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.

House Creature, Home Wrecker, New Cats

Rough Night last night, but I woke up enough to remember bits of three different dream experiences.

In the first dream, I had a small flying house. I was able to float between my three or four "landings" depending on which weather I preferred. On one of my Landings there was a knock at the door. Some local "Inspectors" were at the door wanting to check the premises for mice. I looked around the three rooms, and the little grey mouse got a worried look on his face, and dashed into the closet. The Inspectors spotted the motion, so I had to let them in and then had to admit that I had a small grey pet...The closet curtain fluffed out and a moose stepped out...moose. The inspectors were taken aback, and frantically started looking at their field book and ticket books. Apparently there was no infraction for having a grey house moose. Or a grey and silver cat, or a silver and black coatimundi, or a flying monkey, though the last one was more than a little bit scary when it jumped out and landed on my chest, asking, "how are we doing, boss." The Inspectors fled.

In the second dream, I was sleeping, when the whole house shook with a bang and then rattled to the sound of a heavy engine for a few seconds afterword. I just figured the neighbor was getting ready for work and had closed his gate, which is part of the fence running between our houses. Just as I was falling back to sleep, it happened again, only I could tell the sound was coming from my back yard. I struggled up out of my sound sleep and into some clothes and shoes. I looked out the window and saw that the back hill was covered in sandy dirt. A little darker and redder than street sand, and more powdery. It had over flowed the retaining wall, and only the top of the trees showed at the top of the hill. I could hear the sounds of engines and cracking wood from behind the slope. I noticed a pair of treaded tracks down the sandy embankment and then turning just at my now dirt covered patio, then up the hill over the space where the ivy used to be thickest. I didn't like this at all, I certainly hadn't given any permission for any work to be done. I followed the tracks up the hill, slipping occasionally in the soft dirt. I crested the hill and was looking over the back neighbor's yard. Bulldozers and backhoes were at work tearing down the house. There was a gap under the house where the granite had been dug up and pushed out the back yard and down the hill. Fairly shortly I saw a spinning cylinder covered in two foot steel spikes tearing up the granite as it drove out from under the house. The spikes were mostly bare metal, but the cylinder still retained some of its construction vehicle yellow. The fellow driving the vehicle looked very wide eyed and happy under his orange destruction cap. the tractor rolled back under the hill, then came out again, pushing the dirt in front of the now stopped cylinder, up the slope, across the back yard, and then toppled the heap over the hill into my yard. The tractor teetered on the crest of the artificial dune a moment before sliding down towards my house. He didn't make the turn this time, slamming into the fireplace, and shattering the glass doors on either side of it. (Apparently I'd added french doors to the dining room side of the fireplace.) The whole house buckled in slightly and was pushed about six inches off the foundation towards the front of the house. I shouted a loud "What the hell are you doing!" as the tractor climbed back up the hill towards me. The driver then spotted me, and with a maniacal gleam in his overly large, not very human eyes, lifted the cylinder and started it running, steering directly at me. The tractor was surprisingly fast and it was on me before I could dodge to the side, and though I might have been able to jump over the spikes onto the cab of the thing, he'd thought of that, and lifted the spinning cylinder of death just after I launched myself into the air. I knew I was dead. I wondered who would save the cats. I woke in a sweat.

The dream I was having this morning before the Chimester chimed in started out disturbing, the neighbors had dug a pit and were fighting insects and small animals in it. They had amassed a collection of scorpions, spiders, frogs and lizards and a struggling cat. I had to intervene for the sake of the vertebrates in the group, pointing out how sweet they were and how cute. It would be wrong to make them fight one another. Real animals feel pain and there is no Poke Hospital for them. The creatures all escaped, except one little dragon like thing that puffed out it's black and yellow scales, then eyed me sideways, then ran up my arm and dove into my shirt pocket. It cheeped at me and I rubbed the center of its head between its eye bumps, making it cheep some more. I wondered if it would eat cat kibble, or if I needed to make a trip to the store for crickets or mealworms. I needn't have worried, when I opened up my garage door it jumped out and raced over to the litter pan area, like it knew what it was doing, and began digging out the earwigs and snacking on them loudly. I crouched down to get a better look at what it was doing, then felt a cat rubbing on my elbow. It was the little white and black kitten. Marked much like Giles, only with more black than white on her. She ran off under a vehicle parked partly across my driveway. I went out and stretched out on the curb to see what she was up to. She came out with two more cats, a nearly all black cat with a just a white chin and toes, and an all white short haired cat, with beautiful golden brown eyes. The two adult cats had letters wrapped around their collars. The letters had obviously been written by a child. It stated that they had to move, and mommy and daddy said the cats would be okay on their own, but she knew better (I knew it was a she because there was a drawing of a little girl with her three cats, each with a name below them.) "Please take care of them and keep them together, they're family." There was a phone number. "text me."

My little dragon like friend cheeped at the cats, and they all got head bonks and shoulder rubs as they walked over me and then screwing up their courage, dashed across the open driveway and followed it into the house through the cat door. The white cat stayed with me the longest, unsure about the whole thing. I scruffed her up across the shoulders and ears, trying to let her know she would be safe in the house and wouldn't have to come out into the big blue room again. That seemed to satisfy her and she raced across the driveway, pausing only a second to two to figure out the cat door. I was glad I had just stocked up on cat food, and that I hadn't gotten rid of the extra litter pans yet. Giles and Ember would certainly be entertained with four new housemates. I texted the number that the cats were living with me, and they would be kept together. It was only a few seconds before I got an emoji filled text with hearts and kitty faces. I resolved to text pictures of the cats when they settled in.

Part III

Dreamed again of the space train, and the destruction around the world when someone decided to nuke the station, triggering a less than mild response from all the world's various governments.

Turns out that nuclear winter is a thing, and global warming is not enough to offset it, at least initially. J and I had converted our homes into big greenhouses. Not really enough food to keep alive without trips to the food distribution center. Solar power, deep wells and strong neighborhoods were working to keep things going. Neither of us were able to retire.

I had a part two dream over the weekend, but after relating it to J, I promptly forgot it. We were practicing being energy and food independent, as much as possible, in prep for making it possible for the kids and grandkids to get on the next Loop train.

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.

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."

