Fevered Dream

Started with our little community theater group in Dream City, I'm in the second seat of the first row. The show is going, the audience is full of former cast members and parents, and friends, and the recently homeless, watching, and singing along. It is a run through, working rehearsal, but with a few stops as possible. It is going well. familiar music for everyone.

Take the stage with your friends, the writer and director urge, looking at me for permission. Who am I to deny these people, all these talents, their fun?

There is the digging to enlarge the stage, mounds of stored flats and frames and crates,
Lead down below the hall to the back of the ruined temple on the other side of the block.
And an exterior door.
Street Level.
A short walk to verify, Ware house of house of storage for house of horrors. (See us in Octobre)

It is one of my warehouses, holding a now defunct show's sets I cannot make myself evict.
I smile.

I walk through to a street, a band was set up,
Streets blocked, then been told their promised gig could no go forward.
This City must Move
Without them.

Pack it all up.

Interrupted Nuptials, famous vocal cords grown old, but still grasping at the youth promised of wedded bliss. Fran-San Cisco will not have them.

Take the stage, both of you,
Join the show,
Take the stage with our little community of performers, we're moving the audience into the ground floor,
Opening all the crates.
Under UV lights,
The faded sets like cartoon fireworks, all horror long faded.
We perform the Entre` Act
The choreographer adjusts.
Then a Wedding
Then Act II
Dizzying effects,
Unforgettable Nuptials
A community restoration
"Hallelujah" sung by hundreds of voices.
"We can't sing that, we don't have the rights!"
"I wouldn't worry about that," the silver-haired groom, and owner of the song smiles. "It's meant to be sung. Just, like, this."
He smiles.
"We have three more nights..."
The band, smiles.
My director and choreographer smile.
The excavators smile,
The bride and groom look at one another, all honeymoon plans fled, they take the stage.
And smile.
We finish the song with the crowd.
And smile.

I awake, music still thundering in my ears.
I smile.

Dream City Moviplex

I was visiting the owner of the Dream City MoviPlex, located in the Old City Center's now aging mall. The carpets were starting to look a little worn, hundreds of thousands of eager steps, spilled soda and popcorn as well as the occasional toppled rope stand had taken their toll. The sound of kids eagerly headed to the latest big screen entertainment hadn't changed, though, and the place was filled with happy voices and the hubbub of pre-movie preparations and after movie celebrations.

I went up to the show office with the owner and we were conversing about the place, and the renovations he wanted to make. He knew I had some warehouses recently repaired, and wanted to move his theater equipment into storage during the renovations (as my warehouses were the closest ones to the theater.) I told him I would love to rent him the space, but perhaps he might be willing to make a different deal. I wanted him to give me a couple of passes that would allow me and a guest to attend any show that wasn't sold out when we arrived. While he was thinking about it I bumped the play button on his messaging machine. An old man's voice rang out of the office speakers with measured cadence and a sort of delightful passion - reviewing one of the theater's most recent offerings. The audio review was not particularly flattering, but was delivered with a great sense of respect and humor about the film, its director and actors, and the theater in which he saw it. I understood why the owner wanted to renovate. I then realized that the caller was actually me... True to this type of dream, once the recording was started, I couldn't find a way to turn it off. Though profoundly embarrassed, I also found the audio very entertaining, then felt guilty at my narcissistic pleasure. The plots and images of dozens of other films I'd seen there flashed through my mind, good memories, all of them, even the bitter-sweet memories of good times with past loves.

I suggested that the owner use the review of the theater as part of his web site explaining the need for the renovations, as well as capturing the lure of the place and the love for the whole enterprise. He admitted that he'd kept all of my reviews and suggestions on tape. I was flattered.

He actually wanted to put them up as a podcast about the theater's history, as my "reviews" apparently went back a couple of decades... I had no idea.

When I woke I was actually sort of stuck on the idea of the podcast, not so much for the theater review, but for the reviews/descriptions of the movies I'd seen there. They weren't anything like any movies I've actually seen in my waking city.

I wish I could recall more of the stories I'd seen on that big screen (realizing, of course, that the memories whether real or dreamed, would all be of stories that I created, remembered, or modified from my waking world.)

Five Hundred Miles

According to the song in my head, that's how far I'd walk, then I'd walk five hundred more...
I wonder what part of my brain turns the volume up on the mix tape so loud that it wakes me up from what is (was) a lovely little dream of slipping across dimensions through doors that only I can see in closets and basements that don't seem to exist for anyone else.

Strangled, Reclaimed House

Had a dream that started off serene enough. I was parked in a parking structure downtown, just checking my phone for the e-ticket to whatever event I was about to attend. And moving the porta-potty to the back seat. I heard a noise outside the car and turned just as someone reached into the car and wrapped a belt around my neck. I managed to get a couple of fingers under it before they pulled it tight, but I knew it wasn't going to be enough if I didn't act fast. I turned so the main pressure wasn't on my esophagus and kicked away from the door - it tightened the belt, but also forced the person into the side of the car. The dream ended before I could tell if that helped or not.

This morning's dream was muck nicer. I was in a hilly area outside of the Dream City, just down the hill from Cemetary House, where there were several old abandoned buildings. I had purchased them and was in the process of renovating them. I'd finished the master bedroom and a ball room and the kitchen. In the process I'd hired the displaced people to do the work, and they had renovated small homes for themselves. There was a child who no one claimed, however, so I made sure that there were a couple of rooms that could be used as bedrooms and let the child have first pick.

-----

Later in the night I was inspecting the roof and retaining wall behind the master bedroom, it was built into a hillside with a small private patio on the roof and to each side. It was starting to rain so I had gone up to the top patio to close the umbrella and take it in. I found another child sleeping in a damp pile of bedding stuffed under the picnic table. I convinced the child to come inside, and introduced him to my new staff.

No one knew who his or her parents were, either. I took the child to the front of the house where the guest rooms were. There were two sparten but clean rooms with a common bathroom between them. I told him he could stay in the room the other child hadn't chosen. I went to introduce them, hoping they knew one another, but she wasn't in her room. One of my new employees said the child became frightened of the storm and went to the master bedroom to sleep by the fireplace. She wasn't sure she liked that. I told her the children were allowed to go wherever they felt safe, it would be okay. She was welcome to come up and check on her to make sure she was all right. The new child asked to sleep by the fire, too. The house itself was cold, as I only had heat from one fireplace and the other furnaces weren't working yet. We hadn't even cleared the rubble out of the stairs down into the basement.

I took the pillows and blanket off the guests (or childrens') beds, taking a moment to show the child how the hammock linen storage worked. (A bright blue hammock above the bed with extra blankets and pillows in it. The child asked if he could sleep in it.

"Sure."

