Fermius Firefly

Crash Pad Rental

2012-01-12T19:49:00.000-08:00

I dreamed I was at the Dream City Home Depot type store, looking to rent a crash pad for a special effect gig in a play. While I was there I kept looking down at my outfit - just a plaid shirt and Levis, with cowboy boots, and every time I did I could see my handlebar mustache bounce around in the corner of my vision. It was very odd, but I couldn't quite figure out exactly how.

I had picked out the pads I wanted to rent when I overheard some boys trying to figure out how the put the pads together for a wrestling mat. I walked over to where they were and explained how the zippers worked to link them all together without the seams showing, and that they should try to find four mats were the zippers were in good condition, without any rust or missing teeth. I knew that could be a challenge, as the mats were all stacked up in the outside yard.

As I dragged my crash mat to the checkout, I realized what was bothering me about my outfit. I've never owned three color (brown white and black) cowboy boots. The realization kicked me right out of the dream for some reason.

River Jungle

2012-01-04T21:18:00.000-08:00

I dreamed that N and I were traversing a jungle. We were following a wolf pack that had just lost its leader. We created an elevated blind so we could observe the pack, figuring this was the night they would choose a new leader. I had collected a number of ropes and metal poles from an abandoned river side dockyard.

I used the poles to make us an elevated platform to keep the predators at bay should they suddenly discover us. During the night, the wolves became agitated and started the process of fighting over the former leaders mate. Somehow a leopard got into the mix, and before the pack could recover its cohesion, it had killed seven or eight of them.

In the morning we went down to find out if there was something wrong with the leopard, other than being dead. It looked like it had been, up to the attack, a young healthy male. There was not even any significant tooth decay or damage.

We had lost the wolf pack, and as we made our way back to the dock I realized that I'd been hoping the leopard would get away, seeings how the wolf pack was quite unnatural this far down in the jungle. The docks were busy, two large freighters and a tug with several barges had tied up over night.

N stripped down to a bikini, intent on trading her favor for decent food. I was flabbergasted, but figured "what ever she wants, we're divorced now." I wasn't even sure how we had ended up on this trip up river together. I packed up the makeshift platform fixings and while she tried to impress the sailors, I lashed together a steel drum raft and headed down stream.

Frozen Greenhouse, Red Nebula

2011-12-26T14:15:00.000-08:00

Woke up with a sore throat. Ugh.

There were airplanes, frozen water on the ceilings, and magical but deadly cloning spiders from another planet.

The ice on the ceiling was fun, we were in some sort of warehouse sized structure, and the ceiling was supposed to be like that of a greenhouse, all large plexiglass frames to let in the sun to keep the building warm. Only trouble was that the moisture in the building had condensed and then frozen up against the ceiling.

One of the people with us was trying to take out the ice by shooting a bb gun at it. While that sort of worked, it caused a pretty nasty rain of icicles. I said let me try something, and fired off a small beam of fire. (Like the flame finger spell of old D&D fame.) Everyone, including myself, was surprised that I was able to do it. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to melt very much of the ice.

"That's going to take forever!"

"Well, I could try something bigger, I suppose."

"Well, do it!"

So, I launched a fireball up at the ceiling. Result was very much a hail of rain and ice in a much larger area. I could see the ice cracking and water flowing from the edges of the hole I made, as the sun's heat started to melt the ice right up against the glass. Now the water ran out before it could re-freeze, and the entire ice formation began to squeal and groan and crack.

"Yikes! Too much!" I started shooting frostbolts up at the ceiling, freezing it back in place.

"Yeah, maybe slower is better."

Later on I dreamed I was stopping on another world, but the jump point was oddly far away, stuck in a deep space void with a small dark planetoid and large amounts of thick red debris in a floating disk that was larger in size than the volume taken up by the earth - moon system back home. The only reason there was a jump beacon was the automated ships that mined the rich red material for the valuable minerals that were easy to gather.

The jump point came up, because from certain spots in the sky, the disk acted like a resonating antenna, making the signal from the beacon appear much closer. Getting to the planet we actually wanted to get to was going to take another series of jumps. I calculated them out, and while this jump had only taken a couple of hours. To navigate away from the place, without being accidentally sucked back here, was going to take us the better part of four days. Which would make us two days late.

The captain asked me to take the next best likely jumps, despite the risk of being pulled back. I calculated the jumps and we took the first one without incident. Another planetoid world. There were some team members who noticed that there were some notes about dangerous life forms, so being big game hunters, decided to go down to the planet to see for themselves.

They returned several hours before the jump drive had accumulated a full charge, all disappointed in their findings. They tossed a glass container on a couch, it contained a pair of spider like creatures no bigger than a quarter. "That's the biggest thing we found there."

"Should probably dump them back, then. The life forms were listed as dangerous."

"Nah, it's safe enough in there. It'll be a good exhibit for the colony museum."

Since it wasn't my place to say anything, I didn't, but wished they'd killed the things. I looked at the spiderlike things and asked "Didn't you say 'it's,' " I asked, "there's two of them in there."

One of the hunters picked up the jar and looked at them. "Hunh? could have sworn there was only one in there. Maybe it was pregnant."

Again, I didn't want to say anything, but the two animals looked exactly the same, to me.

I jumped us on the longest leg I'd calculated, waiting until the planetoid was between us and the red nebula before jumping. The jump was far more jittery and turbulent than any I could recall, and in the prolonged buffeting, the jar of spiders was forgotten as folks rushed around to secure suits and weapons where they'd been left laying around. My calculations and jump timing had worked, however rough the ride, we'd arrived at our destination, capacitors nearly depleted. Friends of the hunters on the planet were all too happy to send up a boat for our passengers and their gear. Both the captain and I were happy to see them go.

It was two days before the capacitors were charged fully enough to make orbit and then to land. When we arrived, the station was in chaos. The customs folks told us to stay buckled up, and to lift off as soon as we could. A lot had changed during the hour long jump from orbital clearance to landing pad. Fortunately I had enough power to take us immediately back up into orbit, so without waiting for the captain, I did.

Now almost three hours had passed, and we were treated to shocking reports. Someone had brought in phase spiders. I watched video of our little spider guests shimmering and then splitting in two, then into four. Then they shifted, and were out of their jar. "I knew we should have killed them in the jar when they came on board."

"We should probably look for a jump to make before they decide to blame us for this disaster."

I agreed with the captain, but the emergency lift off had not left us enough power to make a jump anywhere, unless we wanted to risk a random jump, allowing the strongest available hyperspace signal to grab hold of us and pull us away, natural or beacon. The maps for this part of space were not complete, and there were numerous dangerous natural beacons out there. I started calculating the soonest safe jump we could make while the captain scoured the ship for signs of the phase spiders having escaped before they made it to the colony world.

I knew the phase spiders worked a bit like our jump drives, having to accumulate power before they shifted, or cloned themselves. I wasn't sure what they lived off of for energy, but their march across the galaxy had been stopped several places by natural beacons dumping them into suns, or onto lifeless planetoids like the one where we'd found them.

While searching for good jumps, I posted a warning about the planetoid we'd found, hoping it would be upgraded to a red alert/no landing designation.

I was surprised the big game hunters hadn't recognized the spiders, until word came that one of the hunters had jumped off planet shortly after dropping the specimens off. I looked at the captain when she came in to see how my calculations were coming. She was armed, and had the pistol pointed at me.

"We need to jump, now."

"I don't have a safe route."

"Doesn't matter, I'll not be taken captive by Republican Breeders."

In an instant it was clear what was going on. There was a group of people who firmly believed that mankind's reach across the stars was against all the laws of nature and what passed for their religion. Too many worlds, too many possibilities lost, and I suspected, too many places where people were free to believe or not believe as they chose. No matter where we jumped, I figured that I was as good as dead, only the barest shreds of self preservation were left in the captain's soul, and they were all that kept me alive.

I had wondered that the captain hadn't even a rudimentary grasp of interstellar navigation, but then, lots of rich bored children had their own ships and were playing star trader with their lives and fortunes. It was, in fact, how I made my living. Yes, I was essentially a chauffeur.

"Spider," I pointed to a spot on the carpet that could have been a spider, even though I knew it wasn't, then while the captain was distracted, started the ship's recorder downloading. A flurry of needles from the pistol blurred the carpet as the spot vanished. What ever one would say about the captain, she had a steady hand. The spot was soon a thick hedgehog of needles. I made a show of looking around the navigation station, as if afraid of another being around.

I struck the captain as hard as I could, knocking her down in the narrow hallway. Before I could get back into the navigation room to close the door she had rolled over and had the pistol pointed at my face. I slapped the jump button and the ship lurched. Allowing me to slide the door closed as needles buried themselves into the thin but very solid plastic material. I could tell from the motion and turbulence that we were headed right back to the red nebula.

Track Inspector, Sexy Party Guests

2011-12-20T07:25:00.000-08:00

Two dreams this morning had memorable elements. In the first I was involved in checking the continuity of a railroad line. I was traveling to the top of a mountain where I set a marble in the indent in the rail. It began to roll down hill, then started picking up speed.

It had some sort of camera in it that was transmitting back to my iPad. Don't know how that worked, and even wondered about it in the dream. After the marble had rolled several miles, I started down the track after it, a locomotive and a couple of cars not far behind. I knew I would have to get on the train shortly, as it wouldn't be able to keep to just my walking pace on the wet rails further down the mountain.

The second dream featured a lovely dark-haired woman with a navy one-piece leotard with a very sexy tummy and back cutout. She was engaged in a rather pornographic moment with a man who she rubbed to completion, resulting in a jet about six feet long. Her bobbed hair bounced as she turned to me, "still think I'm cute?" She asked.

"Very much so," I said as she leaned up against me. That was apparently the right answer. I had one hand on the smooth tight flesh of her back, and the other on her slightly rounded tummy, where I stroked her through the cutout, following it down to the tops of her soft curly pubic hair.

Her red full lips made an "Oh," then I bent down and kissed her everywhere her cutout allowed. I could smell her arousal and see the dampness forming between her legs.

"Let's go back to my room," she took my hand and pulled me away from the living room, a long legged, almost too slender woman unfolded herself from where she'd been watching and followed us down the short hallway. She was in a pink bra and was bottomless, her flushed labia clearly visible through a coppery cloud of pubic fluff. I very much wanted to run my fingers through that hair, but the dream ended all too soon.

I was happy there were no zombies or video game drama for a change.

Escaping the Pit

2011-12-04T08:40:00.000-08:00

This morning I had what was obviously supposed to be a World Of Warcraft dream. But it was warped to include a crashlanding in a big multi-engined steel skinned aircraft and decidedly non-WoW magical powers.

After the crash I was captured by Orcs and thrown into a pit with a sword and shield to fight other prisoners to the death. I refused, driving the sword deep into the ground and leaning the crappy shield up over the pommel.

They tosses a dirty and beat up looking Gnome woman in with me. We looked at each other across the pit. She sqeaked out an apology and charged at me. Her sword and shield wobbling all over the place. It was obvious that she'd never used either one.

I stepped out of her way and gave her a gentle push as she whirled past, causing her to tumble ass over teacups on the sandy pit floor. She landed, sobbing on the arena floor. I went to her, kneeled across the sword, pinning it to the ground, eased off her helmet and there was the sweetest face I think I have ever seen, bright large blue eyes, filled with tears and fear, green hair and full pouty lips that quivered in terror. I couldn't help myself, I bent down and kissed her full on the lips. “I am not going to hurt you.”

I picked her up and she clung to me, one arm around my shoulder, the one with the shield, and the other clutching my shirt. There was a murmering from the the crown, I am sure that it looked like a man holding a child to most of the gathered Orcs, and that had to be uncomfortable.

Next in the pit was an obviously undead woman. She had no shield, just a pair of wicked looking knives. She turned and spat something fetid at the feet of the Orc who had pushed her into the pit. He jumped back, causing a ripple of laughter from the crowd. She stepped into the ring, walked over to where my sword and shield were stuck in the ground, looked up at the jeering crowd. Then turned to face us, I was holding the Gnome far back, shielding her with my body.

“They are quite angry that you won't fight, aren't they?”

I looked up at the jeering crowd for the first time. They did indeed look angry, angry enough to charge the rim of the pit. “Yes, yes they are.”

“I, for one, take great delight in seeing them angry.” With that, the undead woman spun around with unhuman speed and thrust both of her daggers into the ground next to my sword and shield. “I don't suppose you have a hug for me?” She held out her skeletal arms.

Although she was certainly repulsive, I didn't hesitate but for a split second, shifting the Gnome to a more balanced position, I opened up my other arm and gathered the slender woman to my chest. He cheek barely rested on my shoulder. “Don't expect me to get all teary eyed. They'll send someone in to finish us off soon enough.”

“I wouldn't bet on that.”

A large red drake swooped up out of the canyon and over the rim of the fighting pit. The crowd of orcs scattered. It took some time for the commotion to die down, and eventually a pair of Orcs with long spears came and herded us out of the pit and into a room overlooking the canyon. The only thing in the room was a chamber pot and a sleeping pallet with a thin sheet. It filled the entire floor which is to say the room was small, about the size of a single bed. In highly accented tones one of the guards made a joke about us being lovers so having to share the one bed and pot.

The last two feet of the bed stretched out of the short room onto a ledge overlooking the canyon. The Gnome an the undead woman stepped out to the edge and looked up and then down. “We won't be escaping this way, unless you can fly.”

“Funny thing about that...” I stepped to the edge and dove off, looping through the air and then back to them.

The undead woman looked at me. “Why don't you just go, then, take the Gnome and go?”

“Yes, let's get out of here.” The Gnome pleaded.

“No, we're all getting out, in the morning.”

I managed to fly down and collect a large number of metal pipes and funnels, which I then assembled into a pair of horns, much to the confusion of my cell mates. Finally we laid down to rest, the Gnome tucked under my left arm and curled in tight for warmth, and the undead woman stretched out on my right side, she on top of the covers.

“I don't feel the cold, you use the sheet.” She laid flat on her back, staring up at the sky. It was her who woke us up in the morning. A bunch of Orcs had hung the nose cone of my aircraft over the edge of the cliff above us, and were taking tours, looking down through the windows to see the three of us sleeping together. One of them had dropped a large wooden dildo onto the undead woman's chest. "That way you have one for each. Give us a show!"

They were laughing at us, until the undead woman and I both grinned at them, tossed the wooden object over the side, stage kissed and moved back into the room out of sight. Inside I showed the Gnome how to blow on the makeshift trumpet. We parted it out and they eventually came to poke us back up into the pit. The guards who'd come for us looked around quite a bit trying to figure out where the “Ba ba ba-da, baadum,” sounds had come from. The women actually giggled at them until I shushed them. I didn't want to give the guards any reason to search us.

Once the guards left us I collected the parts of the trumpet and assembled both of them. The gathering crown murmuring over this odd display. I noticed they had gathered all our weapons and shields from the previous day in the center of the ring. and my sword was still stuck halfway into the ground. No one had succeeded in pulling it out. (I had used magic to bury it that deep.)

A fully armored and apparently high ranking Orc stepped to the edge of the fighting pit, looking down on us. “You will pick up your weapons and fight until only one can leave the ring, or none of you will leave the ring!”