A Quiet Remote Place

I dreamed that a group of my friends and I traveled up into the mountains as far as we could by car, and then, when the road was at an end, packed our clothing, bedding, food, water, and tools into bags and satchels and a couple of wheelbarrows. We hiked up over a pass that was only just barely a pass, several times having to pick up the blue and red metal wheelbarrows and carry them over rocky ground too rough for them to roll.

We crested the ridge to look down into a valley that had obviously been settled at one time. There were massively overgrown trails, a rickety rope bridge over a small stream, and several ruins of buildings. There was a herd of deer in the fields, which were full of oats and mustard. (Both the deer and the fields I think.) Blackberry and raspberry bushes grew in a profusion of thorny meandering hedges, the gentle western slope of the valley was covered with peach, pear and apple trees, as well as walnuts and pecan trees. Vine of peas and beans were reclaiming various old pieces of farm machinery. Roses grew over one of the ruins, great tendrils of pink and white variegated flowers that you could smell all the way up the ridge. It was getting dark and we made our way down to the original trail that led into the valley. It had mostly fallen away, and was blocked in several places by rock slides. It would be a long time before we could clear enough to make the road passable again, if it was even possible for the dozen of us to do so.

Then there was a Hollywood style movie montage of time passing, buildings replaced with earth berm houses, using the old windows to bring in natural light, lumber reclaimed to make a barn and a watch tower, with a zip line down to the edge of the valley. We'd managed to bring up a generator (taken from Little Red, I suspect) and made a water wheel for power. I managed to rig an antenna to the tiny wind-up emergency radio so we could get music and news. People hiked out to the cars to make runs back to town for various supplies, at least for a time.

The state came and repaired the road, even though we didn't ask them to. We were able to move all the cars up into the valley, except little red.

A few months later, everything went crazy. It was an alien invasion that caused a panic, and subsequent pandemic, followed by an invasion of emaciated, diseased refugees. Folks who'd been camping out lower down on the mountain. About two dozen of them shuffled into our little valley from the recently repaired road. They climbed over the gates we'd put at the property line, but wandered listlessly around the settlement, not seeming to be aware that they were surrounded by edible plants.The fever seemed to leave them alive, but with addled brains. We hoped that they would recover, and their brain functions would return to normal. Fortunately only a few of them were violent, most were just confused and wandering, with a decided tendency to take the easiest path that led up and out from the trees. They'd lost all desire to eat or drink, at least until something fragrant, like oatmeal with black berries in it or bacon was offered. Even then, they ate and drank little.

Some of our village wanted to round them up and shoot them, but saner heads prevailed and we lured them into the barn where they could be out of the weather, and we could try to get them food. It was difficult, as we could see they were all sick, and we didn't actually want to get close to them. We sent people out to gather up tents and sleeping bags from the various campsites they'd abandoned. Our own supply of blankets was severely depleted. Food and drink eventually helped some of the sick recover, but others continued to decline. I kept worrying that this was going to turn into some sort of zombie apocalypse, but that didn't happen. We spent a large part of the dream chasing down sick folks, and then luring them back to the barn in the center of the valley. (That was where the main leech field for the septic systems started as well, so there were facilities in the barn for our guests.)

We'd lost contact with the outside world, the radio grown quiet and our cell phones no longer connecting to the network. We didn't know if there was medical help available. We sent someone down the mountain to find out, but they returned only a few hours later saying the roads off the mountain were impassable, and that someone would have to hike down into town. I wasn't sure our little valley could feed all of our refugees indefinitely, if they were to suddenly find their appetites, but knew that there were plenty of edibles up and down the side of the mountain, if we could get enough people foraging we would be okay. The apocalypse was in our very mild fall, so we'd just brought in a good harvest and had plenty of supplies.

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.)

Evacuation

Those few of us who were left waited out the Peat Rain, and when the fall had slowed, gathered our most precious belongings, what food and drink we had left, and gathered at the Arco Station on the hill to refuel before driving north into the desert and then east into the mountains. I looked around at the mall, and was amazed by how quickly some the buildings had collapsed into ruin. It was almost like the sturdier the building had been, the quicker it had fallen. I couldn't really make out a pattern for that. My own home had been fully intact, While any with flat roofs or multiple stories had begun to decay around mine.

While waiting my turn to fuel up Little Red, I was absently shoveling the peat aside as I'd seen a depression in the nearly smooth layer we'd all driven over to get to the parking lot on the hill. The pit was about the size of a large tool box and as I shovelled the last of the peat from it, I came to a thick canvas covering that was already being damaged by the spongy alien material. That told us that the pit had been covered up in the first or second Peat Rain.

The garage owner was one of the survivors and he came over to help pull up the canvas covering. There were tools there, blow torches, wrenches, socket drivers, Even a few different tire irons and small jacks. He explained that these were all damaged in some fashion, so had been put in a storage bin as spares. After some negotiations, he allowed the cache to be parted out amongst the survivor's vehicles. We were very cautious taking the tools out of the pit. The garage owner and a couple of other mechanics went over each tool and made sure they were safe before handing them out. Eventually we had about thirty vehicles and several dozen five gallon and one gallon cans filled up and loaded into the various vehicles. We set out down the hill and up onto the freeway, driving at a cautious speed to allow the larger more fully loaded vehicles to keep up. I didn't know what to expect, as everything on our radios was filled with digital noise.

Tubers to Hell and Back

The dream started with myself and the brown haired female companion making our way over a fence into a backyard that was completely overgrown with different berry bushes and a plant that had large manioc like tubers. We had a long discussion about how to identify if these were the edible sort, or the poison variety that needed special processing to be edible. Neither of us seemed to know what that migh be, however. We harvested some of the tubers, being careful to not damage the host plant in the process. We took a lot of the ripe berries as well.

Once the back of Little Red was full we headed out on the freeway into the island valley, as we both felt the coast would be too crowded, and there might not be enough water over the long term.

As we were headed across the valley we were forced off the road by a large line of wrecked traffic, we bounced across the flat valley floor, and came to a ridge line that overlooked a wide valley with three symbols on the floor of the even deeper valley below us. We chose to head to the one on our right, as it looked the most like it might be an airfield. I turned Little Red down the hill and we bounced and bobbled over the rough ground, finally coming to an access road of little better smoothness than the plains I'd been driving on. We parked and decide to hike into the central area where there were some lights.

