All Singing and Dancing, Science Fiction, Future-Fantasy, Seven Escape-Room Extravaganza!

Starting with a sliding ice puzzle and winding its song and dance routine way through; star crossed romance, rescues, tentacled maidens, mafia weddings with choreographed bridal deflowering, lost purses, exes showing off their reconstructive breast surgeries, and, in general no foot, hand or chest pains. What an exhilerating and eshausting morning.

Fevered Dream

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

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

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

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

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

Pack it all up.

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

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

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

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.

Fever Dreams with Robots and...

The fever dream started like any other dream, a nice normal seeming classroom of ten year olds taking my "Robotic Programming" class. I was working a two hour a day shift at a private elementary school, teaching the very fun class with robots and then supervising the playground in the afterschool hour while waiting for parents to come get their students. All in all a very good gig. It was paying the bills while I used my pension to make board games. It was one of those classes where I had as many parents in the room helping as I had kids.

One afternoon, as the classroom began to empty out, the Principal arrived to tell me that they were cutting the class. I pointed to the parents still straightening up the room and kids still excitedly reviewing what they'd accomplished. I didn't understand the decision. She reassured me it didn't have anything to do with my teaching or my class, it was that the board had decided to purchase a new turnkey curriculum and my course couldn't be fit into the new system. She handed me an envelope with my current pay and two weeks extra. I said thank you, but pointed out that I had a contract for the full school year that would have to be bought out. "Unless we can find you another position, which we're trying to do."

I was still mighty unhappy about the situation, but resolved to deal with it another day. I stuffed my anger down and went back to helping clear out my classroom. One of the moms was a labor attorney, she handed me her business card, "just in case you decide you need me." I thanked her and went out into the playground to fulfill my after school supervision. Kids eventually got picked up. Several of the other teachers had stayed behind and we all went into the school, having to duck between the movers who were packing up everyone's classroom in neatly labeled boxes, even taking apart the school's furniture. We watched in disbelief as box after box with our class names on them went out of the building to be loaded up on big trucks. The Principal arrived to let us know that the board had agreed to let us teachers go through the materials from our classrooms to keep what was ours and any thing else they weren't using before it was all sold at auction. A couple of my colleagues were shouting and upset that the movers were packing up their private stuff, including one who's purse and car keys (thus her way home) had already been packed. We managed to intercept the box from her room before it got put on the truck and rescued her personal belongings. I went to my room and grabbed my hat and coat as well as my computer bag, figuring I had the time to go get anything else later.

Saddened by the state of things, I asked why the Board hadn't retrained their current staff, and she started to tell me that there was no robotics... I cut her off, and asked about all of the basic education teachers, some who'd been at the school for decades, weren't re-trained.

"That doesn't concern you."

I put on my coat and hat and stepped out into the stormy afternoon. The weather had changed to match my mood, dark threatening clouds, hints of thunder in the distance, the thick smell of pent up rain. I walked out into the public park.

A row of Thundermen appeared and gathered in front of me, grey fedoras, beige trench-coats, black shoes with wide white spats, immaculately tied ties over white shirts. They stopped my progress. They lined up behind the leader, and a row of apparently meaningful gestures began to form behind him. While I couldn't make out what they were trying to signal I mimicked the gestures as best I could. My Beige trench-coat and fedora (green instead of grey) seemed to confuse them a bit. Finally, after exchanging some pleasantries, and commenting on the delightful lightning and thunder that had begun in the sky behind the school, the leader of the thundermen told me I could be locked in the bathroom until the storm passed, or I could re-enter the school through J-3. I had no desire to be locked in the public restrooms, so entered the classroom, which was still having its desks assembled, oddly, in the desks that were already put together, there were students, or some sort of simulacra of students already seated and working on their lessons. I had a very uneasy feeling, the teacher looked up from her planner and I apologized for the interruption, moving through the room into the schools central hallway. There I ran across the Principal who was beaming at how efficient and trouble free it was all going to be. I started to worry about what was going to happen to all of our students. Were they being replaced, too?

