All Singing and Dancing, Science Fiction, Future-Fantasy, Seven Escape-Room Extravaganza!

Starting with a sliding ice puzzle and winding its song and dance routine way through; star crossed romance, rescues, tentacled maidens, mafia weddings with choreographed bridal deflowering, lost purses, exes showing off their reconstructive breast surgeries, and, in general no foot, hand or chest pains. What an exhilerating and eshausting morning.

Lightning Loop

First there was the flash of lightning. Then the long rumble and shaking. Then there was the black and silver loop. We could see it arcing down from the sky. Then the silvery ships.

The Loop was a hyperbolic curve that looped down onto our world from a shifting point near the center of the local arm and barely touched the earth along the shores of central California, then swooped up and out of the atmosphere and out along a path across the milky way. The loop was solid and shimmering at the same time. Daylight rode along it in long stripes and the view of the sky was pinched along either end.

Hundreds of small craft emptied out of the loop in that first day, then spread all over the world. Some governments tried to knock them down, with little success. Several days later, they all merged through the walls of the Loop and headed off in both directions. I had seen three of the speedy little ships the first day they'd arrived. San Diego was one of their destinations, as much as you can call a hundred mile looping survey a destination.

In the center of the loop, mere days after it arrived was a long line of interconnected cylinders, about a hundred or so, all empty and all illuminated by the bright stripes of the Loop. Inside the engine was an invitation to emigrate, pictographs showing the loading and unloading of the cylinders and illustrations of atoms and their proportions and temperatures related to elemental phase changes each associated with "stops" along the way. Only two stops were suitable for us. Then there was a promise of more Cylinders to come. It took some time to discover the other data flowing along the Loop - that it existed was interesting, but it was mostly unintelligible. (I got all of that from a remembered, in the dream, documentary that had come out roughly six months after the Loop appeared. At the time, no one but the military and their hand picked researchers were allowed near the thing. It didn't take long to lock everyone with a camera out, either. There wasn't more than a couple of days of images, mostly shot from boats and light planes before the military successfully isolated the station.

Each Cylinder was initially full of carbon-rich soils, light minerals, useful metals, water and alien tools for moving the materials around. The machines were all docked along a long central corridor. I believed the materials were meant to be a sample of the other inhabitable world. All of the cylinders were nearly perfectly clear, even though the walls were three meters thick. The first and last Cylinder was more of a bullet shape, and though the outside was transparent, it was not clear what all of the mechanisms were on board the engine and caboose, as they came to be known. There were large portals on the side of each cylinder, each had opened shortly after arrival, and it was obvious that the materials inside had shifted on their long journey. The description of the journey soon explained why. Acceleration shifted during the trip. First aligned with the world, Parallel to the wall of the cylinder, then aligned with the caboose, then midway, shifting over the course of what would take most of a year, towards the engine, and then finally, over a very short period, would shift parallel to the wall of the cylinder at the destination, where there would be about two years to disembark. What happened to the train after that was not entirely clear, but we were choosing to believe the whole thing was sanitized for the next part of it's trip. So everything the colonists needed would need to be disembarked. There would not be a return trip for ninety six years. This was a one way trip for whoever went. There would be eight more sets of cylinders coming to follow this one, each about a year behind the launch of the next.

Nowhere were there any images of those who sent The Invitation. And the Invitation was everywhere, all around the world. Every little isolationist group in the world wanted, it seemed, to be selected to go. Engineers offered suggestions for buildings and systems that would rotate inside with the shifting of acceleration, self sustaining rather than stored foods, etc. Someone tried to blow up the Loop with a low Orbit nuke, but the Loop shrugged off the damage, not so much the atmosphere and nearby satellites. Billionaires offered to buy passage - a whole cylinder at a time. Some people made "To Serve Man" references, and there was no small amount of terror at the thought of what might be on the next eight "trains."

The first trip, according to researchers, would take thirty two years, and would touch down on a world much like our own, but nearly abandoned by it's previous occupants. They wanted their world to live again, if not for them, then for others.

Yes I wanted desperately to go. But realized that I would be eighty-seven years old when I got there, if I made it that long. Even with nearly a hundred cylinders, each just over a hundred meters in diameter and about five hundred meters long, it would be, over the course of three decades, more than a little bit cozy. Plus, it looked more and more like the world was going to destroy itself over the thing rather than end up putting anyone on it.

At one point in the dream I was in a VR simulation of the "train" station, and it was every bit as impressive as I imagined. (The application images of the Loop itself were being broadcast on delay around the world and thousands of viewers avatars were able to connect and interact at a time.) I just marveled at the technology, the amazing amount of energy to hold the loop together, and to so precisely land it.

Other Worldly Fall Through

I had one of those dreams that would take far longer to relate than it did to have. Myself and my cell phone were out for a walk when I crested a low ridge and fell right over the other side onto a different world.

I could tell it was different by how light I was, and the fact that the sky was full of nebulae and stars so close you could see they were small disks. There were no grasses, only broad leafed plants with leaves that turned to follow the brightest parts of the sky. I had no cell reception at all, so I turned off the phone completely to conserve the battery.

I wandered around a bit, coming across a path, whether made intentionally or a game trail of some sort, I couldn't tell. I moved down hill, figuring at least that might lead to water, eventually. The scents in the air were very purple and orange, with a touch of brine every so often. Insects flitted about, but I didn't see or hear any birds. There didn't seem to be any plants over about twelve feet tall, either. Everything had a pretty manicured look to it, though, so I began to think I'd wandered into some sort of garden.

I made my way down to the bottom of the trail, which curved along the edge of a steep slope. I looked over the slope and below me stretched out a nearly endless expanse of land and oceans. I knew in an instant it was a world far larger, and far different than our own little globe. As far as I could tell, it extended into every direction, blending in with the grey black of the sky. I could tell the little world I was currently on rotated slowly about an axis that would make this little trail eventually level or even feel like it was the top of the hill. I headed back away from the edge, hoping to find some signs of habitation.

I came across a camp of about thirty people. As soon as I entered the camp they asked what I was sent up for. It was a language that I had never heard before, so I don't know how I understood the question, nor how they would understand my answer.

I told them that I actually fell down. That was apparently the wrong thing to say as they all drew small makeshift weapons and advanced on me. As they drew close I noticed that they weren't all human, many of them had triangular ears and tails, puffs of fur grew from their cheeks like a lion's mane, and some even had whiskers and small flat noses.

"Look," I said "this is where I came from." I turned on my phone and opened up the photo gallery to show the pictures of myself and the kitties. That actually stopped them. They had never seen anything like it.

I tried to explain that it wasn't magic and the battery was not going to last long if I couldn't get back to my home to charge it.

They conferred a long time, and decided that I was some sort of wizard, and they really didn't want me there messing up their balanced society. Apparently they were all exiled here from the world below, they'd managed to scrape together enough resources to stay alive, but they were stuck as jumping off the world would likely be fatal, and they had received some supplies from below, as occasionally someone had jumped off and survived. The occasional survivor sneaked to the catapult that had put them there and fired up news and goods. The reports were also that survivors who returned to their home area were executed if caught. They knew this because their bodies had been launched up to the rock as a stern warning not to try it. I realized that the only people I could understand, and who understood me were the cat people. They had some sort of limited telepathy, it seemed.

They debated whether to strip me and take my stuff before throwing me off the rock, and during that debate I slipped away, heading to the edge of the rock, again. surveying the world below. Apparently that was not what they were expecting, as they headed for the uplands and the forests and caves to search for me. (At least what I could hear from when they discovered I was missing.) I would guess the whole rock was nor more than six or seven miles around, so a few square miles of fairly verdant territory. I found an area where there was a makeshift "Dock" at the edge of the rock. I guessed that this was the proposed drop-off point. I looked out over the edge and saw a huge water filled crater almost directly below me. I was really thinking a hang glider would come in handy right now. The sun came up, or, more precisely, the rock rotated into a position where the fiery globe in the sky that was this world's sun could reach where I was on the rock. I could see that there was a ladder on the side of the platform, so I climbed down. It turned under the rock and led down to a small ledge. I realized that if I slid down the ladder, and let go before the ledge I would be aimed right at the crater lake below the rock. So, not knowing what possessed me to do so, I let myself slide down below the rock and then let go as I neared the ledge.