“Are you going to come down here and kill us yourself, or are you to much of a coward to face three unarmed captives.”

“There is no honor in killing you.”

“So you plan on starving us to death?”

“No, he'll just send in honorless captives who don't mind killing to execute us.” The Gnomish woman stated.

“Really?” I finished placing the makeshift mouthpiece on my trumpet. “And what if they won't kill us, nor the one after, nor the one after that?”

“Oh, they'll kill us,” the undead woman shifted to watch our backs, and I let the Gnome down to the ground.

The Gnome moved into a defensive crouch, still struggling to assemble her horn. “I sure hope you know what you're doing.” We all shifted into a triangle backs together.

“I knew you would defend yourselves, eventually, you all do.”

“Naturally, but we will not be killing fellow captives today.” I placed the mouthpiece to my lips and started to play. “Ba ba ba-da, baaadump.” The Gnome clapped twice at the end of my call. I played it again, this time, the undead woman joined in. The Gnome finished putting together her small and much higher pitched horn. We played the tune together, and the undead woman clapped, while we both stamped at the end of the tune. I heard the echoes of stamping from the hallways leading into the pit on either side. We played again, and the hallways reverberated with the sound of swords on shields, spear butts on floors and shouts of the final “Baaadum!” The Orc Guards in the pit looked at the doors, then at one another.

The Orc started to look worried under his helmet. After the doors to the pit burst open, and his guards tumbled backwards, pushed down by their charges, he looked positively panicked. But that was nothing compared to the look on his face when he flew down off the edge of the pit to land a few feet in front of me. I climbed out of my makeshift instrument, letting it take the first blow of his mace.

With an odd little twist of my mind, I disarmed the large Orc, stepped up to him, and flat handed him in the center of his breastplate, knocking him onto his back, sand flew from the force of his landing.

“Hold!” I held up my empty hands to stop the advancing gladiators. “We are leaving, and any prisoners who wish may come with me.”

The Orc officer was preparing to make some sort of remark when his eyes widened. He'd seen our rides out of here arrive from the canyon. The orcs in the stands panicked and scrambled over one another to get out. Red Dragons engaged mounted patrols in the sky.

Behind me, dragons landed one by one, then lifted off again with half a dozen prisoners or so on their backs.

I kicked the Pit Master's mace over to him and prepared to defend myself.

I felt a dragon's large toe fall gently, for a dragon, on my right shoulder. “Come, brother, we can leave this place with no bloodshed this day.”

The Pit Master made no move to pick up his mace. I nodded at him, turned, picked up the battered remains of my makeshift trumpet, then shot into the air next to the last drake out. I flew over and landed behind the undead woman and the Gnome.

We wheeled away across the canyon, the air mounted guards giving up chase after only a short distance. I was amazed that there had been no deaths on either side.

In a raspy voice “This doesn't mean I'll sleep with you, you know,” the undead woman quipped with a dry rattling laugh at the end. I noticed that she'd picked up the sinister looking daggers and had them thrust through her sash.

“I will,” the Gnome quietly stated, then played “Ba ba ba-da, baaadump” on her little coronet. Her laughter was like tinkling bells, and I found myself hoping that she wasn't joking.

Dreaming Of Missing N

2011-11-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

I awoke feeling sad, sad to the point of tears. The narrow bed was lonely and cold, the thin blankets not enough to keep me warm and there was not a cat to be found. I got out of bed and looked across the dry rocky back yard. I missed N fiercely, and there was nothing to be done for it. I sobbed a bit, then watched the few stars that could be seen through the haze. I wondered when I would finally make it through a night without thinking of N. My parent's back yard held no answers.
Then I awoke for real, in my (formerly our) bed, surrounded by cats who were all tucked in close trying to stay warm. I still missed N and was still sad, and I still wondered how long before I can sleep through a whole night without thinking of her.

Infected Laptop, Erotic Zombies.

2011-11-13T06:46:00.000-08:00

Dreamed we got a porn pop up infected laptop at work. I was assigned the job of cleaning off the pop up generator and key loggers and the like. I discovered that the laptop was acting like a file host, but couldn't figure out why it would, since the porn content was actually pretty mild and mainstream looking, as such things go. (All attractive people doing attractive things to one another.) At first I was very tempted to make a clone of the hard drive just so I could investigate it further, some of the photos were more art than photography. I figured that there was something else going on below the obvious, so decided not to risk doubling up on the problem by making a second drive. In fact I decide that we would wipe the drive down to the partition tables and low level format it.

I didn't want to take a chance of losing any of the administrator's real data. So we shut off the system and removed the drive. I mounted it on another system with a different OS and was able to save the person's documents. I could see that there was a single large file on the drive taking up several hundred Gigs. Sort of a partition in a partition. It must have taken quite some time to create that.

The next dream was slightly different from the normal zombie dream, in that there were zombies mixed in with the making of an adult erotic thriller. The plot of the film was a mix of "Moonlighting," "Charlie's Angels," and "Walking dead" all shot on a studio back lot. In the course of the story we discover that the zombies want to breed as well as feed. In the dream's reality, we discovered that exposure to sexual body fluids cured zombies. Either causing them to die, if they were the slow undead type, or to revert if they were the fast infected type.

False Waking Night Terror

2011-11-13T06:42:00.000-08:00

I had a false waking dream, and true to the genre, I awoke twice during the dream before waking up for real.

The first time I woke in the dream was because N was standing in the doorway calling my name. She was all dolled up in a sailor suit like outfit, not the school girl sort of thing, but the big buttoned shirt and bell bottom trousers kind. The shirt was cut to show off her trim tummy tuck, and her breast enhancements. She had also had her hair cut and dyed, so it was in a loose curly bob, not quite an Afro.

She was being very pleasant but evasive on the topic of why she was in my house at all. I managed to struggle out of bed, and stepped out into the hall. The hall closet had been replaced with a wall of drawers and small cabinets. I knew immediately that I was dreaming, and I found that I liked that look and wanted to remember it when it comes time I want to remodel the hallway.

I then found myself back in bed, sweating, glad that particular night terror was over when came the crashing and breaking noises from all over the house. Heaps of clothing from on top of the dressers landed on the bed, and the pile was so heavy at the head of the bed that I had to slither down and come out at the foot of the bed instead. I was glad I don't tuck the foot of the sheets in. Once I got out I was greeted by the musty smell of old sweatshirts that had long ago been cat pissed. I flung them off the bed, cursing at the cats, not only for their past transgressions but for the continuing crashing and howling coming from all over the house.

I crawled across the lumpy bed and turned on the light. The entire contents of the bedroom drawers and closets were dumped on the bed and floor. My camera was broken, the lens assembly at the foot of the bed and the body by the door. It had to have been broken and it's parts tossed into the room. That's when I figured out that it couldn't have been the cats. I began to panic, as the noise was continuing from the rest of the house. I looked out the bedroom door and could see that the floor of my front room and kitchen was in a similar state, all the cabinet doors flung open or ripped off the cabinets completely.

I was sill trapped under the covers and struggled to get out so I could confront whoever was doing this. The noise finally stopped, like power outage quiet, and that was even more terrifying, aside from my wheezing and blood pounding in my ears, there was no noise at all.

When I awoke for real I was laying in a pool of sweat, no cats in the room, and I had to get up and walk through every room of the house and turn on every light to make sure everything was all right.

Party Mansion

2011-11-10T23:23:00.000-08:00

T-Rex and Teddy were with me on a visit to a large country estate owned by a wealthy older woman. Her staff and friends were, all, like her, very attractive people.

At one point I was telling how T would sit up and beg, not only did he demonstrate, but Teddy decided to come out of hiding and show off as well. The pretty women were taking turns feeding them out of a cereal bowl as the went from lap to lap. I heard the owner calling and as I got up to go greet her the others encouraged me to hang back and describe what she was wearing first. I poked my head out my cottage door and waved to her, describing the slender creme colored shift with satiny highlights kind the fluffy half sweater that helped bulk up her slim torso. She walked over towards us, and I could tell the group was confused.

"What's that she's wearing," and "I've never seen that before," we're a couple of the comments. Most of them decided to skedaddle, leaving me, the cats and one of her older friends. I knew I didn't want the very dressed up woman to come into the cottage for long as I had just discovered floras and mites.

She entered anyway, saying I should just go ahead and have the place treated, but the kitties and I should come stay with her in the main house until it was done. She called up to the house to arrange to have us moved into the orange suite.

I remember picking through some bedding and clothing to get stuff without flea dirt all over it. Fortunately the infestation seemed very limited at that point. Only T had any sign of fleas, Teddy seemed to be unbothered.

The woman found me a tuxedo and told me to dress up as we were going out to dinner. She insisted her friend come along as well. "I would have taken the others, but they all ran away."

"They seemed to be afraid of you," I said.

"And you're not?"

"No, I can leave any time."

"So can they," she smiled at me, "that's why I like you, you don't act like you need me."

"Well, not in that way..." I pulled her close and danced her around, then we headed back up the walk to the main house arm in arm.

Glass Building and Crochet Critters

2011-11-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

DROG 20111102

Glass Tower Escape

Yeah, um, not sure what this was now, vaguely remember that it was like my work building, only several stories taller. Everyone in IT was packing up their desks and getting out. We'd been outsourced..

Windup Crochet Critters

Now this was a very weird, but cool dream. I had crocheted a ten inch eyelash mite, and a much larger bedbug sort of thing. The eyelash mite was made out of some sort of yarn that wriggled when it's temperature changed. I warmed it up, then as it cooled it raced up my parents screen door. It was actually sort of amazing just how far it could go, about a dozen feet or so. The bedbug, which remembering it now was actually much flatter, wasn't made from the same yarn. To make it go I had to hook the mite up to its back. The mite wriggling pulled on the threads that controlled the bug's legs.

It crawled under my dad's touch and down into the neighbors yard, where I expected it to be torn to shreds by the dog. The dog seemed to be afraid of it and it curved back around and made it almost out to the street.

Holly.

I have absolutely no idea of why I wrote this. I can't even say if it is a woman's name or the plant.

Random with Kiwi.

2011-10-31T14:49:00.000-07:00

There were dreams this morning of a convoluted sort with no real plot, regular theme, or even with a stable cast or location. There were lots of blue and brown, though.

Music, too, lots of music, instrumental, mostly, and a delightful moment where I was explaining to a companion that the signs didn't really say anything because I was just dreaming. My companion turned into a kiwi. "I suppose it doesn't matter then, you can't read any way."

Blue Nanite Skin

2011-10-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

In last night's dream I found myself looking through a microscope at tetrahedral frames with tiny spherical motors on each end. They were able to connect to one another and still move in a very fluid fashion. Each nanite had a small open pit in e center that somehow served as transmitter, receiver, and memory.

I could see the bundle of nanites in the field of view form up into a long twisted tube. The length of the control pit, because of the fouled nature of the nanite geometry was far longer than it would seem possible. I found myself wondering if they could build up to a point where they were intelligent.

When struck by light the nanites were a bright blue. I stretched out a small sample of them across the back of my hand and they smoothed themselves out like a thin film if oil. in just a few seconds they were using my hair and dead skin cells to fuel their expansion. I hadn't counted on that. Soon the nanites had completely covered me in a blue second skin.

There was a few scary moments when the suit tried to cover my eyes and mouth, but after a bit of wrestling, I was able to pull them back and convince the suit that I needed them to operate properly. When I managed to get out of the room I was in I saw myself in a mirror, I looked like The Tick. I remember thinking it could be worse.

Unicycling in the Dark

2011-10-21T05:36:00.000-07:00

The dream was much longer than the part I remember. After the main action of the dream, something involving the downtown night life of the Dream City, I found myself rolling home on my electric unicycle. The headlight was out, however, so I was trying to stick to the less busy streets and allies of the city.

It was the weekend before Halloween, and for some reason there were a raft of Trick-or-Treaters under two foot tall running all over the place. Most of them were dressed as ballerinas or angels.

I turned down an alleyway and found a young man grabbing the little costumed kids and goosing them. The kids formed up in bunches and ran past him in a crowd, more or less sacrificing one of their number as the price to pass. As soon as I wheeled into the narrow passage he let his latest victim go. I rolled slowly by him, and he gave me a hateful look. I reached the other side where a little ballerina stood sobbing, she had arrived too late to go with the last group. I tuned my unicycle around and offered to escort her through.

The evil boy slipped back into the shadows, so I watched the little ballerina, a very elvish little person, much older than her short stature would have indicated, race through the alley to rejoin her group.

It wasn't until I was on my way that I realized the little Trick-or- Treaters didn't have any bags of candy or masks. As I rode on, headed to my room at The Hillside (restaurant/friend's home), I wondered who or what they actually were.

Volcano Soccer

2011-10-20T05:26:00.000-07:00

I dreamed that I was playing soccer at a mountain retreat. The game didn't last very long, as most of the players were even more out of shape than me.

I spent a lot of time kicking goals from a grassy slope whose downhill run gave me a little advantage approaching the other team's goal. After a bit the other team stopped defending if I got the ball while I was up on that slope.

As we walked back across the valley, I looked up and noticed that there was smoke and lava coming from the mountain top. The lava was pouring down the slopes and two molten streams were heading right for our little valley, and another stream was headed for a valley across a low ridge where the women's camp was located.

Since I was in the best shape (and that's pretty sad) I volunteered to run over and warn them.

The next part of the dream was spent running across the ridge, down across a little ravine, where the bottom was all ready filling with a hot tarry ooze. I worried about there being gasses so took some deep breaths and held my breath as I picked my way down the shallow ravine and stepped over the tar from boulder to boulder.

I was completely out of breath when I finally jumped up out the other side. I started calling out to the women's camp as I got close, waving up towards the lava flow when I finally managed to get someone's attention.

I could barely jog the las couple of hundred yards to their camp, and by that time, they had loaded up all their vehicles and left. I stood there in their little valley, wondering how the heck I was going to get out myself, since none of them had waited for me.

I looked back over in the direction of the men's camp, and there was all ready a tendril of lava headed through the shallow ravine I'd just crossed. There was no way I was going to run back.

I scoured the storage garages, hoping there was some sort of camp vehicle, like a golf cart, anything. The only thing I found was a rack of kayaks and a bunch of hang gliders, rolled up in their tubes. It was obvious that they hadn't been used in a very long time.

I started putting together one of the hang gliders, figuring that would be the fastest way down the mountain. I called back to the camp to make sure my friends were evacuating and not waiting for me. I needn't have worried, they were all so busy packing and driving out that no one picked up the phone. That was when I wondered why we hadn't just called them in the first place.

I wondered, as I took off with the mountain on fire behind me, if I should try to glide back over to the camp where my car was parked, or if I should just glide strait down the mountain. I hated the idea of leaving my car and camera. I decided as I picked up altitude that I would fly over in that direction and see how close the lava was to the camp.

It wasn't close, but the road was all ready smoking just a bit further down the hill. There was no way I would be able to drive my car out, and I figured that landing and trying to make a second successful takeoff would be tempting fate just a little bit too much. I whooshed over the camp, out over a stream of lava, the camp looked like it just might survive, as the lava was passing through the valley on one side and another ravine on the other. I could feel the heat rising off of the lava so turned gently down slope into the wind, causing me to suddenly gain altitude. I could see the stream of cars headed down the mountain. Lava poured down into the ravine that the road snaked around.