I made my way through the faculty room, and out onto the little patio that faced the open hillside behind the school. Lightning filled the sky, thunder rolled across the valley and shook the windows of the school, I could hear them rattling all down the length of the building. I looked out to see the fluffy pink bunnies and leaping unicorns lightning struck and suddenly come to life. The plastic cavorting turned into the real thing, accompanied by a tinkling and high pitched whistling music, they danced under the darkening sky until they seemed as one, to notice me watching. They lined up facing me, much in the same way as the lightning men. I started to make the same gestures and then stopped myself, speaking directly to the head unicorn instead.

She blinked. Obviously not expecting me to actually try to interact with them. At first she seemed to think I was a Thunder man, and wanted to run me through, but I somehow managed, by taking my hat off and bowing, I think, to convince her that I was just a former teacher who'd been replaced. This saddened her and she raced away, leaving me to watch her fluffy bunny and unicorn minions cavort to unearthly music. Eventually she returned, accompanied by a large pink and white dragon. The dragon had to be as big as the school she surveyed from end to end with a single sweep of her long neck. She settled over the hill and curled around her bunnies and unicorns, shielding them with one giant wing. She began to shoot the unicorn who'd spoken with me, jolt after jolt of pink lightning.

"Stop" I shouted. "She hasn't done anything wrong!"

"You live, Thunder man, that is not to be tolerated, I will get to you in a moment."

I don't know where the courage to do so came from but I stepped in front of the unicorn, letting my wet trench coat drag the lightning to the ground. I felt the tingle on my feet, but though painful, it wasn't in any way debilitating.

"If you kill her, how will she learn and become an even better leader for you?"

The dragon stopped mid breath. Her great head lowered down to my own, her eyes, as large as myself, took turns looking at me. I felt like I'd been put in a giant MRI or CAT scan machine.

"You are not a Thunder man."

"Thanks, I think."

With that she picked me up and flung me high in the air over the hill and above the clouds. I don't know how every bone in my body wasn't broken by ahd acceleration. I found myself cresting the top of my arc in the clear sky overlooking a vast ocean and a road, suspended in the air. There were small figures, moving, single file along the road as I flashed overhead. A rope was tossed to me and I managed to grab it as I dipped below the road. I crammed my hat on my head, and held on with both hands as the rope curved my fall into a pendulum swing just below the roadway. I pumped and at the crest of the next swing back, managed to grab the hands that were being offered down below the road edge. The large scaled arm pulled be up past the road and let me down on my feet.

It was an assortment of characters, I think from my own gaming past. The large spear toting Lizard Man, a pair of spindly hobbits in all black kit, and an elf of surprising beauty with two longswords on his (her?) hips. The only one I didn't recognize was a nearly topless scaled woman with short curled horns and long nails. Like the Lizard Man, she had a long tail, whip-like rather than trunk-like. They greeted me and one of the hobbits asked if I was a Thunder Man. The Lizard and Demon Girl looked like they were ready to throw me back off the skyway.

"No" was all I could manage to croak. I checked my bag, somehow it hadn't dumped anything. I took off my hat and bowed, that seemed to convince them. I surmised at that point that the hat was part of a thunder man, so they couldn't do that.

"Where are we going?"

"To the other end of the road!" chimed in the hobbit twins, getting disgruntled looks from their companions.

The elf spoke, explaining that they were on a quest and had traveled on the skyway for the better part of two days. They believed they were much closer to their destination than their beginning, which was, though civilization, nothing the matched what I knew. Plus I only had a muffin and a half bottle of water in my back, so didn't fancy going that way until I could replenish my supplies. The Hobbits were the only two in favor of letting me travel with them, but somehow they managed to convince the demon girl after the two women had a hurried conversation out of earshot of the rest of the group. They resumed travelling, single file, except for the hobbits who trotted ahead of the group hand in hand.

"They are a cute couple," I volunteered, trying to make conversation.

"They're twins." The Lizard man grunted, shouldered his spear and leaned forward to pull away from me. The elf had dropped back far behind us and only the demon girl stayed close enough to converse with until we met the end of the road.

