Dolphinia

I had been selected for a strange experiment. I was injected with something that allowed me to stay underwater for several minutes, and sent out into a netted off bay to find and communicate with the trapped Dolphinia. I managed to find her, or allowed her to find me. I was able to communicate with her after a time, finding out that she was a mother, and her pod contained two of her children still. She desperately wanted to be re-united with them so she could see them join up with other pods after their summer feeding meet up. The more days that went by, the harder it would be to catch up. She also worried that it was dangerous for a lone dolphin to migrate the later the season got. I relayed this to our experimenters, and they told me to promise her that people could transport her directly to the feeding grounds where she could find the rest of her pod. She just needed to come play some games with us first.

I did my best, but it seems there were no easy way to talk about being transported really fast until I learned that dolphins bow surfed on whale and boat waves, so used that to say a boat would let us surf quickly to her pod. I felt bad for deceiving her.

The experimenters lowered a whole office building into the bay. I had to explain to them that we still needed to breathe air and couldn't reach the lower levels without extreme risk, so they put down diving bells with oxygen pumped into them. The two of us managed to swim through the building, with Dolphinia teaching me the proper way to swim, and how to glide to conserve air. By the time we were done with our experiments, I could stay down almost as long as Dolphinia. The longer these "games" went on, and the less the experimenters shared with me the more I began to worry that I had been deceived as much as Dolphinia.

Then one morning I woke up in a normal bed, with my normal body intact. I felt woozy though, as if I'd been drugged for days. I managed to get out of my room and found where they were keeping Dolphinia.

She had been completely transformed. She was human now, at least six feet tall, and in a blonde curly haired wig and red dress. She was stunning if a bit alien looking. She was frightened, couldn't figure out how to swim (walk) and confounded by the need to breathe continuously through this thing above her mouth. Turns out I had been allowed to find her in order to calm her down and get her cooperation again. She was so happy to see me, and concerned that I too had been made into this awkward land animal. She was convinced that I, too, had been a dolphin, and that was why I learned to swim and breath so well with her. Spiritually, I agreed with her, and I wanted nothing more than to be back in the warm water of the bay, swimming freely. I wanted to get her back to herself, and then delivered to the summer grazing area with a large pod she could travel with until she found her own. I had the feeling, though, that the dolphin to human conversion was only one way, neither she nor I would be able to go back.

Reality Storm

I was stranded on an Island Nation, my plane had crashed and us few survivors managed to patch ourselves together and get the attention of locals. The Island Folk were perfectly aware of the modern world, and some had even gone off the Islands to college, but had returned to farm and fish. When the first group of rescuers came I stayed behind because I was on one of the smaller islands, learning about the various fish, fowl and flora, what they were each used for, and what to avoid. I was a little bit depressed that I had missed the "rescue" plane, but decided that my letter home would be sufficient to let people know I was alive and well. I helped the village by repairing their packet radio receiver and the village cell tower (not that the cell phones really could reach off island, but the islanders could talk to one another. Because I had repair skills I was admitted into the ranks of the priesthood. When I was asked if that made me a witch-doctor by a tourist I explained that it was more like an Electron Shaman. That got a confused look from the tourist, and lots of laughs from the Islanders.

I was quite content with my life there, and glad to have been accepted for citizenship; the elders of the island sitting around drinking grape crush and root beers saying "yep, he belongs here."

One morning I was helping replace the batteries in a local fisherman's Garmin Navigation system when I spotted some really odd lightning filled clouds on the horizon.

"Reality Storm, looks like a bad one." The fisherman hurried me along and asked if I wanted to ship out to sea with him to avoid the storm.

I was feeling echoing flashes in my head, like a migraine coming on, so I deferred. He shook my hand and thanked me for everything. In doing so, it felt a lot more like a permanent good-bye.

I made my way back towards my tree house in the hills, the Reality Storm overtaking me with bright flashes overhead, big splots of rain and echoing flashes in my vision. I never made it. I remember seeing my friends running towards me as I collapsed and then the world vanished in a white hot blur of headache and flashing. When it subsided, I was someone else.

