The Universe is not What You Percieve it to Be.

              This morning, most of last night, it seems, I dreamed a very frustrating sort of dream. The universe is not really what we perceive it to be. I was playing, or creating and testing a sort of simulation. The interface was beautiful, all semi-transparent sepia and gold cubes with three dimensional icons in their centers. The options which were available to you were in color, faded, at first and then becoming more “real” according to some hidden formulation. For the first part of the simulation I was creating a world, a fractal expanse to be later explored and filed and manipulated by potentially millions of players. Every option led to a swath of verdant green and azure oceans that crashed their foamy waves against jagged self-similar shorelines until one or the other gave way. What was frustrating was that the same sequence of button presses could somehow produce wildly different results. (Ah! Thank you, so much, Gleik and Hofstader.)
              After moving around on the worlds for a bit, I realized that they weren't all that wildly different in many fundamental ways. Similar choices did produce similar results, and sometimes what I thought were the same choices were obviously not the same choices. I knew I was missing something about that, but couldn't, for the moment, figure out what it was.
              I engaged in a series of semi-controlled experiments, finally settling into a sort of rhythm of button pressing and moving about, suddenly the results started to look and feel much the same. I pulled back out of the world, enhancing the contrast, revealing hundreds of cubes with choices that were altered, created or eliminated in the background. I was nearly overwhelmed and had to take a break.
              It turns out that I couldn't escape the interface so easily. N and I went to lunch, and the cubes floated along serenely, just at the edge of my vision. I could see the icons inside growing and changing, even without me pressing on any of them. Just my location and the time made the changes, most subtle, but some glaringly not. I resisted the urge to randomly start pressing the buttons, and tried to concentrate on N and our lunch companions. As I sat there listening, I turned my mind around inside my head, and the whole of the universe stretched out behind me. This was not in the usual sense of behind, it was more dimensional than that, and it was filled with a series of bright icons in their sepia, cream and gold boxes, around them was a haze of other less brightly colored boxes, and stretching in all directions the boxes faded all into like colors and hues, but each still somehow distinct, and then, I noticed odd little islands of bright color amidst the amber-brown sea of multiple boxes. They seemed to have no causal connection, in terms of buttons to press, that would indicate why they were so bright.
              Unable to resist, I reached back, into the space behind me that was so much deeper than just the space behind me, and pressed a couple of buttons.
              The universe shifted, M and S were standing in our bedroom, naked, stepping out to use the hot-tub. I told them I would get us some towels and turned around to find N getting ready for the hot tub, apparently unaware of the changes that had just occurred. I noticed that my flu was completely gone, a welcome outcome.
              I struggled to keep things on the rails, there was something unstable about this...reality, if you will. I was looked back behind me, into the interface and try to figure out what had just happened. I could see the line of bright icons off in the distance, and a new line was forming stretching and growing. M dropped the hot-tub cover to the ground.
              “We need to stand that up, the neighbors have children who play on the hill.” I pointed to the child sized tea set on the top of the neighbor's bank.
              N piped in with “Please help, the cover is heavy.”
              “Just a moment, I need to go get some towels for everyone.”
              I was so distracted by the universe full of sepia cubes, that I barely noticed the naked bodies waiting to get into the hot tub.
              I stepped out of the room and noticed the cubes beginning to crowd the interface. “That would certainly be confusing to most players,” I said aloud. I wanted to have four almost matching towels for us to use, a more elegant solution. I had once, long ago purchased two towels that were very similar. Both had black fractal looking filled stripes alternating with stripes of a single primary or secondary color. I always thought they were very striking. In the main world, I had purchased two, one for myself and one for my current girlfriend. Things hadn't worked out had I had been left with two similar but obviously different towels. I had always regretted not purchasing all six of the towels, even though the colors would have all been different, it would have been an obvious set, because of the rainbow thing. I knew, in this realm, by looking at some of the floating controls, that I easily could have made that decision. I really was struck by the idea that the controls in this simulation were also a sort of indicator. I stepped out of my front door and into my parent's garage, where the other four towels were folded up or being used to cover other items. I gathered them up and went in to ask mom if I could use her washer. (She doesn't really like me to use her appliances as I like to experiment with the buttons.)
              There was no one home, and from the looks of things, they never would be. I didn't like that, so turned to look back at the interface.
              The bright line that was my world was gone, the island I was on was filled with much fewer active options and its island-like nature was becoming disturbingly clear. I was back to feeling the same frustration as earlier in the dream. I pressed the buttons to try to get myself back to N and our friends, taking three of the four towels with me. The green one was full of holes so I left it, even though I knew it would have been N's favorite. I tried a few options to get it whole, but then I never ended up with enough towels for everyone.
              I finally stepped through to my own garage and dumped the towels into my own washer, as they were filled with the dust of years. “They've been sitting a while, I'm just going to freshen them up. They'll be nice and fluffy and hot by the time we're done.”
              M and S had been replaced by S and C, not naked. As I entered our bedroom, N came out of the bathroom in her bathing suit. I handed her a bunch of the small white towels, “for faces and hands,” I explained, then went to round us up some drinks. The island of options was mostly sepia at this point, there were only a few icons with color, and none of them were very bright. I brought back a tray of glasses, two with ice, two without, and several different drinks. I noticed that I had some chest congestion.
              The world shifted a little, and I realized that there were other presences pressing the buttons. I looked “behind” me and realized that we were merging back with an altered but very similar line of bright icons to the ones I had left earlier.
              “The universe is not what you perceive it to be.” I heard a voice say.
              As I woke I realized that my interface testing had been working completely as intended, the results were different because I had not taken several variables into account, the primary one being - time. The initial conditions had not ever been identical, that the feel of the worlds was so similar was a testament to the robust nature of the application's algorithms.
              I fell back into a dizzy dream of clicking on cubes as they floated into my perception, trying to make the world work the way I wanted it to, frustrated that each press of the same icon could yield widely varying results (all of a kind, I could see, but not really what I was looking for.) The world shifted below with every press, I shot across fractal landscapes of black on even darker black and seas so startlingly blue that the color hurt to look at it. Each shift of location and time created a slightly different set of options. “This is taking emergent behavior a bit too far, perhaps.” I said to no one in particular. I wanted desperately to get back to one of my earlier test worlds, but knew that would be nearly impossible. The best I could hope for was a world that had that flavor and texture to some large extent. I promised myself that I would save this time.

