Dolphinia

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Surprise House Party

While I was sleeping, the house decided to throw a party. I woke up to thumping music out in the back yard, the sounds of running and giggling, a door chime, and the smell of BBQ wafting into my office. I had been working about thirty six hours straight, then had fallen asleep in my task chair. Except for bathroom trips and to get food, I hadn't been out of the office for several days. I had some sort of deadline I was racing to make, and had lost one of my illustrators, so was trying frantically to color correct everything for printing. the job was done, and I had fallen into a coma like sleep for a period of time I wasn't sure of, all my muscles hurt. I really needed to swim, but didn't have a suit that fit. I made my way through the surging crowd of party goers, only a few of whom I recognized. It didn't take long for me to decide that the party atmosphere had lasted long enough for me, it didn't help that I was dressed in a pair of pajama bottoms missing the fly button and an old holey T-shirt, neither of which had been changed for at least four days. I went back to my office, but the house had locked the door. When I tried to override the lockout the house said "You need to socialize," and that I would not be allowed to hide in my office until after I did so.

I made my way to the master bedroom, which was also full of party goers, who had overflowed even into the master bathroom. I reached in and grabbed a towel. I shrugged. "Okay, house, if that's the way you want it."

"What are you thinking?"

"I feel like swimming."

"Okay, shall I turn up the pool heat for our guests, the hot tub is already hot."

"That won't be necessary." I like my pool a little bit cooler, and the last thing I wanted to do was warm it up and make it more inviting.

I noticed that there were already a half dozen folks in the hot tub, and only a couple in the pool. They looked like they had gotten too warm and had jumped in to cool off before returning to the hot tub. I waited for them to climb over the wall into the hot tub so I would have the pool all to myself. I dropped my towel and pajama bottoms over a shaded (and thus empty) pool chair, then strode naked to the deep end of the pool. A couple of people came up to me to ask me to put something on, I didn't recognize them, so just pointed to the "Swimsuits or Nothing" sign, and said, "It's my home, my rules." One of them hurried off to go gather his children and leave. I smiled, waved at my friends in the hot tub and dove into the pool.

The house whispered to me through the pool speakers, "that wasn't nice."

I stayed under the water, kicking off the walls and gliding through the cool waters, enjoying the relief the cold water provided from my hand and foot inflammation. When I'd been down for a couple of minutes, several of the women in the hot tub had entered the pool to see if I needed help. I swam over to them and they dove down to greet me, saw my "condition" and turned and broke for the surface. I surfaced between them and mounted the stairs to make my way to the hot tub. A small pink and yellow swimsuit top plopped into the water next to me. My young friend M was below me on the stairs stepping out of her bikini bottoms. Only a couple of people stayed in the hot tub with us. I decided I liked the party after all.

Ultralight Modular Planes (Alien World)

I dreamed I was a settler on a new world. The world was simultaneously smaller than the earth, so less gravity, and the atmospheric pressure was about three times earth's. An interesting combination in that it allowed for the carrying capacity of ultralight style aircraft to be quite substantial, or for sport aircraft to be very small. It also meant that one had to be careful breathing outside, as the carbon dioxide levels were low, and the oxygen levels were very high. Most of us wore a re-breather sort of thing that fed some of our own exhalations back into the intake stream. The air was so thick that even little kids sounded like Darth Vader. Our homes were built on the edges of our covered farms so that the carbon dioxide we produced would go into the air for the crops. It was a sort of joke that we were burning diamonds to allow our crops to grow. (The world had lots of carbon, but it was all locked up deep underground as graphite and diamond, so, yes, we sort of did burn diamonds.)

I was flying a modular ultralight cargo aircraft of my own design. There were several of them around, and they could join together in a larger structure, either wing to wing, or wing to tail. The resulting shape either added motive efficiency, or lift efficiency. One of the neat things about the air frames was the docking collars on the wings, they allowed all of the data sensors and control signals to be be shared with all of the craft, allowing the coordinated turning of the entire structure.

The wings also had a neat feature in that they were flexible in a way that allowed the airfoil shape to be slender (less drag) at lower altitudes, but become more "normal" shaped when climbing up higher in the atmosphere. The aircraft itself had helium in the wing cells, so the air frame was almost neutrally buoyant at lower altitudes (of course with the pilot module, engines and cargo frames, that was a mere technicality.) There was a launch assistant for the aircraft at ground level, I had painted mine up to look like a giant hand. Onlookers would see a giant hand launching what looked like a balsa wood model (my plane was painted to look like one of the first glider kits I'd ever put together as a kid.)

The cockpit of the aircraft was essentially a small aircraft, allowing the pilot to eject, and then glide or fly back to safety. Pilots of the cargo frames would launch and join formations, leaving their cargo with me to make the slow low altitude crossing, and they would fly on ahead to the receiving field where they would be re-united with a larger air frame. The shuttling pilots would sometimes make four flights or more for every one us long haul pilots made.