Or, more accurately, I was somewhere else, I had never been a shaman, and those memories were rapidly fading, but I was still a technician, retired, and very confused. With the help of a friend I managed to get out of bed and walked to the balcony. I apparently had a micro condo in a tall high-rise. I couldn't stop talking about the Island and my life there, but my friend suggested that it was just a fever dream, aided by the unseasonal lightning storm we'd just had. The paramedics insisted, however that I dress and come with them. At the hospital there were lots of tests and poking and prodding. What my prostate had to do with cluster migraines was beyond my, but "I'm no doctor." I joked. My sister came to visit, and was the only person who seemed to be very interested in my experience. She even encouraged me to remember as much as possible of it. It was odd, in a way. I knew she was my sister, but we both couldn't tell a single incident from our childhood together. She said not to worry about it, she might be able to shed some light on that later.

On my third night in the hospital, oddly not missing my own bed, because I really had the feeling that it wasn't really my bed at all, in the sense that I'd woken up in it, but hadn't ever really been in it before then, a visitor arrived. Hew was dressed as an orderly but introduced himself as a friend of my sisters. I thought that odd because it was definitely plural, but I was sure I only had one sister. He asked me about my experience with the Reality Storm. I had, by then decided it had just been a dream, but played along and told him about it. He asked if I was feeling anything about like it still. I wasn't, he grunted and sat down to continue our conversation.

Now, I hadn't been, but as we talked I noticed the tiny flashes starting at the back of my brain, just at the base of my vision. I mentioned that, figuring he might be interested. He nodded, rose, went to the cabinet next to the bed and handed my my clothes. "Let's get you out of here now." As I scooted to the end of the bed he took the big machine at the foot of the bed and laid it down where I'd been laying. "Hurry, before the storm gets here."

He was very urgent about it, so I dressed, wondering if leaving the hospital before falling victim to the headaches was actually a good idea. As we walked out of the Hospital. "Where are we going?"

"The storm is heading for your sisters, we need to be with them if we're going to weather this."

"Weather this? You mean this storm might send me back home, to the Island?"

"Not likely," he explained, "Reality Storms, as you call them, affect different folks in different ways. Some get tossed about to different times and places so often they start to remember all of them, some get shifted once and never again, we suspect some get shifted and blend right into the new reality without ever even knowing, and some pile up. Like your sister."

We entered a large suburban home, my sister, and two other of her were waiting for me in the large living room. I knew I only had one sister, but all three of them were her. "Oh, my." The flashes in my head increased and I collapsed into a chair. The four of them were talking when police broke in through the front and back doors simultaneously. The Orderly and my sister (well, one of them) grabbed me and crushed themselves together with me sandwiched between them. The lighting flashed and thunder from outside drowned out the orders of the police to get on the ground and the three of us found ourselves under a threatening sky in an alleyway with trash cans overflowing and the stink of not having been collected for a couple of weeks, at least.

"Garbage strike," I informed my companions. One was dressed as an orderly and the other seemed to be a mildly attractive housewife sort, very suburban looking and quite out of place in a trash-filled urban alleyway. I vaguely remembered dreaming of an Island and a shining clean hi-rise world with a high tech hospital. I wasn't sure what had happened that had made me collapse in the alley. I checked, my wallet was still in my pocket, so I didn't seem to have been mugged. I was grateful that these two had come along to help me up. We made our way out of the alleyway next to my apartment building.

"It worked, sort of." They spoke to one another in front of me like I was supposed to know them, or what was going on. It was apparent they knew one another, and I thought it was odd that I was being helped by two people from my dream while unconscious in the alley. Though, that made some sort of sense if I'd noticed them before I passed out.

Hello Nurse, Recording Job

I was sitting in a hospital bed (for flea bites, pretty sure) when a nurse came into the room. She was slender with little curve, but with shiny black short hair and bright red lipstick as well as full eye makeup.  She greeted me, and then threw a tennis ball at my head as hard as she could. The throw was wide, and because I'd propped myself up in a corner, the ball bounced right back to her, and hit her square in the zipper of her very tight white pants. I remember thinking that the "O" she made with her bright red lips was actually quite sexy. I refrained from asking if I could kiss it to make it better, but I could tell she knew I was thinking it.