I hoped they would be able to get off the mountain before the lava overflowed onto the road at the bottom.

Dream City Air Defense

2011-09-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

The sky over my dream city was full of aircraft, blue and silver torsos with silver short wings. Instead of flying however, they hovered. I was in a very small agile craft and was weaving in and out of them, hunting the actual airborne invaders.

My craft was equipped with lasers, and cameras. Apparently this was a game aircraft and not really armed. I was supposed to be flying amongst the aircraft that hovered over the city playing a game. Unfortunately there was a real invasion going on. The blue checked cowlings were actually box kites with short wings. I was flying above them and never noticed if there were physical strings or not.

I dodged and wove around them until I came upon the enemy aircraft carrier, a giant charcoal colored, plane filled landing field that lumbered through the sky, its defense guns taking shots at the kites that surrounded them but having little effect on the paper craft.

I lined up and made an "attack run" on the carrier. It took two passes of me flying at them with my ineffective game lasers and wing flashes (cameras) to get them to launch an intercept.

At that point I hoped to use my superior speed and maneuverability to lure them into crashing with the kites.

This was a plan that was actually working as I woke up.

Arch Bridge Romance

2011-09-25T06:28:00.000-07:00

DROG20110925

I was in the northern Dream City, the one with the highly arched pair of bridges over the bay. In this particular dream I was trying to get a couple together for a walk across the bridge. Tricky part was, they had each been separated from their groups and one was on the lift and the other in the crowd waiting for the lift.

The complication was that there was a large crowd of tourists who were less than polite, they kept cutting one another off, and were loading up the spacing gate in such a way as to create a hazard. Then the park staff would have to clear some of them from the gate, and while that was happening more would show up and demand to all be let on together.

It took me several tries to explain that the park would only let eight to twelve people on at a time, to prevent bridge collapse. This wasn't true of course, it had more to do with the capacity of the lift. (Any number who fit could climb the stairs and then walk across the bridge.) The noisome tourists got out of the elevator and were now in the courtyard arguing amongst themselves in an attempt to make eight to twelve person groups.

The young man got off the lift so the first group of twelve could all ride together.

This was the opening I needed to get the young man and his (soon to be) woman together, suggesting that they both looked fit and therefore the four flights of stairs wouldn't pose a challenge to them. (And since no one hardly ever takes the stairs, it was actually more private.) The view was also better as the stairs were on the underside of the bridge for the first three quarters of the climb and you could look almost directly down at the ships and the bay below.

The woman asked if I was going to come along. The young man looked properly relieved when I said I had to drive over the bridge, as I lived far to the south. At that point myriad futures seemed to coalesce; I knew that I had succeeded.

I was pretty sure that my presence in the pedestrian access area, when I had arrived in a car, would be enough of a mystery for them to ponder together as they climbed the stairs.

Found DROG File

2011-09-21T05:09:00.000-07:00

DROG20110914

My brother and I were traveling together in a pair of wildly mismatched vehicles. I was in Little Red and he was in a large blue and silver van. We entered a town that looked like someone had beat it about the head and shoulders with a tree trunk.

We stopped in a clear spot in the center of town near what looked like it had been a park. Every manufactured item in the park was broken, burned or bent into unrecognizability.

As we made our way towards the center of the park I started to get nervous. Turned out there was ahold reason. Three balls of trash and debris began to roll after us, converging as they came.

It looked like we were able to out maneuver them, but each time we did they learned from it and didn't fall for our tricks.

My brother thought we were close enough to the cars to outrun them, but I knew that while his van would likely drive away from one or two hits, Little Red was unlikely to.

I did know that my car was going to just start up and go, as I had left the engine on.

We needed to outsmart them just one more time, so this time we split up, but looped back around, then took off with the three of the now over ten foot high balls crashing into one another. That gave us enough time to get to our vehicles.

I have no idea why I thought they would stop chasing us after we left the park. Because if anything, they were faster on the road.

Exploration, With Installation

2011-09-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

I was swimming around the very picturesque and massively undercut islands looking for a place to haul myself out of the rapidly cooling waters. All th while I was trying to configure Open Office on my waterproof tablet device. I ended up reinstalling the whole thing before I finally found that there was a special .odt file that needed to be deleted and replaced with a customized version for my device.

I never did find a place to climb out where I could enjoy the dark green jungle and flashing whitecaps on the dark blue sea. I kept expecting to see giant squid; thank you Minecraft.

Play Test

2011-09-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

Dreamed I was working with SCV on Spare-Parts Online. We had a pair of systems up and running with about eight people on line with me. I was running on a system that was in debug mode, one screen was a duplicate, in layout, of the main screen, but filled with the text of the background calculations and current database values.

I was trying to focus on the gameplay itself but kept finding myself looking over to the data display. After about twenty minutes or so I realized that the other players weren't seeing all the experience building, etc, so didn't have the distractions I did.

The sp game system in the dream was much different than the pencil and paper game in that there were live Action Point recovery indicators, and the sliders that indicated effect and focus were continually changing as the initiative and actions flowed.

There was a three stacked circle display over the character, faded but visible, that showed the various resources a player could bring to bear at any moment in the game. The circles were the classic red, white, and blue.

One thing that was very different was the concept of resource fatigue and injury, without "Hit Points" to keep track of. Injuries directly affected the performance stats and equipment use related to the character's injury location.

Four and Gaming Party

2011-08-31T07:05:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning I found that I had written myself a note to help remember a dream I had last night. It was the single word "Four" and nothing else. While I'm sure that seemed significant at the time, I can't remember a single thing about it now. I don't even remember waking up and writing the note, if you could call it that.

This morning I dreamed that I was invited to a big gaming party by friends, a couple of former students, who I haven't seen in a long time. I arrived and thought I was early, but my hosts explained that they'd invited some of their friends, who they knew were gamers, early so they could teach them a new game. The game was a combination of Monolpoly, Sim City, and Illuminati. The rules were complex and there were a number of cards, counters and money props as well as vehicles and various buildings that were to be set up on a modular buildable board.

I pointed out, after a couple of turns, that this cried out for computerization and a three-d virtualization with funny animations. My host had to agree, and wondered if anyone had licensed the game yet.

A group of new guests arrived, and the hostess insisted that I come with her to greet them. Turns out she was introducing me around to the single members of their gaming group. I stood out front and chatted with the group of women for a time. One blonde woman was obviously cold, so I offered her my cloak, a red multiple-layered red silk construction with a dark blue green lining. It was a costume piece for a character I played, so it looked recently singed and a little bit ash colored around the "burnt" edges. After I explained that, the woman was glad to take it.

"Oh! This is much softer than I expected."

Our host offered to take the group on a tour of the grounds, and the hostess asked for my help in the kitchen. Once there she started apologizing to me, it seems one of their other guests had brought N as a date. I calmed her fears and promised to behave.

N was sitting on a coffee table just near the edge that surrounded the sunken gaming floor. I stepped in to resume my place at the game, but a twelve year old kid was filling in for me. We weren't doing all that well, but he looked like he was having fun, so I motioned for him to continue. I watched a round and did some people watching. Seeing N wasn't making me happy, and I could tell she was doing her best to avoid even looking at me.

The hostess noticed that I wasn't engaged in anything, so came and "rescued" me. I told her that wasn't necessary but we littered around in the kitchen. She'd made some sort of gin concoction and took a taste test. It was so bad she immediately spit it back out into the container. Embarrassed she handed the container to me and asked me to go and pour nit out in the deep sink, she didn't want that smell in her kitchen sink.

The deep sink was just around the back of the kitchen, and from the I could see my host guiding the group of women back to the party. I noticed that the woman was carefully holing up the hem of my cloak to keep it from dragging in the wet glass. I noted that she was very graceful, and even though I thought she was a bit on the slender side, she had curvy hips and a narrow waist.

The blonde woman came right up to me, bundled up with the hood and face cover bunched up around her face. I said "let me," and adjusted the hood and face mask for her, even that was too big for her.

She pulled up the cloak and inhaled deeply. I realized that even though the cloak was clean, I'd been wearing it and it had to have smelled a bit like me.

I started to apologize, she interrupted, "I love the way this smells.

"That's just me...." I stopped, realizing how awkward that must sound.

She stepped past me into the game room, offering an edge so that I could help her out of it. She made just enough of a flourish to attract a lot of attention, including N's. "Now it's both of us," she half closed her eyes and made a yummy noise. "Thank you, for the loan."

I unwrapped her from the voluminous cloak, revealing her petite but still curvy figure. She placed both hands on the cloak and my chest underneath, I could still feel the warmth of her in the cloak as she stretched up on tiptoes, lips puckered and aimed at my cheek, which she still couldn't reach. I bent down and placed a hand on her waist lightly to steady her.

"You're welcome. I don't the cloak has ever looked better."

It was a cheesy line, but she giggled and hugged me; I blushed even more. She turned and waved to the people in the room, staying at my side snuggled up against the silk cloak and my arm.

N was frowning and turned away when she caught my eye. I actually felt guilty, but stopped myself from pulling away from my new friend and going to her. My hosts were absolutely beaming at us, so I knew they had set this little scene up. That made me smile. Even if the little blondes affection was contrived, I resolved to enjoy it and it's residual effects.

We walked over to the game and I explained what I understood to my new companion, who showed every sign of enjoying the conversation and my attention. Our conversation took an interesting turn when my host mentioned that I had created the game system they'd played in high school. She virtually dragged me off to a small table and began to grill me about RPG design philosophy.

Talk about being my dream girl.

Adventure on Rails

2011-08-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

Sometime, I shall have to look at how to consistently grab the tablet in the "right side up" position.

Not Quite Transformers

2011-08-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

Another space travel dream. This time we landed in a churchyard next to its stables. The stables were full of little animals. The vehicles of this planet were sentient, and typically chose their own drivers. We were warned not to handle the toy sized vehicles, as we they might grow attached.

The only vehicle that was interested in me was a sled. Snow style, stand on the runners type of dog sled. It was red. I decided that in order to not insult our hosts I would take it. Turned out there was no need of snow. The sled zoomed around on the roads, and off it turned out, quite nicely. I could ride on the sled, or stand behind it on the runners, which certainly made it seem faster. By the end of the dream, it had seen one of our books about Christmas and was actually flying around with a cargo of little ones.

I'm not sure what our hosts thought of that. I also know that our captain was loath to bring any of the vehicles aboard, and he didn't want to leave any of his colonists behind, either. Our hosts thought that there were plenty of room andresources for us, and we would give their old boring society some new interests.

I suggested that we had enough resources and help on this planet that a small number of us could stay behind long enough to build a vessel to follow along. But he didn't like that idea either, as the aliens would know where we settled.

I excused myself from the conversation and took the sled out for a run.

Space station

2011-08-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

I was visiting a niece on one of many space stations that circled the earth. Being much older and not used to floating around I was making a pretty clumsy mess of it. I did get to my room, however, and was looking for a way to keep my telescope from drifting away when J arrived to take me to dinner.

She managed to round up my telescope and stuck some sort of rubbery stuff to the bottom of the tripod legs. It then stuck quite handily to the "floor." I use the quotes there because I would discover when visiting her suite later, that many of the permanent residents had completely done away with the floor ceiling and wall convention, their entire quarters were comprised of walls.

She had prepared a delightful meal. To make it easier to eat, we were in a rotating common room that she shared with seven other suites. Nearly everyone from her suite was there. Dinner was entertaining, and I did as much talking as listening, as there were a lot of questions about the "old days" back on earth.

After dinner I visited J's rooms, and was stunned and a little disoriented to discover that there was really no up or down, even in the bedroom. She had taken and cut out the pages from a book of paintings I had sent and used them to decorate nearly every flat surface large enough to hold them. I found the center part of the book intact, it had wide graph paper margins, and she'd been using them to make various calculus calculations.

"Taking new classes?"

"No, those are a friend's, mine are the recipes." she flipped back through the book and changed the LED lights to a different hue, showing her notes, and calculations.

I noted that both sets of calculations seemed related to rationing schemes and optimizing resources. It dawned on me that this habitat was thinking of seceding and heading out into space like so many others. I suddenly understood why my quarters looked so permanent.

"This isn't just a visit for me, is it?"

My niece looked distressed, "I told them you would figure it out right away. Please, we want you to come with us. Don't snitch..."

I told her I wouldn't snitch. I wasn't sure I wanted to go with them, either, but was pretty sure I wasn't going to have a choice in the matter.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

The Way Station, Dream City Party

2011-08-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

The pump had multiple signs on it, at one time they were bright yellow and red, but had faded considerably since they were first installed. The parking lot behind the pump was nearly full, and the lights on the building atop the nearby rise were all off but a row of LEDs that spilled barely enough light to illuminate the bottom line of a ragged, chipped sign saying "way station."

I knew that the line atop that said "Government" and thought it appropriate that it was now unreadable. The government had long abandoned running the way stations, so they were in private hands, now.

A young family had just pushed their vehicle into a nearby parking spot. The mother was obviously upset, so, even though I knew what the trouble was, I asked anyway.

"My husband thought we could get to my grandmother's house. There was traffic." she held up the family's fuel card, it was yellow, meaning that they could only fuel up every other week. Since it was the end of the month, I assumed they had already used their allotment, and since they'd just pushed the car away from the pump, the husband was making arrangements to either get a ride, or to stay at the way station. They'd obviously been denied a. "compassion" exception.

My vehicle was very efficient, essentially having a little gas engine to charge the electric batteries, and my fuel ration card was red, meaning that I could only access the fuel pumps once a month.

I could only take about two liters, so I had always brought along a large container so I could purchase my full allotment, which was twenty liters. In the past I had always been good about not selling or giving away my fuel. I had a large tank at home on my power generator, so giving away a few liters would only be a misdemeanor, unlike selling any amount of fuel, that was a felony.

The transition to the next dream was interesting, a silhouette walked on, grabbed the edge of the way station, then carried the whole thing off, light still coming from only one upper window. It was as if the way station had just been painted on a background flat.

I was then outside an apartment above the Dream City Mall. There was a loud, and once I could see inside, clothing optional party going on. Well, still not being fully divorced yet, I wasn't ready for those sort of shenanigans. I slipped out the back after saying hello to the people I knew, greeting the friendlier ones I didn't, and even poking my head into a back room where a paper and pencil RPG was being played.

The game master asked if I wanted to take over, but I declined. I found myself out on a balcony overlooking the inside of the mall. I chuckled to myself at how appropriate the view was for the owners. A mall guard strolled by, and we recognized one another. We didn't know one another as a party guest and mall guard, however, but as friendly rivals. We greeted each other, then there was a sort of pyrotechnic wrestling match. I came out the winner, surprising my dark haired, bearded opponent. "But your beard is so short!"

"Yes, it turns out that quality is more important..." before I could finish the aphorism, he lunged at me and ripped out a pinch of my beard!

"We'll see about that! Next time, maestro!" With a flourish of smoke he vanished, leaving the by now forgotten woman on the balcony with me completely flummoxed.

I combed my bear, making sure I wasn't bleeding and that the gap wasn't to large. It felt like he'd only managed to pull a dozen hairs or so.

"He's going to be surprised when he wakes up and doesn't have anything."