My job was actually pretty easy, as the navigation was fully automated. The engine and pilot modules were a blast to fly manually. Most of us didn't bother to spend the money for the automation of the pilot pod, since the bigger cargo air frame had plenty of automation, and airfield beacons were easy to follow. It was a pretty cool system. The planet was clearly smaller than earth, as the horizon's curve was noticeable from a few hundred feet up. The odd thing about the planet was the way the water and erosion worked. It was a much smoother world than the earth, and the thicker atmosphere was great for keeping the small sun's heat evenly distributed around the little globe. There wasn't much in the way of seasons, and about thirty percent of the time it rained lightly, usually just a few hours before dawn. (The rain was trippy, as it was slower than earth rain, but somehow felt thicker. Hard to explain.)

In the dream I was headed back home with a pyramid of six cargo frames, and looking forward to taking a turn around my city in my pedal-powered auto-gyro. (Made possible by the aforementioned combination of lower gravity and thicker atmosphere.) I was almost home when another pilot hailed me and asked to join up, it took several minutes to get the clearance and then, even before the systems had synchronized, he punched out of his cargo frame, darting back the way he'd came. The frame he'd attached next to mine was all white, but with long grey streaks across it. It had seen some better days. Almost immediately it began to trigger various structural and control anomalies. I cut it loose and brought it under the six then flew it into position to be towed behind, where I could cut it loose without damaging the other frames if needed. It was a risky move, seeing as how it was having control issues on its own. And at one point I thought I was going to have to abandon the pyramid to autopilot and manually dock the errant cargo frame. Once I got it slotted in, I was able to shut off its engines and leave its controls just neutral. I would have to manually compensate for it, but it wasn't anything I hadn't practiced hundreds of times. I was a little annoyed that no one had warned me before taking it on, so I strongly urged the receiving station to take it off line for repairs. While I was doing that I started to hear deep chirping noises. I realized they were coming from the gimpy air frame. It made me remember the legends of the rare flying lifeforms that had lived here before the terraforming efforts. Usually, they were part of a sort of modern ghost story, and were used to explain why airships (efficient even if slow) and collections of air frames occasionally vanished without trace. I suspected most of those were either fire, or just plain made up. We were never out of touch with ground control, if there were lots of disappearances, you'd think we'd just be able to look them up.

Convoluted

The explanation started, "I was replacing the water-stained kitchen sink, just because I can't stand to look at it any more...." My anger was not so much that it was MY kitchen sink they were tearing out, without my permission, but that the person had not even come close to removing all the bits and pieces of the destroyed garbage disposal, or the water logged stuff that was stored under the sink. They hadn't even thought to turn off the water main when they discovered that the old shut off valves weren't fully shutting off.

I went out to shut off the water and when I stepped into the garage, I was suddenly not in my house any more. Now I was just furious, because I know that my improvised plumber wouldn't think to see why the water didn't shut off, and might go off to buy a new sink, though they seemed to expect me to do that, so probably not even that much. I looked around and stepped out into the alleyway between the house I just stepped out of and the neighbor's garage. I could touch both buildings with my outstretched arms. I decided to go back in, just to see if I would be back in my own house. Nope, the door was locked behind me. I pulled out my phone to see if I could figure out where I was. It wasn't in English. I could make out some of the words, as they had Latin roots, but wasn't sure what language my phone was in. I went into the settings, English wasn't even a choice. I didn't have a network connection, but that didn't come close to explaining why the phone was unreadable.

In the street, all the vehicles were three wheeled coupes that whined by with a light electric buzz. The people were speaking English, but only some of the signs looked like English to me. I was so obviously confused that I ended up being gently delivered to a local hospital. I'd apparently had a stroke that affected my memory and my reading, but not my speech and hearing. It also seemed to have affected the universe I inhabited. That's when it got strange. The doctor completely agreed with me. It seems my whole body MRI showed that I had a lot of organs in me that they just flat out didn't know what they were. I looked at them and told him the names of everything I recognized (Which was more than I thought.) He showed me what "normal" people had inside, and I was pretty sure they were some sort of androids, as most humans I know don't have nuclear power banks.

Then there was finding my home on this world's equivalent of Google Earth, and taking me there, and the place was abandoned, but the driveway looked well kept, and the hedge and Junipers were not completely unruly. There was a grassy meadow, like I'd always wanted, in place of the front yard. The inside, however was a shambles. Critters had gotten in through the pet door and everything was just piles of shredded dirt covered ruin. "Well, it looks like you have lots to do, so we'll just leave you here." And they did. The whole neighborhood looked pretty much like it normally does, except, no cars on the streets, no sound of people, just the occasional whirring noise which I couldn't locate. I managed to find my rake (The handle too dried up, it had shrunken out of the socket and the head separated the first time I tried to rake a pile of old books towards the door. The shovel was in much better condition, but I had no idea where I was going to shovel all the stuff, so settled for just getting it out of the house into the garbage cans. I didn't even know if there was still garbage service. The drapes in the living room crumbled to dust when I went to open them, I had to scrape grime off the window to see outside. My backyard looked like a combination of MC Escher and James Hubbell, but with obviously alien light sources in the sculpture. (I absolutely can't tell how I knew the lights were alien, I just did.)