Earlier, I had been asked to get six copies of a recording made, but was having trouble meeting the time deadline, so the person who needed the copies brought me six recorders which I connected together in a chain and then started recording simultaneously on them, thus reducing the time to make the copies to three hours, rather then 18 hours. My client indicated that the cost was worth it to make his deadline, and told me to keep the recorders when I was done. I wasn't convinced that I needed seven Flash/DVD recorders, but figured I could get something for them used. On the other hand, I liked the speed at which they allowed me to burn copies, and the stack of six was actually cheaper than a multi-bay burner, by several hundred dollars, in fact. (A burner, of course, would have let me make the copies in less than thirty minutes, but the client wasn't willing to buy something that expensive.) While the recordings were going on; in the back of my car, I started planning out how to build a rack for them so they wouldn't take up the whole deck space.

Trouble with... Tribbles?

I was on a survey team, or a recon team. We'd slipped into a run down city and were making our way down through the ruins of a hospital. (It had a place on the roof to land our helicopter.) as we got closer to the bottom levels of the hospital, we began to see signs of habitation.

In one room, I noticed that there were sealed food containers left out, but instead of food, they looked like they were full of swatches of fur. I prodded one, and the furry scraps took off, racing across the room in all different directions and vanishing into various vents and conduits.

"You shouldn't disturb them while they're sleeping, they get hungry."

I turned around to find a slender woman, hair pulled back, dirty clothing, but her face and hands looked clean. I offered her a water bottle, which she took, and then she refused food, saying "We can't open that here." She gestured for me to follow her. I called the rest of the team to let them know we had survivors. We followed her to a surgery, she led us in, checking our clothing in the "airlock" before allowing us into the room. There was a wind up generator in the room and she gave the large hand crank a few turns and then turned on some LED lamps.

She indicated that it was okay to open up the food here. We gave her the container and she eagerly ate its contents, nervously eying the the conduits above our heads as something rattled through them. One of my colleagues reached up to open a pipe before either the woman or I could stop him. A fluffy ball fell out of the pipe and I quickly sealed the ends back together before more could fall out. It warbled pleasantly. "Are you afraid of this?" the hazard suited leader of our group asked.

"No, just...."

As we watched the critter rolled into the food container and the crumbs vanished. A few moments later, the woman was petting it, and four little puffballs fell from its back. She showed us that if you picked up one of them and petted it, it would also pop out four smaller fluff balls. "They're born pregnant."

"Well, that saves some time."

The woman gathered them all up and stuffed them into the container (not too gently, either.) "They're not all bad, though." She scanned the room and with a last look at the conduit led us out and down the hall to the Physical Therapy gym. She had the food container full of critters tucked securely under her arm. Despite being squished all together in the container, they were all trilling or cooing a very relaxing chorus of happy little noises. I couldn't help but smile, even though I had the feeling that things were going to take a less happy turn.

In the PT room, there were a couple of injured folks, the woman put the box in the lap of one of an injured woman. The baby critters were released. They climbed over the woman, each of them stopping over her injuries. Soon they were warbling a different song, sadder, somehow, then each of them began to glow. The woman lurched back and the creatures seemed to fuse with the patient. After a moment the woman opened her eyes and gently brushed the now loose fur from her body. It looked like she had gained a few pounds during the process. Her injuries were gone. Lumps began to form under her skin, and a few minutes later, the lumps began to glow. Our guide and another thin gentleman in a lab coat held her down . The gentleman , mopped her sweating brow.

"It will all be over in a few moments, hang in there."

The glows were suddenly suffused with pink, and then with a small shake, each lump separated and puffed out. The woman yelped or groaned with each separation, but when it was done there were six little fluffy warbling creatures, their hair the same color as the woman who they'd been extracted from. Each of the "births" left a half dollar sized mark on the woman that looked like a second degree burn.