I had to explain that I wasn't flying but falling, as I'd been thrown by the pink and white dragon. The hobbits looked at the elf and said "your prayer must have worked!"

"I doubt that." The Elf had barely spoken to me the whole trip, he seemed to have something against me from the very start, but never revealed what he was thinking or feeling.

It had been much easier to befriend the Lizard man, I taught him tic-tac-toe, and despite there not actually being toes in the game, he was quite taken by it.

The Hobbits seemed to love everyone equally, and the Demon Girl, seemed to be practicing sultry on the Elf, and not succeeding, ignoring the Lizard Man, who seemed all too interested. I had the impression that there was some history there best left lie. She would at least converse with me, explaining her own world and listening intently to tales of my own "crushingly boring" world, which the hobbits seemed to enjoy.

We sat at the end of the road, obviously not what any of us were expecting. I noticed that there was a large blue square with writing in it, but I couldn't make it out from where we were.

Soon I found myself being lowered on the end of the rope. "Press to Call" was what the writing said. I asked them to pull me up and we looked around, but didn't find a button like it in the covered bridge area, at least, not on the side we were on. One of the hobbits took the rope and tied it around her waist. The Lizard man tossed her over to the other side. She landed with a giggle, and found the button, but it had been smashed in and wasn't working. They hauled her back over, and I thought of an idea.

The rope wasn't long enough for me to swing over to the skyway support column, though. I then thought of another idea. We filled up my water bottle and unraveled the knitted border of my sweater to lower it towards the button, again not long enough, until they lowered me on the rope. The bottle landed on the four foot square button, and the elevator shot towards me. the team started pulling me up, but I still slammed into the platform. The bottle rolled off the button and the elevator slowed to a stop and began to fall. I managed to recover enough to pull the bottle back up and roll over to the button. Whoosh, the elevator slowed and then accelerated skyward.

It took a few tests to figure out how to raise and lower the platform smoothly enough not to launch me into the ceiling, or more importantly to land at less than terminal velocity. Apparently whatever controls were supposed to be in operation were no longer working. I drove the platform up to the team and they let me fly them back to the ground. The elf looked greener than usual after the trip down, but the hobbits wanted to stay and see how fast they could make the elevator go back up. As we left One of the hobbits had put a rock on the button I turned in time to see the elevator platform crash through the roof of the bridge structure at the top of the skyway, and then come fluttering, obviously no longer under control back to the ground. We all ran out of the range of the falling debris. When the Elf started to chastise the hobbits they just pointed at each other.

Somehow they convinced me to come with them rather than build a hundred foot ladder to climb back to the roadway. (Even though I was pretty sure the roadway didn't lead back to where I needed to go, I felt it was at least closer to home.) There was a short barrage of other travel stuff. Something to do with a big blue glowy thing, and a pretty wild celebration party that ended with an acrobatic naked tangled celebration between the Demon Girl, Hobbit Girl and myself. The team asked the pink dragon to send me home. Good thing I hadn't tried going back by the skyway.

There was a knock on the door. The police were looking for me, as I had gone missing. I explained that I had been playing a video game the whole time, and was right here. They looked dubious. I noticed the figures on the screen were the Lizard Man, Demon Girl, Elf and Hobbit Twins with a Long Coated stranger in a Green flat brimmed hat. They were waving good-bye as the stranger headed into a pink and white portal and the rest of the team, escorting a wagon with a strange blue glow coming from under a tarp, headed into town, they turned and waved, not at the portal, but at the screen. I was at my computer, but dressed in the clothing I'd been wearing since my "disappearance" including an adventure's worth of wear and tear. Not to mention a bag of gold coins and semi-precious stones that I might have some difficulty explaining.

Reality Storm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vampire Mom

I was in a lovely leather and brocade wallpapered train cabin with a woman and her teen daughter. It became clear that the woman, who referred to herself as "The Wife" was actually a vampire. The trip took on a much more sinister air. It was not clear that she was my wife. I don't remember any details from our conversation, except at one point the thirteen year old daughter (who I presumed was born before mom became a vampire) spoke up.