The center of the area was filled with planes. We didn't find any of the pilots, however, we did find a portal of some sort, and it looked like a passageway directly to hell. Just as we decided that retreat would be a better option, we were confronted by a large demonic lamia. Without any hesitation we bundled her up and dragged her back to the portal. When we tossed her through it, the portal closed.

I drove Little Red down into the center of the airfield, but  it was pretty obvious that the off reading had taken its toll on my little car. We searched around for a suitable plane and settled on a single engine plane that still had full tanks. We found some solar panels and set them up to recharge my car, and decided to fly the plane out to look for a tire shop that we could land near. I wasn't to sure about the last bit, but my companion seemed confident that she could land the plane and take off again as long as the roadway was clear. That, of course, was my exact concern, that we wouldn't find a suitable runway.

Being airborn was a liberating feeling, and we both remarked that it was a shame that we couldn't just stay in the air all the time. I suggested that we should see if there was a blimp available. She headed the plane towards the coast, as she knew where the Goodyear blimp hangers were located.

Too Much Diablo IV

Been playing a lot of Diablo III, so it really isn't a surprise that there would be a Diablo IV dream, the VR version of the game. Nice lightweight headset and gloves made up the VR rig. There was only a little noticeable delay - but only on character movements, the backgrounds were rock solid for the head tracking. There were some polygon lighting oddities but overall it looked pretty darned good. The camera position was fixed and the game itself was still pretty much the isometric view we're used to, but closer and thus more immersive. There was, oddly, still no first person view. The game controls involved hand movements and finger gestures or touches. The gloves had the pressure points in them, and the item you held in your hand was just there to provide some weight and resistance.

Cool game play, and this time the game was focused on less world shattering fare, recovering reputations for your DIII companions, finding lost relatives, freeing imprisoned sisters, and going up against a corrupted order of Paladins intent on storming the High Heavens and taking control from the Angels, some of whom have been less than supportive of humanities newfound importance. In other words, it carried on right from DIII's middle stories. The one thing I found missing was going after Chen's jewel, (to be fair I haven't played the new acts and it may be covered there....)

In the dream I worked up quite the sweat swinging around and attacking things with spells and weapons both. There was a lot of voice chatter from other players, and that was disorienting, as the sound wasn't as well coordinated as the video for some reason. I was using five pound weights as my resistance grips, which made for a pretty aerobic game session. I was not completely blown away by the graphics, but they were certainly well done, with lots of variety that helped make each location stand out in a way that made navigation without the map possible for some of us, anyway, a couple of my companions kept asking me to drop a flag so they could find the rest of the group. (In real life that would more likely be me, I always seem to be the slowpoke in the MMOs I play.)

Where the game design really shone was in the Special Effects, amazing fire and smoke as well as other elemental effects. Also, Combat Engineers! Yes! I was able to build Golems, like the old Necromancer, beef up peoples' weapons and armor, make barricades, bridges and weapons of mass destruction- bombs and traps ala Demon Hunter. There was also stealth, and rapid transit (Zip lines! Hooty hoo!) I was a happy camper. (Note to Blizzard - you can completely steal the Combat Engineer idea, and I'll still gladly pay you to play it!)

Boat Tour, Haunted House Game(?) and the Mad Handset of Vision

I was sitting by a dock in the bay, wasting time, when I overheard a skipper (who sounded like Sean Connery) ask a young couple "sure you could fly to India, if you like being loaded into a cannon and shot to your destination. A boat trip, now that's an adventure from start to finish."

It seems I had just come into a lot of money and needed a way to vanish for a few weeks, so when the young couple accepted the skipper's offer I made my way over to the boat and asked if he'd take an old man on as a crewman. He only asked three questions, "Can you operate a computer? Can you mop?" and "Can you shoot?"

I said "yes" and "I can also cook, read a navigation chart, and I'm not a half bad mechanic, either."

"Yer hired!"

I put my bag on board, my room was a tiny cabin in the bow. I could barely stretch out in the bunk, the light didn't work, but it did have two long narrow portholes. When I made my way back up to the top deck, we were already underway, threading our way in and out of the wide river traffic. The plan was to sail down the nile, across the Mediterranean, through the straights and across the gulf around the horn of India.

-----

I was in a haunted house game of some sort. The chat interface was an odd combination of voice recognition and hundreds of small clicky icons (they might have been Chinese or Japanese). You could type to jump to parts of the list or use the scroll wheel to send them flying by the right hand side of the screen. I couldn't figure the chat interface out, so the game master sighed and ported me into the reality version. There was an evil laugh, and I was actually there in the dust filled, creaking and groaning structure that was the haunted house in the game. The first thing I did was call out to any other players, I got a couple of answering calls, and some whimpering. That didn't bode well. I pumped a round into the shotgun's chamber and checked my ammunition, six in the gun, about twelve in a bag on my belt. I headed for the whimpering, wondering what good a shotgun would be against a ghost.

There was a woman inside of a chandelier. It didn't look comfortable. I moved a couple of couches together under the fixture and then climbed up on the back of one. I cut the thin nylon straps holding the woman down and she indicated that she still couldn't move, so grabbed the edge of the chandelier to tip the woman out. She was in mid tumble inches from my arms when she just vanished.

I spotted movement along a wall and the shadow slunk out the far door. I hopped over the couch, catching my foot on the wooden rail of the back and stumble-hopped headlong into the wall. Fortunately I was wearing some sort of helmet and the blow as cushioned. The impact still left my neck hurting, however. I knelt down and poked my head around the door frame. Gunfire from down the hall, three or four pistol shots. They were way to high over my head, but if I'd been standing? That would have been game over.

"I hope you have a good reason for shooting at me?" I shouted out of the doorway.

"Sorry, I thought something had snuck up behind..." his conversation ended in a scream and more bullets went singing past. Apparently, whatever had snuck out of the room had snuck up in front of him. I rolled across the hallway and into the room across the way, I couldn't see anything in the hall, and started to think that a flashlight would be better than a shotgun. I looked around the room, it was some sort of small sitting room, I opened up the drawer of an end table next to the door.

There were some yellowed postcards from Iceland, the writing in a language I couldn't read, a book of matches with a picture of Iceland and the name of a hotel on the cover, a half dozen gas lamp mantles, and a roll of duct tape. The soft glow flickering from the gas lighting fixture may have caused the postcards to look yellow, they didn't feel old and brittle. I was amazed this house hadn't burned down ages ago. For a moment I contemplated replacing the damaged mantle in the lamp, but then realized I would have to do that in the dark.