The man in the white coat bandaged up the woman's new, but less severe injuries while our guide rounded up the changed babies and stuffed them back in the box.

Our leader wanted to take some of the creatures back to our airship for examination, but our guide recommended against it. She indicated that we could help them best by helping clear the creatures out of the nearby fields and farmland, so they could reliably plant and harvest before they ran out of sealed foods.

Moving by Train

I was emptying out a ruined warehouse, years of boxes that had been stored were now threatened by the elements. An earthquake or or other event had ruptured the spine of the warehouse and one wall as well as a part of the ceiling had given way. I was loading a railroad flat car with the boxes, as they were only going to be moved about five hundred yards down the spur line to another warehouse. The engineer kept urging me to stack the boxes higher. I wanted to make two trips, partly so I could take a break before having to unload the boxes at the destination and again before loading up again. The Engineer said he only had time for one trip, but would leave the flatcar on the siding at the destination if I needed more time to unload.

So I loaded the car taller than I would have liked. I tried to keep the lighter boxes aside so they could be placed on top, but the engineer started getting frustrated that the car was not being loaded as fast as he wanted, so started just picking up the boxes and tossing them onto the car wherever they fit. I tried to explain that the heavier boxes were more stable if they were on the bottom, but he didn't have the patience for it.

The heavier boxes were filled with records and binders of manuals for long forgotten processes and programs. Since the boxed items were sometimes seven or eight boxes down and two or three layers back, I couldn't imagine that their contents were of any import. The boxes had obviously not been accessed in years, and in some of them, I could see that animals had tunneled into them and used them for nests, presumably until they'd been buried too deep for even the animals to find them convenient to use. The lighter boxes contained everything from foam desk toys to collections of mugs and bottles. I found myself wondering what would cause an employee to leave so abruptly that they wouldn't come back for their desk items, or what would cause the company to box that stuff up and file.

It was getting pretty late in the afternoon when it became very apparent that we would need to make a second trip anyway, but the engineer came up with a different solution. Stack the extra boxes around the catwalk and in the cab of the engine with him. So I boxed him into the cab, leaving no room for me to ride.

"It's only a few hundred yards, just walk along side."

I really needed a break, but agreed.

The engine was located just behind the flatcar, and as I walked past the flatcar on my way down the siding to the new warehouse, the engine bumped the car, causing the boxes behind me to groan, rattle and shift. I looked back and noticed the car approaching the curve, as it entered the curve, the tower of boxes shifted and I could tell they were going to topple. I moved up the gravel roadbed, trying to get close to the flatcar, or even under it, as the boxes fell over me like a wave. I managed to only be struck by a few boxes, fortunately those falling from lower levels. Still, there were a couple of hundred pounds of papers and crates of empty Coke bottles on top of me. I managed to uncover my head before the train groaned to a stop.

I woke up in the hospital with my right arm in a cast up to my shoulder and around my back. The pain was incredible. I couldn't even move to try to make myself comfortable as the arm was in traction. All the IVs were in my left arm and hand, but the staff hadn't bothered to move the stand to the left side of the bed, so all the lines were lying across my body in a tangle. The call button was on the right hand side, too. I was worried about the contents of the warehouse and wanted to make sure the wreckage had been taken care of. I hoped the insurance would cover the broken collectables. I wondered how long it was before help arrived to rescue the engineer, since he'd allowed himself to be completely boxed in so he could make it all in one trip. I remember wishing we'd had web straps to tie the load down, as all this could have been prevented.

Even a few hours later I'm still feeling the pain in my neck, shoulder and back. I must have fallen asleep in an odd position.

Clinic Escape

I dreamed I was in a refugee camp, and it was increasingly clear that the refugees were shipped out if they were making any sort of trouble. Since no one ever heard from them again, we assumed the worst. I decided that I needed to get out before I was labeled as one of the trouble makers. I scraped together all my coins and a couple of bits of paper money, then cleaned up my clothing, trading several shirts to get one clean white button down shirt. I managed to blacken up my shoes so they looked presentable and made my way to the camp clinic. Once there, I managed to slip out of the line, and into a closet area, where I was able to don a lab coat and walk out unchallenged to the non-public side of the clinic.