"Huh? I thought this was just a dream!" the woman remarked as I woke up I could swear I actually heard her words in the room with me.

The Way Station

2011-08-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

From the first of the dreams I remember last night. I actually did this note in bed before the write up.

A Lawnmower Man, Three AM Notes.

2011-08-12T07:00:00.001-07:00

Ad astra per technica,
FF

A, Lawnmower Man

2011-08-12T06:28:00.000-07:00

The dream started out as the standard "I've lost my car in this huge dirt parking lot" dream, but soon I found myself standing in my driveway. The yard on either side was overgrown with tall lush grasses mixed in with Queen Anne's Lace (Much like my real back yard this spring after our unusually heavy rains. The butterflies and lizards love it. And now there's a hawk living there as well. All this went through my mind while the dream was going on.)

The yard and house was a mix of both my and my parents' place, yet neither at the same time. The grass was tall, well over a foot high, and filled the front yard from the house to the drainage ditch on the other side of the picket fence that separated my property from the dirt road. Just looking at it brought up mixed feelings. I loved the thick lush growth, and the animals it provided shelter for, but I didn't like how it made the house look like it was abandoned.

A arrived with his lawnmower. It wasn't significantly different from my own, but I decided not to point that out, because it was, at least, newer. His mower charged through the thick grass and Queen Anne's Lace, filling the bag up every few feet. I thought, again, about bringing out my mower, as it is a mulching mower. I decided the mulch would be so thick that it would choke out the plants underneath. I stopped A and took the full mower bag back around the side of the house.

The path around the side of the house was just like my parent's home, a long walk with the house on one side and a cinderblock wall on the other. There was no hill on this property, the wall was more of a wind break. In the far back corner, where the waterfall and pond would be, was my much depleted compost heap. As I was showing A where to dump the clippings, and how rich the dirt at the bottom of the pile was, N came out of my back kitchen door with her new boyfriend. He was dressed in jeans and a red flannel shirt, almost the same as my own.

He was tall and slender, just like she likes, except for the short dark hair. It seems she was willing to compromise after all. I found their presence irritating, especially since they were drinking the last of my iced tea from a pair of collectable Star Wars glasses from the display case in the front hall. (Interestingly enough, I don't actually own any such glasses, and am really unlikely to.) Did I mention that he was thin? Irritatingly so? Good.

Just for fun, I'm going to try to include a picture of the actual note I wrote at three in the morning to help remember the dream. Or not. I can't quite figure out how to get it here from the iPad...still learning. Just ride posting it by mail. The orientation was wrong somehow. There are some limitations on the device that I don't think I would have had with a netbook.

Paralyzed Near the Spinach Patch

2011-08-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

DROG20110809

Lovely little night terror this morning. I was laying along a dirt path, only my right arm able to move. I seemed to be wrapped in a thick blanket or comforter of some sort. Whatever it was, it as both too warm where it covered me, and too cold where it didn't. The longer I was there the more I began to worry about the cats, who'd been left in a nearby rental cabin.

Then N showed up. She wasn't willing to even go for help. "Thats fine," I said, "I think i can reach the spinach." My arm wriggles out from under the blanket and I waved it towards the baby plants, stirring up the dust of the dirt road. I was actually two or three feet from being able to reach them.

I asked her to at least check on the cats, and for some reason I couldn't think of Giles name, and for whichever cat I named instead, N just said, "Oh, that cat's dead." or "Valentine's dead, too." This last confused me, as I have never had a cat named Valentine. (now I would be afraid to name a cat that.)

N walked back over to my cabin and named the cats she could find, there was one missing from her list, but I was tired of naming cats only to be told they were dead.

As the sun came up, N excused herself and left me there. I was starting to worry that someone driving on the dirt road wouldn't see me, and I wasn't strong enough, with just one arm, to roll myself off of the road. I wasn't even sure being in the ditch would be much of an improvement, at least someone might stop for me before running me over.

I Hate Alarm Clocks

2011-08-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

Back to work anxiety has not apparently filtered into my dreams, as I woke up to the alarm, and fleeing cats with the equally rapid vanishing memories of svelte fantasy women and breezy meadow rompings.

Swamp Train

2011-08-07T14:17:00.000-07:00

Most of the family were trapped in irons, chained together working on digging up rocks and gravel and then carrying it through swampy waters to the site of a rail bed that was being repaired. It seemed like it was either perpetually night, but I knew it was mostly just a thick misty cloud layer.

One of the other workers found an old still with bottles of moonshine all around it. He smuggled them back, one at a time, in the bottom of his gravel bucket. The supervisors finally caught him, their suspicions aroused when he kept volunteering for gravel duty.

Gravel duty was the messiest job. One had to go and dig around the bottom of the few low swampy hills, then wash the black, sticky and stinking mud off of the handful of small stones it contained. After just a couple of buckets full you would smell like the swamp bottom, and look like it, too.

The overseers pierced his tongue for it, and threatened to kill the next person they caught with alcohol in their possession. I knew this was going to be a problem, as the man had stashed the bottles and bags everywhere around our camp.

Until the rail bed was repaired, we kept finding the hidden contraband and then were forced to move it out of the camp, but somewhere we could eventually lead the guards to find the whole cache at once...right before the train came through to take them away, preferably. I and a couple of the others were also pilfering pry bars and other tools, as we knew we were going to be chained up when the train arrived.

The train arrived, and the overseers loaded up the young women and chained the rest of us outside of our camp.

"You gonna leave us here to starve?"

"No. Won't take long for the 'gaters to figure out you ain't going anywhere."

The now drunk guards all piled aboard the train. I could hear E yelling at them that they were "disgusting drunks."

E's size and demeanor had kept her safe up till now, but some of the guards were really drunk and I was worried for her safety.

Fortunately we had been chained together outside of sight of the rail cars, but right on top of one of our caches of tools and makeshift weapons. As soon as the last guards were out of earshot we started digging. It was only a matter of minutes before we were able to break ourselves free.

It was our plan to send a small group ahead of the train with ropes and the like to set up a way to take the rescue team and our women off the slowly moving train.

There were only three of us who snuck on board, just as the train got under way. The women were mostly in the last coach, making it really easy to just decouple the car. There was a tussel with the guards, they rushed the two men at the back of the car, while the smallest and least drunk one raced to get to the barracks car two cars up. I was waiting just on the other side of the door, when he came out I pushed him across the gap, slamming his head against the deck of the other car. I disarmed him and, after prying apart the coupling, rolled him off the platform, where he helped sloe down the rescue car.

The next car was actually empty, and as we passed the first of the revue ropes, I reached out and hooked it agains the window frame. The train peeled the windows out, creating a huge racket. The rest of the guards came running to see what was the matter, and I was hidden behind their coach door as the crossed the gap into the car that was being demolished.

I locked the door behind me and raced ahead to the dining car. The train was still picking up speed when I finally spotted E and the foreman. The train wasn't going even as fast as a run, and I spotted one of our crew setting a rope with a hook in it onto the front of the dining car. This one was low into the mostly decorative panelling on the sides ot the car. The trim started to tear away. E laughed at the foreman, a bad choice, as he knocked her off the bench I shouted to get his attention. He turned and then kicked her through the torn gap in the side of the train before drawing out his whip.

Apparently, he'd only seen the big rust pry bar, completely missing the percussion cap revolver in the other hand.

I could hear E wailing over the rattle of the train, so I hoped she would be okay. I then shot the foreman in the upper thigh. He dropped his whip and crumpled into the walkway. I tapped him on the head with the pry bar as I passed. Fortunately the owners of this operation had their car, with it's fancy domed observation deck on the front of the train, and I made my way through the freight car, taking a moment to open the large doors and push some of the lighter crate out. We still hadn't passed the rescue ropes, and I was able to shout that the women were safe back down the line.

I made my way into the engine room and convinced e driver to abandon his post, after using the pry bar to break his chains. He jumped, not even using a rescue rope. I pushed the throttle to full, opened up the air intakes on the boiler, and then shoveled coal into the feed chute until it was full up. The other workers were shouting that there was only one more rope, but I wanted to make sure the door to the observation cars was impassable. At least long enough for the train to build up significant speed.

I waited until we were going over a flooded causeway to jump out, trusting that a water/muck landing might be a little bit softer than trees or rocks.

Even before I hit the water I was thinking that we should follow the rails out and rescue any others we came across.

Minecraft

2011-08-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

I had to sell the house and I moved into a motorhome that I had to keep moving to avoid getting ticketed. I found myself parked outside a crime scene one morning. I overheard the detectives talking about a serial killer. I decided that I'd better go buy a gun to protect myself.

The police wanted to question me so brought me to the house, which I assumed was the scene of the crime. There was a basement access in what would be the closet of my office. We climbed down the stairs, and I noticed that instead of a basement, we were in a vertical shaft that continued down quite a ways.

We passed a waterfall, the steps damp and slick from the mist. "Are you sure your person isn't just lost down here?" I asked, pointing to several side passages as we delved deeper.

"Quite sure," one of the detectives stated. We came out in a large chamber, and I could see that the rock in part of the cave floor was glowing red. I warned them that there was lava there and we should go around. But, they continued on, making me hop over the lava area as fast as I could to keep from melting the bottom of my shoes.

Someone had used sandbags to guide the flow of water over the lava to make a wet path of sorts. Although the water was very warm, it wasn't melting my shoes so I stayed in it. I warned the detectives to stay in it as well, because there might still be lava to either side.

"You mean you don't know?"

"Know what?"

We came around a large pillar of crystal studded rock to find a huge steel tube plunged into the center of a twenty foot diameter lava pit. There was a glassy stone walk all the way around it with safety rails to keep one from falling in. It was hot, but there was a cool moist breeze from behind us.

"We were hoping you could tell us."

"A geothermal power thingy?" I guessed. By this point I was thinking that you would have to tunnel a ways, and very carefully, to get around the lava lake that was below our feet. I explained that I didn't live here, I lived in my vehicle and was just parked on the street until a spot opened up at a nearby campground.

The layout of the house was similar to my old house, so I wondered if it had been made by the same contractor.

They then wanted to know where the rest of the family was. I didn't know, of course, as I wasn't involved in their case. I just happened to park outside their house last evening when I couldn't get a spot at the local campground. I showed them my reservation for tonight through next weekend.

"Is that time accurate?"

"As far as I know, you could check the campground computer to make sure."

"We'll do that."

"Do you mind if we take that," the detective said in a way that indicated that he didn't care if I minded or not.

"Of course not, they emailed me a copy at the same time"

"He could have been here before going to the campground."

I could tell from the detective's face that he was sure the campground receipt completely ruled me out as his most convenient suspect. I also knew that I had dinner and gas receipts for the times leading up to the point where I made reservations, and I wasn't a stranger to the people in either place.

"I 'd like a receipt for that." I pointed to the receipt in his hands, but he just handed it back.

We started back, but almost immediately came to a split in the tunnel up, and it wasn't clear which shaft to take, as both had LED lights along the walls.

One tunnel had the lights on the right and the other had them on the left. I was pretty sure the lights had been on the left as we'd come down, but the detective led us into the tunnel where the lights were on the left. At least we had a source of water and the cops all had flashlights.

Stumble Bum

2011-08-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

Dinner did not agree with me, so the aches and pains insinuated themselves into my dreams as a random falling and bruising myself.

I have no idea what was supposed to be happening in the dream, but every time I tried to get up someplace, even as simple as pulling myself up onto the throne (a loveseat sized futon given to us by one of N's ex-Navy buddies) or the retaining wall, I would snag something, clothing, hand, foot, shoelace, etc. I would then and stumble and fall, always managing to land on something uncomfortable, the exercise machine, barbells, retaining wall, broken clay pots, thorn bushes....

Dream City Afterlife

2011-08-01T08:19:00.000-07:00

A Baseball player comes off the field and we are together next to one another on the trolley. Next thing we know the trolley is being tossed into the air and out into the harbor. Somehow we survive but not as ourselves. The ball player wants to go back to the stadium and get back in the game.

When we get there no one knows who he is. No one recognizes me, either, but that hardly matters as I didn't expect them to. I knew I wasn't the same person as I started out to be. I managed to talk the manager into allowing us to come in as volunteer workers.

I got to work one of the Fifties style TV cameras, making a nice rack focus shot down the right field bleachers where the player's wives were all seated. The coaches all seemed to think that was very motivating, so asked the stadium to hire me for their next scrimmage. Istarted talking up the hitting abilities of the former ball player and they decided to humor me by letting him try to hit a few balls.

He did, right out of the park. The coach went out to the mound to tell his pitcher to stop screwing around. I could see that the pitcher was very frustrated, and was trying to throw difficult pitches. Finally the coach had to agree that my friend could hit.

We left the park, each with a season contract. We stood at the trolley station, checking our pockets for some indication of where we lived. We both had money, but no ID of any sort. I doubted that the me of this world, if there was one, would take us in.

As we talked about what we were going to do to get out of this mess, Death, or perhaps the Devil showed up. He seemed upset that we were making the best of what he said was supposed to be a horrible afterlife. I then found myself strapped into a harness dangling from a zip line to the far side of the harbor. The ball player was dodging a giant white potato, actually splitting himself in two to avoid getting squished.

The potato split into two and so the process continued until they looked like a giant plate of corned beef hash. I grabbed Death, or whatever he was, and we rolled out over the harbor back towards the stadium. He couldn't focus on smashing the ball player, as I was threatening to drop him. The ball player managed to pull himself together, smashing the now smaller potato fragments.

"Okay! Now you go back!"

I found myself rolling onto the landing platform, only the zip line was completely in the stadium. I was me again, and because I'd volunteered to be the demonstrator for the zip line, I had missed the trolley that had flipped into the ocean.

I don't know if the ball player survived, or was still playing ball on the Dream City Afterlife team.

Derelict Stowaway, Cute Toes

2011-07-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

In the first dream I was on a tugboat being taken out to an abandoned sailboat I had just bought the salvage rights to for four hundred dollars. I was carrying only two bags, one with tools and one with clothes and food. I waved goodbye to the tugboat captain and immediately set to work coiling up the rigging from the broken mast.

The mast still had about half it's height left, so I knew that I would be able to rig enough sail to get back to port. I wondered why the tugboat captain hadn't offered to give me a tow; the water wasn't that rough. I knew that in a storm the lake could be very dangerous, but it was just a little windy.

I made my way to the bridge, and found that there was still power and about thirty gallons of fuel in the generator. I was calculating how far that would get me if I transferred it to the engine, presuming that it was still working. As I was making my plan of action, after turning on the running lights, I heard a noise from the cabin area below.

I made my way below and discovered a small child, between two and five. I offered him some food and drink. He came up to the bridge with me, showing a great deal of fear of the weather. I couldn't get him to tell me his name. It only took me a little bit of work to get my radio working. I contacted the harbor police to let them know that I had found a live passenger on the boat I was salvaging. They advised me to try again in twelve hours, as the weather was too rough to send a helicopter.

The child apologized for hiding on the boat. He'd been playing with friends when the boat had suddenly left the dock. By the time he'd gotten brave enough to come out and tell someone he was on board, there was no one there. Then there was a storm and everything broke and the power went out.