The child brought the hammock down and then took the pillows I'd taken off the mattress below and tossed them into the hammock. The little dark haired child's face poked out of a pile of linens and pillows, smiling for the first time of the evening. "I can really stay here?"

"Yes."

The child grabbed the rope and pulled the hammock up above the bed, looking down at us contentedly.

I asked the tall blonde women to bring some snacks for the kids. "I guess we'll be camping by the fire tonight." We went back through the large dining hall, I explained that I was going to recondition all the rooms so they looked like this.

"Empty, you mean" I looked around, there was a single round card sized table with a jade top and a small lamp, at the table was a single embroidered cushioned chair.

I laughed, "no, clean, with nice walls and floors, there'll be plenty of furniture in time. We haven't even decided what to do with all of this space yet."

Dreamlands Park, After Closing

I was visiting the Dreamlands Theme Park, and somehow managed to become separated from the rest of my group. I wandered around for a bit, checking out the shops in the far corners of the park. There was a little hat shop I liked, so was there in the little nook between two knolls when the fireworks began to go off. The fireworks signaled the closing of the park, and most people rushed to the little mock village in the front of the park to get the best view of the fireworks. I figured that would most likely be where my friends had gone. I stayed to talk to the hat shop clerks, and the milliner, who'd stepped out front to view the fireworks.

He commented that though they seemed pretty far away, we did have a good view of the show, because of the alignment of the valley. (Dreamlands Park, while a lot like Disneyland, was on much hillier terrain, more like Legoland California. It was an interesting feature of the Dreamlands part that there were several access tunnels through the hills and knolls of the park, leading from one section to another, and out into the loading docks and warehouses and kitchens in the back areas of the park. We chatted a bit, and he gave me a really nice scholar's/prelate cap to go with my cloak. As I walked to the front of the park, I stopped to talk to several of the craftsmen, as I had gotten to know them over the years.

As I passed through one of the large outdoor stage areas, some of the performers recognized me and invited me to stay a while for their post closing sing along. They sang the various shows' songs, and used the time to learn other shows' songs in case they needed to fill in, or wanted to change parts. I really wanted to get to my friends, but they convinced me to stay and sing a couple of songs. I made it through one song and one of the directors came and took me aside to ask if I would ever think of actually performing at the park. "Only if I don't sing," I laughed.

He laughed as well and said, "Of course not." He'd sent me on my way, having rescued me from the never ending song that had just started up as the performer's second selection.

Each time I stopped to chat, my outfit would change and soon I was dressed in cloak, scholar's cap, white frilled shirt and surplice, breeches that were black like my cape but with red and gold trim (also like the cape and hat.)

As I made my way through the candle and print shops, a group of clergy entered the shop and greeted me as Reverend Malthus.  I decided, after getting the "go for it" signal from the candlestick maker, to go along with the charade. I played the part for a bit, and then one of the clergy noticed my computer bag under my cloak and started going through it to look at all the odd "devilish looking" implements, pens, a watch, etc.  Most of the stuff wasn't mine, but I made it to be a sample of tricky German engineering, or a Spanish tube of ink with a steel nib, etc. It made for an amusing few moments and really stretched my imagination. We moved up to the Print Shop and while there, we picked up some more lost and found items to take to the front of the park. While I was there I noticed the real Reverend Malthus (well, an actor portraying him) making his way across the street with his own group of clergy.

Rather than a confrontation, we greeted each other as brothers, and laughed at the confusion of our "junior" clergymen. We posed together for pictures on each of the lost cell phones and digital cameras, figuring that would be a funny surprise for whoever claimed them. We spent a bit of time adjusting our costumes and primping our ruffles and vestments before each shot, trying to get just the right "serious and pious" expressions. He whispered to me that my friends were waiting at the front of the park, having figured out that they'd lost me. We gripped hands and hugged, sending one another on our way. He suggested (in character) that we should do this more often. We continued our tour, he handing me his group's Lost and Found items to take up to the management office, as he was actually still headed deeper into the park.  Some of my actors were very confused, so some others tried to straighten them out by saying that I was the "real" reverend Malthus and not their actor. I had a very hard time staying in character at that point I wanted to laugh so much.

When we got to the front offices I dropped my "disguise" and was back in my normal clothing, much to the younger actors' amazement. "It's the Old Man on the Hill" they whispered to one another.

"I can still hear you, you know."

Myself and the older actors and the office staff laughed at the blushing and stuttering youths. I smoothed things over by shaking each of their hands and thanking them for a delightful evening. I left a gold coin in each of their palms. (Too bad I can't do that trick for real.) My friends were waiting just outside the park office and we blended in and exited with the last of the happy and exhausted crowd.

Dreamlands Zoo an Amusement Park. Dimension Doors.

Night before last I dreamed I was with some friends at the Dreamlands Zoo, which is really as much an amusement park as a zoo. As we were strolling around, we noticed people suddenly convulsing, and then collapsing, then rising again with classic zombie features. Some of them threatened to go into the enclosures after the trapped animals.

We decided that wasn't going to happen, and rather than running away with the rest of the crowd, we went after the zombies, and used ourselves as bait to lure them into one of the ride enclosures. The ride operator helped us out by starting the ride after we got the bulk of them in the loading area. We hopped on a car, and were able to jump off of the roof of it onto the control booth as it went by. It was a rather long jump, about eight feet, easy for me, but for one of our shorter members we ended up grabbing her by the arms as she fell just short of the roof. She lost her shoes to the zombies below. I told her it would be okay, as there were plenty of shoes in the gift shop.

I carried her piggy back to the gift shop, followed by more zombies as we went. In the gift shop I had to tell her to just pick all the ones her size she could carry, as the zombies were getting close and she didn't have time to pick her favorites. I had to toss the shoes out of their boxes into a bag and then pick her up to get out of the store before we closed the zombies in by lowering the security gates. We found ourselves in a little back stage area, going through shoes. She found a pair of sneaker boots that fit, but they weren't a color she liked. Bright red, so I liked them. I told her to grab any that fit which were the color she liked, and we could take them with us. I figured the boot top sneakers would be better at stopping ankle biters. We joined the others with five or six pairs of tan shoes in a large theme park bag.

There were about twenty of us, warily eying one another, waiting for the telltale symptom of impending infection. Victims' heads would pop off, turn over in the air and land back in place, but transformed by a greenish tint. Then the convulsions and collapse would happen. Anyone who was near when a head popped off might get splattered by goo and become infected. Amazingly, no one had been bitten, and the zombies, once they were rounded up, were remarkably docile. I was glad no one had panicked and started killing them. I was pretty sure that there would be some sort of magical cure, eventually.

I climbed out onto the roof of the building and looked out over the theme park and zoo. Several of the keepers waved to let me know they were okay. I asked if there was enough food for the critters for a couple of days. They indicated that there was. Then I took off into the air and headed for the center of Dream City to find out if there were some EMRTs available. (Emergency Mage Response Team) The dream just sort of fell apart at that point.