              Happy Birthday N!

Theater of the Damned

       I found myself in a mixed crowd of ordinary and ordinarily dressed people, and extraordinary persons, all of whom were dressed in everything from Medeaval to Edwardian garb. I've never seen so much velvet and brocade in one location. As we milled about in a large courtyard, I had the feeling that we were actually being herded or prepared for something, that put me on my guard.
       The theater opened and we made our way inside, we were carefully mixed in our seating arrangements, never more than two or three of us ordinary folks together in a row, and never more than five or six in a block. I thought that was peculiar, and started to notice things about the costumed guests. One of the things that I noticed is that they seemed cold whenever I bumped against one. There was a musty odor about some of them. I could swear that a couple of them couldn't, or at least didn't, blink. Their eyes lacked a certain sheen of wetness. I communicated my unease to my seatmate, but she seemed mesmerized by the handsome vampire looking fellow seated to the left of us.
       I noticed that several dozen of us ordinary folks were also looking mesmerized. The Edwardian fop next to me didn't appeal to me, but it was obvious from his conversation that he thought he should. I pointed out that it's a kilt, not a skirt.
       "But it's not plaid!"
       "Welcome to the 21st century."
       "Oh! My." He seemed to take in the thick socks and combat boots for the first time. He turned away and didn't say anything more, for now.
       I heard the sound of curtains opening behind me. I was now fairly certain that this was some sort of trap to catch us more ordinary folks. I turned around, and looked into the projection room that was opening up behind us. The technician made no effort to hide his vampiric nature, and looked quite surprised that I'd been able to avoid the hypnotic lights and music in order to turn around.
       I smiled a huge smile at him. He reflexively smiled back, revealing large fangs. His had flew up to cover his face when I pointed my finger at him and whispered "bang." His eyes grew large and he hurried over to the other side of the projector.
       I turned back to the stage as the main curtain drew open and I saw myself standing there, in ruffled shirt and silk and velvet and brocade. "Now that's a good trick," I thought. The illusion passed as the performer bowed and then righted himself to reveal a white-haired man of otherwise indeterminate age. He was, despite the white hair and red velvet coat, exactly unlike Santa Clause.
       He proceded to go on about being able to defy death. I leaned over to the woman next to me, "If they try to bite you, poke them in the chest with this." I pressed a long sliver of wood into her hand. "T-Rex, we need more, please."
       T-Rex slipped out from under my seat with a pair of bags attached to his harness. He crawled under the seat in front of me and vanished. I watched the performer on stage. He was sitting at a chair surrounded by Tesla Coils and book cases. He touched both metal pads on the arm of his chair. I tipped one of the coils so it was behind him, and a lightning bolt tore through him.
       It didn't kill him, of course, as he was already dead, but it did create a nice burned hole through him. A hole that was already healing. There were gasps from the audience and he covered up the hole in his chest with his coat.
       "An illusion, quite, shocking, no? I will have to have a little talk with my, wife, about setting up the furniture properly." He looked at me and I could hear him in my mind.
       "You are in our world now, there is no help from yours coming."
       I smiled my huge smile again. "I'm glad we're in your world, because in mine I could never have done this." I decided not to mention that T-Rex had opened up a nice large conduit to my world and I was fully aware that I was in the dreamlands.
       A hole opened up in the floor beneath my kilt, and T-Rex jumped out, dragging a gun case behind and with two bags full of old fashioned stakes.
       "Oh, My!" the fop next to me stood and made his way out into the aisle. T-Rex raced under the theater seats, slapping a stake into the hands of every ordinary person in the row as he went. (Talented cat, it must be those extra claws.)
       "I told you there was something different about this one!" came a shout from the top of the aisle behind me. The technician in the booth slipped around the projector and turned on the hypnosis lights again.
       I tossed a spray of holy water into the beam and there were gasps from the ordinary folks in the room who could now see their companions for what they were. There were also jets of gas from many where holy water had contacted undead flesh.
       "That can't work, you don't believe."
       "Ah, but you do." I stated flatly back, locking the barrel of my .306 in place with a click. I hastily dug a handful of hollow points into a stick of wood to fill their points with slivers.
