. There is a "doxa/ae" so perhaps: Decoration (Adornment/Glory?) The root is also used for "doxologia" or a hymn. However, it is more likely just random words my brain tried to fit on the page. Glory Today, perhaps.

Evacuation

Those few of us who were left waited out the Peat Rain, and when the fall had slowed, gathered our most precious belongings, what food and drink we had left, and gathered at the Arco Station on the hill to refuel before driving north into the desert and then east into the mountains. I looked around at the mall, and was amazed by how quickly some the buildings had collapsed into ruin. It was almost like the sturdier the building had been, the quicker it had fallen. I couldn't really make out a pattern for that. My own home had been fully intact, While any with flat roofs or multiple stories had begun to decay around mine.

While waiting my turn to fuel up Little Red, I was absently shoveling the peat aside as I'd seen a depression in the nearly smooth layer we'd all driven over to get to the parking lot on the hill. The pit was about the size of a large tool box and as I shovelled the last of the peat from it, I came to a thick canvas covering that was already being damaged by the spongy alien material. That told us that the pit had been covered up in the first or second Peat Rain.

The garage owner was one of the survivors and he came over to help pull up the canvas covering. There were tools there, blow torches, wrenches, socket drivers, Even a few different tire irons and small jacks. He explained that these were all damaged in some fashion, so had been put in a storage bin as spares. After some negotiations, he allowed the cache to be parted out amongst the survivor's vehicles. We were very cautious taking the tools out of the pit. The garage owner and a couple of other mechanics went over each tool and made sure they were safe before handing them out. Eventually we had about thirty vehicles and several dozen five gallon and one gallon cans filled up and loaded into the various vehicles. We set out down the hill and up onto the freeway, driving at a cautious speed to allow the larger more fully loaded vehicles to keep up. I didn't know what to expect, as everything on our radios was filled with digital noise.

Basketball Jones, Carriage Ride

One of the great things about being on vacation, sleeping in long enough to have multiple dream adventures.

Dreamed I was playing on a basketball team, probably about college age (oh, to be young like that again) and in some sort of tournament. We were in what we knew was going to be our last game, so the coach was determined to allow every single player on the team get a chance to play, which was good for me, as I'd probably played a grand total of twenty minutes during the last eight games. Oddly, in this dream I really wasn't any better at basketball than I really was at that age, which is to say, I could run, jump and rebound, but getting a basket was purely a matter of luck.

The other team was bigger than us, but not faster, and because we were rotating in our players, they apparently had some trouble keeping up with us, so started getting rough. The third time I got knocked off the court I landed amongst the other team's cheerleaders. They helped me get up, and I could see that one of them, a full lipped, dark haired, dark eyed beauty with long muscular legs, was unhappy about what was going on, so I leaned over and told her my Hotel and room number, saying, "call me later for a drink." (Something I would not ever have had the courage to do when I was that age.)

I went back to the game and actually made my free throws (pointing to her and blowing a kiss each time before I shot.) That got them riled up, and they started playing sloppy, we managed a good five or six baskets in a row and came within a half dozen points before the final buzzer rang, way better than I thought we could do against them.

Cats woke me up for breakfast, one of them one of them meowed "Hey! Doug!" in my ear.

Love being able to go back to bed.

In the morning dream I was sitting on the driver's board of a horse drawn carriage. I was talking with K (J's friend) who had also climbed out to be able to see more of the sights, and we were turning around frequently to chat with J and K's groom B. J was wearing one of my plaid shirts and a really cute pair of white cargo shorts, I had talked her into wearing red lipstick to go with the shirt instead of her usual pink. I leaned back and kissed her. B leaned forward and did the same with K.

"Look out for the tree!" J called out.

I turned forward and grabbed the brake lever just in time. The hood of the carriage barely bumped against a large glass branch, Making the glass leaves tinkle and sway.