There were also cats, but not my cats, though they didn't seem to mind. I started to wonder what I was going to eat, or if there was anything even to drink. I did find some of my cups had survived, though filthy, and oddly, the granite sink, laying on top of the ruins of the counters where the particle board had turned to mush. There was a thin stream of water running out from beneath it, through and under the debris, and then out through the garage along the west edge where it had cut a small channel, then pooled behind the stacks of ceramic tile and left over pavers, where it overflowed a low spot before being absorbed by the rather lush side yard. The fence was long rotted away, but the steel fence pole was still there, rusted and tilted. From the front you couldn't see the flowing brick and glass structure with its alien lights.

This was one of those dreams that had so many tiny details that I can't even begin to describe how rich the atmosphere was with the dank decayed smell of the house and how it mixed with the freshly chlorinated city water. The eerie silence and the low electric buzzing. (Like my electric clock, I'm guessing.) and even the cats and birds were almost silent. The reddish brown sunlight of the town I appeared in versus the fresh light of my own neighborhood, apparently abandoned, but somehow still maintained. (Much of the plantings were wildly overgrown, but all of the hedges were trimmed even with the walkways and driveways, and there was no debris in the street. Even my garage door was perfectly intact looking from the front.

Road Tripping in the New Car

I dreamed that I traded in my Insight for an all electric vehicle, a sleek, four seat, deep cargo well all wheel drive vehicle. It was a dark metallic maroon color. Since I wasn't going to always be on the grid when I stopped, and I was planning on travelling all the way to Colorado to meet someone, I packed not only everything I would need to wear for the trip, but an extra battery pack and solar cell banks, and an air bed. I had a little Honda generator so I could recharge overnight if there were no charging stations or hotels. My plan was to only drive each day until the batteries were half depleted each. The generator was mounted in a little exterior alcove so I could run the thing and charge either battery as I was driving. The solar panels on the roof didn't really power anything more than the phone and radio. There was a little five gallon tank that would run the generator for a little over nine hours. I carried a spare gas tank just in case. It was a pretty cute little set up. I stopped to visit a couple of my former student/gamer friends and their new baby. (Wasn't really a baby any more in the dream.) D and R both looked like they were healthy and happy. The baby was zooming around crashing into things. I was glad they hadn't come to my very un-childproofed house. We played a couple of hands of Scarabs and Side Scroller, just so I could get their feedback. I left them a prototype deck of scarabs, because the baby seemed to like the illustrations, and giggled lots while sorting them out by color or shape. Before I left, we drank a toast to our fallen gamer friend. I then went on my way, headed to Colorado, but I don't remember any more of that trip.

Later on I drove up to my sister's. It had been raining a lot, so the batteries of the rover were both pretty much depleted and I'd only made it because I'd been running the generator the last several hours taking turns topping off whatever battery I'd just used to climb the latest grade, the batteries weren't really designed to be deep discharged multiple times per day, so this trip was an experiment to see if I could make an eleven hour drive in less than two days. By the time I got to the base of her hill. She was there waiting for me anyway. She showed me where to park (next to her little purple car on a little raised gravel bed) and said the road was washed out so we'd have to hike the half mile up the hill. I topped off my little generator and started it up, locking the access door. I hadn't really planned for this trip very well, so I only had a small bag of stuff, not even a full change of clothing, as I'd only intended to stay a day or so. We hiked up the gravel road and came to the place where the road was washed out. There were a couple of shallow stands of stone, only a few inches below the surface of the water that was now part of a lake rather than their lower pasture. My sister was barefoot, and she hiked up her skirt and waded in. The water was only a few inches deep. I only had the one pair of shoes (my blue Nike runners, and I didn't want to get them wet, so I took off my shoes and socks and followed her across. While I was in the middle of the crossing it started to rain. So much for keeping my shoes dry. One of the stoned rocked down a few inches as I reached the edge and I ended up soaking the bottom of my pants, even though I'd rolled them up. I managed to keep my balance and jumped across to another stone slab, it also shifted precariously under my weight. then to an asphalt slab, which started to crumble when I landed on it. I scrambled a bit and then was up on the gravel road bed, what was left of it. I used my socks to dry off my feet as best I could and then stepped into my shoes. I couldn't walk on the gravel road like my sister, my feet just aren't that tough any more. I greeted J when we got to the house. He had pulled out some clothes for me, as I was soaked by the time we got there.

Jim insisted that I stay a couple more days than I'd planned, because he wanted me to witness my sister and him renewing their vows. I pointed out that the clothes we just put in the dryer were the only ones I had, as my visit had been sort of a whim. He said he would loan me a suit, as he thought he had one that might fit. "Besides, if the rain keeps up, you might not be able to get out for a couple of days." We geeked out a bit over my new electric vehicle. Which I had essentially turned back into a hybrid. (Calculating it now, I see I was getting just shy of eighty miles per gallon, not counting that both batteries were fully charged on house current, of course, so way less than that.)

Night Watch, Locked Out

Lots of dreams lately, but too much going on to have taken the time to write them down. Last night was a doozy, though, three thrilling episodes (of which I remember the first and last.)