Something in the mass above me seemed to counter my weight, and I didn't fall nearly as fast as I thought I would so I realized I was in danger of overshooting the lake below. I opened up my shirt and tried to use it as an air brake. That was partly successful, but wouldn't really have been effective. What was effective, however, was the force holding the rock up in the sky, it seemed to pull me into an orbit, or more accurately, a falling spiral centered on the crater lake below. My only regret now was that I had no way to protect my cell phone from getting wet. I balled it up in my shirt as best I could.

I don't remember hitting the water, but I woke in the bottom of a small boat, my shirt and phone balled up on my chest. I unwrapped it, and the inner folds of cloth were still dry. I couldn't have been in the water long.

"We fished it out first, it seemed really important to you." One of the fishing cats communicated to me quietly.

I thanked her. They dropped me off on the shore outside of a town before heading to their own village.

I looked up the street and realized that most of the signs were just pictures, but the few that contained text were completely unrecognizable.

I wandered up the street, looking at the various shops, realized that my cards and what little money I had were not likely to be worth anything here. I greeted folks as I walked, and they were friendly enough, but it was clear that no one but the cat folk were able to understand me, and even then it only seemed to be a fairly small subset of them.

I came upon what looked like a large town hall. I looked around for a seat, figuring I would just sit and watch for awhile, try to get a sense of the society, the way things work. It was pretty crowded and I eventually found myself in a little rectangular pen like area with several open stools. I sat in one, just to catch my breath and get my bearings a little bit. It was obvious after just a short while of looking around that the more cat-like cat people tended to be the less well off looking. There was a good spectrum of wealth shown among all the peoples there, but there were a couple of obvious trends like that.

I finally decided that I needed to move up to the gallery with the "poorer" folks, in the hopes that I would get some inkling of what was going on. Unfortunately, I had sat down in the "Defendants Paddock" and was no longer allowed to leave. I tried to explain what had happened but folks just laughed at me. A bailiff made me sit back down.

The judge/mayor came in, a red-haired woman who, oddly, I could mostly understand, even though she didn't look much like a cat person. I just assumed her words were so reinforced by the cat folk in the audience that I was getting them as a sort of telepathic overflow effect. There were a half dozen "cases" on the docket, not all of them criminal matters, some were civil matters. The Judge went through all of them, and then looked up to see me sitting there after all her files were done.

"Who are you?" she asked, and I could tell it WAS her that I was understanding.

When she realized that her audience couldn't understand me, and had begun wondering how she could, she had the bailiff remove me from the room.

I ended up in the police station, but not in a cell. It was obvious that I wasn't allowed to leave, but otherwise they brought me lunch and a light blanket when it started to get chilly. The evening shift came in, and one of the officers was a cat woman who was able to talk to me. The Judge arrived shortly after my interview with the officer.

The conversation, and another meal, was quite pleasant, and the Judge was pleasant, but very obviously concerned about my story. I could tell that she wasn't really willing to believe it, until I showed her the pictures on my phone, which sputtered and died after a few moments. It apparently had gotten some water in it after all. I had to convince her it wasn't magic, or at least no more so than the fact that we could understand one another.

After our long conversation about where I was from, she pointed out that she could have me arrested for being a vagrant, as I had no money and no place to stay. I could see she was weighing her options when the feline police officer rescued me, saying she had a spare room and I could stay there and help with the dogs until I found other work.

By the time the officers shift was done, I was bone tired and barely remembered the route to her home. I fell into her too small guest bed, and immediately fell to dreaming. (All I remember from the dream within this dream was sitting next to a busty woman in a blue linen jacket, immaculately tailored and with very shiny silver buttons.)

In the morning I got up and helped prepare the breakfast table and then washed up afterwards. Shortly after that the officer got up and took me out to where the dogs were. They were huge, about the height of a pony or small horse. She explained that the puppies were pretty tame, but their mother was still very feral.

She was indeed, and much larger than her children, the father of the puppies must not have been a particularly large specimen. I looked into the mother's eyes and immediately knew that she was much smarter than her handlers were giving her credit for. I jumped down into her pit. There were calls of alarm from the others, but we approached one another and greeted one another. I rubbed her face and ears and then took off the choke/spike chain from around her neck. She stood up and stretched. Then sat, looking at me. I gave her a roll I'd been saving from breakfast. I started walking her around the pit, stopping when she started to pull. (A lot like when walking J's dog Lucy.) We eventually jumped out of the pit and took a stroll around the grounds. The other handlers followed us with weapons and ropes, ready for her to make a break for it. I could tell she wouldn't as she wanted to stay close to her puppies. She kept looking at me like I was going to try to ride her, but I just ruffled her neck fur, gently rubbing down the injuries where the spikes had dug under her coat. Eventually we made our way back to the pit, and she willingly ran down the ramp and stretched out to nurse her newest litter of puppies.

I made sure I had more treats for her after dinner. As I walked out to the pit to feed her, the Judge fell into step with me. I was surprised to see her. As we walked, I realized that she was a cat person. "Did it hurt when your ears were docked?"

Her hand flew up to her ear, hidden by a tiara/turban sort of headdress, then she dropped it quickly looking around to make sure no one had seen. I also guessed that her bustle hid the fact that she had a tail, or at least the stub of a tail. I immediately felt sad for her. She could tell. I promised I wouldn't say anything, as her people adored her and were obviously prospering under her leadership.

Her conversation with me indicated that she would be much happier if I didn't stay in the area, and after seeing me feeding the "feral bitch" she lit upon the "perfect solution." When the puppies were weaned, I would take the dog and leave for a stint in the wilderness, find a feral mate for her so her puppies would be full sized next time. She also indicated that she would not be broken up if the two of us didn't return. Ever.

I told her that would be difficult, as I too was rather fond of the people of her village. I promised I would consider it, though. That seemed to strike her as true, and I realized than that the telepathy was much stronger between people who shared common passions. I think that very much disturbed her, but she knew I was serious about not being a threat to her village so she was content to let me free, but keep a close eye on me.

The dream continued on for quite some time. One night I went to a dance, like our English Country Dancing, except I had to learn the calls in a different language. I tried to dance with the cat women, as most of them could tell me the right (or left) way to go. It was a lot of fun, and everyone had good humor about my lumbering attempts to be graceful.

Another evening we had a huge bonfire and barbecue with story telling. Again I had to have "translators" for several of the stories. I showed my hippo photograph and described the San Diego Zoo. I tried to draw a picture of a giraffe, and that got everyone laughing.  I worked with the dogs, including the feral mom.

Eventually the dog and I were out working with the police, tracking large animals who'd broken into some chicken coops, or chasing after a lost child, or just patrolling the village after dark with my hostess. However, I never rode her like the police rode her grown puppies. It suited us fine. (It was then that I noticed that I was easily fourteen inches taller than any of the villagers, and bigger than all but the blacksmiths and warrior types.) I had little trouble keeping up with the pack, even when they were running. (They were a little faster, but I could run far longer.)

At some point my hostess actually paid me, and then told me about the kingdom'c bright city center, where there were rumors of magic looking glasses like my own, and people who know how to make them work again. I wasn't sure mine would fully recover from the water damage, but when I powered it up, it did come up, and there was no crackling. Still no signal, though. I agreed that a trip to the capitol was probably in order, so we spent my wages on outfitting me and the dog for travel. I was amazed when she allowed me to put a puppy backpack on her, but she seemed to be excited about the trip, too.

This was the point where I woke. I really didn't want to, as I wanted to find out more about this interesting world.

Little John, Lionized. Alien Hunting,

The most memorable part of the night found me walking next to a green hillside with J and Teddy. On the hill was a lovely red fluffy tabby. He meowed an invitation to come and pay attention to him, and he reminded me so much of Little John, that I just had to climb up the hill to greet him. Up close it was obvious that he wasn't Little John, and I was a tad disappointed at that. I sat with him for a while, and we were joined by Teddy and J. We decided the day was so pleasant that we would just lay down and take a short nap in the sun.