"Some people tried to kidnap me on the way home one day. I said 'why don't you take Suzy, she's way prettier than I am." She paused and looked out the window. Mom patted the back of her hand. "I still miss Suzy."

Olympic Flyers, Musical, Mutants

Three distinct dream events last night.

In the first, I was in KPFM watching a new team Olympic sport, Synchronized Triple Jump, Swim, and Gymnastics Tumbling, which we didn't get to see before the dream ended. My friends and I had a center booth along the wall separating the upper and lower level, we had a great view of the main TV screen. We were following the progress of a double's team from China and the USA. Each had lost their partners just before the competition started, and the Olympic committee agreed to allow them to compete at partners, if their countries agreed. Since neither of them were the favorites in their previous teams, both countries coaches agreed. The had caught the imagination of the entire crowd, however, when they took a chance during the synchronized swim competition.They turned in a beautiful performance that included a one minute section near the beginning of them each going through their previous routine, modified slightly so that it became more and more in synchronization until they finished in nearly perfect synchronization. They stunned the crowd by coming in the top five (and would have been the top three if not for the marks of the Russian Judge...classic bit of history there.) At that time there were still two more events to go. The station we were watching replayed the swim event at least three times while the Triple Jump competitors were running through their paces. It was in the picture in picture box next to the performances of the other Teams as they went through the synchronized hop, skip and jump of the triple jump. There wasn't as much artistic interpretation in this event, but the pairs got an artistic mark, as well as a straight score for their distance rankings. I wasn't sure exactly how balanced that was, but no one expected a world record women's triple jump record out of these athletes. They should have. The mixed team arrived and both had chosen to wear their hair down. The Chinese athlete had trimmed her formerly long hair to match her partner's length, and they had plaited a strand between them. The walked in with their inside arms entwined, and this meant that they had to perform the triple jump by running in mirror image form. (Admittedly some of the previous teams had also done that.)

They ran, they hopped, skipped and jumped, but their jump saw them windmilling their legs in tandem, almost as if they were tied together for a three-legged race, and they just didn't come down. Literally, they kept moving all the way into the observing crowd, who parted for them, and beyond, across the track, and into the most expensive seats in the stadium, where they made it almost to the back row. The crowd sat stunned. One man with long hair and a kilt stood up in the back row and applauded. Every in our group thought it was our friend MS, but I pointed out that this fellow was much shorter and rounder than MS. (MS was there, though.) It took a couple of moments, but the rest of the crowd, including everyone in the restaurant joined in. As the camera panned around the crowd, we spotted our friend and his wife in the second tier seats with other NG employees.

I was coming out of the dream, because the break with the laws of physics was a bit too much, but we soon got a text from MS saying he'd witnessed a miracle and we should turn on the Olympics. The dream dissolved before any of us could respond, though.

_____

In the second dream of the night, I was at a musical performance, wish I could say now what it was about. I was watching the show for the third or fourth time, as a friend of mine was in the show, and I'd managed to make friends with several of the other cast members as well. There was a lot of audience participation throughout the show, and during the intermission the players chose an audience member to come up and sing a song at the beginning of the second act. The person chosen was a little nervous, but she did a great job. After the show, the pianist stayed behind to allow anyone to come up on stage and sing songs from the show. I really enjoyed this after-show, as there are a lot of talented singers out there. I was also waiting for my friend, as I was her ride to dinner with some of the cast and then home afterward. When she came out she insisted that I go up and sing with her. I tried to warn her about my voice (which is a-tonal) but she and her show-mates insisted, so I did. I asked for the mike with the auto-tune (which they didn't have) and that made everyone laugh, but after I sang they decided that might not be a bad idea. My friend said she loved me anyway, she did so in a way that made it clear that wasn't in a "just good friends" way. I was pondering the implications when I awoke.