"Are you okay down there?" I asked into the empty hallway.

There was no reply save a wet smacking sound and crunching, like when a dog is chewing on a large bone. I took that as warning not to go that way. Although, if it was chewing, the shotgun would probably work on it.

I looked across the room at the window, it was partly open, the curtains gently blowing, I finished opening it up with an effort, it felt like it had been painted in that partly open state. I climbed out the window and stepped over the dead holly bushes. The dried leaves were even spikier than if they'd been alive. I walked out into the street and took in a view of the house. It was three stories, and there were houses up and down the street as far as I could see that looked very much like it. All of them in the same state of decay, most all of them with at least a few windows glowing faintly from gas-lights within. The house across the street was completely black, a burned out shell, however.

The streetlamps were also gas lights, some of which had their mantles burned out, and just a flickering ball of burning gas at the end of their jets. Some were completely dark. I guessed they were a ball of flaming explosion waiting to happen. I couldn't tell if it was day or night. there was a thick layer of clouds that looked to be just above the height of the tallest building's roof lines. At one end of the street I could see tendrils of fog creeping in (at least I assumed they were fog.) At the other end of the street, was pitch blackness, none of the houses lights reached the road and there were no streetlamps alight. I was deciding whether I should re-enter through the window or try to find the front door when the window sash came crashing down. I saw a hunched figure at the window, and then the gas lamp in the room went out.

------

This morning's wake-up voice told the other voices to hush, "he's got the mad handset of vision."

I rolled over awake, thinking "interesting, what the heck is that?"

I swear I heard the the voice give out a disappointed "awww."

New Cats, Survivor's Meetup

In the first dream of the evening, I was heading to the front room when I heard a tiny forlorn little meow. Following the noise led me to the dining room, and there in the far corner of the bottom shelf of the far book case was a fluffy white kitten with bright blue eyes. She saw me, and immediately switched from meow to purr. Teddy head-bumped my leg from behind as if to ask "can we keep her?" I put down a bowl of food for her, and another white cat arrived, this one was older, quite possibly the kitten's mom. She brushed past Teddy and myself as if she'd always been here. Somehow, that made me smile.

The bowl of food was next to the water dish, and Teddy laid between them and the rest of the house, guarding them while I went and got my camera. I was pretty sure from the ratty collar on the older cat that they were abandoned, but figured I'd print out some pictures and walk the neighborhood to see if anyone claimed them. I told Teddy we didn't want to be kit-nappers. He didn't seem to appreciate the pun.

I was thinking they would bring me back up to five cats, and that made me sad, because there were no more sprocket kitties.


Right before the water sprinklers went off out front, I was dreaming of another post-apocalyptic, digging out from the rubble to re-establish some sort of order, scenario. I have no idea what the actual apocalypse was for this one, only that there were very few of us left, and none of us were much younger than forty or so.

Whether the younger folks had all traveled away from the ruins to start new, or were taken in the apocalypse, I can't say. However, it was nearly the full moon, so those of us who'd stayed, or were left, gathered in the ballroom of the only hotel to have one in the area.

We'd thought about meeting at one of the college gymnasiums, but the hotel was more elegant, so it won out in the voting. Personally, I thought it was a little bit on the musty side, even though a few of us had raided the Home Depot to repair the roof and windows, it still seemed to get enough water to encourage mold to grow. I always waited until the last second to make my way through the musty hallways to the ballroom, which, at least, had hard floors and paneled walls, so didn't have as much mildew smell. We managed to get the generators started up and the room's chandeliers glowed unsteadily from the fluctuating power.

There was some trading, and some reporting of events of the past month, some fresh vegetables and fruit, some furs, some clothing and finally, some music and dancing. We welcomed new members to the community, and said goodbye to those who were leaving for what they hoped were greener pastures. For a change there'd been no deaths to report, and the people who were missing were accounted for by their friends or kin.

Folks returned from San Diego brought the news from the survivors there, apparently there was some sort of turf war going on, that made us all shake our heads. There really weren't enough of us left to imagine that there wasn't room enough for everyone who wanted to stay in the area, but the city was apparently being flooded by the high tides and that had forced some of the coastal sorts to abandon the convention center and Harbor Island, the other coastal communities hadn't been willing to absorb them.

There was lots of drinking with the dancing and soon folks were slipping off into the various halls and rooms for some private time. I was too drunk to make my way home in the dark so found a spot on a couch near the front desk, where, when I rolled over later I found N sleeping there next to me. "Don't get any ideas, I was just cold."

Scribe

In my dream I was traveling with a pair of companions, a tall muscular, armor clad man, a holy warrior, and a nimble leather clad woman of ethereal beauty, dark and narrow-waisted with shimmering golden eyes and slender pointed ears. As for myself, I was clad only in a robe and sandals, a satchel of writing materials on one shoulder and a battered sword over the other. We'd a fourth member, but there was an incident in the woods surrounding the ruins we now found ourselves standing in front of. That member camped just out of sight above a nearby fountain, hoping to heal while we made our way inside. Personally, I was of the opinion that his wounds were likely to be mortal, but had made him as comfortable as possible.

We entered the ruins, intent of reclaiming the paladin's birthright. I unrolled a map as we stepped out of the collapsed gatehouse into the great courtyard. He stood in the center of the yard, then reached out to touch a large sphere of stone. He was bathed in a golden light and the grime of our passage through the dangerous lands was blasted away, along with the straps of his helmet and shield. We were knocked back and there were tones and angelic voices from the air around us. The Paladin jumped with renewed energy, and raced back over the ruins of the gatehouse, and even without asking I knew he was going to use the energy of his new found aura to heal our companion.

I unrolled the map, and we began to discuss where we should go next, and how we should attempt to acquire the items our companion would need to complete his quest to liberate his home from its cursed state. While we pondered, a ragged trio, one of them quite badly lacerated, hastened from the western passage. Their warrior reached the stone and placed his hands on it. Nothing happened.

"Only once, that's what the riddle meant, you can only heal one." The warrior collapsed, breath coming in ragged gasps, I could not tell if he was exhausted or sobbing.

I was about to ask "what riddle?" when their group's bowman turned to me and handed me a battered journal. "I wouldn't risk my soul for this, but if you must, perhaps this will help you more than it did us."