I woke to a giant paw on my face, I opened one eye. It was a young male lion. My heart started to race, but as I looked into the lion's eyes, I realized that this was Little John. He chuffed at me, and I could hear Little John in his admittedly much louder and deeper voice. He rolled next to me, and Teddy climbed over me to lick his large face while I rubbed his belly. I grabbed his mane and scruffed him up, hugging him. I sobbed into his mane and he pulled back and licked my face with his huge raspy tongue. I always knew he was a lion at heart. I was sad that we had to leave. We bonked foreheads before he loped up the hill and then over the top out of sight. Teddy wound around my legs, and I picked him up, hugging him close as we half slid, half walked down the grassy hillside.


Later, J and I were walking in a neighborhood with lots of brick and white picket fences at the edges of perfectly manicured lawns. One side of the street was much higher than the other, and the sidewalk had a four to six foot or so retaining wall next to it. J couldn't see over the wall into the yards, and even I had to go on tiptoe to see into some of them. They had very steep driveways and we had stop and look carefully at each one. Suddenly, the sky was full of flying wings, and little aliens in jet backs fell from them, landing all around us across the lawns and on the roofs of the houses. Oddly, they didn't seem to have any interest in us, nor any people who abandoned their houses. J started calling our neighbors and telling them to run outside. Soon most of the neighborhood were outside, being ignored just like us. We could hear shooting and screams from inside some of the houses, though, so we worried that the aliens were just waiting to take us out.

Just as suddenly as the aliens had arrived, they were racing out into the streets and running away. Curious, I followed them, sending pictures back to J on the phone. The aliens gathered together in a cul-de-sac at the end of the street, then one of the flying wings flew over, and blasted them! The aliens were almost instantly charred, I could feel the heat wash across me (Good thing I'd stayed pretty far back. I could see the same thing happening across the valley, alien ship after alien ship firing on their own. I noticed that there were a couple of aliens who were delayed getting to the charred area, they looked just as shocked as I was. They dropped their weapons and jet packs, and took off, hopping over fences and running down the street. I sent video and suggested that we should try to catch them alive, or we would never know what just happened. So the great alien hunt began.

There was a third dream between these two, but I can't even recall the one word title I'd given it to try to prompt my memory. I really should do this first thing in the morning rather than waiting for my breaks.

RGB Troll Theater

I was a member of a troupe of performers, and the story we were performing was a tale of the rise to power and terrifying fall of an historic leader of the Tribe. Trolls were divided into three castes, Orange-Red were the political leaders, the Blue trolls were the educational and religious, and the Green trolls were the warriors. The lightest tinted of each group were the workers, farmers, and craftsman, and performers, of society. Being born to a family of depth (or strong hue) didn't mean you would inherit the hue, every troll started out like a clean white parchment.

There was something about your rank in society and your position that caused your skin to change as you aged, and there were even the rare trolls who took on more than one color. I was playing the roll of one of those sorts. My color, however, was applied by a combination of lights and makeup.

The show was a progressive show. In other words, the entire production moved through the village, and the regions around it, each change of location representing a new act in the performance. In many of my performance dreams, I became, as the dream progresses, more and more unsure of my actual lines in the show. (I think because I am waking up.) This time, however, I was very familiar with the show, and the story, and the character. As we moved into our second act, some of the crew, and performers were taking the ground route, to entertain our following audience, and some of the others were taking an actual airship. The trollop I was infatuated with was taking the airship. I tried to impress her with a little bit of magic, as I had recently discovered my flesh turning blue, and found I had shamanistic control over the wind and sand. It was getting so pronounced that in the first act, I no longer needed the blue lights and blue makeup.

At the end of the first act, I used my new power to stir up the dust under the red and blue spotlights that were on my left and right. This was a pivotal moment in the plot, my beloved whisked away by a powerful prince in his airship, and I a lowly shaman, had decided to take matters into my own hands in her regard, but there was a choice that had to be made, a path to choose, and until this point in history, no troll had ever chosen a blended path, at least not with any great success. (I knew as a modern troll that there were many such folks, even amongst our company and in our audience, but this was a historical piece and the castes were much more rigid in that time.) I stood as the lights picked up my swirling dust and the they swung over to each light a half of me...then suddenly the performance area plunged into darkness. (Part of the show, not a surprise to us in the company.)

We slipped away into the night so I could get a light dusting of red to make me a more purple or blended looking troll. I discovered that my beloved hadn't even been watching my climactic moment at the end of the first act, so hadn't even seen the magical effect, which I could hear our audience chatting about with no small appreciation. She asked if I could do it again for her, but my reserves were too low and the sand where we were conversing was a little too wet for the slight breeze to pick up the grains. She laughed and re-boarded the airship gondola, which was winched up into the sky as the airship, with the lighting and sound crews aboard headed to the location for act two. The makeup artist looked me over and put away his red powders. "Don't know what's going on with you, did you do your own makeup?"

I hadn't. I told him that. He grew very quiet when he realized it wasn't makeup.

He pulled out a jar of tan powder and slapped it all over me. "Well, however you did it, you need to tone it down, you're too hued for the second act."

I looked down at the palm of my hand. It was indeed purple, and much darker than I remembered. I reached out with my mind and sifted through the sands, grinding the grains even smaller and making an even finer powder out of the pile of sand at my feet. I was squeezing my hands so hard that the blood spilled into the sand, and was immediately absorbed and spread throughout the growing mound. I was immediately able to control the sand and the air about it with much more ease. With a start I realized that this was some sort of blood magic, something the character I was playing could do, but almost no trolls currently practiced, as it was considered a lost art.

We began our journey, the interlude route was where I would pick up my "army" of maimed and oddly hued trolls, the outcasts and untouchables of their time. We would also pick up members fo the local audience who fit those descriptions, and they would stay on the stage with me during the second act, no longer shamed for just looking different. It was in fact, during one such performance that I had joined the company as a young troll. Now our company director was stepping down, so he'd asked me to keep an eye out for promising talent, so I really looked forward to this part of the performance, part ritual and part improv.

What was different this time, was that some of the shamanistic miracles we would just read the holy text's descriptions of...I was fairly certain I had enough control to do some of the effects, even if just to a small scale. The first event was a sand bridge allowing the character and a maimed old man to cross a ravine. The bridge was in place and the airship would light it up as I approached. With the addition of all my flying red sand, the illusion was nearly perfect. We had a lot of people follow us to the second act at that point who might not have otherwise done so. I even heard surprised gasps from some of the crown, and saw a blue shaman eying me with a suspicious look on his face. He was missing some fingers, so I motioned for him to join me. I took his hand and noticed that I was already darker blue than him, it shocked me. He nodded to me, and fell in with my army. I could see my actress friend up in the airship looking over her balcony rail, she was in the company of an Orange Red troll of pretty deep hue, and I realized I had lost her. I didn't give up, as the character I was playing proved, "hue is a temporary thing, ever changing, and fortunes and feelings change with them."

After some more fluffing the sand around the dream broke up and I woke.

Celebrity Time Tour, UFOs, and Random Voice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was now my turn to laugh.

-----

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

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

-----

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

Giving it the Old College Try

After much bouncing around and short bits of flying, I arrived at a college campus. I put away the gaffer's tape cube I had been using to fly, noticing that my hand had rubbed off one of the symbols on the cube. I chatted with a couple of young women as I headed to one of the larger lecture halls. The conversation was actually about their studies and it was a refreshing change from whatever I was used to.

When I arrived at the lecture hall, I knew the lecture was in one of the Balcony theaters, so pulled out my cube and levitated up to the lecture platform, dropping down over the rail just as my friend, the lecturer, was concluding his opening remarks about levitation and flying. I set my cube on the podium and we turned the document camera onto it.

I had to borrow a marker to re-label the sides. I then explained how the piece of alien technology that allowed the flight effect was also very sensitive and potentially dangerous, thus the thick layer of tape. Its effectiveness at reducing both the sensitivity and the micro slashing of the mechanism made the device usable and safe. The labels were really for user convenience, and didn't have any actual effect on the use of the device, other than to make sure you didn't accidentally shut it off in mid air.