       "You deserve to be one of us!"
       "Perhaps, but none of these deserve to be dinner."
       "You know you can't shoot me with that."
       "Yep, that's why I'm handing it to her." And I passed the rifle to the woman on my left, who'd already dusted a couple of vampires around her. I took her stake in exchange.
       "Blood and fire!" The vampire on stage started to turn back into me, then began to shift into a winged form.
       "Shoot him first." I whistled for T-Rex, I wanted to get him out from under foot before the real melee started. "Welcome to the 21st century."
       A shot rang out. Then I realized that the woman didn't know anything but look through scope, pull the trigger, and I had to show her how to operate the bolt. I used some form of telekinesis to keep the vampires away while I showed her what to do. It only holds four rounds and one in the chamber, she'd have to reload. I knew there was a larger clip for it, but T-Rex hadn't brought it.
       "Aim for the flying ones. We'll handle the ones on the ground." I told her. She was still partly mesmerized, but was responding to my commands. I knew that T-Rex had gotten stakes to nearly everyone, but I also knew that the undead were still likely to take a few of us with them. T-Rex vanished and then returned moments later with more vials of holy water. I sent him to put one in the lens slot of the projector.
       The hypnotic cone spraying across the middle of the room seemed to sap the strength of any human that entered it. I was using my phantom arms to keep the vampires away from my rifle shooting companion. I found that I was not even able to jab the stakes into the vampires, though I could hold them at bay, and fling them around. Others had to make the fatal jabs.
       The hypnotic cone suddenly changed to a bright cone like a shaft of sunlight. I shouted out for everyone to make their way into the cone of light.
       Violent and scary dream from that point on, lots of injuries, limbs ripped off. T-Rex could teleport small (stake and vial sized) objects about a meter or so. He got really good a popping up a vial of holy water directly into the path of a charging vampire. I really don't think they were prepared for such a talented familiar. (Or perhaps they'd never fought against a foot high creature who could pad silently a full speed under rows of theater seats and show up nearly anywhere.)
       The cone of now 'Holy' light weakened any vampire or undead who stepped into it. Interestingly, my own telekinetic abilities were also damped by it. I had to step out of the cone to make use of my ability to grasp and move things. It was like having a second set of arms and hands that could stretch to anywhere I could see.
       Being outside of the cone made me a target. Having an extra set of arms gave me a bit of an advantage, and seeing the vampiric 'What just grabbed me?' expression was priceless.
       Once we had the upper hand T-Rex and I opened up a portal home, and, though it wasn't home for everyone, it was safer than being here, where I could tell there would never be a sunrise, and we would always be hunted. We moved the injured across first, my magic hands lifting them under the shoulders and lowering them through the hole. I could only evacuate the injured between shoving vampires back into the aisles and down into the orchestra pit. Or, my favorite. T-Rex would flip a vial into the air and I would shatter it, then I push a vampire through the resulting cloud of vapor. Steam and screams and vampires running away or turning into gas and fleeing. I wished we had some lighters, but perhaps it was best that we didn't, burning the place down around our ears might not have been a winning strategy.
       The battle continued, and I knew it would continue a long time. I didn't think that I could jump through my own portal, so I was going to be stuck there it seemed. T-Rex arrived with more ammunition and I filled the hollow points with wood slivers as my rifle woman kept shooting. The theater was empty, at last, but I could hear large numbers gathering outside. I used my abilities to pick up as many stakes as I could, moving them into a pile close by once my cargo pockets were filled. T-Rex made another trip and brought back a couple of bags of more stakes, and he pulled through a long steel shaft with wooden points on both ends.
       "Where in the world did you get this?" Then I recognized the steel shaft as a length of pipe that had been stored in our garage for many years. I wondered why I'd kept hold of that.
       I still don't know who made the wooden points for it, but was glad to have it, seeing as how I didn't seem to be able to use a firearm. I wasn't sure the dream logic would allow me to stab a vampire either though. I also woke up wondering where T-Rex was getting vials of holy water, I mean, who would give holy water to a witch's familiar? If you steal holy water, is it still holy? Who broke up all the scrap lumber into pointy stakes? Who makes panniers for a cat? Why can't I hit things with a firearm in my dreams?