I reached over and touched the sphere. I was infused with a golden glow. My female companion joined me.

I turned to the injured companion of the trio that were getting to their feet. I touched him and there was a flash, I relived the excruciating fight, really more of a slaughter, watching from a helpless vantage as the man swung at a beautiful woman, who was saved by a spectral man with black hair and blacker eyes. The spectre's talons lashed out and gutted first one and then myself, or rather the man I was holding.

His wounds closed, and the vision faded.

"Why did you do that!"

"He would have died."

"But now you can't save one of us!" I though for a moment that the elf was going to strike me.

"It was the right thing to do, Elba. He will just have to be more careful than usual" and with that our Paladin broke into a mighty roaring laugh. Apparently his comment was a joke at my expense, as I was so careful normally that I had only once drawn the sword he'd provided me. Having thought our way around all of our previous obstacles.

"Well, I'm not using mine on him, then."

The Paladin and our other companion both touched the sphere. Both were infused with a bright glow. I asked the other group to try the stone again, but there was no glow for them. I tried it, and there was no glow for me.

I opened up the battered journal, looking for the notes about the stone. There was a verse, and while it wasn't entirely clear, take in conjunction with what I'd seen, it seemed it would only allow one to heal once, and then the blessing would never be bestowed again, unless you were a scion of the house. I looked at our Paladin in a new light, it seems he was the real deal, after all.

The other group seemed to feel it, too, and quickly excused themselves. I swear the Paladins armor was now so clean it gleamed brighter than the fading sunlight. We agreed to split up to go east and west. The eastern task was supposed to require a test of physical prowess, and the new information I had seemed to back that up. There were notes that indicated that the previous group had succeeded there and brought their token back to the stone. I noticed that the token wasn't there now, however.

The Paladin slammed his mace down on the stone pommel first, a habit he'd gotten into to seat the head, which had started to come loose. I winced, thinking that wasn't probably the way one should treat a major magical artifact. There wasn't even a blemish on the stone, however. "No time like the present. I'll come help you when I'm done here. Be careful." He laughed again, knowing full well that I wouldn't behave any other way.

We split up. I looked to the northern passage before we headed west, it was identical to part of the path we'd entered several miles back in the woods. I pointed that out to everyone, but the Paladin insisted that we "not think on it until we return successful."

"Did he always talk like that?" the elf asked me as we made our way through the ruins of what had to be some sort of chapel.

"No, only the closer we've gotten to here."

We came upon the woman from my vision. She was tall, taller than myself by at least a foot. Her hair was silver, and the outfit she was wearing was beaded in what looked to be pure silver beads. She turned to us.

"I can take her," Elba reached for her weapon. I stopped her with a quick hand on her arm.

"Wait, this is not supposed to be a test of physical prowess."

"Perhaps, depends on how it's played." The woman whispered. "What if I am the lock that guards your precious treasure and you are the key." The woman had turned and bent down slightly to bring her face close to mine. There was the scent of flowers, and femininity, and blood, old and clotted.

"If I am the key and you are the lock..." I thought, was this a demonstration needed, or the answering of a riddle? I decided it was an answering that was needed, at least for now. "Would this lock be tight from lack of opening?"

"Excellent." The woman smiled, "But you have already lost your enchantment, so you must be careful in the opening."

I lifted myself up on tip toe to bring us eye level again. "If I am your key than I fear I am equally unused, perhaps what we both need is some lubrication."

I stepped back, I could see her do likewise preparing herself for violence. Instead I opened my satchel and took out a bottle, gently working it's cork with my thumb. "I fear, dear lady, that I have no cups to offer you, but this is the last of a fine vintage, and I would share it with you."

She hesitated and moved forward, suddenly with two silver chased wine glasses in her hands. I poured. We sipped. I toasted her and her stalwart performance in protecting her precious treasure, I toasted our liege, and that got her attention. I explained that our companion was a descendant of this castle's great kings returned to restore the place of his birth and reclaim his birthright.

The conversation went on, and Elba began to grow bored, she slipped deeper into the chapel, only to be escorted back by the talon equipped specter from my vision. While she was gone I had managed to move closer to the tall woman, who had invited me to sit with her on a rock to continue our lock and key wordplay, the conversation had grown quite full of double and triple entendre. The smell of blood had long retreated and only her flowery femininity remained.

Her final question, and I could feel that it was the last question was what would be "done with the lock once it was opened?"

I thought only a moment, "A good lock is too valuable to leave unused, and it usefulness is not gone once opened, a key that has no lock to open is useless, I would think that my liege would want to put such a precious lock to use and keep it and its key close."

"Indeed he would!" the Paladin entered our little area, setting aside his mace and shield. He lit the room, and his golden light glittered off the woman's silver beads.

"I see," the woman leaned over and kissed me, deeply. After a rather surprised moment, I returned the kiss, and while so doing heard the sliding of the chapel alter. I opened my eyes and looked over to the noise. The specter led Elba by a nervous hand over the the darkened chamber below. She reached in and pulled out a reliquary. The wood had grown soft in some places but it was otherwise sound.

The Paladin set a small totem on top of the reliquary and the woman asked why he hadn't placed it on the sphere.

"I thought we should all be present for that."

"You are quite confident in your companions."

"Do you think it was misplaced?"

The woman looked at me, unsure.

I stretched myself up on tiptoe, still, my mouth was a few inches short of her ear. "Come with us, you and your brother. You deserve to be part of this."

"So, you are still thinking of a different opening."

"If you are a lock and I am your key, it would seem a shame to only be fit together once."

When we returned to the courtyard, the north passage was no longer a duplicate of the entry to the woods. I could clearly see the castle proper at the end of a long span of bridges, partly fallen, and alive with creatures of some sort. I could tell it was going to be a challenge still to get to the bridge. I started looking up into the ruins for alternatives to a long sword fight all the way to the castle gate.

The Paladin laughed at me, knowing what I was doing. "Not this time, scrivener. Sometimes evil needs to be confronted directly. We have this!" He tried to clap the specter on the shoulder, but his hand passed through.

"Only his claws are solid, my Liege." Elba said, the "my Liege" part only sounding a little bit forced.

"I knew that. Let's go." He slammed the pommel of his mace against the stone, seating the sometimes loose mace-head a little more firmly. I was thinking I could fix that with a few minutes at a smithy, but then realized our Liege wouldn't have a need for what I had come to think of as one of his signature habits. He even paused in battle to re-seat the mace head, usually on the thick skull of an opponent. No, the royal mace would remain un-repaired, a character in its own right.