In the first dream of the trio, I was having trouble sleeping, so got up and was wandering the space station's shopping mall. The mall was a giant eight story collection of shops and services (mostly the latter.) The mall was crowded, despite the hour, as many visitors to the space station kept their own local time. The sunlit forest and farm areas were exposed to daylight 24/7, and the mall and research labs, where I worked, were on the "night" side of the station. The police force of the daylight side were called the "Frangers" (short for "forest rangers") and the night side station security were the "Night Watch." Both security forces were headed up by the station security office, but all of the members but the Chief and his two deputies were volunteers. There was an application for the Frangers, but there were never any positions listed for the Night Watch, even though there seemed to be plenty of them.

I was strolling from the lighter "gravity" area down to the heavier rings of the mall to do the 12 staircase circuit when I heard the Night Watch announce the time, one fifteen am, and "all's well, lots of walkers out this morning." followed by a smile, more felt than heard. I had never experienced that before. I stopped in my tracks and looked around, trying to find the source of the voice, then realized it had been in my head. Odd, that. I relaxed and closed my eyes, I could hear a half dozen people checking in with the same "All clear here" and the like. I'd never noticed that before on any of my walks. I decide to try something.

"Good morning, can anyone hear me?" I thought with the intent of someone hearing it.

The chatter stopped for a second, and then there were a chorus of "yes's" and genuine well wishes with only one sort of worried greeting. I wondered if I'd make a mistake. I noticed one of the Night Watch looking around, checking out the crowd, a confused look crossed her face. "I wonder if he's still out there, I can't feel anybody but us. Hello?"

I waved at the Night Watch officer, a strawberry blond in her fifties, slightly plump in a way her smartly cut uniform couldn't quite disguise. "Was it you?" I heard her think to me. Clearly as if she'd spoken. I found it more than a little odd, as I didn't believe in psychic powers, but then realized it must be a side effect of my Hall implant.

"I think so," I thought directly for her. She smiled and approached. I could hear her checking to see if anyone else had heard me, they hadn't. That didn't surprise me, as the message had been for her alone.

"Welcome to the Night Watch."

"Don't I have a choice in that?"

"Sort of, join us, or have the implant removed and be sent dirt side."

I realized that the implant wasn't removable, as I'd purchased it myself while living on earth. She didn't know that, as most station employees had theirs "on loan" from the station owners' association. Being sent dirt side would put a kink in my research plans, not to mention aggravate my allergies and arthritis.

We talked for a bit, long enough for the "all's well" to be sent out again, along with lots of questions about me.

"Yeah, you can't hear him unless he's talking directly to you, or broadcasting, pretty amazing control for a breakthrough."

"Oh, finally a new dispatcher!" I heard a very excitable sounding girl's voice ring in my head.

"Let's not get ahead of our selves here. He's a TopSec Research, Custom, Private already working three fifths. I doubt they'll let him go a full shift with us.

"Awww," the little red-haired girl sounded disappointed.

It sounded like I was just going to be a civilian volunteer, plains-clothed, and only when the insomnia kicked in and I was going for my walks. But it was kind of nice to feel like a part of something larger.

-----

The second dream had something to do with a solar powered aircraft, but I don't remember more than that, and a very crowded feeling cockpit. And the color orange.

-----

The third dream was this morning. I was staying in the convention hotel, but wasn't attending the convention. I was there to make contact with a couple from China, and to give them the papers and instructions to make their way to a safe house so that they could defect. I was staying with a partner, we were registered as a husband and wife. We had an adjoining balcony with the Chinese couple. I was napping outside in my robe after the exchange had been made, and was trying to see if I could get a ticket to the last day of the convention. My partner wasn't interested. When she retired to our room, I took a long drink of water, then fell asleep. When I woke up, I couldn't get back into my room, the sliding door was locked.

I checked the other room, the Chinese couple had left during the night. Their door was open but I didn't have my room key, so I didn't want to go out into the hall since I was just wearing my robe and flip flops. I scooted back across the balcony and knocked on the slider. There was a woman in her underwear sprawled out on the bed. Nicely shaped, too bad we hadn't had time to be more married like. I could see luggage, but it wasn't mine or the other agents. I began to wonder just how long I'd been asleep. The woman woke with a start and rolled over. It wasn't the other agent, she quickly covered up.

She picked up the phone, so I shouted "thank you." and turned away, looking out over the city.

A few minutes later a hotel manager sort appeared. I explained that I had fallen asleep on the balcony (it had been a warm pleasant night with a gentle cool breeze) and meanwhile, it appears that my "wife" had checked us out. I didn't have my luggage, clothes or even a room key. I told him the Chinese couple next door had been pleasant but very quiet. He actually remembered them. After a few minutes of trying to figure out how I'd gotten on the wrong balcony, he discovered that my car was still in the Valet parking. I suggested that we move out of my former room, as we were making the current occupant uncomfortable, she was covered in a thin sheet, not having dressed.

We moved over the the adjoining now empty room. The Hotel computer had somehow "lost" my hotel reservation records, as well as the room next door. I considered myself fortunate that the assistant manager had remembered the Chinese couple, so knew my story wasn't a complete fabrication. I would need to stop and fuel the car once before making it home, so asked if I could borrow a shirt and shorts from the gift shop, he had my vehicle information and home address.