The lab coat I had on had a badge that let me leave the camp side of the building and cross into the open side of the building. I got pulled into a room to consult on a case, there was a moment of panic when I thought I would be discovered, but I was able to read the charts and look at the woman. I could see that she was malnourished and pregnant at the same time. I was dismayed to see that on the generic treatment recommendations form, lethal injection was one of the options. The rumors were likely true, then, that a visit to the camp clinic could be one's last. We agreed that the woman needed about 1400 calories a day, and a significant portion needed to be from protein.  (She had a very low iron score on her blood test results.) I suggested an iron supplement, as I knew that fresh greens were in short supply for refugees, and any protein she was likely to have access to would be vegetable and insect protein - lacking in iron. Anemia was a common problem in the camp.

The other doctor complained about making the camp even more crowded, and I joked that it was too bad we couldn't prescribe social integration. I thought I might have blown it at that point, but I could tell the doctor agreed with me.

I explained that my shift was long over and I should go, and with that, I got an orderly to carry my coat back into the dressing room, and declined a cab, saying it was a lovely day for a walk, (Which, if it wasn't in the nineties would even have been true.)

I headed into the nearby town, wondering how I was going to get myself to the coast, and on board a boat to just about anywhere else. I passed a stall that had lots of seed packets for sale, all for mere pennies. I bought a bunch of them, then made the trip back to the clinic. I found the doctor still on duty there, and handed him the seed packets. "Give one to each patient you see today, perhaps we can help fix this ourselves." He agreed and we parted again. This time I left the other doctors badge at the front desk, telling the very bored looking receptionist I had found it outside. She thanked me like this was a common thing and promised to page the doctor to have him pick it up.

Green Colon Slime

              We've been back two weeks, and I still have trouble getting up and out in time to have some writing time before work. Dreams are sort of lost by the time my first break of the morning rolls around, if I can even take a break. This seems to continue even on the weekends. I did have a dream this morning that I remember parts.
              More of a nightmare, really. N was visiting with J, when she began to experience severe lower GI discomfort. We rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with green slime in her colon. (Obviously been playing too much WoW lately.) The hospital doped her up so she wouldn't mind the pain, and that's all they said they could do for her. The EMT said that she needed a druid to dispel the magic, a de-curse wouldn't do it, so I couldn't help her.
              I didn't know that I could de-curse in real life. Figuring that if I could remove curses, perhaps N could heal herself.
              “She's not that kind of druid.”
              Yes, like I said, perhaps a little too much WoW.

