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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.

Sunday, January 01, 2017

Lunar Rebellion, Cruise Ship Encounter.

Multiple long dreams the last couple of nights, including a dream in two parts! It's been awhile since I had one of those.

Two nights ago, I found myself embroiled in a Rebellion in a Lunar Colony. The colonial citizens were fed up with the lack of work, and thus the absurdly low pay they were getting. They wanted to riot to convince the government to provide more work for them. I was in a position that allowed me a significant amount of mobility throughout the colony, driving one of the transport trains, as well as maintaining the software system it ran on. A lot of us who were keeping things running wore two hats like that. It was, therefore, obvious to me that I was essentially taking up two jobs, even though my life and my cargo pretty much relied on the software systems to make our schedule and avoid traffic jams and the like. I wanted to know what the AI was doing that was in control of my safety. On my way to deliver food to an outlying mining community, all radio communications were suddenly cut off. I found myself using the lunar version of Facebook to make an ad-hoc connection back to my dispatchers, once they figured out that was how they could still talk to us. I got the warning that there were rioters waiting for my food train just as I was locking into the station's air locks. Too late to lock myself into the control cabin, or eject, I found myself captured. They almost killed me, but someone a little bit saner prevailed upon them to spare me, so they wouldn't have to wreck the train to get into the locked refrigerator cars. I knew that once I'd let them into the cars, I wouldn't have much leverage. I started trying to find out what their issues were, and how they thought wrecking their connection to the Central Authority was going to make things any better. They weren't entirely self sufficient now, and blocking their reception terminal with a wrecked train wasn't going to encourage the Central Authority to send any more. This train needed to clear the station and go back if there was ever to be another one.

I convinced the rabble-rousers that they wouldn't get anywhere in my transport without me to unlock the software. Mostly by making it clear that I wasn't going to tell them how to get to the central core of the colonial administration dome, and I wouldn't be there to authenticate the transport at the various junctions on the grid to get back. If they killed me, they would have to figure out how to get there by walking. Not really possible during the long Lunar night.

On the long trip I tried to explain to them the actual "how things work" of air, water and food production and distribution. Trying to convince them that if they caused so much trouble that it wasn't financially worth it to maintain their habitats, mines and factories, the central authority could simply cut them off, forcing everyone to relocate, or die. Their standard of living would be far worse than it was now if they had to live on the air, water and food they produced locally. If they could even make it work with the population they had. By the time I'd managed to make it back to my dispatch station, the group had calmed down, more thoughtful and less angry leadership had appeared among the crowd, and we were given clearance to bring a group to the Central Authority. As we made our way across the surface, I pointed out a collapsing dome in the distance. Emergency evacuation pods were shooting out across the surface of the moon, and transports like my own were hurtling off the tracks, deploying their emergency service vehicles. The central system caused us to stop, and I began to deploy my half dozen emergency service vehicles, each programmed to pick up two of the emergency pods before returning to the transport. Our first rescuers told a rather harrowing tale of how some nearby minors had rioted, and then someone had blown out their central dome. Hundreds of people had been gathered in the central dome to hear a connected mining colony protest their working conditions and the rationing that was going on. Rioters from that colony had shown up. Only a few dozen had made it to evacuation pods. The mood was much more somber on the way to the Central Authority. I was surprised we'd been granted permission to travel that far. I was not surprised when there was about a hundred people with tasers waiting for us when we arrived. They were very surprised when the injured evacuees were carried off first by my passengers, and that none of my group were armed or unruly. I explained that the envoys needed to talk to the CA about preventing the same sort of disaster we'd just helped rescue people from.

Later, I dreamed that I was on a cruise ship, my four person room had been paid for, but I was the only one who could make the trip. I bumped into a very unhappy woman and her two children at some sort of lecture event. She had just been dismissed from her position on the cruise, and they were threatening to put her off at the next port, where she would have to try to find a way home for herself and her two girls. I shared my box lunch veggies and dessert with the kids, and made napkin rabbits and other puppets for them. She left to go get her luggage packed up. After the kids had left, I noticed that they had left their shoes behind. An elderly (more than me) man indicated that she was quite fetching, and he might just have the thing to cheer her up. He wanted the kids shoes so he could introduce himself to her. I thought he was way creepier than I am, so decided that I would return the shoes instead.

This morning, I dreamed of music without any sort of plot, I kept trying to understand the words, but they didn't make any sense. I woke up to Giles purring in my ear, and Ember meowing her creaky little meow. Their food bowls were empty.

I went back to bed and dreamed I was back on the cruise ship. I had asked where she had worked, and went to the lounge where she was checking out to leave the ship. She was glad to see her children's shoes. There was some kerfuffle with her paper work, so I agreed to sit with the kids while she went to take care of the issue. (She was just a few feet away at a big desk.) One of her supervisors came over and started telling me things I didn't need to know, and that were private. I told her I'm just the baby sitter, and it wasn't proper for her to share private financial information with me. I asked to see her supervisor. A ships officer was going by and intervened. I asked him to switch the family to my cabin, as I had three empty beds. He seemed to dislike the supervisor enough to ask me to wait there a moment while he checked to see if there was a way to do that. A porter stepped away from his station and brought the family's luggage, three small bags and one larger one to us, then asked what room I was in. I told him and he wheeled the luggage away. I started to stop him, as it wasn't resolved yet. But he just smiled a huge grin at me and indicated that I should just wait. The woman returned, obviously trying to be brave in front of her children. She asked where the luggage was going, but the porter just waved in my general direction.

I confessed that I might have done something rash. She started to refuse, but the kids jumped in with the "Please, please, pleeeeas! chorus." By the time she'd gotten them settled in, the officer was back, and had three extra room keys for me, and wrist bands to replace the ones the kids were wearing. The former supervisor just sputtered incoherently and walked away. I found myself hoping that I hadn't gotten myself in too much trouble. But the ship's officer assured me that we would all be treated just like regular passengers.

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