He was pretty smart fo a little guy, he had eaten the refrigerated goods first, and saved the cereals and snack food for last. Judging by what he'd eaten, I guessed he'd been out here for almost a week.

I managed to get a sail up, and we turned towards the harbor, of which I could just make out the lights shining on the bottoms of distant storm clouds. I couldn't find a child's life vest, which verified that he was a stowaway, but managed to get one of the smaller vests on him.

This morning I was in a car being driven by a cute woman with a round face, freckles dusted across her nose, and a very sleek looking pageboy haircut. Her hair was a light coppery color and her eyes were a matching shade of brown.

We were chatting about something inconsequential whe she suddenly pulled her left shoe off, causing the car to drift a bit. I was polite and didn't say anything. She crossed her left leg over her right and curled her toes so I could see her toenail polish.

" I got this really cute pedicure, see?"

Her toenails were painted with peach blossoms on a green and blue background. Her feet and toes were absolutely the cutest I have ever seen. "Your toes are the cutest I have ever seen." As I looked up from her toes my line if sight went up her very shapely calf and across her smooth thigh, under wher her sundress had hiked up to she just the tiniest bit of her yellow panties and a sparse layer of ginger curls escaping the edge.

"Hey! Eyes on the toes!"

I looked up, she was looking directly at me, blushing and pulling her dress down over her lap. The car swerved a bit.

"Eyes on the road." I resisted the urge to grab for the dash as she swerved us back into our lane.

"You owe me now!"

I crossed me left leg over and curled my toes in to show her my toenails. I was just wearing sandals.

"That's not what I mean, and you know it."

"How about we wait until you're not trying to drive?"

I woke up thinking that whoever this was she was the prettiest woman I had ever dreamed up.

Alien Turnover, Lost Charges

2011-07-31T10:20:00.000-07:00

Tumbling at LH's house to end up down in the canyon with aliens attacking overhead. The fun part of this dream was the detail and excitement of trying to keep upright and out from under tumbling furniture as the house was turned over with unusual slowness and care. Like the aliens were turning over a rock looking for something underneath.

In fact, the aliens were still making their way along the ridge line turning over houses as they went.

At a theater conference awards show, trying to find the group I'd been asked to chaperone. Since I didn't actually know any of the kids, I couldn't figure out where they were seated.

N Visits

2011-07-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

I dreamed that I walked into the house, the front door being wide open, and N was here. She'd taken down all the books and knick-knacks from the shelves and had several small boxes of stuff packed all ready to go on a dolly. It was interesting to see her with strawberry blonde hair.

I was not happy about her leaving me the work of putting everything back up on the shelves. "Sorry about the mess. You're going to need to reorganize, anyway," was her comment as she put the box she was working on atop the others on her dolly and then barreled out the front door without another word.

After fuming for about thirty seconds, realizing that was pointless, I then found myself wondering where the cats had gotten to.

Dance Hall Renovations

2011-07-26T05:42:00.000-07:00

I was in a large hall with dark tiles, all variations of a reddish brown granite material. About one fifth of the tiles were missing where a set of offices had once taken up the back two corners of the building. The carpeting had been removed along with the office walls, but instead of replacing the flooring the contractor had left it bare cement. It hadn't even been painted.

Imaged to get a copy of the contract, and it was clear that the floor of the whole building was supposed to be replaced. A couple of calls led me to find that the natural looking tiles were manufactured, and there were plenty in stock. Armed with that knowledge I met with the contractor, pointing out that they could either be on the hook for the whole floor, plus penalties for not making the deadline, or they could spring for the tile I had found and send a couple of workers out to help me lay the tile before our big dance event.

My volunteer team had taken the measurements of the floor, then covered it with colored butcher paper in hopes of making the best of it. With only three days to go before the event, I managed to get the flooring contractor in there, and working with them, we got the floor installed, and recovered it with the paper.

On the night of the event, everyone was gathered as the host explained the problem with the floor. Myself and about a dozen volunteers stepped out of the crowd and pulled up the paper to reveal that the floor had been replaced. The tiles were a perfect match, and the host was astonished. We rolled the bandstand in from the back room and let the festivities begin. The colored lights reflected nicely off the faux granite tiles making a bright warm atmosphere for the dance.

Sparky's Submarine

2011-07-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

DROG20110725

I dreamed that I was playing Axelpyre's youngest child, a somewhat incompetent chemist and engineer. He sat atop a ramshackle submarine, in the middle of an alley, brick building on one side and sandstone on the other. In that regard the game looked a little bit like Minecraft. The submarine was setting atop a rectangular carriage that was little more than a frame for two electric motors and a slew of batteries. The controls for the cart were at the end of a long ribbon cable that reached up to the edge of the open cockpit.

You're way ahead of me. Yes, open cockpit. Did I mention that Sparky here was an incompetent engineer? Hush now and let me finish telling what little bit of action followed.

A Roc of indeterminate origin croaked out it's hideous warning from high over the buildings of this rather crowded part of the city. For not non-obvious reasons, Gnomes are quite terrified of Rocs flying overhead and squaking out their names. Now I knew that the Roc would never have fit in this narrow alley, but it seemed that the game would come to a standstill if Sparky didn't have some sort of action creating reaction to the sudden appearance this menace.

He floored the vehicle, thrusting both control sticks forward. At this point in the dream I stopped playing and began living the part. The motors whined to life and the submarine launched itself out of the alley, in reverse. The motion was so unexpected that I fell forward and the controls slipped out of my hands and fell down onto the floor. The fall caused a bump that momentarily stopped one of the motors, causing the contraption to make a sharp right turn not going in the correct direction, of course, on a oneway street. Other cars honked and swerved to get out of the way.

The road went down hill towards the shore of the local bay. I scrambled for the controller, but the bouncing caused me to miss it, knocking it, instead, off the ribbon cable!

I managed to get myself upright and to get the pair of submarine propellors turning. I reversed thrust and that slowed the vehicle down, some. By varying the torque on the submarine's engines I was able to veer a little to the left or right while driving the wrong way though traffic and the signals. For good or I'll, the Roc had spotted me and was flying low over the buildings waiting for a clear shot at me. His presence had scared many of the drivers of open carriage autos off the road all ready, so my path was mostly clear to the bay.

With a much smaller bump than I expected I drove off the road that ran along the shore and heard the rocky causeway grind away the electric carriage, flinging the sub into the shallow water. I was still driving backwards, with one eye out for the Roc.

The Roc was banking over the cities edge and coming around for another pass at me.

"All hands, dive! Dive! Dive! Dive!"

There was no one else aboard. And as I struggled to empty the buoyancy tanks, I realized that I hadn't installed the dome for the cockpit, yet.

"All hands, prepare for emergency surface!"

Frantic now, I looked at where I was headed, set the motors to full reverse and barely managed to roll the sub over just in time to avoid being plucked out of it by the Roc.

I slewed the craft around just in time to miss a bridge abutment. "All stop!" shouted to my non- existent crew. I put the engines in full forward and brought the craft to a stop under the brick and concrete supports that lifted it up away from the shore to arch gracefully to the far side of the bay. I could hear the Roc high over the bridge squaking out it's frustration.

I also thought the moldy algae smell was a little overpowering for a game.

Wife, Brother, Best Friends

2011-07-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

DROG 20110720

I was in bed, asthma and foot and hand pain making it difficult to want to get up. N appeared at the foot of my bed. She was dressed in a creme dress with bright flowers all over it. (Like the T mobile girl would wear.) It was scoop necked and tight waisted with a flared skirt. She had obviously gotten over her fear of pink because her lipstick was bright fuchsia. N was there to gloat over the divorce being final and to show me "what I was missing out on."

I knew I was dreaming by this time, so asked myself why was my brain doing this? Instead of an answer the conversation just continued with N saying it went wrong four years ago when I refused to go along on some Victorian costume jaunt.

So apparently it had nothing to do with my near constant complaints about my illness or my dislike of her self medication, or my being overweight. I realized there was no use arguing, as I would be arguing with myself.

Later I dreamed that my brother had come down to visit, a little escape time. We were walking along one of the many trails at the WAP. We talked a little about growing up, and a lot about how different it was for his kids. I didn't have much to offer, as I had only worked with hundreds of kids that were not my own, and with few exceptions we were involved in activities they desperately wanted to succeed at. Really a very different environment than a family.

This morning's offering was the trip to the San Diego ComicCon 2012, and because of the number of us we ended up having to take two cars. No one rode with me so I was on my own.

I managed to snag a small parking space on the street, neatly tucked in between to red zones, but the curb was clearly not red, and there were white space indicator lines on either end of the spot. I walked back to the entrance and waited for the rest of them to show up.

It was so noisy that they didn't hear me calling to them as they walked by. I had left my cell phone at home, so had no way to call M and ask him to wait for me inside. By the time I got checked in, the floor had opened and my group was gone. I hoped they would remember to meet at six for dinner.

Kite Disaster

2011-07-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

I was in a huge warehouse of what I would call vintage design. Red brick, narrow windows in tiny panes across the top quarter of the long walls. Inside we had a giant round parafoil style kite attached to a pile of lumber. A giant fan rattled and whirred in the center of building. The large loading doors were open on either narrow end, creating a makeshift wind tunnel. I could see the main line of the kite being pulled down into the fan, and just moments before the line was cut started shouting to get the researchers out of the way.
The line went into the fan, cutting it almost instantly. I ducked into a nearby doorway as the stack of lumber swung down and flattened the giant fan under it. Although the power had been cut, the blades were still rotating. Wood and metal fragments were blasted across the warehouse; shattering the windows within thirty feet of the centerline.
I don't believe anyone was injured or killed, but knew this was going to be a setback for the air pressure lifting project.

Fly!

2011-07-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

Woke up to the shout, "Fly! Fly on insects' wings!" in a deep woman's voice from right outside my bedroom slider. All of the cats were along the floor under the curtains looking up along the edge of the hot tub. I have no idea what that was about.

Vampires at the Mall.

2011-06-29T11:19:00.001-07:00

I dreamed I was in some sort of mall, collecting up items for work when the mall was suddenly feeling very deserted. I ended up finding a lot of vampires and for some reason they seemed to assume I was one of them and didn’t attack me.

After a short while I was able to get outside into the sun, where, they couldn’t run after me. They could still throw things, and they were able to throw stuff really hard. I was quite battered and bruised by the time I got to the first row of cars and could take cover.

When I woke up I knew that the plot of this dream was pretty much just two lines. The dream lasted a very long time, and I interacted with a half dozen different vampires, including a couple of very pretty women. The surreal nature of hanging with predators meant I had to practice a lot of self control to not give away how frightened I was. Every time we walked somewhere I worried that I was going to see someone I knew, and have to blow my “cover” in trying to save them, too.

I was quite glad when the group revealed that their attack was somewhat botched and most everyone in the mall escaped out into the sunshine. There really were no fatalities, and they’d managed to pick up a couple of “groupies,” amongst the bitten ones. I managed to avoid my first instinct, which was to suggest that perhaps they should have attacked after nightfall. Although it wouldn’t really have helped them, as the mall closing at 9 PM still meant there was plenty of daylight left.

The dream reality glitched after I had escaped, and I was back in the mall, helping the vampires make the transition from the mall into the back of a long panel truck. I was using a large tarp to keep the sun off of them as they ran from the mall to the truck. Once they were all inside I was volunteered to drive them to safety. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t use one of their groupies for that. One of the women explained that they didn’t trust their judgment, as they couldn’t believe that anyone would choose to be a vampire. Completely not what I was expecting for an answer.

None of the groupies had actually bitten a vampire back, so I couldn’t see how they would become a vampire. (Apparently I knew that returning the biting was the only way to become one in this particular version of reality.)

I had to wonder if I was under some sort of hypnosis. To which the female vampire answered that I wasn’t, but they knew I was a reasonable person and wouldn’t just randomly doom them all.

Egyptian Ruins

2011-06-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

The ruins were in a remarkable state of preservation. I shone my flashlight around, a huge 12 LED bright white beam, and could still see the color of the pigments on the walls behind a thin layer of dust. My colleague and I let the underground area breathe a bit and used a remote controlled robot to enter and check the air quality.

She read the words off of a strange seal, and there was an audible pop. Several Egyptian looking gods (human bodies and animal heads) rushed in glowy apparition towards our little opening.

“Finish the incantation!” I urged.

She did so, and the gods receded, as if plastered to the surface of a deflating bubble. However, amongst the red and ochre, grey and brown, there was the glitter of gold and the stirring of flesh. Apparently the gods had revived two of the mummies.

Even though I was pretty sure there was some magic involved, I was immediately infatuated with the gold covered woman. We helped the pair of them out of the buried ruins, and they seemed grateful.

Some time passed and our guests were pronounced healthy and allowed to return to the dig site. By that time, we’d managed to clear out a large amount of the dust and debris, the murals were amazingly well preserved and there was such a large quantity of painted hieroglyphics that this site alone had more than doubled the effective library of ancient texts.

Both our mummies had served as consorts in their previous life, and neither had been particularly happy about being chosen for the honor of accompanying their mates into the afterlife. They had actually lived decades apart, and their lives had not actually overlapped, so they were strangers to one another. You would have thought that they would have become friends, since they spoke each other’s native tongue, but that wasn’t the case. The woman and I had become close, and the University had “allowed” it, as we had been able to argue that, regardless of the mechanism, both of our guests were fully human and therefore had their own human rights.

We returned as a much larger team to the ruins to get their help in deciphering some symbols and interpreting some phrases that we had never seen before.

Once there, the male guest intoned an inscription that reformed the strange soap bubble, and the woman grabbed on to me. The three of us were transported back into time, not too far, as I could hear the machinery against the far wall of the outer chamber that would soon break through. Glowing apparitions pressed against the bubble near where our digging would soon break through. The male guest threw himself to the ground, prostrate before the apparitions. The female guest grabbed my arm and pulled me back further into the ruins where the gods couldn’t see us.

“They will escape into the world if we don’t read the incantation,” she whispered to me.

“I can’t actually read the incantation,” I admitted, I’m more the technology guy.

“I can read it, but I can’t see it from here.”

“Oh, I can help with that.” I pulled out my computer slate and brought up the image library, it only took a few moments to find the pictures of the seal.

“If we stop them, will I be reborn?”

I didn’t know the answer, but sure enough, their mummies were there in the front chamber, just as they were when we broke through. I wondered if I would be duplicated from now on also.

“Perhaps we should talk to the gods, first, find out their intentions.”

“Okay.”

I stepped out to where the deities could see me. The male guest was still worshipping the glowing apparitions from the floor.

I hailed them and got their attention, they didn’t seem too happy to see me. I called a few of them by name, the one’s I thought I recognized, and they moved to get a little bit closer to me.

I don’t know what possessed the male guest to jump up at that point, jealousy, anger that I wasn’t bowing and scraping the floor or some other emotion, but he crossed the dusty floor to interpose himself between the gods and myself. As his reward the foremost deity grabbed him and pulled him into himself, impaling the man on three foot long spikes that had suddenly appeared from his glowing body.

I heard chanting start behind me and fully expected to be killed next.

Instead I found myself in the clean and well lit present. I heard my tablet clatter to the ground and spun around, fearing the worst.