There were larger devices found, and they were going to be the focus of the class. Their job, as graduate students in alien technology, was to figure out the principles that underlaid the devices' functions, in hopes that we would be able to replicate the devices.

All in all a successful lesson, and finally we emphasized the dangerous nature of the devices by setting the classroom's version on top of a ham and activating it. It chewed its way down through the ham until it was surrounded by the flesh. Apparently the devices were found in the remains of alien beasts, whose battered exteriors seemed to indicate that they'd been involved in some sort of aerial gladiatorial contests.

I then flew off to a party being hosted by a patron who had become a good friend. I was staying at a nearby hotel, but most of the artists and writers that had been invited to his mini-convention were staying at his home. (Which was the size of a college dorm, and in fact may have been one at one time.) I was pretty frothy by the time I arrived, as using the flying device required a great deal of physical activity, about the level of a good run. I went up to the second floor so I could use one of the showers to clean up before the late morning events.

I bumped into N, her hair was now red with blond and white highlights, very frizzy similar to when I first met her, but about mid back length, what little of it actually hung down, it mostly framed her face in a poofy cloud. It wasn't a particularly attractive look, but it was certainly dramatic. She was back to her insulting self in this dream, but it didn't really bother me. When she pointed out how sweaty and disgusting I was I just shrugged, "I just ran over from the college, so yep, I need a shower and a change of clothing."

Someone asked me why my condition was such a big deal as I headed to the showers. I explained that she was my ex, and they just grunted in understanding.

When I got cleaned up my patron was meeting with the attendees. Someone was talking about the wide variety of attendees to the event, and it was obvious they were vying for the patron's attention, and probably support. The F's were in the front row, and when a group of folks decided to illustrate a point made by another speaker by breaking into song, Phil turned around and asked them to pipe down as they couldn't hear the speaker. He seemed to recognize me so I waved.

I still had a towel over my head, trying to tame my hair into something reasonable looking before I had to speak. I didn't succeed, as the patron introduced me just as I was drying out the inside of my ears. "Sorry, I just ran over and needed a quick cleanup."

"You could have stayed here, you know."

"I'm at the college all week, though, so the hotel was closer."

"I have cars, you know."

We bantered back and forth a bit. N was decidedly unhappy looking when it was revealed that I was the Patron's new publisher and managing editor. Some of the others I knew were much happier about it. Since my publishing house was co-branded with my patrons, I had no intention of letting my personal feelings get in the way of publishing anything that my editors and test readers liked, so no one had any real reason to worry. (Except me if my final choices proved to be unpopular.) I explained what "Un-Conventional Proceedings" was going to be, and there was applause and excitement in the room about the concept.

After the announcement my patron started meeting with individual creators. When the F's sat down I told him he should give them whatever they wanted. Even if it didn't make us all money, it would be entertaining. "Good enough for me!" was his response.

Kinda wish that dream had continued, it was just about the most fun I've had while asleep in some time.

Alien Wristwatch, for Cats

This morning I was fitting my six feline companions with wristwatches, or more accurately wrist computers. The devices allowed me to translate their mews and marrrows and meers and meows into (human) intelligible speech.

Oddly, much of their conversation seemed to involve how wonderful our new alien allies from space were, and what a wonderful peaceful world it would be if we just adopted their culture.

They were oddly silent when I asked them if that included getting along with the grasshoppers and other critters they liked to munch on. I found myself wondering what the worlds' spy networks thought of these devices, as they were everywhere, essentially allowing all the worlds higher life forms to communicate. It was pretty much devastating the meat production market in the US and several other countries, though.

Many countries around the world had tried to make it a death sentence to use the devices, interestingly, those leaders had awakened the next day with the devices strapped firmly around their foreheads for everyone to see.

No one had yet actually seen one of the aliens (or at least they weren't publicly admitting to it.) So the world was busy blaming the US or whatever super power they feared most for the devices being just about everywhere.

I personally was of the opinion that the devices were the aliens, or at least a part of them.

Sepia Tone World Invades via The Dreamlands

Sepia Tone World Invades via The Dreamlands

I had a long convoluted dream, a few nights ago, so some of the details have faded, but there were so many, I know I will tire of writing before I can capture them all.

To start, I was a butler to a family of four. I shared their home, living downstairs in a suite of rooms on the other side of the kitchen and wash rooms. The two children were in their early teens, the girl not quite two years younger than the boy. To be honest, mom was near as disinterested in her children as she could be, but still maintain the title of "Mom."

Dad was of the "All movement must be useful!" school of thought, so had developed a casual disinterest in the children's "playtime" activities so long as they didn't interfere with his own momentous and important activities. When his children were engaged in "useful" work, however, he was a very attentive and supportive figure. During those times, I was his devoted wife's only adult companion, and our relationship was complex.

I was quite in love with all of them, but the Missus and I were close intellectually and physically, I served as her masseur and social confidant as well as family butler. She was achingly beautiful, bobbed black hair, bright blue eyes, high cheekbones framing a tiny freckle spattered nose. She was lean but with gentle curves. Put her in a flapper dress and tiara and she could have stepped right out of a Roaring Twenties fantasy. She knew I loved her, and reveled in it as long as I made no demands.

A few years earlier she and her children had nursed me through a bit of bad health. It was the only time I had heard the Missus say "I love you." Her children, however were quite generous with their affection, even into their teen years referring to me as their Uncle, much to their Dad's dismay. During the same illness, however, he had, in pretty much the only way he knew how, said the same as his Missus.

"The family has convinced me to continue your pay throughout the period of your illness, no matter how long it takes you to recover. I expect that you will do something useful with the funds when you are well again. I do hope that is soon."

I had, I had invested it all, along with most of my pay every paycheck in the sorts of companies that the Mister created and served, an investment plan that had, unknown to the family, allowed me to accrue a net worth nearly as large as their own, since I had no family to spend it on.

These were the sort of random thoughts that were in my head as the family headed to the "Dreamlands Pavilion of Marvels" that had recently come to town. I was driving (of course) and the son had insisted on riding "shotgun" and was in danger of being overruled until he pointed out that he would be learning to drive soon, so wanted to observe a professional. That made me smile, even though the car was essentially a robot, it was something of a status symbol to have a human driver. In fact, it was something of a status symbol to have a driver's license, as the requirements were now quite stringent, and most people had a parking or off-road only license, they were not allowed to drive in any sort of traffic. Depending on the severity, any driving infraction could cause a person's license to be downgraded permanently. Traffic fatalities were so rare they made national news when they occurred. The daughter sat in the back between her parents, arms crossed, pouting. I knew it was just an act for her brother's sake, he would probably let her ride up front on the way back as a result.

The fair was amazing, it was a technology/science research announcement more than anything. The 'branes between us and another universe were going to be particularly close for a time this year, and then again in forty and then again in one hundred twenty years and finally one last time some three hundred sixty years from now.

After that our two worlds would be out of synch and out of touch. The first contact event had been twenty years earlier, and had been quite confusing. I was looking forward to seeing home again.

The family had managed to buy seats on the contact floor; as had I. My ticket was for a solo event later in the week. The family didn't know that I could afford such a thing, though I think the daughter suspected, she had her mother's intellect for numbers and I'd caught her snooping at my mail from time to time.

The trip home was amazingly quiet, their contact with another world had left them subdued, each sat in the back of the limo, mom and dad huddled together, and the children huddled together, whispering. I kept hearing snatches of conversation and it seemed of a language I had not heard for many years.

Once home the oddities piled up to the point that I confronted the family over dinner. "What have you done with my family?"

The family had made the same choice I had made twenty years earlier. They had swapped minds with the aliens. Mister and Missus, however were quite distraught...their hosts had not transferred out at all, and each parent was now shared. The family hugged, the alien children weeping about losing their parents. I went back to my rooms and returned with a couple of high tech baubles. I had been working to make these for twenty years, in hopes of bringing my own family over, at least their intellects. I had hoped to find people to volunteer to host them once I got them here.