Zombie Outbreak, Convention Parking, Ex-Girlfriend/s

       The dream last night (no pain meds) was much more like the sort of dreams I like to have. It started out with me and several friends stuck in the elevator of a hospital. An outbreak of Zombiism was occurring and we had to escape from the hospital. (I am seriously thinking of using this as a convention game scenerio.) I noticed that the zombies, where they were still 'fresh' were fairly fast, less so when they were more damaged and bled out.
       Another aspect, while they didn't seem too smart, they did seem to have extremely acute senses, both hearing and smell. Oddly, they really didn't seem to be able to operate any machinery, so pushing the elevator buttons, something that would have probably doomed us, was beyond their ability. They were, however, very infectious, not airborne, but any sort of body fluid ingested or introduced into a wound (say by biting) would result in an infection. We rounded up all the fire extinguishers on the floor and found that they made the floor slick, and a cooled zombie was very slow and not very sensitive. We managed to lure or slide the zombies away from the elevator, then took the elevator down to a nearly empty maintenance level. From there we lured the zombies in the parking level up the stairs and then locked them in the stair well. One of us stayed behind (me) to keep them from turning back down the stairs. The orderly that had joined us locked the bottom stairwell door, called me on the cell phone, and I raced to the elevator, taking it down to the parking level.
       I found myself wishing the zombies were like old fashioned Daleks, and couldn't climb stairs. At the same time, I realized that if that had been the case, we wouldn't have been able to get clear of the zombie hoard. The Orderly drove us to our cars, as there were still some zombies wandering the parking lot. We managed to drive out in a caravan of half a dozen cars or so, a big SUV in front if the way needed to be cleared. The Zombies really didn't seem to be interested in the vehicles as long as we kept the windows up.
       I think smell and sound were their primary senses, the vision portion seemed very limited, they didn't seem to be able to recognize that there were people in the vehicles that were driving by them. Although they did register "big moving thing," followed by "Is it consumable?"
       Thump.
       "No, not consumable."
       You would think that the human brain would still be providing something other than motor services, but apparently not.
       The group of us drove out into traffic and carried the infection away from the hospital. I was concerned about that so washed my car down with bleach water and used bleach in my shower. I also bleached all of my clothing including my shoes. I didn't want to take any chances there was infectious material on me. The bleach really took the color out of my hood and roof of the car. The tires ended up a funky brown grey color.
       I realized I was late to the convention center, so got back in the car, I used an old shirt for a seat cover as I had bleached and discarded my old seat cover. I put the car in gear and drove downtown. The convention center in Dream City is actually agains the east side of some mountains that the town cradles on three sides. I made my way down out of the hills and into the city, noticing there were zombie inspection stations we had to go through. My car scanned clean and I was allowed to go into the auto repair garage (the convention garage was already full.)
       When I pulled up to pay the outrageous parking fee, the garage manager stopped the ticket taker and asked if I knew anything about the wiring harness on the car I was driving.
       I did, so I told him so. He validated my parking and told me he would have one of his mechanics drop me off at the front door of the convention if I would only help them go through the catalog of parts and pull out the correct one for a customer who had dropped of a car like mine.
       I was a little suspicious, until I saw the car, and realized that they were not going to be able to take out my flux capacitor for the other car. It was a slightly different model. I showed the mechanic where the bad part was and how to find the correct replacement on line. They then shuttled me to the convention center. The mechanic gave me his cell phone number, in case I didn't want to walk the three quarters of a mile back. I thanked him and he thanked me. Apparently whatever I was driving was fairly rare here, and the mechanic had literally no idea of where anything was inside the engine compartment, the online resources were also not really available.
       I found myself wondering how I knew so much about the thing, then, but shrugged it off as I was met in front of the convention by an old girlfriend.
       This was one of those true dream moments. The woman was a compilation of every petite blonde I have ever dated. Her image and voice slid easily around all of them, never quite settling on one or the other. We walked into the convention, then out onto the dealers floor after checking in.
       She/they were afraid that I would try to convince them that I loved them.
       I explained that I did love them, always had, we just weren't a match at the time we broke apart, and probably still weren't. It didn't mean that I didn't love her, just that I knew we weren't right to be together.
       She wanted to know if I thought we would ever be right.
       I admitted that it could be possible. I put my arm around her/them and hugged her close. I really did feel the same love I'd always felt for her/them, along with all of the emotions, good and bad from our relationships mixed in, and I knew that it still wouldn't be a match, but was still good, and there really was still a great deal of love and affection there. I told her that and she seemed resigned, but didn't let go of my waist.
       We continued around the convention, visiting old friends, and introducing one another to the friends the other didn't know. It was quite an enjoyable convention and I knew that I wouldn't be calling the mechanic to bring me back to my car when the festivities closed late tonight. I invited my former GF to come stay with me at my house, suggesting that we could carpool down tomorrow. We should also be safer if the zombie plague should get out of control as I lived in a home with a fenced and gated property.
       One of the GFs said that if she'd known I would be so rich she would never have dumped me. Odd, I had thought the breakup, in this case, had really been mutual.