This morning's dream was suffused with a dark and brooding atmosphere, amber tones and deep purple and blacks in the sky. There was a haze that blocked out any sign of stars or moon, and diffused the pale amber lights from inside the house.

I entered the house, and there was no furniture in the front room. The carpet was threadbare, a path worn between the front door and the kitchen, and, oddly, between the left and right walls of the room.
As I stood there, pondering where I needed to look next, a man, very similar in build and manner to myself, stepped through the wall on my left, running, and into the wall on the right. I checked the walls, they were solid enough. I thought perhaps it was a ghost. Just to be sure, I entered the dining area and turned down the hallway to the right, checking to see if the apparition ended up in the front bedroom. No. There was a musty curved front chest, a ragged shag carpet (dark green from moss or its original color I couldn't tell) and the remains of a bed frame, six slats and two long rust marks between a collapsed footboard and a headboard with rotted fabric and hairlike stuffing on its face. The headboard was leaning back against the wall, where water stains showed it had been in that place a considerable time.

There were no signs of traffic through the room other than myself. I retreated back to the kitchen and began cleaning up the place with brooms and mops that were in much better shape than the rest of the house.

The house was essentially nine squarish rooms:

Bath and Hall to backyard, Kitchen, Master bedroom
dinette and hall, dining room, hall and closet and Master bath
Bedroom, front room, Bedroom with round front chest of drawers.

There were only two exterior doors, one in the front room, and one at the hallway between the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen was a very '50s looking affair with white and chrome appliances that had rounded corners. Once I had everything cleaned up I moved a table into the front room and covered it with the best tablecloth I could find in the linen closet. I then set out a number of food items and drinks.

The next person who burst through the wall almost crashed into the buffet. They stopped and noticed me, and it was an awkward hemming and hawing. Yes, we had the same name, too. I could feel some sort of connection and he took a snack and excused himself, promising to come back.

Another pair of people shot through the room. They went around or leaped over the table. While both exhibited the same uncanny resemblance to myself, one of them was decidedly female. It occurred to me that I might want to discover why they were running. The last pair had left wet marks on the walls they had passed through. When I touched the water, I noticed that it didn't feel right. I pushed my hand into the wall, and then through it. I looked at the direction they had gone, and decided to go after them, rather than in the direction of whatever was where they were running from. I crossed the room and pushed my way through the wall, a green glow filled my vision as I pushed through. I stepped out into a bloody red sky and blackened ruins. There was a solid chunk of wall behind me, and no indication of where the folks who were ahead of me went. I turned back and pushed myself through the wall and ended up back in my place.

The woman was waiting for me. She was snacking and perched on the end of the table. Her presence was a little unnerving, she was both me and the opposite of me at the same time. Her height was about four inches less than my own, but her hair and eyes were the same, her expressions so very much like my own, just a little softer, and rounder. "You're like a sister, one I never knew I had."

"Closer than that. I'm your X chromosome doubled. We are nearly genetically identical."

"Then the men..."

"Closer that actual twins."

"Clones?"

"Not exactly. Just other...possibilities."

She then took me on a quick tour of the other possibilities, except one because, "things are a little hot there, right now."

There was essentially a path out of each room of the house, except the dining room, as it didn't really have its own walls, the front room passage was the quickest to navigate, and went between their party house and the ruins I'd seen earlier. "We don't know what happened there, and we don't spend any time there, it's even creepier than here."

"Thanks."

"Just calling how we see it, your house just feels wrong."

I have to admit, I felt much the same way about it. I was pretty sure I didn't actually come from this place originally.

"How many of you...us?"

"Eight, though one died, and then there's you, so...nine." She looked around the blue green world we were in. "Odd, we really thought there was just one per room in the hub, your house. But then there's you." All of the homes we'd traveled through, except the ruins, had indeed had eight or nine rooms, not all of them were square, though, some were linear, or two lines, some "u" shaped, and one was two four room apartments connected by a breezeway.

"Maybe I'm not one of your eight," I suggested, but immediately knew that wasn't true. "Or there are nine.

She agreed that nine was probably the right number, but wondered if that meant there was a ninth place we could travel to. I wondered that, too. "That has to be where you are from, though!"

I hadn't thought of that, but I didn't have any idea how to get us there. At least, I didn't until I noticed the round front chest of drawers sitting in an overgrown part of this house's yard. I walked over towards it, and as I did so, it glowed slightly, and made a noise like my cell phone alert. A low whine and then vibration. The glow strengthened and then faded in time with the alert.

"Never seen that before," she said.

Another one of us showed up, sandwich in hand. "Thanks for the grub," He wiped his palm on his pants and we shook hands. There was a nearly electric jolt went through both of us. "Wow, he's like us, only old."

"Thanks," I coughed. I did then note that all of the others had also been mid twenties looking.

It wasn't long before there were half a dozen of us, including another female me, but with long red hair. "She dyes it." the first woman wispered when she noticed me looking at it.

"Interesting, my hair used to be reddish like that when I was in my twenties," I had quite the clear memory of my image in a large vanity mirror, and indeed, the me of the dream, now white haired, had once had reddish brown hair.

"Oh..."

"Told you."

We turned back to the chest of drawers, I could feel it pull at me, and the glow was more pronounced. I gestured towards it, and the drawers started to open, flooding the yard with a greenish light. We all gestured towards the bulky piece of furniture and pulled, until there was a wooden frame filled with a bright green glow.

"So, who's first."

I was, but I just ended up surrounded by cats and staring into the alarm light next to my bed. No other me around. (Probably a good thing, that would have freaked me out.)

Dreamlands Zigzag

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream City Mall. 3:12 AM

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

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

"It is."

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

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

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

Courier

I dreamed I was working as a courier, flying with a locked silver case handcuffed to my arm. I had no real idea of what was in the case, but the actual item I was carrying was a small SD card tucked into a business card in my wallet. The case was essentially a distraction.

Sure enough, whoever it was who wanted the data I was carrying managed to cause the cuffs to pop open during an "unexpected" layover. I was knocked down and the case was stolen. The police were polite by ineffective, which was fine, I am sure the wildly extravagant but pointless activity gave the thieves time to think they had truly gotten what they wanted. I quietly slipped away from everyone and booked myself on another shuttle to get me to my destination, hopefully before my antagonists could figure out they had several terabytes of encrypted garbage. I would arrive before my scheduled time, as I was taking a sub orbital shuttle, for a rather princely sum of cash, which would alert my employers to provide extra security as the bait had been taken. I was glad we hadn't surgically implanted the data chip, as that would have been messy and possibly fatal.