Instead the female guest knocked be back, holding on, crying. Even though I was certain the fascination was still mostly magic in nature, I was hugely relieved.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Hypnopompic Hallucination

2011-06-14T07:29:00.001-07:00

This morning’s odd little voice offering: “There were many thoughts left un-thought.” The voice was a clear genderless tenor, with just a hint of urgent trepidation in it.

For whatever reason, this completely wiped out the rather long and detailed dream from earlier (except for an image of a leggy blonde in a deep blue dress with yellow polka dots.) Sometimes when this happens, I will remember when I climb into bed the following night, usually too tired to get back up and jot anything down.

Trans Dimensional Rift War

2011-06-13T04:52:00.000-07:00

Stale Chocolate bars in a drawer beneath a drafting table. I figured the chocolate would still be safe, but apparently there was too much milk in it and it had turned rancid. The section leader called over the radio to warn us. I found one bar still wrapped and it didn't smell or taste bad to me, but I didn't finish it, just to be safe.
We reported to the front of the design building where we (a group of about a dozen) were assigned to a virtual machine interface. The mission started in full video with cgi overlays for the multidimensional threats that were brewing in our skies. There was a sort of cartoon aspect to the overlays as more threats began to form. (Apparently the drones were fired out of a cannon of some sort and the wings were deployed once we reached the target area.)
We had a sort of chemical laser to fire into the micro rifts when we spotted them. There were only about a dozen shots per drone however, so the control center had to monitor who was available and route us accordingly. I was almost on top of a rift shortly after launch and my laser activated and was fired in a matter of a few seconds after my wings deployed. All faster than I could have reacted. I boosted my power draw to catch up to my flight and took the far right tail position of our "V" formation. In many ways us pilots were simply along for the ride, the AI in the drones was much faster than a human pilot ever could be. Only thing the drones didn't have was the visual processing ability and decision making process that went along with it. The control center was wired directly into our heads, so it sometimes reacted to our perceptions of threat before our conscious mind was aware of it. It was a very odd feeling. We flew our patrol, splitting up to surround a newly formed rift. One of the flight was in position to take two rifts when a second formed near by, and she got a double kill.
We congratulated her, but knew that any of our drones would have reacted the same if we'd had the shot.
Soon, however, there were too many threats, and the system began to simplify, eventually we found ourselves flying our drones through a sky full of wire-frame models, that, when there finally was a breakthrough (which we were supposed to prevent if at all possible) there was an explosion of black and purple rotary winged creatures that split off in all directions, they sprayed a caustic chemical of some sort that would then violently explode if we got too close. It made following them very dangerous (for the drones at least.) We lost a couple of drones before we figured out this new tactic.
Our front mounted guns didn't have much ammunition, so we had to conserve by using single shots or three shot bursts or risk not being able to survive the whole engagement. This was the sort of flying and shooting that the drones excelled at. Unfortunately the targets that dropped out of the rifts weren't always the same, so humans had to make the fine targeting calls, as well as prioritizing the targets, and coming up with tactics to deal with the unexpected; like exploding chem trails. In this particular mission, there were just over sixty rifts, and we managed to stop all but two of them.
When we formed up after the engagement to return the drones to our base, there were only eight of us left. We'd shot down a similar number of aliens (or alien craft, the researchers couldn't agree on that, some believing that the living craft were a drone, like our own.)
According to historical data, the engagements always lasted anywhere from 21 to 84 minutes in increments of 21 minutes with rifts forming three to five per minute. We didn't have any good theories as to why that would be, just that it always happenend that way. If no micro-rifts formed at the 22 minute mark, then we knew it was safe to stand down for another few days.
Later I was at my parents old house, still in the world of the rift war, and came upon a drawer full of small scorpion-like creatures. I knew immediately that they were part of the alien invaders' little left overs. I immediately went numb on the right hand pinky and ring finger when one of them stabbed me. Quickly I ran water in the sink and dropped the whole drawer into the hot water. The little silver and blue critters could actually swim, and started darting around picking up their eggs (which were a fuzzy flourescent green color.) It took several seconds to rinse the critters off my arm and hand. The hot water seemed to be slowly killing them, though I had to keep sweeping escapees back into the sink. I used the back of a carving knife for that. After I cut the first couple in half, tricky since they were all of two centimeters long, they learned to avoid the knife by rolling up into a little ball. I'd tried crushing them, but the little ball was impossible to break, so I just rolled them back into the sink. I finally had the situation under control enough to activate my headphone and call it in. I knew I was in for a long decontamination and that my parents' house would be incinerated and passed through a triple zero mesh. (Whatever that is.)

Virtual Flying, Sobbing Apparition

2011-06-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

In what was a very detailed dream, I was playing Axlepyre, running through an instance in World of Warcraft with nine other folks from the guild. We were ducking through a glowing green maze, trying not to touch the sides, the whole thing was rotating, making it fairly difficult. In the fashion of this sort of dream it wasn't long before I was not playing the game, but living the game. Apparently the others in the group had the same feeling. We finished up the current group of creeps we were fighting and decided to mount up and fly out of the area. Soon we were darting over the jungle of Stranglethorne, racing between the tops of the trees and diving down to skim the surface of the rivers. We stopped at the diving platforms and made a camp fire.
It didn't take long for us to change into far more colorful attire. (Or in the case of the elves in the group, less attire.) I put on my chef's hat and prepared a couple of feasts for the group. In one of my bags I had a chest that was essentially a refrigerator and some sort of magical grill. I set up on the other side of the path and was chopping vegetables and carving fillets, grilling same, and then brewing up some sauces and finally mixing them all together in a large wok. I remember having to stand on a fallen log to get to the top of the grill to turn the meat.
Since half the group were Gnomes there weren't a lot of short jokes, though I did notice that I was the shortest of the entire group, so when there were jokes, I was typically the subject.
Soon we were all taking turns diving off the platforms, though some of us who could levitate or slow fall cheated so we could do a couple of dozen flips or turns before splashing down in the brackish water of the cove far below.

I woke up thinking, "that there was worthy zip-line inspired dream."

In the morning, while laying in bed unable to move, feeling fully awake, I could hear the cats moving around, knocking stuff over in the kitchen. Then, from N's old office I could hear a woman's high pitched wail and long broken sobs. The despair was palpable and I wanted nothing more than to go and comfort the poor woman, all the while concerned that the house was somewhat insecure if she could have just walked in. I could not, however, make myself get up and go to her. The sobbing stopped, and a few moments later the woman passed through the hallway, past the front entry where the light caught her from behind, revealing reddish brown hair just past her shoulders, a cap sleeved blouse almost the same shade brown with cream colored lace collar and trim. It seemed she was wearing a skirt of the same material (brown corduroy, I think.) But I could not tell whether the skirt was long or short as the skirt turned into a dark roiling mist just about mid thigh and going to within about a foot of the ground.
I heard the cats scrabbling around, knocking into the toaster and flowers on the kitchen counter, then tearing through the living room, frantic claws on paraquat tiles. When they bounded in across the bed they bounced over my hips and across my chest, and that finally woke me up.

I didn't really look for the woman, but I did find the kitchen to be quite the mess; toaster crumbs, coupons, plastic flowers and a couple of zebra-striped place mats were strewn across the counters and onto the floor.
I love how fast and how detailed your brain can fill in a scene with very little real information. In this case the cats were probably racing through the house and the wailing was likely Little John's "I'm a mighty hunter!" call (or perhaps his "where the heck is breakfast?" call.)

Happy 50th?

2011-06-09T05:59:00.001-07:00

I would have thought that the occasion of my 50th birthday would create some sort of dream presence. I wasn't exactly expecting any great revelation or wild dreamlands party event, but, well, something a little out of the ordinary, perhaps.
But no, just the usual jumble; a plotless mishmash of friends and strangers trying not to look like zombie chow and a one-line musical refrain. This morning's musical selection, courtesy of Counting Crows: "And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls..."

Hawaiian Shirt Noisy

2011-06-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

Last night's dreams were all over the map, but seemed to have one theme, they were Hawaiian Shirt noisy. By that I mean both the colors and sounds of the dreams. Sometimes I woke with the "What the heck was that?" memory, nothing but sounds and lights, bright patterns and little of anything making any semblance of sense.
Colors were sounds, and sounds were oddly visible, the refrigerator running was a galloping blue and charcoal gray, the cat meows were bright gold and metal flake red swooshing loops, people voices were odd little checkered patterns that undulated in a variety of colors.
I was, in one scene, drifting up near the ceiling in my front room, and there were four inch high people running around on my dining table, trying to set up some sort of stick and string tower. I remember thinking that it would be so easy for me to tie the sticks together, if I had hands. That scene, too, eventually broke into a riot of dueling colors and sharp staccato bursts of meaningless sound.

Diablo 2.5

2011-05-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at the computer, talking to some other older gamers and we got to talking about Diablo and how we'd never really figured out how to make a full RPG out of it, as it just didn't have all the bells and whistles for making it happen. I suggested that perhaps that was just a failure of imagination on our part rather than blaming the game for not being what it wasn't ever meant to be.
One thing led to another and we were all soon loading up the "new" version of the game and logging in to play in a shared game. The game was pretty much the same as I remembered, except there were some new critters to bash. Having the audio helped and soon we were too absorbed in trying to stay alive to keep everything in character.
"This just doesn't stop, does it?"
"Well, yes, in a way, we just have to fall back a bit."
"Still, I have to admit that the action pace doesn't allow for much RP to happen," I admitted. "I guess I'll stick to my idea of 'fast turn based' for any Online RPG I design."
"The new critters are pretty, and the colors and particle effects are cool."
I had to agree, the look of the old Diablo had been updated with a much richer color palette and better shading and lighting effects, not truly dynamic, but a very good approximation. I also thought the critter animations were much fuller and weightier feeling. When the angelic critters landed to fight, the ground shook and their legs flexed, their clothing and hair had bounce and follow-through, very convincingly done.

I Want to Go Home! and One of Us!

2011-05-30T16:55:00.000-07:00

This morning's hypnopompic hallucination featured a child's voice saying, in the way one might say "I want to go to Disneyland!" when asked where to go next, "I want to go home!"
If I hadn't been paralyzed I probably would have been beaming ear to ear; the voice was just that happy.

The dream I had before that was pretty much a standard "Escape from Zombie Invasion" dream in which several people I don't know were trapped in the center of a small town. The undead citizens were closing in on us and we had to pick a direction to try to fight our way out of it. In the process one of us was bitten, and since he knew he was going to turn he chose to stay and fight off the zombies. Only thing was, he ran at them shouting "Soon I will be one of you!"
"One of us!" the zombies started mumbling and shuffling around like they were dancing. They completely forgot to chase us. It was enough of a distraction for the rest of us to make it out to where people's cars were parked, and presumably to get away.

New Job, Hypnopompic Hallucination

2011-05-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

The dream started, or at least my memory of the dream started, with me meeting a new technician. He stood on the other side of the cube wall from me. We shook hands and introduced ourselves, and then I added him into the work order tracking system, not by sitting down at a computer and typing anything in, but by dialing up an input vector on a phone like device with a red tube display panel (like on an old HP calculator.) I spoke his name into the device and then spelled it when prompted.
After we got all his details situated, I stood up and found a smaller version of the device, plugged it into my console, and then dialed up another function. After pressing a button, a couple of whirring noises and a loud ding, his device was programmed. I unplugged it and handed it to him. “Welcome aboard,”
I showed him how I had the remote headset configured on my personal system. “Let's go meet the rest of the team.”
“Okay, sir.”
“You don't have to call me sir, I'm the same job as you, just in a different location.”
“Yes , sir.”
I just smiled and took the new tech into the meeting room.
The room was wood panel on the lower third, below a brass chair rail with imbedded red tube displays. The upper two thirds of the walls were a dark charcoal gray that shimmered when we stepped into the room and then cleared, making it look like we were in a large meeting hall, standing on a railed platform. There were about sixty or seventy other technicians in the room all standing or sitting facing our platform.
“Good morning, Boss”
“Hey, Captain.”
“Mister coordinator, sir.”
And a couple of “Hi! D” were tossed about as we logged into the meeting.
“Not the boss, eh?”
“Just filling in until we hire someone.”
“It's been six months now,” one of the techs in front said. “I think they've hired someone.”
And then the complaints about my not being paid for the job started and I raised my hand to bring them back to order. In what was almost a complete surprise to me, the room fell silent immediately.
“We have a new technician,” I introduced the new guy to the crowd, a pretty good mix of young and old, genders and races.
“Which brings us to the first item on the agenda, this job will be filled next, so get your applications in.”
There was some discussion again, but I brought them back to order and zoomed through the rest of the agenda, reminding them that we were in the business of helping people, not helping computers.
I then stepped aside so the boss could address the group. He then told them what I had just told them, but instead of fifteen seconds it took half an hour.
When the meeting dismissed we stayed and chatted a bit. He was concerned that if he hired a new coordinator that the team would still look to me for leadership (which let me know that he'd all ready chosen someone else.) He made some vague promise of having my regular job (which I'd still been doing in addition to coordinating the team) re-classified and the pay assigned retroactively. I knew that would only happen if I pushed very hard for it, so just smiled and said “that would be nice.”
In my heart I realized that I would probably have to retire and then come back to work at my old job half time to actually get a raise out of the deal. This made me a little sad, and a lot tired.

This morning, I had a hypnopompic hallucination, started with the classic paralysis, sweating, the feeling of presences holding me down (cats most likely) and then the clear as day woman's voice, “Wake up and find your Wife, Douglas.”
This could be difficult seeing as how N left six months ago.

Chess Match

2011-05-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

I dreamed last night that I was playing in a chess tournament. My opponent had three women sitting behind him with large pom-poms. They sat quietly until he reached out and made a move. Then they jumped up, revealing very long shapely legs and tight tummies with a bit of under-boob showing below the very short tops they were wearing.

I remember thinking, "who brings cheerleaders to a chess match?" And wondering if their jumping around on my clock time was going to be allowed.

In a later dream I was surrounded by some rough looking sorts after stepping outside of a very crowded bar for some air.

"Since we outnumber you, we're going to let you hit first." The biggest and easily ugliest of them told me while gesturing to his chin.

"Really, you sure?"

They all just laughed, the ugly one the loudest.

So I lit them all on fire with a wall of flame that jetted out from every part of my body and pushed them back several feet.

Oddly, I was not expecting that at all, so much so that it woke me up.

Anxiety is Flowing Blue and Gold Checkers

2011-05-24T07:42:00.001-07:00

Woke up from a particularly blue and gold flashing colors and pulsating lights sort of pure visual dream that was somehow anxiety causing at the same time. (Only rarely are my dreams so synesthsiatic, but my waking memories and experiences almost never are.)

When I fell back to sleep after this dream, I dreamed I was trying to describe the previous dream and all I could come up with was blue and gold checker board patterns projected onto a cauliflower like surface, but that surface also boiled and moved. The blue was fairly steady, a bit lighter than a royal blue, but the gold flashed and pulsed, white, yellow and gold but not in a metallic sort of way.