Turns out, neither of us had been driving, we'd been letting the horse choose the path all along. I thought this was just the way it was supposed to be, as there were no reins to be found. I talked to the horse a bit and got him to steer  back a bit and then out away from the tree somehow.  I stood up and paged the glass leaves and branches up out of the way as we rolled under the glass tree (It was very much like the one Rod Bass had designed for the port "Trees" exhibit a few years ago, just much larger. and with smaller leaves all over.)

Then I found the reins tied off to the bottom of the driver's bench. Oops.

 B and I changed places. The carriage seats were so fluffy I sank in it till I was actually looking up at J and out into the sunset sky - all purples and reds with the faintest promise of twinkling starlight to come. I could smell the ocean, hear the clip-clop of our horse's hooves and those of other nearby carriages. J slid over and cuddled in.

I am adding "Carriage ride with a cuddle buddy" to the list of things I want to do. I will hire one with a driver, however, as I apparently should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery under the influence of J.

Tree Climb

Had a great little snippet of dream this afternoon during my nap. J and I had climbed up the embankment, and then out across the heavy branch of the fir tree, it's about twelve feet or so above the ground at the point where it levels out. We sat down and looked out over the neighborhood. (Which, technically, I think the roof of the house would be in the way if you sat down.) The trunk was a little sappy, and so were our jeans. We might have been, too, but I don't remember our conversation, what little of it there was. The neighbor girl was in her back yard singing "D and J, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g" in that lovely ten year old sing-song voice.

It's an hour later, and I'm still smiling. I like having happy dreams, makes me think I need more naps.

Bossa Nova, Traveling Cat

The text alert on my phone woke me up at about 4:15 this morning, and so I struggled awake out of a musical dream. Dancing to a Bossa Nova beat version of the song "I Just Want to Celebrate" (another day of living.) I don't really think the Rare Earth's version was Bossa Nova.

Don't know why the phone went off, I suspect I may have dreamed that. I did notice a text had come in while I was out last night, but that was more than six hours earlier. Going to be annoying if the text alert sound has joined the repertoire of my hypnopompic hallucinations.

After I went back to sleep I almost immediately slipped into a dream where I was at a cosplay convention for animals. I had a little black Moggie with a white muzzle and boots with a thin white stripe on his belly. He was a lot like my old T-Rex, but better at traveling. He was sitting with a bunch of us at lunch when he decided to dive headfirst into the swag bag of the woman sitting next to me. We dug down past the fliers and buttons to find him on his back, piddy-pawing the air and purring up a storm. "Okay," she smiled at me, "I don't even really like cats, but I so much want to take him home."

"We're a set." I said without missing a beat. (Ha, I'm never that smooth in real life.)

"I'm okay with that."

I blushed. (So it's probably a good thing I'm not that smooth in real life.)

Nightmare, Music

Terrifying little dream early this morning, three of us were trapped in an old lumber mill, and somehow we'd been tied up to a rack and sent down the feed chute to a large saw. We were upright and the platform we were tied to was moving about six inches at a time closer to the saw as it ran back and forth.

We figured out we could shift about that amount one way or the other so were able to avoid being filleted and got the saw to break apart the frame for us to escape with only minor injuries. That wasn't the nightmare part, though. When we confronted the person who'd done this to us, he kept getting back up, no matter how many times he was knocked down. None of us wanted to kill him, but it was getting rapidly clear that was going to be the only option if everyone was to escape. Finally I convinced the other two to run away, just take the boat and leave (Apparently we were on an island.)

I was planning on staying behind and just knocking the monster out until I no longer could. I would knock him down and then drag him around the mill, looking for something strong enough to tie him up with so I could eventually escape myself, but there seemed to be nothing available that he couldn't break out of.

I kept getting more and more fatigued and knew I wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer. I disabled the saw just before I blacked out.

In happier mindset, I woke to music playing (in my brain.) "In time the Rockies may Crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, they're only made of clay, but our love is here to stay." Thank you Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald for a performance that resonates stronger than ever.  I don't mind when some music gets stuck in my head.  (I blame J for this.)