As I boarded what was essentially a rocket ship, I realized that I may not actually have any real data, and could quite possibly be a full on decoy mission. I wasn't too happy about that. At least whoever was after the data I carried wasn't willing to commit a very public murder to get it. I decided that I needed to make sure I had lots of company when I reached my destination. I looked out over the super modern airfield with actual launch towers (Mag-lev tracks that accelerated the rockets up over the city before the on-board boosters kicked on.)

I don't think I've ever seen so many acres of "don't hit me orange" and titanium white. It was much a "yes, we're living in the future, right now!" moment.

Dream Lands Elevator

In the first dream I remembered (at least part of) my sister and I had been visiting the Dream City together (a first as far as I can remember.) We had a short companion, at first I thought my niece, who recently passed, but no, it was someone else. Nonetheless, I was feeling pretty melancholy about the resemblance. The three of us were at the base of the exit to reality, when I happened to notice that there was an elevator, a little bent but still sturdy looking. I looked up the seven hundred plus stairs, and then at the elevator and shrugged. Why not?

So we took the elevator up to the nearby ridge that separates the Dream Lands from Reality. We spoke for a bit and the short woman promised she'd be back later. We stepped out at the top of the ridge, after a long rickety ride that had me wondering if this had really been a good idea after all. When I crossed the threshold of the elevator I woke up.

[I re-arranged the cats. They had positioned themselves such that I was getting no benefit from the AC unit I'd moved from my office to the bedroom. It was blowing cold air on them, though, so they wanted to cuddle. ]


After I fell back to sleep I had a travelling dream. Little Red loaded to the gills with supplies like clothing, bedding, dry foods, water, RPG tools, etc. The short ash blonde woman was with me. "Told you I'd be back!" she bubbled at me. She was still very short, easily under four feet, slender but with curvy hips and calves, her hair was short, but feminine and her lips full. I couldn't really tell if her eyes were blue, green or hazel, they seemed to shift with the light. She had a pleasant voice, not as highly pitched as you might expect for her small size. It was a delightful trip, we ended up in Boulder Colorado for an Anime Convention, where we'd been invited to run an RPG (my gig) and talk on a couple of design panels (her gig.) We ended up at a pretty wild party, where there was an ever full fountain of soft drink punch - highly spiked.

My companion got a lot frisky and started up an "Anime Pose Recreation Game" where things started out innocently enough but the posses slowly got more and more provocative, and the clothing started to come off. Viewers voted on the points per pose on a completely made up scale ranging from one half for folks who chickened out up to a million when my companion stripped down to her boy shorts and sports bra. The last challenge that came our way was a pose from an "accidentally compromising" moment in an Anime that I can't now recall, it basically had us splayed out arms and legs akimbo with our crotches together. Another cool bazillion points from the onlookers, after I warned them this would be our last one, because if we did this I would "need to take her away now."

My companion's answer was, "woo hoo! See you all later!" I noticed that her nipples had become all sorts of perky under her grey and blue bra.

I knew I was deeply in love, or some four letter word starting with "l."

We probably would have gotten more points but we decided that it might not be a good idea to take my pants off, as my under shorts didn't look at all like gym shorts, which hers could sort of pass for. I don't even know what sort of prize we won from the party hosts, but I liked my personal prize for 'playing along' a lot better, I'm sure. (The dream, sadly, didn't go into that. The End: we were untangling ourselves and she was trying to cover my excitement, only making it worse, of course.)

Ghost Adjuster

Dream City, some nights are as long as four nights. It had been days since I'd been to the office, the boss was probably angry. She needed to fuss like a cat needs cream. Sure it tastes good, but then it all turns to....

Where is that music coming from? Tempo change, sudden tonal drop, it's happening. Time to go to work.

I noted my surroundings, and then, bamf! I was two blocks closer to the trouble, the music changed as I walked in a circle getting my next bearing.

Bamf!

I heard the crumple of car metal, the plastic tick-tac of lens screens bouncing on pavement and the screams, the lovely screams. I went to work.

I appeared in the back seat of a nearby car as it was lifted into the air. The driver and his passenger were, of course, screaming. Scrumptious.

Bamf! The three of us stood in a sidewalk cafe three blocks away. The surprised waiter didn't react when I told him to get his customers inside. I faded away, a thin tendril of smoke and then appeared behind him. "Now would be a good time." I said.

He jumped, and the emotion was delicious.

Bamf!

Bamf!

Bamf!

There was now a beat up fellow in a spider man costume and the levitating villain above him was monologuing and adjusting his stubby winged hovercraft. It appeared to have been damaged in the fight and wobbled unsteadily. A thin trail of smoke trickled into the nearby air, pooling like blood in water. He wasn't my concern, as he didn't have a policy with us.

He spotted me, though and stopped. "What are you..."

"Public Damage Mitigation Adjuster. Just doing my job."

"Well you're going to have to do it in the afterlife." He wove around to me and unleashed a fusillade of tiny fleshettes. The metal razors lashed their way through my coat and hat.

"I really liked that hat."

"You're dead!" The villain screeched at me.

"Yes, that's generally the idea with a Ghost Adjuster."

I walked over to him and reached into his sputtering hover-board, then yanked on a bunch of wires and cables I found inside. They fell to the ground with two distinct thumps, one hard and ringing, the other flapping and wet.

"I thought you weren't supposed to interfere," the Spiderman figure huffed at me.

"I really liked that coat, too, it took a long time to find a ghost trench that fit. Think of it as a paid damage claim that won't affect your premiums." I drifted down into the rubble pile, pulling out the injured and delivered them to the ambulances that were pulled up by the dozens outside the nearby cafe.

When I got back to the rubble pile, my boss was there, helping assess the damage to the building. Our Spider Man and his villain were being loaded into separate ambulances. She glared at me. "I expect to see you in the office after this. Today!"

Her anger fueled me, reminded me why I still worked there. I resisted the urge to feed, I wanted that anger fully stoked for when we were at the office later.

I headed back to the office, there would be forms to fill out, depositions to arrange. Hurt feelings to sooth over and delicious delicious anger. I drifted through the locked front door and hung my battered hat up on a peg in the entry hall. I made my way over to my cube, returning the greetings of my co-workers, a singularly emotionless lot, as gray as the cubes they worked in. No wonder I hate coming here. My cube was empty. Seriously, no chair, no desk, no file cabinet (it was empty anyway, I figured if someone needed paperwork, they should keep it, I sure as heck didn't need it.)

My boss slammed in shortly after I arrived.

"Wondering where your desk is? Well they promoted you, over my objections...of course. You're in the West office now." She pointed to an office between her corner office and the kitchen, and sauntered towards it, not waiting for me to follow. I hung back, enjoying the hypnotic sway of her curves. I sipped her seething cup of anger and detected a taste of something else...pride, envy, affection? Interesting, unexpected.