In my dream recitation it sounded more exciting, and took far longer to figure out. I swear the entry in the dream was a couple of hundred words, rather than this paltry couple of dozen.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

T's Carpool, Hillside Restaurant, After Closing

2011-05-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

I dreamed that TC had driven down to visit. We decided to gather all of us half-centurions together and have a belated b’day celebration at Magic Mountain. T was driving and we were taking turns at riding “shotgun” as we found that none of us wanted to be behind T as his seat, in order to drive comfortably, had to be within inches of the back seat. When it was finally my turn in the front seat I stretched my legs out and the seat dropped back. Tilting me up to look through the sunroof at the large puffy clouds.

“If these clouds stick around it is going to be a great day for roller coasters.”

“It’s always a great day for roller coasters,” MS stated.

“So, how many of us can actually ride, given the restrictions on neck and spine injuries?” AH asked.

We hadn’t pulled out of the rest stop yet, the silence of the answer hung in the car.

“How about we run out to the opal mines, instead?” SCV suggested, “I don’t like roller coasters anyway,” and they then all reached for their cell phones in unison to call their spouses.

“Okay by me,” I was enjoying the puffy clouds and was glad I’d brought the camera, as there were some great “cloud rabbits.”

I was back in the old part of the city, having just gotten out of a live performance of some sort. On a whim, I decided to run down to the Hillside Restaurant, just on the off chance that the kitchen hadn’t closed yet.

When I got there, only the family and a few of the staff were there. They had closed early as all their patrons had left before midnight. They wanted to open up and cook me something, but I insisted that they go ahead and clean up and go home early, I would be able to conjure something up at home.

“Where’d you park?” one of the bartenders asked.

“Down at the bottom of the hill, in front of the warehouses. I never know if I’m going to want to trudge uphill after getting out of here.”

“Why don’t you go with him?” the owner suggested in a way that suddenly made me feel nervous. The bartender looked nervous too.

I’d been away awhile, and was wondering why everyone had to be nervous, this part of town had always been very safe.

We left the building and headed down the hill. We passed a couple of the night people, mere shadows lurking around the mouths of the ally way and leaning on the trashcans and paper bins on the sidewalk. I wished them a good evening, but the bartender just nodded and sped us on by. Most people find the night people unsettling, but for some reason, I never have.

As we got to the well lit intersection at the bottom of the hill, the bartender looked around the corner, paled and then ran back up the hill, not even making a pretext of looking back to make sure I was following.

I wanted to take a look around the corner myself, but I also wanted to make sure that the bartender got back to the restaurant okay. So, with a grunt, I turned and started jogging after him. As I ran back up the hill, I saw that the night people had all crouched down behind parked cars and were completely off the sidewalk. Whatever was behind me had frightened them, and that’s not usually very easy to do. I cut through the alley after the bartender, but he was much younger and faster than I was, so had vanished up the coast road, headed for the back entrance of the restaurant.

I noticed a couple of local toughs crouched ready to fight, until whatever was behind me ran out onto the street. They jumped a chain-link fence and took off running between the businesses on the hillside that went down to the beach.

I finally wondered why I was running away. I turned to face whatever was chasing me, a crackling orb of electricity forming around my body. The bolts of static lit the street, and the night people drew back into the shadows.

Whatever had come through the alley behind us had stopped and vanished completely from view by the time I had turned around. I could still detect it was there, as could the night people, all of whom were moving quietly and quickly out away from the street.

“Show yourselves!” I called out, not because I expected them to, but to lure them into thinking that I didn’t know where they were. I began to suspect that they were vampires, of a sort.

One of the night people, from the group I’d wished a good evening on, broke up a wooden pallet with a high leap and then tossed the shattered wooden spikes into the street before slipping down into a storm drain. I smiled, now completely understanding who my antagonists were. I strode down the street, moving into the middle of the roadway. The vampires, still invisible, were only a few meters away, still all in a little knot of hungering hatred.

I reached out and the large wooden splinters joined the swirling bolts of electricity (which I now knew would be merely irritating to my quarry.)

Unfortunately that gave my intent away, and they were suddenly aware that they had become the prey. The group split into four distinct presences who jetted down the street into the warehouse district. I was only able to catch one of them.

I headed back to the restaurant, I knew they had guest rooms there, I hoped that one would still be available, as I’d decided to stay downtown a few more nights.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

UFO Chase, on Foot!

2011-05-17T08:18:00.001-07:00

A UFO zipped across the sky and shot down at an angle that convinced the four of us that it would crash or land some relatively small distance away. I managed to get my camera out and take a couple of shots, which I knew would be the classical blurry variety as the object was pretty far away. We immediately began running after it. A and C both taking off at a good clip, as they were in better shape than myself. There was a young woman, just a bit shorter than myself, with thick black curly hair and dark brown eyes with a light coppery rim. I don’t recognize her as someone I know, but rather than outrunning all of us, she chose to stay back with me, as I was the slowest of the bunch.

As we ran out of the park, trying not to stumble down a wide concrete stairs, and then down a rural street, we came across the sports fields of a school. There was a football game going on, and the band was just coming off the field. A and C ran through the field, and I temporarily lost sight of them amongst the shiny red, blue and gold band uniforms. I slowed and headed around the field, not wanting to cut through the event. The YW seemed grateful for going around. Even though we weren’t keeping up real well with A and C, just barely moving faster than a jog, we were keeping a steady pace and actually made up most of the distance, as A and C had to make their way through the crowd on the other side of the bleachers.

By the time we ran off the campus and back out into a recently harvested field, I was having a little trouble with my asthma, I think the recently cut straw and dust was creating an issue. I had to stop and took the time to pull out my camera and take another couple of shots of the UFO as it settled behind some trees in the distance. A and C were almost the edge of the field at the bottom of the shot, I could see that they were slowing down, walking rather than running at this point.

I took a couple of zoomed in shots while waiting for the YW, she was hunched over, hands on knees, out of breath. My legs were cramping, but I wasn’t really out of breath, aside from the slight asthma. I asked if she was ready to go on, and now it was me who was staying back for her as she could barely maintain a slow jog, hand clutching her side trying to mitigate the “stitch in my side.”

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Broken Ankle

2011-05-16T08:25:00.001-07:00

I dreamed this morning that I was taking a tour of a theater where a show was being put together. One of my former students was the Technical Director overseeing the installation. As we made our way down a ramp we had to duck under a lighting truss. She slipped and rolled down the ramp a ways.

When I got to her, I could see immediately that her ankle was at an unnatural angle. She wanted to get up and get out of the way, but I stepped in to insist that she wait until we could stabilize her ankle and get the paramedics here to move her.

She insisted that it would be okay.

I assured her that her ankle was quite broken and she really didn’t want to try to move around.

She ignored me, tried to sit up, put pressure on the broken ankle and immediately passed out. I barely managed to catch her shoulders and keep her from smacking her head on the ramp. For some reason her crew were unwilling to help, even though they obviously wanted us out of the way. I tried to argue that the faster we brought help in the faster they could get back to work.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Squeaky Wheels

2011-05-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

This morning I dreamed I was at work in a new location. I had been moved to an office so my phone call voice wouldn't be heard all over the cubes nearby. This apparently created some resentment and I got into work one morning and found my chair had been replaced with a hardwood kitchen chair with cheap casters bolted on to it.

I sat in the chair, and rolled it around a bit. The casters were quite noisy, but it actually rolled easier and spun better than my previous chair. It also had arm rests that were exactly the right height, or at least would be with about two inches of padding on the wooden seat.

I rolled it around the cubes asking to borrow a pillow from various folks until I could go buy my own.

Squeak Squeeeeeak!

"What is that?"

"My new chair! How cool is this?" I would then spin the chair as fast as I could. "It's almost perfect! all I need is some lumbar support and a butt cushion. Can I borrow your pillow?"

"Uh, no, I'm using it, ask B if she has a spare."

"Oh, Okay, thanks."

Squeak, squeak, squeeeeak!

After squeaking around the office for about ten minutes I rolled back into my office, took care of a couple of emails, and then left to go to the restroom.

When I got back my regular padded chair was back at my desk, no sign of the squeaky kitchen chair. Even though I started out the morning faking it, I was really getting attached to that chair.

I really hope I'm not "that guy" at work. Now I'm afraid to go in this morning.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Midlife Crisis, Dinosaurs

2011-05-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

I dreamed last night that I purchased a dark green sports car, two seater, like a Miata, but more 40’s roadster looking in the grill and front end. It had brown leather seats and a brown leather top. Even in the dream I was thinking I must be crazy as the poor car would never be parked under cover until I retired. I rationalized the purchase to myself by arguing that it was my midlife crisis and I could do what I wanted with it. I love it when my dream mind and waking mind argue, that’s perfectly normal, right?

In a later dream I was being chased by a large dark purple and green dinosaur. No matter how I twisted and turned, nor how fast I went, it was right there behind me. As I ran I started to become very winded and soon it caught up to me. Not sure what happened then, but next thing I know, I’m riding the large beast, herding a bunch of triceratops like dinosaurs across the bushy flatlands.

Oddly, I was singing, but in Latin. (Sadly, I didn’t sound any better than I would in my waking life.)

Shortly after that I was in my office, much cleaned up, with only three book cases and a pretty dark-wood computer desk. I was working on translating the Latin lyrics from the previous dream. I’m pretty sure the lyrics were from the limerick I had written for a forum post earlier in the week:

A young priestess, sweet Mercymay,

Set out for Goldshire one day.

What she learned in that Inn

of fur, feather and fin,

Made her rush back to the abbey to pray.

I suspect the Latin wouldn’t be quite as poetic.

Night Terrors.

2011-04-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

Dreamed I was sitting across from N at some public function. She’d cut her hair short and dyed it blonde. She wasn’t, however, any more pleasant than she’d been before.

I had to work very hard to hold my tongue, but imagining her as a hamster seemed to help me keep my composure.

Although there was really nothing overtly frightening about this dream, my level of anxiety continued to rise exponentially throughout the dinner.

Finally N asked my opinion, in a very obviously baiting way, as the conversation previously was all “believer talk” that brooked no opposition, at least to hear N and her companions discussion.

“Miss K knows my position all ready, and is fully aware that as a non-believer my opinion on this matter will be rightously discounted around the table. So instead, let me just say that I have met people of faith who can profess and live their faith in an inclusive, uplifting and tolerant way; adding to the richness and happiness of our world. However, that is quite the opposite of what I’ve heard here tonight.”

Later, I was having the more or less standard driving along the sea-wall with the waves building out at sea, dream.

And, just before waking, I dreamed I was called in to help with a production, last second, at the HS where I used to work. For some reason the students had set up multiple microphones on a series of i-beams and aluminum trestles laced around the theatre. Some of them were aimed in directions that would only have resulted in amplification of their own output, or massive feedback.

I put on a safety harness and pulled myself up to the top of one of the longer trestles to reset the mic in a less problematic way. While I was up there, a group of students joined me. I had to tell them to get down, as they didn’t have any safety harnesses on. Just as they were almost to the bottom of the beam I felt it give way. They jumped, causing the beam to tip out over the audience.

The seats were mostly empty, and I was able to shout out a warning to the family that was sitting in the front row. I did what I could to ride the beam down and slow its fall, but the safety harness stopped me short of the front row, and the trestle was torn from my arms and then bounced over the family, clipping one of the children on the head as it passed.

The child seemed okay, but I insisted on calling the paramedics, as head injuries can be tricky.

In the back of my mind I was pretty angry at being called in to take over this mess, and then to have an accident happen first thing. I didn’t think I would have my job for long after this.

While we waited for the ambulance, I had the house manager clear the seating area so we could fully inspect the rest of the installations.

Dream Babe Turns into Cat

2011-04-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

I dreamed I was rolling around my living room rug with a woman with short curly black hair. She had dark green eyes and a really cute smile. As our tickle fight progressed, she bit my hand, and when I looked back to see what she was doing, she was a cat. A very large cat, but a cat.

I woke up with Teddy chewing on my finger. Apparently I had forgotten to set the alarm, and breakfast was then minutes overdue. I swear they can read the clock.

Hippos attack.

2011-04-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

I dreamed I was on a boat in Africa. We hadn’t intended to go to Africa, but came under attack by pirates. I was bound hand and feet and thrown overboard as we were sailing up a river.

The ropes that tied me seemed to swell in the water, but they also became weaker. I was able to loosen the one around my hands and get them free, swimming to the surface just as I ran out of air. It seems all my thrashing around disturbed the hippos in the water. They might have been used to boats going by, but not swimming with people. One charged me, and I just managed to get myself out of the way.

I struggled to get my feet untied and then had to dodge another attack. I managed to get on the back of the beast somehow and so he charged the boat in frustration.

The boat capsized, completely flipping over. I managed to get myself on the bottom of the boat by grabbing onto the keel as it rolled past. The hippo dove underneath to attack the pirates who’d fallen off the deck. I took some deep breaths and prepared to dive under and try to rescue my travel companions.

Woke up completely pinned under the covers by the cats.

Who's there? Just Me.

2011-03-07T07:30:00.001-08:00

I dreamed there was someone in the back yard. When I stepped out to see who was there, it was me. Only, not me. I had short hair, a long haired black and white cat and a fat wallet. It appears that I had, in another universe, invented, or rather worked with a team who’d invented, a way to pass between the universes.

Unfortunately, there had been no provision made for getting the other me back to where he started out.

He was quite surprised to have arrived and discovered that I was not living in San Diego, but out here in the suburbs. Apparently, in that universe, I had not stayed with the school district at all, quitting when they made me re-apply for my own job and take the test that I had written. The other me had continued on to a four year college and then graduate school and finally a doctorate in physics. The other me was much better educated, but apparently had a much smaller place, only the one cat, and had never married.

Now, he and his cat were stranded in this world with a slightly different technology base.

We decided to get the other me introduced to the folks at UCSD, and there we were able to convince some people what had happened. (It took some genetic testing to show that we were and identical match, and my mother testifying that I was not actually a twin at all.) Eventually, through mathematics and such the other me was able to prove he was me, but from another time and place.

Interestingly, I kept getting invited to the same functions as the other me, and the team he put together at UCSD wanted me to be part of the research group. It was interesting working with myself. There were lots of similarities, many of the same interests, but the other me was used to being in charge of things, and I was not. It was somewhat reassuring that I still knew more about computers and such than the other me. (They were just a tool to him.)

We sat together at a large dinner on the eve of testing of “our” universe transmitter, and after he spoke he opened up the wormhole and began tuning the radio around, searching for his home-universe. He took a USB camera and several hard drives with him when he finally found the signal he was looking for, put his cat in one of my carriers and walked through the portal.

We planned on keeping in touch between the worlds via a tiny wormhole with a radio signal running full duplex between them.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

No Parking at Hillside Club

2011-02-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

I dreamed I was driving all over the hills around the Hillside Club and could not find a parking spot. Finally I pulled up into the delivery driveway and got out of my car, folded it up, then put it in my pocket. I was a little amazed that it had taken me so long to figure out what to do.

I made my way into the club, but the place was pretty much shut down. The dining room was closed and a couple of the waiters were sleeping in the booths. I tiptoed up into the bar. There was only one other patron there. She wasn't who I was supposed to meet, and after a couple of questions, she decided I wasn't who she was waiting for either. We sat on opposite ends of the bar, hoping that our respective appointments would show up.

I ended up chatting with the owner, then when the bar finally closed up I helped round up the serving trays and dishes and helped wash everything up. The owner asked if I was staying over again. "Your room is ready, clean linens and heated up, no need to try to drive back up the hill tonight."