Dream City Mall. 3:12 AM

I was outside the movie theatre in Dream City, this time I was not lined up waiting to get tickets, not waiting for a theatre to be cleared, nor randomly checking out the various offerings by going theatre to theatre. I found that remarkable, and relaxing. There was a crowd, but we were just milling about, visiting, and we were on the mall courtyard grass instead of in the lobby. While we were visiting, a gentleman came up and introduced himself, and I recognized his name but only vaguely his general appearance. The last time I'd seen him he was a high school student in our theatre program. Without the introduction, I wouldn't have recognized him at all. It was a friendly meeting, and I was surprised to see him in this particular location, since I so rarely see people I know at this theatre, or these theatres. (I remember when the place changed over to a multi-plex, sometime in the '90s I think.)

We chatted for a bit, and then he and his friends went in to catch a movie. By this time, the folks I'd been visiting with were gone, so I went into the lobby to see what was playing that I might want to take in. The manager greeted me, and we exchanged some small talk about the offerings. I expressed my appreciation of the new scheduling board. All red and amber LEDs in a matrix small enough to make the letters very reasonable to view. It was quite the large board, as there are a dozen theatres there, and they often were showing twenty or more programs, so the schedule board was twelve feet high and nearly thirty feet long. I looked at the board and then checked the clock, "is that the right time?" I asked.

"It is."

"I don't' think I have time to sit through any of these," none of the films were starting for at least forty minutes, "I have to get up to feed the cats in about two hours."

"Come back any time, we're open seven, twentyfour, threesixtyfive. It's always good to see you well."

"Thank you, always good to be seen." I complimented her on how the burgundy (maroon) highlights in her dark, curly hair matched her blouse. We exchanged smiles and I headed back out into the night.

Celebrity Time Tour, UFOs, and Random Voice

In the first dream of the evening, I was invited on a Celebrity Time Tour. Something, however, went horribly awry and we were separated from our guide. I spotted a young Mark Hamill along a boardwalk, so pointed him out to the other tourists who were starting to panic. Sadly, the younger ones of the group had no idea who that was. Sigh. I remembered that we were supposed to just hang out and watch, not interact with the future celebrities, or that could alter history. (The guide did tell us that history was pretty resilient, but we'd better behave just in case.) The trip planning had involved a lot of questions about who we might be related to, as that seemed to be the one thing that screwed up history fairly easily.

We went across the boardwalk and started discussing the wooden jacuzzi tubs that were set into the bathing pools. Some folks wondered why they'd been removed. I pointed out that even with careful cleaning, wood tubs could harbor fungus and bacteria better than other materials. I pointed out that it was still a neat style, and that we could easily replicate it with sanitary substitutes given a little investment push. As the discussion progressed, I realized that the young Mark Hamill had joined in the discussion. He seemed to think it was a pretty good idea, actually.

We tried to withdraw from the conversation gracefully, and finally the tour guide had to come up and take me away, "Grandpa, you need to get your meds now, sorry young man."

"That's okay, it was cool to meet you."

We got back to our time tour HQ without further issues, and there was Mark Hamill, "Hey, I remember you!"

"Please tell my you agreed to make a movie called 'Star Wars'?" I asked.

"Star What?" then he broke out into a huge laugh. "I did want to show you this, though."

He had an investment promo for faux-wood pool accessories. "I started this company. Sales are great. Thanks for the idea. I was trying to get a time tour to go back and find your family so I could pass some of the success along... well, we see how that turned out."

It was now my turn to laugh.

-----

In the next dream I was having trouble with my asthma and so we were packing up Little Red so I could get home and get medicated. (The car med-kit was apparently dry.) As we sat in the car a line of UFO's crossed the beach about a hundred yards off shore. I quickly got out the cell phone and started shooting HD video. My passenger complained "why do they always look like god-damned Tupperware?"