_____

The third dream was more of a roiling mass of partially clothed madness, it was some sort of overly stuffed pool party and the guests all had multiple extra limbs, protuberances and depressions. I was the only non-mutant looking person there, so some wondered why I had been invited. (Indeed, I did, too, at first.) The party started to go into a decidedly clothing optional direction, which I'm not so sure was a good thing, given how we all were apportioned. It was at that point that I discovered that I was a mutant, too. My legs looked like they had two knees each, and they bent the wrong way back when I crouched. (Short thighs and long feet.)

Diablo IIID, All Downhill

My first dream (that I can remember) started with me waking up to the "You've died" sound in my headphones. I had nodded off while playing the new Diablo IIID game and my hardcore barbarian/ninja (class mixing was now a thing, apparently) had just been killed. Except what I was seeing wasn't the normal death screen, the center was periodically lightening and opening up and I could hear the chanting of my character's name, "Imhotep, Imhotep, Imhotep, wake up, wake up, breathe, time is running out..."

Sure enough, there was a timer down in the life orb, ticking down from 13 seconds. I reached for the controls, struggling to see what was happening to the red misty "death haze" it didn't look good, I was surrounded and the beasts were still milling about hammering on my ancients, who were going to return to their afterlife in just a few seconds. I didn't remember summoning them, but figured I must be wearing an item that did that, and saved me. I looked at the timer bars on my skills, there was only really one chance, jump over the ravine I'd parked myself at, because it looked like a safe place to take a breather. I just had to survive long enough to get my heroic leap charged up then I should be able to jump away.

The timer hit zero, just after the Ancients vanished. My health rocketed up to 50%, then immediately began falling. I tried to move out of the bad stuff, but I was immediately hemmed in. I switched over to an area of effect melee attack, just for the life steal, it helped, but not enough. The jump skill button lit, and I flicked my cursor over to the shelf on the other side of the ravine, hoping against hope that the rift was jumpable, and not the actual edge of the map.

I jumped out of the mass of attackers, and sailed across the ravine. I gulped down a healing potion and moved as far away from the milling mass as I could. Several of them broke off and flew across the gap, chasing me. At least now it was only four on one and not twelve on one. I discovered that there was a cliff face half a screen away from the ravine, and that was the edge of the map. There was, also a group of about thirty mobs, not elite, fortunately, but so many that I was going to find myself unable to move again if I wasn't careful. I looked at the timer on my Ancients, and realized that if I jumped into the middle of the mobs, I could probably fight long enough for them to act as sort of a meat shield, assuming the flying beasts had to land to attack me, which they did. A few hits and I was down a third of my life. I jumped away into the middle of the regular mobs, and the elite critters bunched up outside the edge of the mobs, apparently not able to launch and land in the midst of the mobs like I could. Lucky break for me. I switched over to single target attacking, only using the AOE when my health dropped down to fifty percent or so. Every time I used the AOE, a ring of mobs would die, and the dangerous ones would grow closer. I felt like I actually had a chance to make it.

All Downhill

This morning's dream (after getting up at the first hint of light to rattle the cats' food around in their bowls) I was more a silent incorporeal observer, though the woman did seem aware of my presence as she was talking to me much of the time. She was dressed for adventure, heavy pants and shirt, lots of pockets, a thin pack on her back and a pair of shoulder satchels, though I'm pretty sure one of them was essentially a purse, just adventure grade. She was also wearing a pith helmet, covered in the same heavy material. Her long dark brown hair was tied back and mostly trapped under her pack. She had a survival knife, which she was using to stop herself from sliding too far.

We were apparently lost.

We had spotted flowing water at the bottom of a steep slope, and rather than follow the edge of the slope, and looking for an easier way down, the woman had decided that she wanted to refill her canteens, and get cleaned up now. So, she immediately began climbing down the slope. I tried to keep her from anything that was really cliff-like, but since I was incorporeal, I really couldn't know how slippery some of the soil was, nor how sturdy the vines were that she was using to climb down. At a couple of points she used a rope looped through a root to lower herself twenty feet or so, then would pull the rope loose and coil it back up in the big pocket on the side of her pack. When we got within about sixty feet of the water, I flew out to see what it looked like.

