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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.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Road Tripping in the New Car

I dreamed that I traded in my Insight for an all electric vehicle, a sleek, four seat, deep cargo well all wheel drive vehicle. It was a dark metallic maroon color. Since I wasn't going to always be on the grid when I stopped, and I was planning on travelling all the way to Colorado to meet someone, I packed not only everything I would need to wear for the trip, but an extra battery pack and solar cell banks, and an air bed. I had a little Honda generator so I could recharge overnight if there were no charging stations or hotels. My plan was to only drive each day until the batteries were half depleted each. The generator was mounted in a little exterior alcove so I could run the thing and charge either battery as I was driving. The solar panels on the roof didn't really power anything more than the phone and radio. There was a little five gallon tank that would run the generator for a little over nine hours. I carried a spare gas tank just in case. It was a pretty cute little set up. I stopped to visit a couple of my former student/gamer friends and their new baby. (Wasn't really a baby any more in the dream.) D and R both looked like they were healthy and happy. The baby was zooming around crashing into things. I was glad they hadn't come to my very un-childproofed house. We played a couple of hands of Scarabs and Side Scroller, just so I could get their feedback. I left them a prototype deck of scarabs, because the baby seemed to like the illustrations, and giggled lots while sorting them out by color or shape. Before I left, we drank a toast to our fallen gamer friend. I then went on my way, headed to Colorado, but I don't remember any more of that trip.

Later on I drove up to my sister's. It had been raining a lot, so the batteries of the rover were both pretty much depleted and I'd only made it because I'd been running the generator the last several hours taking turns topping off whatever battery I'd just used to climb the latest grade, the batteries weren't really designed to be deep discharged multiple times per day, so this trip was an experiment to see if I could make an eleven hour drive in less than two days. By the time I got to the base of her hill. She was there waiting for me anyway. She showed me where to park (next to her little purple car on a little raised gravel bed) and said the road was washed out so we'd have to hike the half mile up the hill. I topped off my little generator and started it up, locking the access door. I hadn't really planned for this trip very well, so I only had a small bag of stuff, not even a full change of clothing, as I'd only intended to stay a day or so. We hiked up the gravel road and came to the place where the road was washed out. There were a couple of shallow stands of stone, only a few inches below the surface of the water that was now part of a lake rather than their lower pasture. My sister was barefoot, and she hiked up her skirt and waded in. The water was only a few inches deep. I only had the one pair of shoes (my blue Nike runners, and I didn't want to get them wet, so I took off my shoes and socks and followed her across. While I was in the middle of the crossing it started to rain. So much for keeping my shoes dry. One of the stoned rocked down a few inches as I reached the edge and I ended up soaking the bottom of my pants, even though I'd rolled them up. I managed to keep my balance and jumped across to another stone slab, it also shifted precariously under my weight. then to an asphalt slab, which started to crumble when I landed on it. I scrambled a bit and then was up on the gravel road bed, what was left of it. I used my socks to dry off my feet as best I could and then stepped into my shoes. I couldn't walk on the gravel road like my sister, my feet just aren't that tough any more. I greeted J when we got to the house. He had pulled out some clothes for me, as I was soaked by the time we got there.

Jim insisted that I stay a couple more days than I'd planned, because he wanted me to witness my sister and him renewing their vows. I pointed out that the clothes we just put in the dryer were the only ones I had, as my visit had been sort of a whim. He said he would loan me a suit, as he thought he had one that might fit. "Besides, if the rain keeps up, you might not be able to get out for a couple of days." We geeked out a bit over my new electric vehicle. Which I had essentially turned back into a hybrid. (Calculating it now, I see I was getting just shy of eighty miles per gallon, not counting that both batteries were fully charged on house current, of course, so way less than that.)

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