Not without a credit card or cash, they said. They would let me keep the robe, though. The assistant manager thought a moment and then said he had some lost and found items I could probably use. When the car was brought around, my bags were in it! (But not my "wife's.") I was able to retrieve my wallet, and tipped him forty dollars for not making a big scene about it. The hotel management was very polite about it.

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.

Lightning Loop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short Stuff, Working, Space Survival

Many little dream snippets.

Two featuring miniature people. The first was a vacation trip. Couldn't afford to go our selves, so sent miniature versions on the vacation. We got to be there, but in miniature form. It was like visiting a beach in 'Land of the Giants' mode. While at the beach one of the avatars dropped the room key down a sewer grate. In climbing down after the key, the avatar started growing, good, in that the long drop wasn't long any more, bad in that there was no going back the way we came.

Lots of large stacks of boxes and crates and a dark damp wall full of fist sized hollows, one of which had the key, which had morphed into the key for my old Plymouth Satellite. I had to slide down a pipe, then scale down a stack of moldy crates and boxes to get over to the wall.

---

In the second Little People Dream, the avatars were back home, and they were now living independent of us. They had developed their own personalities and shared our home. One evening there was a glass soup steamer over the fire pit. The steamer rolled off of its stand as the last of the soup dried up. The little man avatar threw himself in front of it where it rolled out into the room, absorbing the shards of glass as the tube shattered. I don't know how he knew the tube would shatter, but had moved faster than any of us. The female avatar raced to his side and collapsed, sobbing, and then shut herself off.

We put them in a series of sarcophagi on a shelf with statues of birds, because, as the avatar's instructions indicated, "There shall only be birds at our grave site." The avatars personalities had been backed up, but we knew that even if restored from that backup, they wouldn't be the same.

---

In another dream I handed in a couple of spreadsheets to an accountant, who was just raving about the quality and speed of the work. (Which mystified me, as it was something that took about twenty minutes.) She was cute, though, so I didn't mind the fuss.

I was sitting at another desk across the hall, and after my last appointment left, my old boss came in to express how disappointed he was that I had taken these other jobs. "All for what?" he asked.

"Less stress, and eight percent more per year in my retirement check."

I was trying out both jobs to determine which one I would keep, if either at the end of the year. One job was full time to half in the second part of the year, the other was half time to full time at the end of the year, so they complemented one another perfectly to make me full time. Both paid considerably better than the previous job.

My old boss wanted to know why I hadn't promoted in his department, so I had to explain that the education cost to do so was greater in terms of time and money, neither of which I would have gotten back on the job, not to mention it was only a five percent raise, not twelve percent.

"It's a waste of your time and talents."

I pointed to the happy accountant and the family that was just making their way out of the lobby, "not to them it isn't."

---

In the fourth little snippet, I was floating in space, having been ejected from my vessel by pirates. I jetted off into orbit near some asteroids and set up my emergency shelter. There was enough ice in the nearby asteroid to flood the cotton candy like walls and get the greenery growing faster than normal, that would scrub the CO2 from the air and in a few days provide food. I had enough emergency rations to make it that far.

I was floating in the center of the sixty foot diameter ball, watching the grass grow, as well as the gauges that showed the atmosphere percentages, the electricity production (the outer layer of the ball was solar panel material) and the positions of nearby ship transponders. Sometime during the second day, another commander drifted my way. He also had an emergency shelter in tow. I extended my airlock tube and the commander rotated to connect. I had still not completely gotten off of my suit oxygen as my bubble was still growing its atmosphere (I could have survived if I had, but didn't want to stretch the growing system.)

She introduced herself, and we compared seed stocks.  We traded some seeds, passing them through the tube. We decided not to visit one another yet. I could see that she'd been out in space far longer than I, her greens had grown more than a foot into her living space, and she'd trained some of her vine plants out into a sort of hammock, or nest. I indicated that there were good organic carbon solids on the asteroid I was orbiting, so we could grow some of the longer rooted plants in time.

She indicated that she was hoping to make a go out here, if she could just get a more permanent shelter. She then asked if she could keep my bubble when I was rescued. I had to admit that I'd been toying with the idea of tethering to the asteroid below and then hollowing it out. She let out a girlish giggle, and asked if I had two spoons. I pointed to my escape pod, explaining that I had my prospecting tools, including a portable mining laser. It was fully charged, still.

Four More to Go.

My dreams took their usual meandering path until early this morning. J and I found ourselves owners of a lovely ranch style house nestled into a hillside, lots of wood floors and paneled rooms. One of the paneled rooms was next to a space, that by looking at the rooms around it, should have had a room.

I started knocking on the wooden paneling until I discovered a hollow sounding area. We carefully removed the panel there, and discovered a doorway that had been covered up. The room was full of dusty office furniture, but sunlight was streaming into the room from a very dusty window. We both thought that was odd, as this room would be backed right up against the hillside, and it was early in the morning.

I looked around the walls and found a plastic covered wall plate with a smooth cover about a half inch in from the edges of the plate itself. I noticed there was a little thumbnail shaped divot in the cover, like someone had used a tool to pry the cover up previously. I started to use it to pull the cover off but then realized the cover was very flexible, so pressed gently in the center where it was bulged out a bit. The bulge inverted and the cover popped off into my hand.