We started for the bridge, as creatures were already massing and hopping or sliding towards us. It would be good strategy to meet them on the narrow part of the first bridge, and hope they didn't have bows. I would have explained that, but the specter and Paladin were charging into battle, and I could see that the forces would meet right where I would have chosen, so felt it was going to be okay. As I walked towards the battle, I felt a tugging at my sword, but it wouldn't come free of the sheath, come to think of it, it hadn't last time, either, and I'd had to use it like a club. The woman grimaced at me, "It's rusted shut."

"Yes, we're probably safer that way." I rummaged around in my satchel and pulled out a sling, I started to select rocks and handed them to the woman as we moved to the side of the where I would have a clear throw at the creatures on the spans further along the path.

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.

Movie Making

I dreamed that I was working with a film company on an erotic romantic comedy. The comedy took place at a school, in fact, my old middle school. The projectors and white boards had been removed and we'd reinstalled the old green boards that I remembered from my own childhood. The production company had wanted all wooden desks, but I had pointed out that not only would that be over our budget, but it wouldn't actually match the chromed steal desks with laminated tops that we'd actually used as students. The desks with the unmanageable wire book management trays. The ones where large books got tangled, and small ones always seemed to spill out and end up under foot. The ones where the wires got bent into a hook that was just the right height to catch and untie shoelaces, or pop open three ring binders.

It was the middle of summer and the condemned school was empty except for the film crew, most of whom, because there was no air conditioning, and the extra lights were powerfully hot, had stripped down to shorts and t-shirts for the men, and shorts and halter tops for the women. We were filming a scene between the four protagonists where they were essentially playing truth or dare in the classroom after school.

The scene was getting pretty racy and soon there would be enough nudity to get us our "R" rating, but in the process, things were going a decidedly NC-17 direction, as everyone was horsing around and the crew had started to play along with the actors behind the scenes. I commented to the director that the "Making of" documentary was going to rated "X" at the rate we were going.

We decided to take a break, and the water truck was pulled up next to the abandoned buildings and set up to spray the little planter area, which we dubbed our "Water Park". Everyone ran out and got soaked so we could take a long lunch break. One of the nearly naked actresses made sure to stay close by me, asking all sorts of questions about what the school had been like when I had gone there. Somehow it had come out that I had actually dated a teacher a few years my senior shortly after I had graduated and come back to work at the place.

I pointed out that the teacher was still quite young, and had not been there when I was a student, but she insisted on portraying it as the scandal upon which our own movie was based to anyone who would listen. By the end of the break nearly every woman had invited me back to the hotel after the shoot, because "you won't have to drive all that way in the heat," and "we have a pool, air conditioning, and a bar tab."

The nearly naked actress smiled at me as we went back to work, "you can thank me later, sweetie."

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.

Cecil and the Alien Apocolypse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trans Dimensional Rift War

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

Plains, Studio, Falling Damage, Forest Flowers

              The first dream of the evening has all ready grown dim in my memory, even the title I thought of to recall it by has vanished. All I remember is low rolling hills covered in a golden shimmering coat of grain, and silvery streams running between them. I was with a group of people and we were mounted on some sort of animal or machine that soared a few feet off the ground at a speed just a little bit faster than a run. We were laughing and chatting, excited to be on our way somewhere for some special event.

              I dreamed I had converted the entire upstairs room into a library/studio. The photo backdrops were on rollers in front of the book cases, for when I didn't want to use the book cases as a backdrop. I had a couple of large digital cameras and a rather wide array of lights and reflectors. My desk was up there as well, the entire surface having been replaced by a large bright touch screen. One wall had several framed photos, and a couple of painting from those photos. LA had done those, I think. There were also a few framed magazine covers as well. I had opened up a skylight in the roof and was having someone use a crane to lower a bunch of potted plants into the studio. A couple of models were walking around in robes, waiting for the clothing lines to go away.

              I dreamed I was playing with a large group of people in a very elaborate setting. There were multiple platforms and the 25 or so of us were fighting the main boss of the dungeon. I was Axelpyre, and was trying to stay out of the way and at my maximum range, as the boss was one of those who randomly charged his attackers before going back to the tanks.
              At a later point in the fight, he became invulnerable, and starts stomping random party members. The raid leader wanted everyone to distribute themselves to the various platforms around the main platform in hopes of keeping him on the main platform with the tanks. I noticed that when he attacked someone who was standing on one of the flower designs, the damage was shared with whoever else was on the flower designs. I asked everyone to jump back down to the main platform and stand on one of the flowers. I jumped first. I managed to pull him off the platform. He fell and I landed, by blinking at the last second. I was hurt, but alive. I started bandaging myself. The rest of the raid hurried to position themselves before the boss could climb his way back up to us. When he got to us he was at about 10%, apparently his immunity didn't apply to falling damage.
              “Make sure to add that to your recount posting,” I whispered the Raid Assistant.
              She sent back a “:P”
              I popped all my defensive buffs and the boss jumped me. Everyone took about 400 damage.
              “It's working, Oh! My gods! It's working!” the raid leader shouted.
              “I wonder if this works even after this phase?” a priest added. (It didn't.)
              The boss attacked a half dozen more times, each time the damage was spread across the raid.
              Soon the boss went back to his normal attack, targeting me. Apparently, the fall damage was on my aggro account. “See you in a few!” I shouted and popped my invisibility. When I reappeared, he was at about two percent and I managed to only get off a half dozen casts before we had him down completely.
              “Maybe we should try that again before Blizzard fixes it.”
              “Are you kidding, that was sheer luck,” I said.
              “Come on, let's at least try it!” came a chorus of voices.
              “OK, Tuesday night, we're on again.”
              I opened a portal for everyone and as they ducked out they each whispered their congratulations, and condolences; the boss hadn't dropped any caster loot.
              About ten minutes into making repairs and putting stuff on the auction house I began to get whispers and invites from people I didn't even know. Apparently one of the raid members had recorded the whole thing, and had already posted it on line.