Brick House Ghost Story, FPS Department Store Rescue

       I dreamed I was in a new house, or new for me anyway. There was a huge domed front room, all brick work. There were large wooden beams across the vaulted ceiling, and there were large skylights, classic arched top windows around three sides of the upper half of the room. The fireplace wall was at least forty feet high. I can't say what the place was used for before I turned it into a house. This place was also a little old looking. I expressed a concern about the decorative brick work so far above the ground (Perhaps the wall was now more like 60 feet high.) I was looking at the brick ledges and step patterns above the fireplace when I saw a brick shift. There was the hint of a little girl in yellow climbing the brickwork.
       I mentioned to N and C that they should step back in case a brick got dislodged by our climber. They thought I was crazy, but stepped back any way. A brick came sailing down and crashed on the stone hearth, shattering. Both women squealed, but no one was hurt.
       The debris from the brick vanished without trace. There was an old dimple in the stone where the brick landed, and just next to it was the little girl in the yellow victorian dress. She faded away after pointing to a brick ledge where I could see a dusty rag doll.
       "All right, then, no climbing on the brick work."
       "I wouldn't go up there even on a ladder," N offered.
       "I can take a hint."
       I came back in the house with several 10 foot 1"x2" boards. I nailed them together with a long nail on the end. Carefully, I built the thing four high, in place, and hooked the rag doll and brought it down. I carefully dusted it off and offered it to where I knew the little girl was watching. She appeared and hugged the doll, then vanished, I think for good. I felt another presense, an odd combination of old man, guilt and young boy.
       "Your secret is out, and you couldn't have known she'd go after the doll. What you did was wrong, but not murderously wrong. Go, play nice with your sister. Make it up to her."
       The presense faded as well.