Behind the cover was a set of unlabled controls. A row of white buttons on top, then a cross of buttons NSEW and center arrangement, then a couple of rows of buttons on the bottom. In each row the right most button was slightly larger than the others, and the center button of the cross was larger as well.

I pulled things away from the wall, looking to see what this might control. I found another larger panel, a couple of feet square, and behind it were several bundles of cables, some I wasn't familiar with, and some were Cat-6 ethernet cables. there were a couple of small hubs for the Ethernet cables, and there were faded labels on the wires. The alien looking cables also connected to what I guessed was a hub, but it was round and the cables plugged in from all directions. A much larger cable connected to one end of the alien hub and vanished into a conduit in the wall.

J was more interested in cleaning up the window to see what was outside, as she was convinced that this was like the other house where the hole in the floor went to another house in another part of the world.

When I woke up, (yes a dream within a dream) I was disappointed that the house wasn't real. I was telling the dream to J and some others at lunch, with J chiming in if I left out a detail. We were outside where other folks were passing by, when one of those folks stopped to listen. When I finished the dream he looked at me, and there passed a sort of odd feeling of familiarity. He smiled "Four more to go."

A woman who'd just come out of the cafe also smiled at me, "you know?"

"They just had the first,"

"Oh, four more to go." She took the gentleman's hand. "Welcome to the family."

I looked around, and several other people in their group waved at us.

J said she thought they were a little strange, but no stranger than the two of us having the same dream.

Mobile Home (Wet)

J and I couldn't decide where to live. So, we bought a boat.

At the end of a trip from Monterrey to San Diego we ended up docked outside a amphitheater like venue, where I was repairing the rails. A rock and roll concert started. It was a group of older rock-n-rollers, covering a lot of sixties and seventies songs we both liked. Grandkids N and M were visiting along with Dad, and had never been to a concert before, at least, not on a boat.  They were having a great time. Our boat rode pretty high out of the water, and the two electric masts were gleaming pink in the setting sun. The raked main mast had the booms tied in tight and we were anchored both fore and aft. (The boat was all electric and wind/solar powered. It had two re-conditioned torpedo motors in addition to the sails.) I loved the dark oak color of the decking and sides.)

The band invited us to come backstage during the break between sets.

All the while this was going on I was replacing the old thick wooden railing with lighter, stronger, and more weather resistant composite railings. I was almost finished by the time the concert was done. I was just finishing the composite so it was the same color as the electric masts.

J was concerned about N's first back stage experience, but I pointed out that he would be fine (he was an adult in the dream, with dark curly hair.) Besides, she'd be there. Her son tried to remind her that she was almost seventy and needed to behave like it. I just laughed, figuring that's not going to happen. I did clip  her into a safety line before she climbed down over the side of the boat, better safe than sorry, right?

House Tour

Last night's dream was a perfect combination of every conversation and movie J and I experienced.

Mom  and Dad, in their 90's now, came to tour my home and to help celebrate my daughter's 16th birthday, High School Graduation, College acceptance. They had never been up to "the complex" where J and I had moved over 16 years earlier. We started in the office, I showed them the main development center, and there were the over a thousand servers that ran both our games and development software. There were no blinking lights in the entire place, as I found them too distracting. Only a couple of the team were actually working when my parents arrived for the tour, as it was quite late local time. I had to explain that the majority of our employees worked from home, or from satellite computing centers if there'd been enough of them to build one. Only just over a dozen developers and robot maintenance workers worked at the main site. Many of them had homes in another part of our business park.

A pair of cybernetic enhanced golden retrievers joined us. Part family, part guardians, they conversed, after a fashion, greeting Mom and Dad warmly. We stopped in the cafe, open around the clock and around the calendar, they catered to all of the local businesses, many of which ran around the clock as well. I explained that the kitchen was rarely closed, so if they needed something in the night, they could call over and it would be delivered to their room. The retrievers wondered if there were treats for them. I told them treats were for later, and they fell in behind us, friendly but alert.

We went outside to a nearby intersection. I pointed out a building across the street with three domes on top. You'll be staying in the red domed room, the other is empty for now, and "your grand-daughter's rooms are under the green dome. Her dome was rotating slowly and the clear windowed opening was slowly rotating out of view. "She likes to watch the stars at night when it's clear enough."

My mom commented that was just like her grumpa, and her dad.

I pointed to the rest of the complex up the hill, all solar cells and wind turbines. I was proud of the fact that our operations ran on almost wholly renewable energy resources. I had an experimental tidal generator on the coast, but it wasn't online yet. When  it was, I would be able to provide power to some of the other homes in the area as well. I was not planning on expanding the business any further.

"Cross now," one of the retrievers barked and we stopped our conversation long enough to navigate the curbs and cross the street.

We entered our home. It was very open on the bottom floor, and there were places were balconies overlooked the main hall. There were a couple of folks meeting quietly in one corner, some others playing cards. They all looked up and greeted me, so I introduced my folks around. These were friends and co-workers (employees, technically) who were using the main hall as one of the few well lit meeting places in town, I even had a robot bartender rolling around somewhere. It was the closest thing the island had to a night club.

I took my folks back up into the more private part of the residence. The retrievers got their snacks, and then headed back out to the main hall.