There was steam coming off of it in places, and there were some pretty big crocodiles lounging down stream. Nothing near the steam vents, though. I tried to get the information to the woman, but couldn't actually communicate to her, so was forced to fly close and then away towards the safer choice whenever she moved towards the crocodiles. She moved her climb to come out at the edge of the water across from a fumarole. She did stop and look, as I placed myself at the edge of the shore and bounced up and down, and she slipped back into the brush quietly when she saw the crocodiles. There were lots of little animal skeletons there, but no sign that the big crocodiles came this close to the hot water. She moved upstream a bit and the water was actually cold, downstream, the water had an odd smell and was nearly boiling (we could see it boiling further out in several placed in the middle of the stream.) She decided to fill her canteens and take a bath in the cold water. She waded in fully clothed, unfortunately. I did notice a lot of dirt came off of her and out of her clothing. I circled around and up the slopes on either side of the stream. There didn't seem to be, with the sixty foot radius I could travel, to be a very clear path out of here, and following the stream down past the crocodiles didn't look like a very good option. I didn't find any signs of the crocodiles upstream as far as I could see.

Lunar Rebellion, Cruise Ship Encounter.

Multiple long dreams the last couple of nights, including a dream in two parts! It's been awhile since I had one of those.

Two nights ago, I found myself embroiled in a Rebellion in a Lunar Colony. The colonial citizens were fed up with the lack of work, and thus the absurdly low pay they were getting. They wanted to riot to convince the government to provide more work for them. I was in a position that allowed me a significant amount of mobility throughout the colony, driving one of the transport trains, as well as maintaining the software system it ran on. A lot of us who were keeping things running wore two hats like that. It was, therefore, obvious to me that I was essentially taking up two jobs, even though my life and my cargo pretty much relied on the software systems to make our schedule and avoid traffic jams and the like. I wanted to know what the AI was doing that was in control of my safety. On my way to deliver food to an outlying mining community, all radio communications were suddenly cut off. I found myself using the lunar version of Facebook to make an ad-hoc connection back to my dispatchers, once they figured out that was how they could still talk to us. I got the warning that there were rioters waiting for my food train just as I was locking into the station's air locks. Too late to lock myself into the control cabin, or eject, I found myself captured. They almost killed me, but someone a little bit saner prevailed upon them to spare me, so they wouldn't have to wreck the train to get into the locked refrigerator cars. I knew that once I'd let them into the cars, I wouldn't have much leverage. I started trying to find out what their issues were, and how they thought wrecking their connection to the Central Authority was going to make things any better. They weren't entirely self sufficient now, and blocking their reception terminal with a wrecked train wasn't going to encourage the Central Authority to send any more. This train needed to clear the station and go back if there was ever to be another one.

I convinced the rabble-rousers that they wouldn't get anywhere in my transport without me to unlock the software. Mostly by making it clear that I wasn't going to tell them how to get to the central core of the colonial administration dome, and I wouldn't be there to authenticate the transport at the various junctions on the grid to get back. If they killed me, they would have to figure out how to get there by walking. Not really possible during the long Lunar night.

On the long trip I tried to explain to them the actual "how things work" of air, water and food production and distribution. Trying to convince them that if they caused so much trouble that it wasn't financially worth it to maintain their habitats, mines and factories, the central authority could simply cut them off, forcing everyone to relocate, or die. Their standard of living would be far worse than it was now if they had to live on the air, water and food they produced locally. If they could even make it work with the population they had. By the time I'd managed to make it back to my dispatch station, the group had calmed down, more thoughtful and less angry leadership had appeared among the crowd, and we were given clearance to bring a group to the Central Authority. As we made our way across the surface, I pointed out a collapsing dome in the distance. Emergency evacuation pods were shooting out across the surface of the moon, and transports like my own were hurtling off the tracks, deploying their emergency service vehicles. The central system caused us to stop, and I began to deploy my half dozen emergency service vehicles, each programmed to pick up two of the emergency pods before returning to the transport. Our first rescuers told a rather harrowing tale of how some nearby minors had rioted, and then someone had blown out their central dome. Hundreds of people had been gathered in the central dome to hear a connected mining colony protest their working conditions and the rationing that was going on. Rioters from that colony had shown up. Only a few dozen had made it to evacuation pods. The mood was much more somber on the way to the Central Authority. I was surprised we'd been granted permission to travel that far. I was not surprised when there was about a hundred people with tasers waiting for us when we arrived. They were very surprised when the injured evacuees were carried off first by my passengers, and that none of my group were armed or unruly. I explained that the envoys needed to talk to the CA about preventing the same sort of disaster we'd just helped rescue people from.