"Nice." I wondered what the heck I got with a promotion other than an office. I wondered what I'd done to even deserve a promotion. I was rarely in the office; there was so much to do out in the field.

"I don't know why they bothered to move your desk, the only thing in it was an unopened company manual and these." There was a key ring hanging from a hook on the edge of the desk. I recognized them, they were the office keys. The front door, the file room and several file cabinet keys. I'd wondered where I'd left them.

"These were locked in the bottom of your file cabinet. I don't even want to know how." She picked the keys up and threw them at me. Instinct, I suppose, but I faded just before they hit and the keys sailed through me and out into the hall, jangled to a stop at the base of a cube.

I drank from her anger, calming her, feeding me. This was going to be a good office location, I might even come in to the office more, I thought.

"Get your ass in here tomorrow, we need to take depositions. Use your damned keys! That's how corporate knows you're here. For god's sake, get a new coat, that one looks like shit." She brushed past me on her way out, scowling, but I could feel her smile after she passed me.

I was thinking, "I might just come to work on time tomorrow." (And knew I was kidding myself.)

Working at the Cinema

The dream started, for the first time, with me already inside the Dream City theater, in the large center theater of the multiple theaters. This one had a stage in front of its screen and two control booths, one for the projectors and another just off to the side and lower for audio and theatrical lighting system. I had been brought in to run the technology for an upcoming presentation that featured a live presenter.

The presenter, of course, didn't have the right connector to make the connection from his computer to the projector (a lovely six lamp affair with two lenses.) I don't know what brand it was, but it seemed to have every possible video input in the world on its back panel, except for the one for this presenter's computer.

"That's the trouble with hosting all these transdimensional events, no real standards."

That made me chuckle, as I work/live in just one of those dimensions and we can't even settle on a standard. I had to go down the ladder into the hallway and then up into the other booth. I rummaged around a bit and found some cables I could take apart to make an adaptor for his computer. Fortunately the presenter was travelling with a companion, as there would need to be someone in the projection booth to advance the presentation (his remote didn't reach from the front of the room.) While I was there to run the stage lights and the sound. I have to admit that I couldn't follow the presentation, and judging from the sparce attendance, and the number of folks who left in the middle, not many others were following it either.

It occurred to me that I have dreams that the content of what I'm doing doesn't actually make any sense if I look at it. This made me wonder exactly who's dream this is. At which point I woke up, so I'm gussing it was mine.

Hidden House, Not the Chosen One

I dreamed again of the large bookshelf lined dome house, with its long spiral stair up to the second floor which was open to the floor below, with a grand round promenade that looked over the center of the house below and up into the sky dome above. The house was being rebuilt, and not everything was in place. There were unruly piles of furniture and books waiting to be sorted, a stack of floor lamps awaiting repairs and transportation back to their proper locations. Because of this there were large pools of darkness on the floor below, lending an aura of creepiness to the stillness. The house should have been buzzing with activity, but I'd sent the workers home, just wanting to sit and relax quietly under the moonlight coming in from the sky dome.

In the solitude, I began to hear noises, like conversation. Either someone had left a radio on, or someone hadn't gone home. As the sounds drifted up to my ear I could tell the tones were conversational, male and female, so decided it must be the latter. I made my way downstairs and followed the intermittent noise, made difficult by the acoustics of the dome. Eventually I found a doorway that led to an older part of the house. It had been covered in the rubble of the original disaster and had not yet been cleared. I dug it out, remembering that it went to an older, underground portion of the house. There was a back door of sorts, in the hillside across the berm that covered the servant living/storage quarters and separated my property from the graveyard property. I made my way down the long dark hall, now empty of its angry ghost, into the brightly lit yellow and white gingham kitchen, and there was N and her boyfriend, who she introduced as Derek.

I'd never seen him before, but was amused that he was a chubby, crew-cut, suit wearing sort. He was obviously older, but just as obviously was dying his hair, and scalp, where his hair was thin. The complete opposite of everything she had previously found desirable. Even though I was angry to find them in my home, this made me laugh.

Laughing as I told them to pack up their junk and leave made Derek angry. Fighting angry. He came at me swinging, but I backed up and tapped him on the nose over his missed swing. He went down with a howl. I politely suggested that he not get up for a moment. N made some comment about how I'd never fought for her.

I suggested that if I'd known about Derek when we were married I would have done far worse than merely bopping him on the nose like a bad puppy. I told her it's far too late to give me the opportunity for fight for her, so he's all hers and to take him away with the rest of her crap. It was a very tense dream moment, but also, oddly, satisfying when they picked up their stuff and began stacking it outside the door.

-----

This morning, I dreamed I was playing a mash-up World of Warcraft, Diablo III sort of campaign, and soon it was real, rushing around trying to avoid the undead, unleashing powerful magics and then leaping huge distances to clear surrounding hordes of evil undead. I raced through the map, avoiding creeps where I could and engaging from a distance where I couldn't. At the conclusion of the conflict I somehow managed to return home victorious. Others were gathered there, and greeted me as the "chosen one" who would lead them all to final victory. Now, I'd actually come to report my successes to the person who previously had been considered the "chosen one" and asked him to straighten everybody out. We went out to the crowd, who pointed out that I fit the prophesy.

I pointed out that I didn't. Their leader was the one with the one handed companion, not me. I didn't even have a companion!

A little gnome jumped up with a large axe in her hand, "I'll be your companion!" Then she raised the axe to chop off her hand.

I intercepted the axe and took it away from her. "I'd love to have you as a companion, but you can keep your hand."

"I'll just tuck it here in my belt, then." Well, she missed a little and her hand went right down the front of her pants, her big gblue eyes went wide at the error, causing a ripple of laughter through the crowd. I put down my magic bow, then knelt down and hugged her.

"It will be good to have help in the coming conflict, I'm honored."

A different Gnome picked up my bow, and held it aloft. It was an oddly designed thing, more of a harpoon gun than a crossbow, and so it had but a single large cocking lever outside, as the works were entirely internal. "Look, a one-armed companion to me!" The Gnomes in the crowd all hushed and then after the laughing stopped, a silence fell across the whole crowd.

"We should go plan your final campaign," the real chosen one leaned over to me. My Gnome companion took my weapon and, even though it was half again as tall as she, held it aloft and fell in behind us. I would rather have strapped the weapon back on, as I felt a little exposed without its heft at my side, but the pride of the Gnomes seemed wrapped up in my weapon, which I realized was likely an ancient Gnomish design (and proably why I had kept it and continued to add enchantments to it regularly.) "It appears you have fulfilled another part of the prophesy."

"How so?"

He looked over his shoulder, which prompted me to do the same. "That sure looks like you raised the whole Gnomish Army in a single minute." And there was indeed an army's worth of grim faced gnomes gathered respectfully in the courtyard behind us.