The four of the family gathered together and the energies unleashed caused them to lift into the air and rotate slowly about the two baubles. The alien minds transferred perfectly into them. The family, human parents, alien possessed children sat across from one another, looking at the baubles. It seemed like a whole day passed in quiet contemplation. I brought meals and the families spoke quietly.

Finally, Dad reached out and took the bauble for the alien dad. He put it in his breast pocket and sat, "we can hear one another, share, your parents are not gone."

The Missus reached out and put the other bauble on the chain around her neck, removing the six caret diamond pendant. "We won't let them fade, we just won't!" And she knelt down and hugged the two children. I was pretty sure, at that moment, that it was the Missus that was somehow in the bauble, not the alien mom. Then she said, "where are my babies, what will happen to them, we didn't go with them!" I revised my thought, apparently the two moms were fully integrated, both speaking and interacting at once. That was an effect I and the scientists who'd sent me had not expected.

"I've got a ticket to go tomorrow. I will go and make sure our children are okay."

"But the process doesn't stick for adults!"

I've already made the trip, it will be like going home for me, we have to try.

Dad smiled. "I always knew there was something special about you."

The Missus' "me, too." had a slightly wistful sound to it.

And the transfer happened, the human from this world who had taken my teen aged body and I swapped back, exchanging memories, plans, hopes, and technological knowledge in what seemed like twenty years relived.

Then, suddenly I was home. I could feel the pressure of a hundred billion souls, the alien children, no, my children, were waiting for me in their elephant-like environment suits. Most places in this world were not actually safe to expose oneself to. My debriefing was to disgorge myself into a bauble and then the bauble was replicated and I was decanted back into myself. It was odd knowing there was an intellectual double of me now, one that would, as one of the first Dream Walkers to return home, likely be preserved forever, a form of immortality that made me, for a moment jealous. The children were surprised to see that I was me.

The first Dream Walkers had been created from data taken from the alien world twenty years prior during the first exchange. DNA data. The face that greeted them was indeed mine, but considerably younger. We looked to be contemporaries rather than parent to child aged.

In twenty years, some things had changed. The political climate was stricter in many ways, resources were stretched even thinner, and the government was hoping to export a significant number of the population the next time the 'branes crossed. They had no intention, however, of hosting the other party of the exchange. It would be a humanity crushing invasion if the current government had their way. I knew, from what had happened with the bauble technology, that would not be needed. The mind matrixes worked, and there would be people willing to adopt our refugees, perhaps even to use the cloning technology to create new bodies for dimension hoppers out among the asteroids and other planets. With the advances we'd made, the human world would not need to suffer the same sort of resource depletion and could then afford to expand to the stars, before their star became the bloated red monstrosity that was ours.

Outside, the children and I walked to the electric slideway, our suits locking into formation with other travelers and we were whisked to the former home of the Dream Walkers who now lived in luxury on the children's home world. They were very quiet, trying to get used to their new selves. They looked like twins, one boy and one girl, each had received the correct gendered dreamer, so that was a break, we were all around fifteen or sixteen years old, not much of a change for them, but quite a shock for me. Nothing hurt, I was slim again (and vowed to stay that way, not that there would be much choice on this world, even if I was now a minor celebrity, or at least, my bauble was a minor celebrity, almost no one had surplus calories here.)

We arrived at the Dreamer's apartment. Six rooms, very utilitarian, very, well, poor. The trip under the bloated red sun, angry sunspots yellow and black mottled its surface, the brown sky, the sickly brown/green water, the endless tan buildings with spindly fruit plants on every balcony and roof with their alien red leaves and dark splotchy fruit had served to create a sepia toned mood for a sepia toned world. The children sat quietly, sorting through their clothing, trying to find something they might like. "Don't they like color here?"

"I didn't know it would be so drab."

"I thought they were wealthy, like us."

I assured them that having an apartment with two balconies was quite luxurious, and that the parents had to have been quite wealthy to have afforded to have two children. The Hardy Boys like love of a great adventure and mystery slowly started to kick in. We went out onto one of the balconies. The fruit plants were well taken care of, despite not looking like much to the children. I pointed out across the slideway. Large ships were docked, sometimes eighteen deep, their sails and electric masts stowed, glowing a reddish glow under the sun. I pointed out the white glow of individual lights where they occasionally reflected of some polished surface.

"We call them soul lights. Everyone has one for nighttime use, or when you want to see the proper color of things." I rummaged around in my pockets and found mine. They charged through motion, or by dropping them in the charging pocket of a suit. "You'll only use this when you really need it, as it's considered ostentatious to do otherwise."

"So we're supposed to stumble around in the dark?"

"It isn't dark very long here, the nights are fairly short." I pointed out at the sun. "It's big, takes a long time to rise and set. Look up over there," I pointed to a darkening part of the sky. There were bright objects in the brown sky. "Giant power stations that focus sunlight down to the planet even at night. There's enough spill to get around by it."

"It really is alien, isn't it. Even if people are still pretty much people."

That night I dreamed of the electric elephant suits, we were galloping across the brown sky full of brown clouds with barely enough light to make out the rivets of our environment suits. We were headed up to The Elevator, sort of a prize for being hosts to the aliens. As the three of us headed off to our adventures, I realized that my companions didn't know that the average life span of the natives of this world were around 600 years or so. I also wondered if they were fully aware that there would likely be no going back for them.

Aliens Crash into Hospital

DROG20140109

Sunday night the thick layer of clouds over the Poway basin were lit up like lightning. From the vantage point of the VZ’s back yard I watched a car sized meteor clip the top of Pomerado Hospital and smash the medical building across the street. Smaller chunks of smoking rock smashed into the ridge line and into the parking lots leaving craters and showering the hill sides with burning debris. Mr. VZ brought out a pair of binoculars and a hunting rifle with a scope. I was looking through the scope when I spotted creatures coming out of the largest meteorite. They were in some sort of dull metallic protective suit, and I knew they had to be tough to have survived that crash. They started randomly shooting a weapon that looked like a large stapler, however, golden yellow bolts flamed out on everyone and everything they hit.

I figured that anything that could survive crashing in a meteor wasn't likely to be phased by anything as simple as a bullet. However, I had the rifle in hand, and it looked like there was some sort of seam at what looked like a faceplate of the creature. Even if you couldn't hurt the critter inside, I wondered if we could blind them. I lined up a shot at one of the aliens who'd climbed on top of an SUV and was just firing at the other cars in the parking lot, especially ones where people had taken cover. The shot struck the corner of the faceplate near some little round indentation, and the thing shattered. The creature turned, trying to see where the attack had come from, dropped its weapon, grabbing at its head, then collapsed. "Get online, we need to let people know how to stop them."

Indeed, twitter was full of chatter from all over the world (hash tag "alienInvasion") so we added to the postings with a quick drawing of the alien helmet and the section I had hit with the rifle.

I looked over the back fence, this time with the binoculars. The aliens were suddenly no longer visible to us, having gone to cover. Their firing had stopped, and I could hear the sirens and see lights from a police helicopter. After a couple of minutes I saw another alien fighting off the local sheriffs, their bullets just bouncing off of the alien armor. I took up the rifle and made another shot at the sensor spot, but missed. In the confusion of the firefight, it didn't notice. Suddenly, I noticed a lot of bullets hitting the thing in the prime target area, finally one connected and the creature went down. A third alien appeared, but this one was holding an arm up over the weak spot, only occasionally uncovering it before moving to a different position, and continually firing. I wondered how long the alien could keep up that rate of fire.

A police car peeled out as the alien crossed a parking lane and intercepted the creature, there was a loud crash and the car and alien slid thirty or forty feet. The alien stood up and backed away from the car, unfortunately the weak spot was on the other side of it from my perspective. It raised its weapon and then backed up a little further before firing into the engine compartment of the wrecked car. Apparently it didn't want to be hit by the splash of its own weapon. I added that to my twitter feed. (Well, had CL add it as I was still waiting for an opportunity to take another shot.)

Alien Invasion x 2

     I dreamed that there was a huge alien vessel hovering over the parking lot of the high school where I used to go (and work.) It was summer, so there were openly a dozen vehicles or so. The ship had a large open hanger-like structure below and lots of textured panels and pipes above with several decks of observation windows around the middle of the vessel. There was an obvious bridge like structure jutting out from the side. Also on the underside, were twelve to sixteen turret like structures.