Hospital Dream, Road Trip

       Hospital Zombies bumbling though what otherwise seemed to be an empty building. I was lost in the corridors, unsure even where the entrances to the place were. I started to follow one of the green lines on a wall. It took me to an X-ray CAT-scan area. I turned around and followed the green line back to a lobby. The zombies ignored me, in fact they seemed to walk right through me without even detecting that I was there. I knew that N was looking for me, but she wasn't able to see me.
       Ginger Muffin found me, as a ghost, so everyone but Ginger ignored me. There were no zombies in the lobby and I tried to get N and the doctor's attention. Neither would respond. I started looking around for something that would tell me where I was. The red line was the emergency room, so I started down that way. Ginger broke free from N and raced after me. We traveled together down the hallway, checking in rooms. She jumped up onto a hospital bed and started licking the blood off of a face. It was mine. There was no one around and there were all sorts of soaked bandages and things sticking into my chest. I coaxed Ginger into pulling some of the things out of me.
       I woke up with Ginger cleaning my face. Alarms sounded all around, I coughed and reached up to pet Ginger. N and the doctor came running into the room. The doctor looked surprised, open jawed, and N looked like she was going to barf. Ginger meowed at them. The doctor called for a surgical nurse and blood, then asked N to get the cat, please. There were suddenly half a dozen people crowded around and I asked them not to gas me yet. The doctor told them to wait, started asking me questions about where I hurt and what I was feeling.
       "Bring another heart monitor, this one is bad!"
       Then they gassed me and I fell asleep to the sounds of the doctor swearing at his staff.

Road Trip.

       N and I stopped at a garage across from a tiny motel; the garage was right on the edge of a canyon. Being dark, you couldn't really see anything. The owner of the garage indicated that sunrise would be spectacular.
       In the morning I discovered that Cecil, my old Plymouth Satellite, sat abandoned in the shop, for sale due to non-payment of bills. The garage owner was amazed that I was the former owner, and agreed to let me have it for $300 cash. Cecil had casters under three wheels and a wireless security lock on the front driver's side wheel. The wheel lock was marked "Property of FBI" and wrapped through the wheel and around the tire. There was no label on it that said "do not remove."
       The tire lock was easily removed, just having two long set screws on the inside of the wheel. For some reason I wanted a fourth caster rather than taking the casters off the other three wheels. I'm not sure, but I think I was planning on towing him home. N wasn't so sure this was a good idea. I had decided to convert to a hybrid diesel electric motor. The garage owner thought that would be a cool idea and wanted to help, so convinced me to leave Cecil there with him to do the conversion work.
       Soon it was sunrise over the canyon. You could see the far walls of the canyon from the windows at the back of the garage. I swear I saw the shadow of a dragon swoop across the far canyon wall. I didn't make a big deal out of it, not wanting anyone to think I was crazy. I moved to the
edge of the window, following the shadow, and saw there was a lake at the bottom of the canyon, a lake with a snakelike dragon flying low over its surface.
       Since I was pretty sure there was no signal going to the Feds from the lock on my old Plymouth. I left it with the garage to get it running again.
       Oddly, no road traveled down to the lake, just a foot trail.

       I woke up to calm some cats down. I think someone fell out of the bed. (Or got pushed, I'm a pretty active sleeper.) On falling back to sleep, I fell right back into the same scenario, only no dragons this time.

       I made my way down to the lake with a couple of other people. There was a large tin box with a couple of reel cannisters that made it look like an old time movie camera. As it floated by I heard a mewling sound from it. I reached out and grabbed it, pulling it to shore under an electrical tower. One of the people with me helped pull it out of the water. The person warned me that there was no shoreline, just a steep drop off. I held on to the brush beside the trail so I wouldn't fall in. We wrangled the box past the tower so we could both be in a position to pull it up onto the trail.
       There was a soaking wet bag inside the tin box shaped like a camera body. I opened it and tossed out a couple of live fish. One of them turned into a golden cat, floating face down but moving slightly. I pulled the golden kitty from the water and shook the water out of it and breathed into it. It started breathing on its own. There were also kittens in the bag and their mother, who didn't look alive. I managed to save one of the three kittens. I was trying to recessitate the mom cat, she still had a heartbeat and was warm, just not breathing. She was a kind of ragdoll Siamese looking cat, gold and tan. I was sad about the two kittens and one large fish that I knew I couldn't save. (Which is sort of weird because I was also thinking the fish was big enough to eat.)

Ad astra per technica,
FF