       While N was getting ready to go to work, I kept falling into a dream where I was alternately playing an FPS computer game, and then living out the game. FPS game scenerio was some sort of Department Store Rescue. The player had to move from the top of the department store, rescuing the people who were trapped in the various departments and shepherding them to the first floor where you could get them out of the building. At that point you could go into the basement to take on the alien creature that was animating all of the electronic equipment you had to fight on the previous levels.
       The brunette woman (who admitted that she might love her cats more than her husband) I met at the vet's office was there in the pet section. When we made it out the front of the store her husband was there, and decided to join in the hunt for the alien in the basement.

Victorian Drag; Refolding A's Boat

     I dreamed I was in a corset and lilac colored victorian dress, complete with bustle and bonnet. The reason was I was working with Scotland yard to catch a serial rapist. I had some cool hidden weapons both in the bustle and the sides of the corset as well as in the linings of the sleeves.
      While we were preparing for the sting, the queen came through on an inspection tour. She pointed out to me that I'd better learn to curtsey rather than bowing, or I'd give myself away. She then assigned one of her ladies in waiting to help me learn how to move more like a woman. As quickly as she'd entered the ward, she left. I thought I heard her asking the inspector general if we couldn't have found someone without a full beard. I'd sort of wondered that myself.
      Forward in time, I was at a play and then left with the crowd, walking "home" on a carefully laid out route in hopes of catching the rapist. I don't think I've ever been bumped and squeezed in a crowd like I was bumped and squeezed that night. I was angry enough to take the rapist out completely by the time I got out of the crowd. I was jumped from behind about six blocks from the theater.
      The rapist had pinned my arms and used the base of the skirt to try to tie me up. We knew that from previous witnesses, so the dress was break away. I broke free, pulled a couple of guns from the lining of the sleeves and the bounder gave up. "The beard should have been a clue."

      In another dream I found myself with N, A and C walking through a dense forest. Also in Victorian clothing. (Seems to be a run on that theme lately.) We were moving along the shore of a stream when we came to some severely over-grown docks. A insisted that the boat had to have been stolen as he couldn't find it anywhere.
      "When was the last time you actually saw it?" I asked.
      "Before all this undergrowth, and these huge cactus like things weren't here."
      "They look like triffids, almost." I poked one, but it didn't move. I remembered that there had been some heavy rains not too long ago, and that is what folks were saying caused the jungle to grow up around the place. I waded out into the watery plants and made my way over to the other shore, sure enough, the boat was there, underwater.
      The rain had filled the boat and it had sunk. I pulled it up out of the water. Plants had started to root on it, so I managed to pull them out. A explained that the boat could fold flat for storage. N said I could figure it out, as I was good at origami.
      "I'm just a beginner, N," but the boat was easy to figure out. I pulled it out of the water and re-folded it on the surface. It had a strange multi-fold closure at the bow, and in the stern two closures with snap like plastic hooks to keep it all together. There was a thin plastic strap that fit around a groove on the outside of the boat to hold it all together and a couple of seats to keep the side walls from collapsing. When I was done it floated with only an inch of draft or so. I figured it might hold two of us, but certainly not all four of us. I pushed the boat back to the group and climbed out of the water.
      We started discussing going up river to find the source of all the jungle growth. There did seem to be a tunnel of jungle over the river that would allow for us to pass. I wasn't too keen on the idea of towing the ladies in the boat while wading. I hadn't seen any jungle animals, yet, but something told me they were out there. I really didn't want to be crocodile food if there were crocodiles.
      "Even if there are crocodiles, they couldn't be very big, yet." A reasoned.
      I pointed to the 20 foot high triffid looking plant that grew out of the dock. "Are you sure about that?"
      "Good point," C piped in, "Maybe we should find another boat and ask if we can borrow it?"
      N agreed and they set off through the jungle growth to the boathouse to ask about borrowing someone else's boat. I didn't really think they would find anyone at the boathouse as the whole lake seemed pretty much abandoned.