     As people got out of their cars to look up at the thing, the turrets began to sweep a bright blue beam out across the parking lot. When the blue beam struck a person, a much wider, lightning chased beam would snap onto them and they lifted into the air, suspended in the lightning, arms and legs dangling limply.

     People began to dive back into their cars. I was glad that school was out, as there weren't thousands of students hovering around the place. I was on a motorcycle so had no where to hide. I dropped the mirrored faceplate of my chrome helmet and pulled the rear view mirror off the bike. I reflected the blue beam as it swept towards me. It took only a moment to reflect it back up to the ship, and when it hit the emitter, the beam snapped out. Still, the white lightning filled beam engulfed me and I was lifted into the air towards the ship. Other turrets began to track towards me. As their beams struck I reflected the the blue portion away, hitting as many of the emitters as I could. After I'd disabled a good half a dozen, the aliens stopped trying to hit me with them and I was swung over towards the hanger. I could see that there were several unconscious or possible dead people on the hanger deck floor. There were little grey headed aliens rushing about, dragging them onto stretchers and then hauling them away.
     
     I landed with a thud, and used the momentum to roll over two approaching aliens. I heard crunching as they went down below my bulk. I apologized as I got to my feet and headed for an open hatchway, mirror clutched firmly in hand.

     I don't think they were prepared for a conscious arrival, as there didn't seem to be any guards whatsoever. I made my way towards the bridge, or at least what I hoped was the bridge, unsure what I was going to be able to do about any of this and expecting to be killed at any moment. Perhaps the tinfoil hat people were right, as my chrome plated helmet seemed to do a great job of keeping me from being brought down. The mirror was really useful, as when I reflected a beam from an alien hand weapon onto another alien, the target would go limp and then slump to the ground. I picked up one of the little ray guns, but couldn't make it work. I put the gun in one of the cargo pockets of my jump suit. It bumped against my leg much more forcefully than I thought something that size should.

     I finally reached the doors to the bridge, I could see the high school stadium out of the windows, we were hovering about the level of the press box and score boards. An alien stepped around from the side of a command chair and I reflected his weapon back onto him. He slumped to the floor, dropping his ray gun as he fell. I stooped over and claimed it, placing it in the cargo pocket of the other leg, since I figured I wouldn't be able to make that work, either.

     As I came into the bridge, I could see the captain, or at least the leader. At least, I assume he was the leader, as he had more decorations on his uniform and head. He also kept his weapon holstered at his side. We looked at one another for a few moments.

     Then he rather confidently started asking me questions. I answered him politely, even using "sir." I seemed to eventually convince him that we weren't exactly the monsters in this little scenario.

     After a while he seemed to be satisfied with what he's heard, and ordered everyone returned to the parking lot below. I sensed, somehow, that he was telling the truth. He explained that they were unharmed and would return to consciousness in a short time.

     Then we came to the point of discussing what to do with me. I suggested that there were plenty of people who would voluntarily come with them for any nondamaging program of investigation. (I knew there were some who would volunteer even if there was the possibility of harm.) He indicated that he felt I was amusing, and calm, and just who they needed. He asked if I would be their spokesperson, their ambassador. "Please," I thought, "just say it..."

     The alien laughed, it wasn't a human laugh, but I recognized it immediately. "Take me to your leader." I could feel the alien smiling as he ordered a course for Washington DC. As the ship turned, he then ordered the beams to pick up my motorcycle.
    

    
     In the second Alien Invader dream, the aliens weren't so polite, and didn't seem to be able to be reasoned with. They were just staking out mineral deposits and mines and destroying anyone who came near. they had achieved atmospheric superiority in just a few days, their flying wings crackled overhead almost constantly. every so often they would swoop down and destroy any large congregation of people and machines, otherwise, they left us alone, almost as if we just didn't matter. Aircraft on the ground they left alone, passenger airplanes they had left alone, until some Middle Eastern army got the idea of loading one with explosives and flying it into one of the alien's mining rigs. The attack had been successful, the rig was obliterated, the mining operation there abandoned. However, the aliens responded by shooting down everything in the air at the time.

      Air passenger service had not then been restored. 
     
      It was also not a good idea to drive your vehicle directly at an alien wing or contraption, as they would immediately open fire. Any time an alien was killed, the aliens would retaliate, killing a hundred or more humans in the immediatly closest area. There was no communication, only slaughter and the working of machinery. Once they had killed enough people, they would simply stop, and return to whatever they had been doing. So, if one heard alien weapon fire, it was best to flee or hide deep underground until the retaliation was over. Some people reported surviving by playing possum, but there was evidence in other events of people being shot while they lay on the ground, so running away or locking yourself into a bunker seemed to be the best choices.
     
      I had come across a crashed alien wing, and because it had been so sudden, I didn't have a chance to turn away before I heard the amplified alien voice. I saw the pilot was pinned. I moved up and used some of the wreckage to pry him loose. His blood was a deep blue green color. I used a plastic grocery bag and some napkins from my "to go" lunch to make a bandage. Then I helped the alien up and helped him to my car. The alien pointed down a road and I started driving. Every so often the alien spoke, and I could hear replies. He would indicate that I should slow, then pointed and I would turn. Eventually we came to a small alien outpost. He indicated that I should stop and I did so. He tried to get out of the car, but couldn't. I got out and opened the door, then helped him out, and then even helped him approach the alien outpost. Eventually I ended up carrying him.
     
      Aliens, armed appeared on the firing platform, but the big guns didn't track me. I carried the alien right up to the ground entry. Terrified. The alien indicated that I should put him down. I checked his bandages pulling the ends of the wounds back together and tightening everything up. I walked away but turned back. No one had opened the door, though the aliens had left their firing platform.
     
      I waited, still, no one had come out of the outpost to pick up the alien pilot. The alien was speaking. I had no idea what he was saying, of course. I looked at the outpost. The big guns were still not tracking me, so I went back to the alien, taking off my jacket. I made him lay back and elevated his leg (especially the wounded one.) The alien clutched my arm, just above the wrist, it was shivering. I grabbed its wrist as well, sitting down next to it. We waited, together. Eventually a flying wing arrived. Oddly, the outpost defenses powered up and the guns tracked the vehicle as it settled, Harrier like, just in front of my car. An alien got out, actually moving to check out my car. The alien muttered, tried to speak. It weakly pointed to the wing.
     
      I shouted out, lifting up the pilot, who tried to hold on to me. The alien turned around, saw me walking towards them and reached for his weapon. The alien I was carrying spoke again, and I could hear the muffled reply. The other alien lowered his weapon and beckoned me closer. Another alien appeared in the hatch of the ship momentarily, then vanished. The wing powered up and I could feel air and heat rushing past my legs. The alien walked over and took his pilot from me after inspecting my bandaging job.
     
       They both stayed, just for a moment. Looking at me. Then, both almost together, quite clearly said "thank you" heavily accented. I waited to make sure they were aboard their ship and then walked back to my vehicle, which was directly in front of the wing's weapons. The wing lifted off the ground and turned around as I got into my car. The wing tilted left, then right. Then straightened up and took off.
       
        I sat in my car, shaking. Wondering how badly I had just screwed up.
       
        A few moments later, the ground began to rumble. A shadow blocked out the sky, and an alien ship hovered over the outpost. A moment later the alien crew came out of the outpost and were suddenly lifted up into the hovering alien vessel, followed momentarily by the outpost itself. I watched the alien ship move out across the valley, picking up outpost after outpost.
       
        When I got home, covered with alien blood, the news was all filled with pictures of the alien pullout, but just of our little neighborhood. Essentially everything within several miles of where the pilot was recovered.
       
        "What happened to you?"
       
        "I found an injured alien and took him back to his people."
       
        "What! They could have killed you!"
       
        "But they didn't."  I pointed to the television. "It seems to have worked out okay, though."