"I am not the chosen one. I don't even believe in the chosen one."

"It's not about what you believe at this point." He paused at the top of the stairs to look out over his outer courtyard. Portable forges were being set up everywhere. Gnomes, Dwarves and Men were working together to arm and armor the Gnomish host following us. "They have chosen you, that MAKES you the chosen one, by definition, really, it's quite simple."

That made me sad, because I was pretty sure that I wasn't even going to pick up the game again, as my subscription had run out and I didn't think I played enough to warrant the expense.

Mountainside Adventure

Was with a group of friends on a mountainside, scrambling around the rocks, goofing off when some of my male friends started making like we were all gay. This was right before a gal I was interested in showed up. I managed to extricate myself from the annoying bunch, but I could tell from her expression that the damage had been done. To her credit, she did let me explain that they were just horsing around, and I had been fighting to escape from their escapades. The fact that neither if us could find our pants seemed to help my case.

Later I was in the Dream City mall, lined up for the movie theater. There were a number of really old movies playing, and since it was after midnight, the theatre had closed thier box office and opened thier doors, allowing people to move freely from theater to theater, keeping the soda and popcorn flowing.

Spit of the Red Ott

What a great morning. I had a long (several years passed during it) dream and got behind a pair of giant dump trucks being moved with a police escort! (I love dump trucks for some reason, and have even thought of buying my own.)

The dream started with me walking into a little Chinese cafe, and there finding a portal to other worlds. In those other worlds, I had various different and usually heroic identities. Over time a group of us "Dreamlands' Heroes" made the cafe a regular meeting place, and every other Saturday found the table waiting for us. Time passed, and the group grew and shrank variously through the years.

At one point, we were contacted and asked to appear at a banquet, as there seemed to be hundreds of other groups like ours and the powers that be wanted to recognize us. We, as a group, actually walked outside the cafe together for the first time ever. I told them that the cafe would still be here in the future, but the hotel next door would eventually add eight more rooms, and thus would expand into the courtyard space we were currently standing in. The group went their separate ways to prepare for the banquet. I heard someone call my name from the cafe. The villain from our last world was there in the doorway, evil villain hat in hand.

"You weren't a particularly good villain, but following us back is a first." I turned to face him.

"You would do so much better, have done so much better."

I admit, I was momentarily confused.  But then I understood. I was getting old and slow. Younger sorts were growing up into the hero spots, but his role was not one that needed a young musclebound type. No, it needed older and craftier, well experienced souls. He delivered his message and faded back into the cafe, "Think about it. You would be great."

I changed my appearance for the banquet, Going with dark red - brown short hair, and a close cropped beard to match. I had a oversized black double breasted coat with a wide high collar, further diminishing what little neck I already have. I went back to the wire-framed round glasses to complete the look. J was there as Fredigar, sitting at another table. I looked around, all my gamers from over the years were there, most at other tables, but all fairly close. I had several positive comments on my new look.

I headed back to the cafe, realizing I needed to recruit a replacement for my spot at the table. I found a strapping musclebound lad, a new hero, I could tell, and thought that would be good for my group to train a completely new person. The dream city came under attack as I was trying to convince him to sign up with us, and ushered him towards the cafe. It's safe in here, we are protected by the Red Spit of Ott. As I walked him up to the cafe I let him see the thick psychic red ooze that covered the outside of the building. A dream woman walked by and made a comment about how his glutes flexing made her all quivery inside. I realized that he was actually her avatar...and knew that she was going to be a perfect replacement. I shooed them both into the cafe. He immediately headed for a green jungle portal, that, with some training, would have been 'his' perfect hero venue.

"What is this place?"

"Meeting hall, training ground, portal collection to the various heroic venues. Chinese Cafe. Come with me." I guided the woman into the "Invaded High School" venue where there were monster and student cutouts. The game was to go through and shoot the monsters but leave the students standing. The tricky part was that some of the students were monsters, and some of the villains were human.

I made a little gun shape with my hand and blasted the first two.

"How...?"

"Just pretend you have a weapon and let's clean the place up." I didn't really look back to see what she was doing, but she was following along, zapping things as we progressed, with a wand or a spell I didn't know. We got to the end of the hall and there was Prestar and her Troll friend Wheels (one of my avatars,) from an earlier game. I fired a couple of shots at Prestar, just out of fun, but the little girl panicked that the score went down. "Ex wife's avatar, don't worry about the score, that's only for you and I to know about, and it won't count against you." I thought it was interesting that during the run we had both morphed. I was still in the thick overcoat, but my hair and beard had returned to their natural white/gray/brown color and, sadly, I was fat again. The bimboesque shape had thinned out and the woman had gotten much shorter, it was obvious that this was actually a child.

Judging by our score (even with my intentional misses) I knew that, even though her Muscle Man avatar had been chewed up by the jungle world, with the help of my current team, she would grow to be a great Dreamland Hero.  I felt that my group was going to be in good hands, even though I knew it would be a little odd for them at first to not have me there, but also knew that this new person would rapidly grow to be the new core of the Cafe group.

We stepped back into the cafe and I looked around at the shimmering portals, knowing that I was going to have a new role to play.

Some of the Venues were amazingly detailed, the Jungle with its muddy stream that emptied out over a cliff above the ocean. A desert world with ancient pyramids and monolithic ruins tucked into space oasis, complete with jackal headed monstrosities and undead mummy hordes. The Dream City itself, both a current day, fantasy future, post apocalyptic future, or past, it was hard to tell. A rocky moon or asteroid around a dead world with leaky habitats and a problematic shuttle to a similarly decrepit orbital station. A red and violet world of alien forms gliding past shiny wet domes of indeterminate origin. A smoke and fog filled Victorian wharf and wooden ships slowly rotting at the docks, the rat traffic more prolific than human traffic. A whispery suburban world with manicured lawns and quiet, ordinary people where the cracks in the floors lead to "other" Dreamlands. Every venue I looked at was a reminder of a brace of adventures, successes and failures, solo and team efforts, solid memories of past events and the shimmery ghosts of future efforts.

In those future efforts I could feel myself, more as architect than participant, truly an odd realization.

Benadryl Dreams

Got myself bit by a spider and had the largest allergic reaction yet, so lots of anti-histamines. Lots of very intense and completely random dreams.

Little Red and I went flying off a six foot drop at the end of a roadway, right into a parking lot that was rapidly filling up. I had to move all my stuff out of the back over to the passenger side, as the driver's side rear wheel had fallen off. I limped the car around the lot looking for a place to park that would be large enough for me to get a tow truck behind the car. I couldn't find one, but did come across an empty shed that belonged to a Mystic Memories store. I pulled the car in and took a look underneath. It looked like it would be easy to put the wheel back on, if I weren't missing a couple of nylon gears. I figured I could get them from the dealership, which was less than a mile away.