              In another dream, I found myself walking alone in the forest, it was spring, and the path was covered with tiny green shoots. Vines, covered with flowers, honeysuckle and roses, mostly, crawled along the path and veered left and right into the forest itself. I could make out the remains of a low stone wall on either side of the path, the walls were completely knocked down in some places, in other places there were obvious drain features, and in others gateways, with the gates long rotted off their hinges. On a whim I stepped through one of the gateways and followed a much overgrown path into the forest, there was even a four inch diameter tree growing from in between the cobblestones.
              After a minor tussle with a blackberry bush, I managed to come to what had been the front lawn of a small cottage. The cottage itself was still standing, but covered from top to bottom with flowering vines. I recognized bougainvillea and honeysuckle, there were old porch posts that now looked like tree trunks, they supported a dizzying amount of wisteria. The effect was like looking at a faerie castle instead of an abandoned cottage.
              I walked around the cottage, noting that the windows had been shuttered when it was abandoned, as though someone thought they might be coming back to the place. I listened to the wind rustling the flowers, and found myself thinking that you could almost make out voices. I had just decided to try to make my way inside when the phone rang.
             

Time Door, Sirocco

Time Door

       I dreamed of a duel direction sliding glass door. The dream was interrupted and then continued when I returned to sleep. The early portions of the dream are sketchy now.

       The door was in the back wall of a house like my parent's house. Plain, single level, four bedroom (rather than 3) and a couple of baths. It was on a low rise surrounded by trees and fields (long fallow) when the dream began.

       For several of the jumps, Red Paw was with me. Short jumps into the future, the “Where have you been gone?” sort of jumps. Coming back and finding the furniture dusty and not much else has changed. Finding a child of about eight, who'd been missing for years wandering in the back yard, crying because this was his house, not ours.

       A ferret, but much larger than a modern ferret, and calico. His collar was also a camera and highly futuristic. Red Paw found him wandering on the patio I build outside the door. They became friends in a very short couple of days.

       Jumping to the past, delivering the missing child, changed the future. Pure blind luck we arrived anywhere close to the right time. The kid's parents had abandoned the house, thinking it was haunted, and because of the slight recession and people moving to the big city, the house was empty when we landed. Their contact information was on the front door, though, and we were able to call and leave the kid for them. We were within about a year of when he vanished. Red Paw and I didn't stay around to answer questions.