Three of the four UFO's turned edge on to the ocean and dove out of sight. The fourth one, which looked more like one of those round hot tubs, bounced down into the waves, where it was obvious that it was, in fact, one of those round vinyl covered hot tubs. There were four very frightened people in the tub. We got out of the car and raced down the beach to help pull them in to shore. I was still having trouble breathing, but didn't want to miss their story because of a little thing like that.

-----

As I lay in bed, trying to ignore the alarm light, I heard a voice (concerned, male, deeper than my own) say "He died this morning, shortly after two a.m." It made me sad.

Moon Dance

I dreamed I was remotely connected to a robot on the moon. There were a couple of hundred of us operators working on the moon, building the systems and places that we were going to be moving to in the not too distant future. Our biome and three of the six others had finished the planned construction phase early, so we had a few days rest time - which meant that we'd have batteries fully charged as we went into the long "night" where it was difficult to fully charge because of the low albedo of the earth. We decided to set up for the usual observations, but decided to spend our charge on a dance.

I got online early and virtual hopped between the lunar orbital cameras, looking at the web of domes and long connecting tunnels, so much like dew on a huge spider web. I only hoped I would be able to still qualify when the construction was finished in '35.

Our robots trundled into the central recreation dome, not yet fully constructed. The crater floor had been leveled and paved with bedrock, a black and silver marbled material we'd come across. It was quite hard, and attractive enough to not need any sort of decorative finishing (other than polish, I supposed.) The access tunnels connected through various points along the crater walls, and as my date and myself entered the construction zone, we could see that others had arrived early and cleared a large space on the central floor. As folks entered the area, I could see that we'd all dressed up for the occasion (I was in a green silk shirt, black bow tie, and though people wouldn't see it in the avatar display, my black dress kilt.) I don't know if I'd ever seen so many of our robots gathered in a single location since the radar building collapsed in '22.

Music began to play, and we headed out onto the dance floor. I was really looking forward to the day when my damaged body would be able to walk those hallways for real. As the night progressed, folks had to take their leave, so they could return to their charging stations. My date and I had programmed in a less energetic evening, so were amongst the last to leave, taking several minutes to look at Hawaii Rise on the globe that hung above us in the sky. "Just about time for me to get up and feed the puppy," my partner stated. We'd planned the low power program just so we could see her current home come into view.

I'd put down extra food for my one remaining old cat, so she'd been quite content to leave me to my virtual date.

"Look at California," I fired off the green laser on the roof, it pulsed with a digital valentine.

"Oh! for me! Thank you. I never even thought of being able to do that. You'll have to send me the specs."

I was a little disappointed that she was more impressed with the technology I'd cobbled together than the message itself, but at my age I took my victories where they were offered.

I agreed and then "walked" her robot back to it's charging station outside her subdome. I stayed in direct voice communication with her while I rolled mine back its charger in the retirement barracks. I thought it was funny that we'd all adopted robots that were fairly close to the places where we were eventually going to settle. Even though I was apparently not normally an operator of this particularly small robot, I tended to be assigned the big tractor like machines that had long bouncy journeys to make. Those journeys were getting to be fewer and fewer as the long roadways were completed. A robot on a roadway only needed someone to check in from time to time as they could be automatically navigated. I liked the long trips, especially to the the back side of the moon to deliver materials for the giant telescope. I liked looking out at the sky where the earth was not present to block the view. I'd often thought about dropping my own automated telescope along the path, just to have it available to live feed to my current home. While I could use the extra charge on a robot at the end of a shift to build some of the parts on the moon, the electronics would have to be flown up, and that cost a dollar a centigram.

My virtual date cajoled me out of my reverie, I'd apparently forgotten she was still online with me, so converted the remote control protocols into a direct video feed, where she was showing me a full shot of her "dance" gown. It was a lovely cream lace thing, that didn't do much in the dawn's early light to hide the bright red lingerie beneath it. I zoomed out to show her my dress kilt and we twirled a couple of times for one another. "Can't wait to do this on the moon with you!" she smiled.