Gremlin Catastrophe

I dreamed I was a Gremlin (thanks ET and Elizabeth, I'm certain) on a
chunk of floating planet. Unfortunately, not the sort of Gremlin with
magical powers, so perhaps more like Goblins. The chunk was a huge
volcanic mountain with chambers in the formerly molten core. There were
close to seven hundred survivors who'd made it underground and managed
to seal off the caves to preserve both water and air. A nuclear power
plant provided energy and heat as well as the power to
electromagnetically shield the living areas, sort of.

The chunk of planet we were on was large enough to provide a bare
minimum of gravity, so we had pipes going to the former surface of our
world, dredging up as much plant and animal life as would fit, along
with air and water before it completely boiled away. I didn't know that
we could actually survive for long, as we'd already lost a couple of our
grow lights, and the replacement stock was very small, only about half a
dozen lamps.

I calculated, with the rest of the survival team, that we had all of
about a year and a half to survive on stored supplies, so our plant and
animal (insects, mostly) growing was going to have to be an incredible
success in order for us to last any longer.

We were apparently a few months into this when I was elected to
represent the non-scientific community of survivors, even though it was
partly my process that had hollowed out the air tight spheres in the
magma.

One of the groups major desires was to get radio working, in case there
were other survivors out there. Even though the science team was not
sure that was truly useful, they agreed to allow some small expenditure
of resources to construct the antenna on the surface. My survivors had
to make the environment suits, though, and provide the technicians. I
volunteered as did another.

The suits were hand made from donated and scavenged materials brought
back by the robotic vacuums that roamed the surface. Meanwhile, we came
up with a way of coiling the antenna wires and then throwing them out to
make up the antenna array. We practiced a few times in one of the
larger lava spheres, one that was partly open to the surface and
therefore nearly a vacuum. We discovered some small snags in the plan,
the wires would sometimes kink up and loop around, causing waves to
build up in them and then they would break. I requested a robot to haul
the lines around, but was denied, as the science team wanted to preserve
the batteries for emergency use. There were a number of technological
item that we weren't going to be able to replace anytime soon, if ever.

The other volunteer and I talked about the plan, and we decided that
rather than just popping out to the surface and tossing the wires
around, one of us would roll out the wires. It meant a couple of hours
of outside time, rather than just a few minutes. It may have been
chauvinistic of me, but I insisted that I should be the one to roam,
partly because I was stronger, and partly because I was actually
smaller.

We made the trip to the surface and one of the science council members
brought me a spare oxygen tank on the sly. That was going to make a huge
difference, adding at least another couple of hours of hard labor time
to the task (presuming no leaks.) We stepped out onto the surface from
the elevator air lock. The night sky was fantastically clear, I could
see the molten remains of the planet spiraling out away from us, the sun
was glinting off of the fragments of the world, many of which still
glowed white hot from whatever had sundered our planet. I saw that there
were some larger chunks still floating whole, and they looked as though
they might have splashes of light on them.

Whether the light was just from the fires of destruction, or signs of
other survivors, we couldn't tell, but were hoping to find out. I ran
the wires out across the surface in long bounds, maintaining tension the
on the wire enough to keep it from kinking. I anchored each end on a
glass insulting stake and we crisscrossed the crater with wire, then put
the receiver up at the focus of the makeshift parabolic antenna. With
about half an hour of air to spare we headed back for the elevator when
there was a huge burst of static on our walkie-talkies.

We looked up. Overhead was a huge blue and green fragment hanging in a
white circle of white hot debris. It was larger than our little
planetoid, and, unfortunately closing fast. I was actually more
concerned about the antenna's survival than my own. We raced back to the
airlock, telling the people below to brace themselves, something large
was coming. It wasn't until we got back below that we found out how
large.

The science council was in our little radio room, crowded around our
small speaker, chattering excitedly to someone about the inbound portal.


I was confused.

The white hot debris wasn't debris, but an interstellar portal, one that
had been poorly aimed, one that had accidentally ripped through our
world. I was a little upset to know that the council had known about the
portal. (Thus why they had been so eager to deploy our magma bubble
process all around the world.) They were now communicating with the
portal's owners on the other side, negotiating a rescue.

The rescue consisted of pulling part of our hunk of planet through the
wormhole, and dropping it onto a world that was being terraformed. We
would be evacuated to a large stable mesa on the planet, several hundred
rescue bags were being delivered to the surface above the large empty
bubble we had used as our rehearsal room. Several thousand more were
waiting to be delivered as we discovered and located other survivors.
The wormhole was a large version of the small vacuum hose carrying
robots we'd been using to scavenge up our survival supplies. Only it
sucked up planets and deposited them on this huge framework of a world,
to which we were going to be delivered as well.

I started rounding up the survivors and getting them to the hallways
leading to the large sphere, I was soon suited up again, and hauling
large silvery spring loaded bags into the bubble, where they rolled
slowly down to the bottom of the sphere next to the door. My partner and
I then rolled the bags into the airlock, where a family would grab one
and head out to the elevator. From there, like a large hamster ball, the
family would roll the bag out to the former parking lot of the facility.
We had to them all there in just a few hours. I don't know how we did
it, but we did.

A lobe of the portal swooped down and they, and the parking lot, were
gone. A few minutes later, we heard them shouting and cheering over the
radio, they had made it.

The two of us who'd stayed behind, though, to manage the communications
with other survivors, were not going to be so fortunate. Until my
partner remembered that there was an airfield nearby. We said our
goodbyes over the radio, then suited up one last time. We bounded across
the remains of the facility, watching the portal grow ever larger. We
found the airport, and most of the planes were a jumbled mess, but there
in a chunk of asphalt was a small bi-wing, staked to the ground. My
partner squeezed into the open cockpit, then I released all of the
tie-downs. I took the longest one with me.

There was an electric cart nearby, I stuck the nose wheel tie down in
its grill and started it up, then jammed the accelerator. I managed to
climb onto the wing and then into the front cockpit. The tie-down went
taut, and we started rolling along behind the little cart.

Since there was little atmosphere by this point, I had no actual
steering control, so just hoped the little cart would roll off the end
of the long slap of concrete and asphalt with enough speed to pull us
out, off the mountainside, and then through the portal well in front of
the mass of planet behind us. Well, that was the plan, anyway.

The little cart hit a bump, and bounced up off the tarmac. It rotated
and struck the ground on its two right wheels. It scooted forward a bit,
then teetered over onto its side. The tie-down strap went slack. The
cart was sliding to a stop, directly in front of us. I climbed out and
pushed on the right wing, then tried to keep pushing, but the low
gravity made getting traction difficult. I managed to tilt the wing up
and over the cart, then had to struggle to catch back up to the plane. I
dug my feet in and pushed hard, trying to stay on the ground and push at
the same time.

We approached the end of the tarmac, where much of the mountain had
fallen away. The small plane tipped up slightly as it bumped over the
shallow ridge the defined the broken runway, and momentum carried it
over the edge. I jumped after it, overtaking it, and several feet above
it. My partner had pulled in the tie-down strap and tossed it out in
front of me.

We hit the surface of the portal, and there was atmosphere. The plane
stalled beneath me and I grabbed the end of the strap. I shot over the
top wing and my fall pulled the plane's nose down, breaking the stall.
We fell, I pulled myself up the strap, watching the first bit of the
mountain hit the surface of the portal, and explode into fire. It was
gaining on us.

"Start the engine!" I shouted, but my partner waited until I was past
the engine and hanging on to the wing struts before trying.

I could feel the heat above us. The engine sputtered. I prayed that the
fuel system was sealed enough for the fuel to still exist. I worried
that the lubrication of the motor might have boiled away in the vacuum.
The propeller turned and I dove head first into the cockpit, trying not
to hit the flight controls as I tucked myself into the flight harness. I
put us into a slight roll and tried to aim for the nearest edge of the
mass being torn up by the portal. Small bits of debris pinged off the
hull and wings around us. The plane lurched as the engine coughed and
sputtered, cutting into the thin air enough to pull us forward.

Our radio crackled to life, the council asking what was going on. "Hell
raining down on this world, how do we get to you?" I asked, but there
was no reply, just repeated calls for updates on the situation. I
realized they must be out of our radio's range.