There was a large alcove in the master bedroom with a life sized photo of J and her five grand children, N was a young man, his little sister, M was a teenager, as was their oldest cousin. There were two younger cousins, twins, were tweens in the photograph. All of them were grown now, and a couple had provided J with great grand children, or would have if she was still alive. The family was still close with myself and my daughter, and that was a sweet set of memories. They kept J alive for me. In the photograph J was quite clearly beaming, and very pregnant. There were dozens of smaller photos lining each side of the larger photo, and there was a single perpetual candle below the center of the display. The whole thing was on an antique oak dresser with J's jewelry and some other keepsakes displayed on the top. It was quite the shrine. The whole thing brought up many bittersweet memories.

Mom wondered what had prompted us to become parents in our sixties. I answered that we'd been fortunate enough to have both the time and the money, so we did. I showed them the master bedroom, the pedestal for the California King had been refinished and modified to move the drawers closer to the edge of the bed. The headboard still held several books, a couple of teddy bears, and the love dice game.  The mattress was a climate controlled sensor bed, and the central area was the storage for the robotic paramedic that served the family. The bed spread was an antique quilt, one of the ones J had loved. In the center of the bed was a large cat, marked like a clouded leopard. He regarded us, then loped over to rub against Mom and Dad's legs. It was as though he knew they were family. "He's recently sired some kittens if you think you'd like another cat."

I eased the doors closed and we headed up to the roof, passing under the awning that made wintering through  possible, and we stopped outside my daughter's room. I knocked on her door and it opened almost immediately. She'd probably been watching the tour's progress on her tablet. She bounced out into the hallway and hugged Mom and Dad, genuinely glad to see them. she was about the same height as mom, bright blue eyes and cheekbones like her mother, brown wavy hair like mine when I was young. She was slender, but curvy, a perfect blend of our two families. (Perhaps unfortunately for her nose, it got J's bump and our length, like most teens, she was oversensitive about it.)

Mom was stooped with arthritis that had progressed too far to be treated even with modern medicine, at least not without replacing her spine, something she absolutely refused to do "I never planned on living this long!" she kept saying. At least her condition had been brought to a standstill, so would get no worse. Dad's hearing had been replaced, however, with implants, it was the only gift he'd allowed me to give him, and even then, I had to convince him that I needed his help for the "trials" of the devices, as I wanted to invest in them. (In fact my company now owned the company that made the devices, and we subsidized their distribution, about 95% of the cost for those who could afford it, 100% for anyone who couldn't. I don't think my dad actually understood why we did that.)

My daughter dragged her grandparents into her room; showing off the view and some of the awards she'd collected. Like her mother, there were piles of clothing on the floor and the beds, as I think she tried everything on every morning before heading out. She'd done her best to move the piles out of the way, or cover them with bedding.  She was, very much her mother's daughter. I was quite proud of her, thinking the J and I had done okay, and that the business, when I handed it over in a dozen years or so, would be in good hands. I had every intention of retiring and becoming a face to face game master, and gaming away the last few decades of my life with friends both old and new. (Unless, of course, we discovered the secret of immortality. Human life spans were now in the low 120s regularly, and the record was being  broken continuously by a woman who was in fact one of my virtual employees at 127 years of age. I didn't know if I would make it to that age, but it seemed likely that I would at least see Halley's Comet a second time.)

Hello Nurse, Recording Job

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

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

Cycling

Last nights's dreams all had a similar theme. I was pedaling my butt off all night long. In the first dream I was at the beach. No exactly on a bicycle, and not exactly on a unicycle. The device had two wheels, but they were side by side, unless I opened up the device, and then on was to the front of the other, sort of. The frame of the thing was about twelve feet long, it wobbled like a teeter totter, and I had to continually lean it so that folks could duck under it or step over it.

In a later dream I was riding up the street and then around a corner, where I found myself at the end of a parade, since I was on a real unicycle this time, the crowd just thought I was part of the parade, the police went along and let me through their moving barricade, which allowed me to catch up to the actual parade. I managed to pedal up next to the mayor's car and then when I had the chance I ducked down a side street to finish my trip to the store.

In my final dream this morning, I was pumping water from the bottom of the house up to the roof where it was going into a storage tank that flowed back down through a series of water wheel powered turbines. It only generated a few watts, but it was enough to light up the house at night and recharge the cell phones. Everyone was supposed to take turns running the generator, or pumping water up into the tower. In practice, however, I seemed to be the only one who hopped on to the exercise bike and actually did any pumping. I thought it was particularly unfair, as I had also built, and maintained the windmill that powered the pumps/generators most of the time. One of my neighbors asked why anyone would bother pumping the water up there. I told him that sometimes people might want light and a shower when the wind wasn't blowing.

Hypersleep

Realistic detailed dream of the sort that made me think it was real, and caused some confusion about how I woke up in a bed with actual fabric coverings, and small furry animals.