I went into the Mystic Memories store and proceeded to tell them how fortunate I had been to find their storage unit open. I asked if it could have been any more pre-ordained. That immediately had the effect of shutting down their opposition. I told them I would be back with parts as quickly as I could, and would be willing to help move their inventory they had been packing for storage when I got back.

I had a long pleasant walk to the dealership, and the parts were only a few tens of dollars, and they promised to deliver.

The walk back didn't take as long as I got a ride from a tow truck driver who was headed in that direction. She and I got to chatting, and she gave me her card in case I needed a lift to fix the car.

She dropped me off at the shop just as the parts were being delivered, so the three women from the Mystic Memories, the tow truck driver and the parts driver all crowded into the little storage room. I assembled my wheel and the five of them lifted up the car so I could reattach the wheel. It went right into place without a glitch.

I moved the car out into an open spot, and the six of us moved the boxes into the storage unit in just two trips. The store owners asked me to dinner. I remember realizing that this was a dream several times, but it was never enough to kick me out.

This morning I was out in the back yard, picking up fallen branches. The sky was a wavy blue and green, like an inverted ocean surface. Not cloudy, though, the sun was plainly visible in the sky, and it was bright. I wondered what the heck was wrong with my eyes.

I sat down to ponder the whole thing when it dawned on me that there were more spirits of cats than cats around the yard: Tiny, Penelope,  Calrissian, Lucy, Rocky, Annie, Junior, Dolly, Jennifer, Princess Tiger Lily, Chloe, Domino, T-Rex, Purina, Ralston. While I sat there remembering them, I was sad that I couldn't actually sit with them. I also realized that with Ralston gone, I really don't have anyone to come and sit with me in the back yard. (Fawn would probably skitter off, though I am sure I could catch her easily these days, I just don't want to risk it.)

Hillside Cantina, in 2D and Road Trip

Had an oddly delightful twist on the dream city Hillside Cantina location. It was in the form of a 2D side scroller. The patrons in the bar area were aware of the change, but the ones in the restaurant section seemed to be oblivious to the difference. I think it may have been something in the drinks. The color palette of the dream was also seriously reduced, making our outfits quite garish.

No one seemed to be too upset by the change, and we did figure out, after a bit of fiddling around, how to move between layers. That was the only way to get out of the bar, it seemed, as the entrance was not in the actual plane of the bar and the patio. (I should say "patios" as there were ladders leading up onto several other layers of the "patio.")


In a separate dream, this morning N and I were travelling to Connecticut in a big blue muscle car (fins and portholes, white leather interior) and, for the first time in a couple years, we were completely civil to one another. In a way, those are the hardest dreams, because when I wake I know it can never be that good between us again and it throws my whole morning off.

Dream City, Time Tour

Haven’t taken the time to record my dreams of late, but there is a couple this week that have stuck with me all through the week.

The first was a pleasant walk through the small coastal “down town” area of dream city. Unusually, it was daytime, and I was walking with a brown haired woman who I don’t recognize, but she was pleasant enough company. We strolled up the hill where my favorite restaurant/nightclub was located. Being early in the day, it was actually closed. I knew I could let us in, as I had a key for the living areas above the club. Instead I explained that we could come around the other side and see the deck that looked out over the ocean and that we should come back later in the evening when the place was open.

We then walked up to the top of the hill with its funky three way intersection, and the really nice view of the rest of the city. I love the elevated freeway that enters the valley and then arcs over the city before dipping down to a wild tangle of entrances and exits. I pointed out the warehouse district and the location of the twin movie theater complex with its pair of distinctive tall buildings. The theaters are four to a building and are one atop one another rather than side by side. There’s a walkway with a good view of the mall complex that stretches between the two buildings on the third floor.

Later in the week, I was back in the city with the same woman. (I really like when dreams seem to run in series.) We were in the warehouse district, checking out the basement of one of the buildings I owned. The tenant had just skipped out and left a large amount of equipment behind, so I needed to figure out what it was and arrange for it to be sold and moved before I could rent the place out again. When we reached the basement there was a pink flash and we were still facing the electric panel, but now there were a couple of skeletons leaning against the panel, their hands wrapped around a couple of large switches.

“I hope that isn’t us….” The woman said.

I checked the jewelry on the skeletons, I didn’t recognize any of it. “Not us. But still, we’re not in the right timeline anymore.” I have no idea how I knew that, but I did. I couldn’t tell if we were future or past, or even sideways, given the way the Dream City works, it could have been any combination. In the office area we ran into a few little doll-like creatures with mouths full of sharp teeth, they jumped my companion, but I had no ability to pull them off, couldn’t summon up a magic effect, and didn’t have a gun. (Though I did try to conjure up one at one point.)

I ended up physically pulling them off, using my jacket to insulate my hands so I didn’t touch them directly. To my amazement they hadn’t harmed my companion, even though she was a little rumpled. “they’re so cute.”

I didn’t really think so, and the needle like teeth were still worrying me, but they helped us find a group of people who, it turned out, were all employees of my former tenant.

They were also wary of the little sharp-toothed homunculi. We began to compare what we knew about where we’d found ourselves, with them having a much more thorough input. Some sort of side slip and run into the future is what we concluded, as the city above was overgrown, fortunately with many edible fruiting plants and vegetables. We weren’t going to starve, it seemed.

We went outside to check the situation ourselves.

I could see the hill where the club was located, it was still standing the building thrust up white against the green overgrowth, the buildings around it seemed to be reduced to rubble.

“It’s locked up.”

I pulled a key out of my pocket, “I can fix that.” I knew, with the certainty that only seems to exist in my dreams, that once I opened up the place, I would be able to get us all back to where we belonged.

Desert Crossing

This mornings mental offering was a dream of outstanding complexity. It started out with my meeting with a couple whose car had broken down on the long lonely stretch of freeway outside of the Grand Canyon. I suspected I was in the Dreamlands, as this stretch of road was more dirt and gravel than asphalt. the couple were fairly young, in their late 20s or early 30s at the most, but they looked beat up from living outdoors, not the weekend camper sort of beat up, but the out of work for a couple of years beat up.

I looked at their pickup truck, and it was rusted out. It reminded me of the total failure of a steel bucket I had owned. 

The bucket had just been used for hot water and baking soda, I had washed down the garage floor, getting rid of the final layer of cat urine, preparing the garage for use. When I was done, the bucket gave a metallic groan, and the rim cracked like someone had attempted to fold it. The rolled edges of the bucket cracked off and fell around the base of the bucket. I called N out to show her the odd behavior, and demonstrated by pressing lightly against the bottom, which promptly separated from the sidewalls, which then folded up like cardboard. pretty soon I had the whole bucket sitting in four inch pieces in my hands. N yelled at me for destroying the bucket, failing to see anything interesting or enlightening in what had happened, and unwilling to ponder what might have caused galvanized steel to fold like wet cardboard.