       I appeared outside the house after dropping the kid off. I had to break into the house to jump again, there was no longer any contact information on the door. The former owners didn't answer their old phone number. Red Paw and I jumped slightly into the future again. The house was completely boarded up and I had to break in to allow us access to the door mechanism. We oversleep and the jump landed us far into our future. The current owners of the house don't even know there is a door there, as it has been covered.        Red Paw and I tiptoed out of the back yard and greet the woman of the house, she was gardening in the front yard. I explain that we were taking a walk and “We've gotten ourselves so lost, we don't know what year it is.”
       The woman tells us the year, enjoying the “joke”. I should've been 99 years old, and Red long dead. We talk a while. The woman invites us in, we meet her father and husband. The husband comes back from the study with a framed photo. It is of Red. “He looks just like this cat!”
       “He is that cat. We used to live here.”
       Everyone laughed.
       “There were more photos upstairs. Just a second. The husband ran up into the attic with a jaunty bounce. He returned with several photos and paintings. Frowning.
       “Just what is going on here!” he demanded, putting the photos and paintings on their table. There was a photo showing me and Red with N and several other cats. I emptied my wallet, credit cards, money everything was from the past.
       “There's a bored time machine under the house. I know it would be more convincing if I was from your future, but it is what it is.”
       He turned over the photograph. “It is what it is” was written on the back in my handwriting.
       We all sat looking at one another in stunned silence.
       We took out the pony wall to reveal the old sliding door frame behind the wall's footer. It was marked in increments about half a centimeter apart all along its length. Numbers on the one side, and numbers with plus and minus on the other. I had trouble figuring out what they might mean. “These weren't here when I jumped. I get the feeling I will eventually figure out how to operate it, and when I do, I'll try to leave instructions. I can't imagine we would sell the house without the instructions, unless that's why this is closed off. I hope I figure it out.
       We became friends, in large part thanks to Red Paw, who was a little charmer. It took a couple of days, but we were able to clear the wall. I set the thing for what seemed like would be a relative jump to my home time, and stepped through after suggesting they wall the thing up when I was gone. I think that is the only time in the dream there were witnesses to us walking out of the door and just vanishing.
       Jumped to a future where there was no house, and we were on the remains of a landfill. The house and its doors were buried beneath a layer of composted trash. And the junkyard dogs were robotic and fortunately a little bit intelligent. I managed to convince them that I needed one of the digging cranes to come and uncover “my property.” They were bored and so arranged to dig me a trench. There were no more glass doors, just the frame with its evenly spaced scratches barely visible below the scratches from being the floor of a dump. I took a bit to reveal the whole thing. I was tempted to have the crane pull the foundation up, but really didn't want to risk being stuck here. I found some strips of metal to drop into the tracks and set them to the reverse of what had brought me to the future. I made note of the company names and logos on the junkyard crane and robotic dogs. I knew I'd be investing if they existed.
       I didn't think it odd that the dogs were so helpful until after a cold night with Red Paw curled unhappily against my chest. He'd not had any dinner and only a little water. The robot dogs had taken turns watching over us during the night. In the morning, I stepped across the threshold and felt a little tug as I crossed over. The yard was still green but browning a bit.
       “N left again, I was gone too long last time.” I heard in my own voice.
       “I think I can figure this out...” and the world shifted radically. Memories of two time lines merged in my head. The two universes collapsed into a common one like soap bubbles. None of the missing alternatives were any the wiser. Only I retained the memories of both worlds. Red Paw was gone. No not gone, he was with N. I called her to make sure he was all right. She was testy about it, not even realizing that he hadn't been with her the whole time. She accused me of running off with the ferret girl. I had no idea what she was talking about.
       I decide to run an organized test. What I discover is that time jumps are determined by how far the door is open and which side governs forward or back, as well as how close and how long a person is in the vicinity of the door when it is open. (Partially why there were so few disappearances, the room had almost always been a study, and when it was a bedroom the door was either never open, or only open a little bit. The real time device was buried beneath the door frame. The controls were missing so the AI used the sliding doors as a sort of “control substitute.” Or at least that was my guess. During the test I borrowed a meter stick from a neighbor and marked the track in either direction every half centimeter. In so doing I found that I seemed to connect to something deep under the slab. I put a door stop on the thing to keep it closed. Oddly, that seemed to work pretty much like an off switch. There were no jumps if the clip was anywhere on the track, inside or out. No matter how long the door was open or how long I was exposed.
       During my testing, the ferret returned. I put a note on his collar about how the door worked and in so doing discovered that he already had a note with the settings that were used to send him through. I reversed those settings, to the best of my understanding, and jumped forward with the ferret.
       There was a ferret girl. She was a very bright teen, and very methodical in testing the door. She had uncovered the slider frame and convinced her parents to put the sliding door back in place. It had motors to control the opening and she'd managed to convince her parents to keep the original track with the markings on it. The numbers were still in my handwriting. She showed me the pictures of Red Paw, N and myself. “I knew you would be there sometime. Tell me how it works.”
       “You caught the wrong one, I'm only just working it out.”
       We spent some time fiddling with the settings and that was when we discovered that exposure to the settings was part of the equation. She'd done a ton or research on missing kids and other anomalies, she'd collected a couple of volumes of my photographs (Flat Memory media that she slipped into a reader on her wall and, well, I recognized many of the photos, but not all of them.) “You should have been a professional, full time.”
       “I was sort of busy...”
       “I suppose so.”
       On a more serious note. She said she found a sort of maximum back end, sometime in 1953. She didn't ever try it, as she was afraid to run into the folks who'd originally installed the time machine and would be just another one of the four vanished kids.
       Her story made me feel a little bit queasy about the possibilities of how the thing might be used by the wrong sort of person. I decided that I would have to go, but to do so would require me to stay in the room near the device with the door on the left all the way open for about a week. Her parents weren't too keen on the idea, but because they knew their parent's story about meeting me, had my photographs, and there I was again, unchanged, over twenty years later, they found the time travel story rather believable..
       The parents were also a little concerned that other kids had gone missing in the past, and that there I was in their house, with their daughter. I explained to them what I wanted to do, how, when I met myself earlier the time lines had collapsed together like a soap bubble. I wanted to fix the missing children and I thought I knew where they all went. To the beginning. They had all vanished before the house had central air, and all from the hottest part of summer. They didn't go all the way to the beginning of the time machine, just close, about a weeks worth of hot days close. Ferret girl lent me her ferret, Chester, and taught me how to operate his GPS, though I reminded her there wasn't any GPS system in 1953.
       I jumped to 1953 and found the local sanitarium was home to three missing children, and two adults who knew enough details of their time to convince me that they were from the actual future. I don't know how I managed to break them all out, but I did, and we made our way onto what was a farm at that time. The house that covered the time machine hadn't been built and the time machine itself was difficult to find. I rolled out a tape measure where the door frame would eventually be, and set metal rods on it in the position to take the first missing child back home. We jumped early the next morning, and reunited the kid with his family. They had completely boarded up the room, so we had to get the family to open the room up for us. The family promised to shutter the thing when we had jumped. I felt several things shift in the multi-verse and once they did I only had two missing folks to return home. One was a child of about 11 or 12 and the other was an old woman who only admitted to being above retirement age. They barely remembered our other travelers.
       Each of the missing one returned also caused a shift in the universe, as we knew it. For good or ill, I couldn't really say. Chester vanished on one of the remaining trips. That made me sad. I was surprised that I remembered him, in fact it seemed I could recall a lot of things that were changed. I wondered what would happen if I never bought the house, how would I have fixed all this, then. Then I was alone, in the boarded up house and I planned my jump home, hoping to make it before N left. I really didn't want that to be over.
       I arrived, and the Ferret Girl and Chester were there. FG was explaining that they were just looking for me, and there wasn't anything going on. That wasn't exactly true. As I stepped into the house the universe shifted, and I suddenly remembered FG from 1978 and changed my personal history by becoming one of my early girlfriends. A girlfriend who introduced me to time travel by sneaking into an abandoned farm house a couple of hours away from home.
       I could feel that the time machine needed my continuity as I was most connected to it, having traveled in time both as an adult and as a teen with FG. Talk about complex. I had memories of both of them in my head. FG was still a teen, though, and I was still old. The universe shifted and N vanished from the picture, as did the cats. FG was also gone. My new continuity was settling in without either of them, but I still owned the house. I jumped back hoping to merge with myself at 25, just before meeting N. Only, the memories didn't go away, I still had three or four time lines worth of memories. I realized it was going to be tough to live through it all again without trying to fix the mistakes and to take advantage of missed opportunities. Turns out I needn't have worried, at least about that. We didn't merge, our time and existence were separate enough not to even meet. I jumped back home and put the slide lock in the door. N didn't know who I was. I had lost FG somewhere in time, a jump where we both ended up in different places, and I hadn't been able to find her, either going forward or back.

Sirocco

       I was in a desert environment, investigating a ruin tucked into a small rocky semicircle of former reef along a desert coastal inlet. The site was a three color high contrast scar in an otherwise vast expanse of sand and sea. As I climbed out over the dunes to get a good vantage point to take some photos of the entire site for an over view, I heard a roaring behind me, like thunder, only it never stopped. I looked back to see a wall of billowing sandy brown clouds bearing down on us. I packed up my camera gear and ran back to the camp, “Dust storm!”
       The lead archaeologist looked up from an old Samsung monitor he was measuring and detailing to ask “How much of the horizon?”
       I ran out of the tent and climbed on top, the tent was apparently some sort of modern electrically stiffened material. The cloud wall was slightly more than half the horizon and closing in. I could feel the heat and wind speed picking up. “We have to get to cover and fast.”
       We ran around, finally deciding to take the pallets of monitors and cover them with our tent material, and then to use the same material to stretch out a roof over us. I undid several battery powered pieces of equipment and rigged them to supply current to the tent fabric surrounding our “artifacts” but the storm got to us before the six of us could rig up a roof and get power applied. We all dove into the lee of the rocks between the ancient black coral and the pallets of equally ancient monitors. (Which I had visions of stacking in a previous life time.) The world became all roaring and dark and gritty and brown. We all had respirators, and we stretched the remaining tent material out over us trying to maintain some breathable space.
       If we don't report in, someone will come for us, we just have to keep enough air around us to survive until the storm passes.
       I was working to try to get to the electrical contacts with the batteries from one of our food processors to stiffen our cover, as I could tell there was going to be more sand on the tent than we could hold up by hand for any length of time.