I was a crew member on an intersteller ship. We had been awakened to perform maintenance on several ship's systems. Part of the repairs actually involved deploying a shield made of ice, and then a space walk to replace some exterior sensors and plates. Apparently we'd bumped into a fairly large (less than a gram!) chunk of carbon and lithium, and it had punched a hole into one of the storage decks (fortunately unpressurized.) I patched the hole while another crew member assessed the damage to the cargo. Then I replaced a couple of sensors while I was outside. When I looked at the ice shield, I could see little flashes of light as it took hits from the intersteller debris. It turned out that space was not as empty as we'd thought, or hoped.

I looked back at the scoop array, still amazed by the size of our endeavor. At a half mile away, it was impossible to tell if they were working or off, or even if there were any physical damage.

When we got back inside, we listened to some of the news and telemetry notes that had been continuously beamed to us from Earth. Lots of unrest and turmoil around the world. Several other "Earths" had been located in the nearby stars, and there were even broadcasts from the second colony, about twenty five years worth! Their target world had been discovered long after our mission had left.

We also had bad news. We'd lost a lot of our cruising atmosphere supplies, and so needed to cut our maintenance operation short. We put the bulk of the team back into hypersleep. Finally, there were only two of us there working on the final few repairs, the deflector anti debris system had depleted a significant amount of our power resources. It was obvious that we were going to have to use the emergency hypersleep stand-ups instead of the full featured ones, as that appeared to be the only way to guarantee that the debris mitigation would continue all the way to our destination. The stand-ups were a supportive framework instead of a high tech bed, the hookups were very simple and the mechanism encased the sleeper in a special ice like material. I monitored the freezing of my companion, and then with everything else powered down, connected myself by the bluish glow of the debris shield. I closed the ceramic screen, and triggered the process, allowing the cold to take me away.

When I woke up I was very confused, as the dream was so strong it was like a memory of a real life.

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 Zigzag

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moon Dance

I dreamed I was remotely connected to a robot on the moon. There were a couple of hundred of us operators working on the moon, building the systems and places that we were going to be moving to in the not too distant future. Our biome and three of the six others had finished the planned construction phase early, so we had a few days rest time - which meant that we'd have batteries fully charged as we went into the long "night" where it was difficult to fully charge because of the low albedo of the earth. We decided to set up for the usual observations, but decided to spend our charge on a dance.

I got online early and virtual hopped between the lunar orbital cameras, looking at the web of domes and long connecting tunnels, so much like dew on a huge spider web. I only hoped I would be able to still qualify when the construction was finished in '35.

Our robots trundled into the central recreation dome, not yet fully constructed. The crater floor had been leveled and paved with bedrock, a black and silver marbled material we'd come across. It was quite hard, and attractive enough to not need any sort of decorative finishing (other than polish, I supposed.) The access tunnels connected through various points along the crater walls, and as my date and myself entered the construction zone, we could see that others had arrived early and cleared a large space on the central floor. As folks entered the area, I could see that we'd all dressed up for the occasion (I was in a green silk shirt, black bow tie, and though people wouldn't see it in the avatar display, my black dress kilt.) I don't know if I'd ever seen so many of our robots gathered in a single location since the radar building collapsed in '22.

Music began to play, and we headed out onto the dance floor. I was really looking forward to the day when my damaged body would be able to walk those hallways for real. As the night progressed, folks had to take their leave, so they could return to their charging stations. My date and I had programmed in a less energetic evening, so were amongst the last to leave, taking several minutes to look at Hawaii Rise on the globe that hung above us in the sky. "Just about time for me to get up and feed the puppy," my partner stated. We'd planned the low power program just so we could see her current home come into view.

I'd put down extra food for my one remaining old cat, so she'd been quite content to leave me to my virtual date.

"Look at California," I fired off the green laser on the roof, it pulsed with a digital valentine.

"Oh! for me! Thank you. I never even thought of being able to do that. You'll have to send me the specs."

I was a little disappointed that she was more impressed with the technology I'd cobbled together than the message itself, but at my age I took my victories where they were offered.

I agreed and then "walked" her robot back to it's charging station outside her subdome. I stayed in direct voice communication with her while I rolled mine back its charger in the retirement barracks. I thought it was funny that we'd all adopted robots that were fairly close to the places where we were eventually going to settle. Even though I was apparently not normally an operator of this particularly small robot, I tended to be assigned the big tractor like machines that had long bouncy journeys to make. Those journeys were getting to be fewer and fewer as the long roadways were completed. A robot on a roadway only needed someone to check in from time to time as they could be automatically navigated. I liked the long trips, especially to the the back side of the moon to deliver materials for the giant telescope. I liked looking out at the sky where the earth was not present to block the view. I'd often thought about dropping my own automated telescope along the path, just to have it available to live feed to my current home. While I could use the extra charge on a robot at the end of a shift to build some of the parts on the moon, the electronics would have to be flown up, and that cost a dollar a centigram.

My virtual date cajoled me out of my reverie, I'd apparently forgotten she was still online with me, so converted the remote control protocols into a direct video feed, where she was showing me a full shot of her "dance" gown. It was a lovely cream lace thing, that didn't do much in the dawn's early light to hide the bright red lingerie beneath it. I zoomed out to show her my dress kilt and we twirled a couple of times for one another. "Can't wait to do this on the moon with you!" she smiled.

Giving it the Old College Try

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You could have stayed here, you know."

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

"I have cars, you know."

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

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

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