There was no answer for several seconds, long enough for us to steer
away from the debris falling past us, and soon any answer was blocked
out by intense static interference. I started looking for signs of life,
but there were none, deep canyons and crevasses with an odd silvery gray
framework were slowly being covered by molten rock that seared the sky
and crashed behind us with continuous shock waves that pushed us on the
front of a roasting wave of heat that made controlling the plane
difficult. We dove for well over a minute, our planet roaring through
the portal, being sucked to its final location a bit at a time as it
ground against the portal's surface, torn and collapsing to the ground
far below.

As we got closer to the ground I could see signs of plant life in the
distance, and we both decided to head in that direction, even though, as
far as we knew, we might be flying in exactly the wrong direction.
Clouds blotted out the sun and lighting arced all around us. The heat
began to be unbearable, our little suit batteries finally starting to
run down. We put the plane into a dive, building up our airspeed to the
red-line. My partner let me fly while she tried to find something on the
radio other than static. I told her to try the walkie-talkies, too.

There was nothing, however, but static and heat. At least both tanks
read "full" and when we got lower the air was cooler and smoother. I
spotted several lakes and meandering rivers in the distance and gently
nudged the plane in that direction, we needed to find flat ground to set
down on if we ever expected to be able to take off again. Problem with
grassy fields is that you couldn't see how bumpy they might be from the
air, so a long stretch of gravel shoreline seemed like a better plan. I
found myself wishing we'd looked for a float plane.

The radio crackled and sputtered, but we could make out our council,
we'd been flying in mostly the right direction, to judge by the Vortac
radios, once I got them tuned to the same frequency.

I wondered how their radio was working at that distance, but it dawned
on me that we were probably using a radio from the group that killed our
world. I flew for a few minutes about ninety degrees to our former
course and then took another bead on the radio. The lines were very
nearly parallel, either their radio was moving, or we were hundreds of
miles from their location.

The dream jumped ahead several days. We'd set a lean-too up using the
wing of the plane as a roof. We'd apparently just about run out of fuel,
and were only using the engine to charge the batteries to keep the radio
going. (I figured we could listen about an hour a day for the next five
months or so.)

We'd heard other survivors on the radio, even managed to talk a few
moments to some of them as they passed so far overhead that we couldn't
see them, so knew our little group wasn't the only one that survived. I
kept a fire burning and hoped that someone would fly over and see our
bright yellow plane from the air. We'd managed to find grain and fruit
that was edible, as well as some fish-like things. (Information from the
radio helped identify animals that were safe.) My partner was confident
that rescue would only be a matter of waiting for the collection of our
planet to cease, then the aliens would be able to fly out and pick us
up, they were too busy rescuing others at the moment.

Another time jump. We were indeed rescued, but had to leave the plane
behind. I took the radios and the battery, though, just in case. I was
in a group that was overlooking the deposited remains of our world,
still molten and glowing, but with odd bits of other planes and loose
remnants of debris that had somehow been cast out from the periphery of
the storm and littered about this new world. I'd found some old phone
bills, along with the other papers that had somehow survived the intense
heat, or been blown away from the cataclysm.

It was all sort of depressing. The aliens were very tall, about two to
two and a half times our size, but oddly similar in construction. They
didn't have tails, though. They were very, very, sorry; and seemed to be
doing everything they could to rescue whatever populations they had
found still alive, they had even turned over their pre-built colonies to
us. Still, from a world of several billion souls, we now numbered only
in the thousands.

I looked down at the pile of papers I had collected and then let them
drop from the ledge I was standing on. They fluttered down into the
still molten remains of our old world and vanished in a series of
flashes. I hoisted my radio pack and headed back to our observation
tower.

Cecil and the Alien Apocolypse

In this dream, I found myself behind the wheel of Cecil, my old '69 Plymouth Satellite. I'd found it parked on the top of an abandoned parking garage, and had, for some reason, taken the old keys as a sort of good luck charm when the aliens attacked.

The aliens were long gone, having either been defeated, or having found what they were looking for, gone on their way. The human world had been pretty much left in a complete shambles, however. Oddly, a rather largish group of aliens had also been left behind, but not voluntarily, it would seem. One of them was now traveling with me. It climbed into the passenger seat after tossing it's collection of bags into the back seat next to my rollie and backpack. After I put the pair of 5 gallon cans in the trunk, I climbed into the driver's seat. I turned the engine over, only slightly amazed that it started on the first try. The V-8 rumbled in the enclosed space, setting off car alarms several rows in all directions.

"That's my baby, I missed you." I patted the dashboard, it had been restored, as had the seats, and was now a plush dark brown pile. The beige vinyl seats had been redone in dark brown and grey herringbone, very attractive. The steering wheel had also been replaced, a bentwood wheel polished to a high gloss. I carefully backed the car out and started down the ramp to exit the parking garage. I had it in mind to head back towards home, to check on family and friends, and to switch over to Little Red, who would be quite a bit more quiet, not to mention getting fifty MPG versus fifteen.

I tried to explain how the seat belt worked. To a creature with no true permanent form, I suppose it seemed an odd thing. Their own craft "seats" were essentially buckets with padded holes around the top rim. After a bit I gave up and just told it to "hold on a best you can." It oozed down into the floor area.

We drove past the other empty cars, only occasionally setting off a car alarm as we drove by. My companion slouched down further in the passenger seat floor, apparently frightened of the noise. I suppose I should have been a little more worried about the noise as well, just as we exited the parking structure to head down the four story exterior spiral, there was a loud explosion on the exposed part of the exit ramp. The structure rocked and I managed to get us to a stop before plunging into the wrecked and still smoking hole in the exit ramp spiral. Still, one of the front tires dipped onto the abyss. I was glad the Plymouth was rear wheel drive and was able to pull us back up to safety.

"What the hell? It's not like we're a threat to anyone!"

We got out and picked our gear up, back on foot, I lowered our bags by rope down to the bottom of the spiral, then, trying to stay on the sturdiest parts of the rubble we scampered down as best we could. I'd left Cecil parked with the keys in him. Thinking I would go back up and try pushing him over to the entry ramp, and this time just letting him coast down silently.

Raptor Mesa

The first part of the dream I remember is running across the dusty orange brown desert in search of a place to take cover before the sun came fully over the horizon. I wanted to stop running and be tucked away long enough for the chill of night to take away my excess heat. I spotted a mesa in the distance and angled over towards it.

The mesa was further away than I thought, but that meant the shadowed side would stay in shadow much longer, so I headed in that direction, waking up a pack of raptors as I ran by their hidden den. They may a sort of odd howling noise and bolted after me. I just kept running, knowing that I was faster than them, and would outlast them. Though they might stalk me for hours if I couldn’t find a route that discouraged them.

That route seemed to offer itself up as a climb to the top of the mesa, or at least near the top. I made my way around to the north side and found a likely crack that rose all the way to the top of the stone mountain. I started climbing, only having to kick one of the raptors back down as he grappled with my foot. When he collided with the ones below him, they all backed away and sang mournfully all the way back to their den. I still kept climbing.

Once near the top, I found a passage through a narrow tunnel into the depressed top of the mesa, I was surprised to discover that it was shaped more like a caldera valley than a mesa. I started down the ridge when I spotted more raptors. I began to head back, when I realized that they were wearing clothing, and had much larger heads than the ones in the desert below. They seemed to come to the same conclusion about me and we compared clothing for a moment before they beckoned be down. I was still wary of their rather large collection of long sharp teeth, but something about them seemed peaceful enough.

The whole dream was sort of Burroughs-like, but without the wildly proficient protagonist. In fact, on that score it seemed more like I was a complete newbie to the world, and had been dropped in place with nothing but a few chocolate bars, a canteen and a pocket knife.

We reached the intelligent Raptor’s village just before the dream ended, it was a series of round, thick-walled domes planted over with tall grasses and under the shade of several very large trees. They had round windows, with a thick bulgy glass deeply set into them. (Which is how I could tell the walls were thick.)

Not Quite Transformers

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 they might grow attached to us. 

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 and resources 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.

Alien Turnover, Lost Charges

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.

Trans Dimensional Rift War

          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.)