Victorian Conventions

     I dreamed I was trying to get into a convention but I left my membership documents at home and didn't want to drive all the way back. I realized this was a dream, so forced them to be in my journal. The dream resisted because I wasn't playing by the rules. There weren't any signature forms, suddenly they were all filled in by others and the blank stack had "just run out."
     "Two can play that game!" said one of the dream counter operators / check-in clerks.
     I really didn't want to go back, even though it was just a dream, I might miss something. There were a couple of exchanges and the dream leaped forward in time, without me going back or filling out one of the silly forms. "OK, I suppose we're both happy now."
     The convention wasn't even ready yet, we were still setting up. Our display area was a Victorian dining room and drawing room. I was dressed as a monk, Rasputin, apparently. N and C were having a great time dressed as Russian Nobility. One of the other players was really into his part and was properly snooty.
     When I came back in with the very thin N in all her finery, he was suddenly willing to share his special wine with her, etc. She accepted, then continued to play the part of fawning all over me. I was worried that this Rasputin was going to meet the same end as the original, none of the single gentleman courtiers could stand that I was getting the attention of all the women. I had trouble understanding it myself.
     I later found I was in bed with N under the covers across my lap. Mom and Dad kept poking their heads into the room to see how I was doing. N was trying to keep quiet, but it was difficult as I was goosing her.
     I got lost in the forest outside of town, but realized that someone would come looking for me. I had no idea why they would be looking for me, but I knew they would. I made my way to a stream and found it came to a culvert. I climbed up to find myself on a small frontage road along a rail line. I followed the rail line back into town.
     I knew the people who were looking for me, a sixteen year old in a red dress and white pinafore, not quite a Victorian Orphan Annie, an eight year old boy, not quite Lord Fountleroy, a three year old girl, bonnet included with matching dolly, a Jack Russel terrier and a rag doll Siamese were all on a railroad hand truck headed out of town in my direction.
     We managed to cross paths and I got the hand cart turned around, though it was a little tight we all fit on the cart. I heard a train coming out of the station in town and managed to get us stopped and off the tracks, just about 30 seconds before it huffed through.
     I asked the kids who they were. "Your kids" they chorused, "And your doggies" offered up the three year old, holding the cat and her dolly up to me. I took the struggling cat, who settled into my arm, looking relieved. I was hoping for a minute that the cat was Rocky, but she wasn't. She was, however, quite glad to see me and settled right in, purring all the time. The terrier kept jumping up two feet in the air and yipping. I finally told him I was happy to see him, too, and he stopped. We managed to get the handtruck back on the rails and we pumped our way back into town.
     There were people waiting for us, and we made our way back to the convention center and the Victorian Display area. I was dressing as we made our way up the stairs. This time I was in a gentleman's adventuring costume, complete with pith helmet. The children still insisted they were mine, and when asked about mommy they insisted we were a "Disney" family and mommy was still quite dead all these ten years.
     "Yeah, how does that explain those two?" I asked the oldest girl."
     "We're all adopted."
     "Don't get too cute or I'll turn all Woody Allen on you."
     "I think that's the idea, I'm past the marrying age, and I only have you in my heart. From the time I was six I knew I was destined to make your remaining years happy and fulfilled."
     "OK, when did this become a gothic romance."
     "This dream has always been a gothic romance. How come you aren't playing along. I hate it when my dream characters don't play along."
     "Me, too, but I've learned to relax and let it go." I looked at the girl in the orphan Annie victorian outfit, then stared into her face, trying to memorize it.
     "Shouldn't music be swelling or something..." she asked.
     "Or something," I just couldn't resist the slightly out of character comment.
She tiptoed up for a kiss as the dream dissolved. I though I could hear her swearing "Firk, ding blast, this always happens at the best part..."