I shook off the (false) memory, and brought my attention to the present. We needed to get moving, as there were critters migrating across the desert that would strip us to bone and call it a snack. While the family might have been able to hole up in the now deserted gas station, it certainly wouldn't have been very pleasant. Even then, their truck was collapsing into fist sized chunks right in front of us. 

As if to underscore the urgency of the matter, I heard a rustling across the road from the gas station. A beast, with skin like a pineapple and long horns burst out onto the broken asphalt road.  "Be still."  The beast nosed the air, then came running for us as the couple's children came bursting out of the two bathrooms. "Get in my car!" I shouted and the family grabbed a few handfuls of their stuff and piled into my car. 

The car was a slightly modified version of my old beige Plymouth Satellite. The modification appeared to be that I could start it up and open the doors with voice commands. Somehow I ended up in the back seat, and the couple's twelve year old was behind the wheel. The beast launched a salvo of stinging quills at the car, but they bounced off the windows and doors as I pulled the last one shut.

"Make it go!" the daughter shouted.

"It isn't that sort of car," I explained, "you have to manually drive the vehicle, and you're in the driver's seat."

"No time to swap, take the lever behind the steering wheel and put it in 'D' for drive, then press the pedal on the right when I tell you."

"She can't do that!" one of her parents shouted.

"She's big enough to reach the pedals, she can do it. It'll be just like a video game."


"What's that?" the Dad asked. 

I was flummoxed for a moment, but then gave the command for the engine to start up. "I know a place near the edge of the canyon that should have some parts I need. We'll go there and then escape by air."

"How?"

"Don't worry about that, just keep us on the road until we're far enough away for us to switch drivers." 

The twelve year old stepped all the way down on the gas pedal, and the throaty V-8 shuddered to life, rumbled and coughed a bit, then caught, launching us out onto the freeway. The car swerved and fishtailed as the girl over corrected her steering. I leaned over from the back seat and took the steering wheel. "Ease off on the pedal, about a quarter of the way down will be enough."

We settled into a fairly even ride after only a few frightening moments. When we'd left the beastly scout far enough behind I explained the brake pedal and we came to a stop. I fired up the GPS system, which had somewhat spotty reception out this far from civilization. (I thought that was a little bit odd, as this was where there should have been no interference at all.)

By using the GPS, I was able to navigate us overland to the rim of the canyon, and to a dirigible hanger that I knew about. I had the envelope for the car and the cable in the back seat to connect us to the large bag, what I didn't have was a way to quickly inflate the thing with Helium. I hoped the Catalysis system in the hanger was still working. 

It was a bit like driving on the map in a game, searching the topographic overlay for passable routes to get us up to the rim of the canyon. Apparently one of the other upgrades to the Plymouth was an adjustable suspension and four-wheel drive. After watching our little white rectangle positioned against the map for several minutes, all while listening to the family inventory what they were able to grab from their truck, we arrived at the hanger. 

The hanger was collapsed and the caretaker's house was in only a little better condition. I told the family to go and get blankets and towels from the house while I rigged our escape. The two little boys raced for the house, all ready having to go again.

The trunk appeared empty, but I spoke a short phrase, and another dimensional space was revealed. I'd waited for the family to go into the house because I didn't really want them to know about the secret spaces in my car. I could easily ride out the swarming horde's advance inside my car, but it would have been more than a little crowded with six of us. 

I removed six stacks of cables and glassware, then a huge red velvet feeling hide. It was a demon hide, very rare, and very stretchable. There were six inlets set with a pair of poison spines on either side of the connection. The connections had been set into the bag by powerful magics, and were the only way to get gas into the bag. I could rig the bag to fill itself, but that would take several days. (This had been my original plan.) I rigged the first cable and connection, carefully bending the two poisen spikes down and through the tops of the tubes. Poison began to flow into the contraption, being caught by the glass bowls and altered by their magic. The bag immediately began to fill, the small stack of glass bowls working magically to filter hydrogen and helium from the air. 

My car clamped itself to the ground, living steel spines shooting into the ground from behind each wheel. The Dad was out of the house, watching by now. I could tell he didn't believe the bag would be large enough to lift the car. I told him to check in the hanger for anything that looked like a bunch of long hoses, or we were going to have to fortify the house until the bag could finish filling. 

I quickly connected the other five cables and the magic glass filter pumps. It was then that I noted that my first pump was actually broken, and wasn't properly filling. I removed it and went into the kitchen of the house. I needed some small glass bowls to replace the ones that had their bottoms rotted out. Like the galvanized bucket from my memory, the bottoms had just separated from the sides of the bowls. It was not the sort of behavior one normally sees in glass, so I found myself wishing that I'd made a better analysis of the bucket all those years ago. 

I noticed that I'd attracted a shadow. The Twelve Year Old had attached herself about two feet from my left elbow, and wherever I moved, she was right there with me. I could tell she was scared, eyes darting around, always looking outside the window. The dad had found some hoses. We watched him drag them over to my car, where the large bag had all ready doubled in size, and the cables were charged and holding it just a few feet above the roof of the car. "He doesn't know where we are." The Daughter stated. 

I found some glassware that might suffice, but I would have to reveal a lot of my abilities to the family in order to make them work. I wasn't really looking forward to that. So far they had managed to retain a feeling of urgency that exposure to pure magic might trip them over into panic. The demon bag was probably all ready perilously close to the line as it was. I took some small pleasure in the musical tinkling as the small bowls nested together, and the last of the original glassware fell to ruin. 

"Interesting, are you mine or his?" I asked.

"Neither," the Daughter pointed out to her Mother, "We're all hers, except you. You're not, but she doesn't know that, yet."

As we headed out to fix the first connection, I felt the hydrogen pouring out of the end of the hose the Dad had delivered. I disconnected the cable, put my bowls inside the tube and then performed the rituals to enchant them just before slipping the output hose over them. The Demon hide bag began to fill and stretch.

Apparently the woman and her family had figured out what was going on, and they all vanished quietly. I picked up the ruined glass shards and began to investigate why they had failed. I began to worry about demonic corruption from the bag. I would have to fully inspect it and make repairs if needed. I had time to do that, now. 


One of the things I loved about this dream was the textures and color details. The desert reds and browns, the brown-red rich color of the bag, the blue and red bottoms of the glass elements in the filter pumps. The textures of the etched glass bowls, the velour of the bag, and the dusty crumbling bucket and bowls. 

There was another dream, equally as detailed, but much shorter. All I can remember now is waking up and thinking "Oh, another one of those dreams." Hardly useful for remembering any details, sorry about that.

Crash Pad Rental

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

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

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