"I'll help make pancakes in the morning."

"Always appreciate that." She hugged me in a very matronly way.

I thanked her and made my way back to one of the small guest rooms the staff always seemed to have ready. Before I turned in I took a stroll outside and unfolded my car into a parking spot on the hill, now that there was one available. I thought for a second about driving home, but decided not to risk it as I was very tired. Besides, I really did enjoy making pancakes for the morning regulars. (Of which, apparently, I was one most days.)

In the morning I had a dream similar to many previous. I was in "Little Red" driving along a sea wall. In the distance I could see a large wave approaching and could tell it was much higher than the sea wall. I started looking for side streets that would take me to higher ground. As is also usual for this type of dream, there weren't any that weren't blocked off or jammed with traffic. I found a place in the lee of the wall and rolled my windows up tight.

It didn't take long for the water to come crashing over the wall. The car rocked a little bit, but really just stayed put pretty much where she was. It took about ten minutes for the water to drain away and I was able to start my car and continue driving along the road, carefully making my way around the larger clumps of seaweed until I could head back inland and up into the hills where my house was. I found myself wondering why this dream always caused such panic, there really wasn't anything to it.

On Stage, Under Water

2011-02-10T06:50:00.000-08:00

I dreamed I was at a performance taking place in one of my old elementary school auditoriums. I went to the back stage area to say hello to some of the performers who were friends of mine, and they talked me into joining them on stage for their opening improv.

I did and we ended up doing a very funny audience interactive version of “Little Red Riding Hood.” It was a blast.

When we came off stage after the first bit the director of the group asked who I was. I apologised for sort of taking over, but he stopped me and asked if I wanted to finish out the tour with them. We chatted a bit, but I knew that I couldn't do that. I took part in a couple of other short improvs, and then when we were taking our bows he saved my introduction to last, "And our special guest performer, the school district's own..."

I enjoyed the applause and then when the show was over several teachers came and asked if I could come work with their classes. I explained that they would have to clear that with my bosses.

I then dreamed I was investigating a stretch of bay filled with shallow sand bars and the remains of many towers. The towers were now muscle encrusted stumps of oily wood sticking up out of the bottom of the ocean. Only in a few places were there and sign of the towers above the water level. One of the things I discovered was a giant blue and grey shark.

The shark was incredibly intelligent, and soon figured out that we were looking for the old tower sites, so he let us hang on and took us on a tour of the bay floor, stopping to hunt and let us map each of the sites.

Un-Amusement Park

2011-01-31T07:25:00.001-08:00

I was, in this dream, visiting the old partly broken down amusement park, somewhere in my dream city landscape. I don’t know exactly where it is located, as I don’t seem to remember ever getting there, just being there. In this dream there were several attractions being renovated, a different set than last time.

As N and I walked through the place, it seemed that the only attractions N was interested in were being renovated. To be honest I was more interested in the renovation process than most of the attractions anyway. There were lots of cranes and pipe bending machines, as well as people welding and assembling large mechanical devices. Nerd heaven.

In what could only be defined as a “snit” N made her way to the show office to complain.

I waited in the lobby for a bit, where I bumped into a park manager who asked, “Is there something I can do for you?”

I pointed to the office where N was ranting at another manager. “I’m with her, she’s really un-amused at the state of the park today.”

“Oh, we can give you free tickets to come back another day, if you’d like, and we’ll refund today’s fees.”

“Thanks, I’d like that.”

She got me squared away so I opened up the office door and tapped N on the shoulder. “I got us a refund, and tickets to come back another time.”

N grabbed the refund and the pair of tickets and stormed out. “I don’t know why I even bothered.”

I watched N get in her car and drive off.

“She’s kinda mean.”

“No, she’s just having a bad day,” I started making excuses for her, like I always had. I stopped in mid sentence, realizing I didn’t have to do that anymore.

“Yeah, and she forgot that we car-pooled, too.”

“Oh dear! Can I drop you off somewhere? Call you a cab?”

“Thanks, if you’re headed towards SM I’d love a ride. You can call me D.” I tried to make light of being stranded.

Time shifted, I rode the glass elevator in the parking structure several times, just to enjoy the view of people walking around the park, they looked like they were all having a good time, the feeling was catching.

Soon we were pulling into the parking lot of Penny Lane, where she invited me to stay for a drink after her union meeting. “I’m kind of the president, so I have to say a few words to get things going, then I’ll be right with you.”

The phrase “right with you” seems to have a pretty variable meaning for most people. I was just thinking that I could walk home from here in an hour or so when she slid into the booth next to me. She’d somehow slipped off and changed her clothes and re-done her hair. Instead of slicked back and held down by combs her hair was now a mass of variegated brown and blonde curls framing her face. Her blue eyes were crinkled up in the corners from smiling and I suddenly thought that her lips were very kissable looking.

That’s the point that Teddy or Miranda (or both) went bounding across my tummy.

I went back to sleep, but dropped into a work dream, answering parent calls and resetting passwords. The phone would not stop ringing, every call I took seemed to generate two or three calls at the same time. I wondered when I would ever find time to call people back.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Hand Tools

2011-01-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

I found myself working underwater, in my house. It seems the floor had collapsed into a sink hole, and the sink hole had a few feet of bromine scented water at the bottom. I was trying to dig myself a path out using my hands, which had turned into a hammer and chisel. I wasn't holding a hammer and chisel, my hands were the hammer and chisel.

Polymorphic Problem

2011-01-19T09:42:00.001-08:00

I was rushing around with a couple of friends, climbing way back in a storage container, looking for my pocket vest and light cargo pants. We were preparing to jump through a rift to go visit a huge festival in a sword and sorcery universe, and I wanted lots of emergency supplies, since it was best to be prepared.

We hopped through the portal and met up with a couple of other folks we’d travelled with before. Our room at a local Inn was ready for us, and we dumped off our non-essentials and changed into appropriate clothing to attend the festival. That meant very ornate robes for me and leather and linen for everyone else.

We ate our way across the festival grounds. At one point we stopped to say hello to the court magician. He gave the guy we called Angry D a vial of potion and myself.

“Go ahead, drink it!” He grinned at us.

We both took a sip.

In only a few warped feeling moments, I shrunk down to Angry D’s size and he grew to mine. It was great being young and healthy, but I wasn’t too thrilled with being short.

Angry D looked very pleasantly surprised and was busily adjusting his vest and trousers to fit his suddenly taller and wider frame. I hiked up my robes and tightened my belt. I took a couple of steps and then stopped to roll up my pants legs.

In the noise and confusion I didn’t hear what the Court Magician said next. Angry D smiled and thanked him, however, so I figured I would find out later.

It didn’t take long for Angry D to get separated from the group. We watched a few worlds class performances, having fun spotting the other Rift Travelers in the crowds.

Back in our Inn, we’d had visitors to our room. Everyone was upset, until I pointed out that they’d left us paper money and a couple of pins from their worlds. I made my way over to their room and returned the compliment.

The occupants were lounging around, obviously as worn out as we were. One of them was a tall elf looking fellow and another was light lavender skinned. I didn’t have any badges for them, though, so left them with some bills and coins. One of them recognized my name, but said “I thought you had brown hair?”

“And I’m much taller,” I showed them the potion and explained that I’d temporarily traded forms with Angry D.

Turned out they were from a future world and had actually found out about this festival from my blog. (Which was, in their time, thousands of posts long.) They looked at one another and there were whispered comments of “should we tell him?” and the like. The evidently decided that telling me, whatever it was, was a bad idea.

I went back to my room, the group had hired some women to come in and bathe and give them massages. As I prepared to join them, I noticed that Angry D, whose reflection rather shockingly greeted me in the mirror, didn’t have naturally black hair. The roots were definitely brown. The stubble of my incoming beard was a dark reddish color though, I figured I would just let it grow until we switched forms.

The massage was wonderful, the woman, delightful, speaking in highly accented English, we joked and shared stories of our lives. She was also a very attentive and gentle masseuse. I remember thinking I could live here quite happily, if only they had computers and the internet. Being a fantasy world with lots of magic, the population wasn’t living in squalor and filth like many such worlds. The standard of living was actually very high for such a low technology world.

Angry D arrived, laughing in my voice, asking “So, how’s your girlfriend, or mine, rather.”

It turns out that Angry D had been spending a lot of time in this world, and my masseuse had learned English from him.

He admitted that he’d grow cool on her, because she wouldn’t put out without a commitment. That made me like her even more. Our conversation was fairly fast and Angry D seemed to be stretching it out, taking forever to make his points. The woman, though, managed to follow along, finally breaking in and asking how we’d changed bodies.

“The Court Magician had us drink these,” I showed her what was left of the potion.

“Oh, no, that’s permanent if you don’t drink the second dose together!”

“What?”

“Sucker!” Angry D bolted out of the room, grabbing my robes on his way out the door. I was glad I didn’t have anything in the pockets of the robe.

“What happens if I drink the rest of this and he doesn’t?” I asked.

No one knew the answer. I took the chance. Change rippled through me, but I didn’t grow any taller and my beard didn’t come back. I was still young. The only thing that seemed to change was my skin and hair color.

“He’s heading for your Rift!” one of my companions yelled.

“Get him!”

“Hey, youse, where do you think you’re goin’,” a gruff voice rumbled in my ear. The owner of the voice picked me up off the ground. One of the local bosses, underworld like, walked up to where I was being held.

It only took showing him the potion bottle to convince him of what had happened. Apparently the woman was related to him in some way, daughter, niece, I couldn’t quite make out as I didn’t know the local language all that well.

He sent his men after Angry D, but the Rift had closed. I got hit by another change, this time growing to my normal height. My hair was still brown without any gray in it and my beard had grown back, fully reddish brown instead of white.

“This could be a problem.” My face had also sort of changed back, but was thinner and the eyebrows thicker and my eyes were now dark green instead of blue. I could tell that the magic of the potion had worn off, and that this was pretty much, without finding Angry D, what I was going to look like.

I turned back to the woman, asking if she would like to see my world. (Normally this would not be good Rift Traveler protocol, but Angry D would take some finding.) She agreed, and the underworld boss pointed to two of his bruisers and said, “Take them with you, for luck.”

“Uh, okay. Let me bring them back some clothing, though, that armor isn’t going to fly where I’m from.”

My friends had all ready packed up their stuff and weren’t too happy when I explained that we were taking the bruisers with us to help find Angry D.

“At least you almost look like you.”

“Let’s hope the jump through the Rift bumps me a little bit back to normal. Low magic world where I’m from.” I explained to the woman, who translated for our body guards.

She leaned in close as I opened up the rift home, “It’s okay with me if we don’t come back here. I’d like to stay with you if I can.”

I hadn’t really thought about that, but found that I kind of liked the idea. I just wasn’t too sure that I would be able to resume my old life if we didn’t find Angry D and get him to drink the rest of the potion, which one of the bruisers had found on the ground by the portal as we stepped through. Luckily the vial hadn’t been smashed on the wood floor.

I could tell there was going to be lots of explaining by their wide open expressions at my home. There was no sign of Angry D. My coin collection was gone, however, as was my check book. I hopped online and moved my money into another account. I started to realize that I wasn’t probably going to find him and get my old pain filled body back. I decided that I was okay with that. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but liked the team I’d managed to collect to deal with the problem.

“I think we may need to pay your Court Magician another visit.” One of my friends told the woman. “Perhaps there is something to make him look like he used to.”

“Why in the world would I want to be fat and old again?”

Boating the Amethyst Maelstrom

2011-01-18T07:03:00.000-08:00

I dreamed that N and I were in boats headed out to where there were some large gemstone islands, green, purple and pink crystals jutted out of the sea. As we neared the place I could see the shore wasn’t really a shore, but a thin layer of purple amethyst crystals about three millimeters thick. N wanted to plow through it, but I wanted to carefully cut away large sheets of the material, as I thought it had some very unique features that would make it sell to collectors for far more than the value of the crystals themselves. I was fairly certain the flat field of crystals was unique.

N, from her boat, started breaking the formation up, while I carefully pulled the sheets of material aboard my boat, stacking them with paper and foam between the layers to help protect them from bumps.

I heard a yelp from N, way out in front of me, she’d been aimed directly for a large green garnet, but was shouting something I couldn’t make out as she pointed over the side of her boat.

I saw her boat dip down a trough out of sight and shortly after I knew why. She’d uncovered a maelstrom. My boat dipped over the lip of the swirling storm and shot down the sloping wall of water. The thin crystalline sheets rained down around us from the edges of the swirling funnel. I managed to get the boat turned so I wasn’t racing towards the center of the swirling water, but couldn’t get enough power from the motor to climb out of the dip.

I could see the funnel was slowly flattening out, but I didn’t think that would happen fast enough for us to escape. N’s boat was opposite mine, and it was obvious she was having the same trouble and I had an idea. I had a long pole, used when the boat was near shore, I unshipped it and set it into a divot in the deck and stretched it over to N’s boat, bracing it against her mid-deck.

“Set yours between us, too,” I shouted into the raging wind, but she didn’t seem to understand what I was asking. “With both poles we can keep the boats aimed perpendicular to the funnel and we can ride out the storm!” I shouted, and hoped.

Nan pulled out her pole, but used it, instead, to skull her boat , adding its power to the power of her motor, trying to get out of the storm. This had the effect, as long as my pole was connected, of pulling me more towards the center.

This dream is so obviously symbolic it isn’t even funny.

Bears, CH Gets New Glasses.

2011-01-17T13:10:00.001-08:00

I dreamed that I had met up with a large number of folks in a heavily wooded area where they had hidden horses in a large cave system. Although I wasn't really sure of the reason, we were evacuating the area. Only one problem, there weren't enough horses for everyone. At least a half dozen people would have to ride double, a couple of them adults. That would slow us down.
I noticed that there were, however, a couple of very large brown shaggy bears chained in the back of one of the caves. I went over to them and "communicated" the problem with them. I came out of the little side cave riding one and leading the other.
Everyone backed away from us. "I can take another adult if anyone is willing. We have to leave now, because the bears are going to be slower than the horses."
"I can't imagine anyone would follow you, though."
"Those bears are even bigger than I thought," whispered a woman hiding behind her husband.
"I'll go, but my sister has to come with us," a young woman said. Her sister looked to be about eleven or twelve.
I turned and asked the female bear if she would take them, and the bear said she could take one, the other would have to ride the male with me.
"I'm okay with that," the little girl said, apparently able to understand the bears, too. She grabbed up her school backpack and ran over to where I was and I helped her up in front of me. "Don't you have a bag?"
"No, just what's in my pockets." Which I knew to be a lot, as I was wearing a vest with four pockets and cargo pants.
We started out immediately, no one else in the group left behind offered anything more than a wave, mostly seeming to be glad to see the bears go.

I dreamed that CH came over to help clean the house, and she was wearing new glasses, thick dark red frames with a slender rounded rectangle shape. They really drew attention to her blue eyes. I commented on them which made her smile, and that's when I noticed that they were prop glasses, with no actual lenses in them.
She explained that they were for a costume she was working on, but I couldn't tell now what I thought she said.

All in all these were both a welcome change from the all consuming Zombie dreams I've been having of late.