Later, I dreamed that I was on a cruise ship, my four person room had been paid for, but I was the only one who could make the trip. I bumped into a very unhappy woman and her two children at some sort of lecture event. She had just been dismissed from her position on the cruise, and they were threatening to put her off at the next port, where she would have to try to find a way home for herself and her two girls. I shared my box lunch veggies and dessert with the kids, and made napkin rabbits and other puppets for them. She left to go get her luggage packed up. After the kids had left, I noticed that they had left their shoes behind. An elderly (more than me) man indicated that she was quite fetching, and he might just have the thing to cheer her up. He wanted the kids shoes so he could introduce himself to her. I thought he was way creepier than I am, so decided that I would return the shoes instead.

This morning, I dreamed of music without any sort of plot, I kept trying to understand the words, but they didn't make any sense. I woke up to Giles purring in my ear, and Ember meowing her creaky little meow. Their food bowls were empty.

I went back to bed and dreamed I was back on the cruise ship. I had asked where she had worked, and went to the lounge where she was checking out to leave the ship. She was glad to see her children's shoes. There was some kerfuffle with her paper work, so I agreed to sit with the kids while she went to take care of the issue. (She was just a few feet away at a big desk.) One of her supervisors came over and started telling me things I didn't need to know, and that were private. I told her I'm just the baby sitter, and it wasn't proper for her to share private financial information with me. I asked to see her supervisor. A ships officer was going by and intervened. I asked him to switch the family to my cabin, as I had three empty beds. He seemed to dislike the supervisor enough to ask me to wait there a moment while he checked to see if there was a way to do that. A porter stepped away from his station and brought the family's luggage, three small bags and one larger one to us, then asked what room I was in. I told him and he wheeled the luggage away. I started to stop him, as it wasn't resolved yet. But he just smiled a huge grin at me and indicated that I should just wait. The woman returned, obviously trying to be brave in front of her children. She asked where the luggage was going, but the porter just waved in my general direction.

I confessed that I might have done something rash. She started to refuse, but the kids jumped in with the "Please, please, pleeeeas! chorus." By the time she'd gotten them settled in, the officer was back, and had three extra room keys for me, and wrist bands to replace the ones the kids were wearing. The former supervisor just sputtered incoherently and walked away. I found myself hoping that I hadn't gotten myself in too much trouble. But the ship's officer assured me that we would all be treated just like regular passengers.

Missed the Boat, Movie Extra Extra

I dreamed I was wrapped up for winter, even though it was only a mildly chilly day, because I was going on a cruise to Alaska. Unfortunately, the traffic was stopped and my shuttle missed the sailing time by about 15 minutes. I managed to get to the ticketing office, and they switched my boarding to LA, but told me I had to get there on my own. I made my way over to the train station where they looked at me like I was crazy, but the ticketing agent just smiled and asked if I'd forgotten my sunglasses. I looked at her questioningly, and she laughed and said I looked like a spy from "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego" and that made me chuckle.

In the second dream of the morning I was an extra in a zombie movie, and at the same time performing with some friends in an art film using some of the other extras as their main performers. I was in a torn up tuxedo and my hands were made up so I could tear off bits of my own "flesh" and chew on them. It worked so well that the director of the movie I was an extra in decided to promote me to a "named" zombie and featured me in a couple of different scenes. This sort of threw off the filming of the other film a bit, but the directors' production assistants managed to work out a compromise, and at one point I was being whisked away in a cart with a makeup artist and a costumer going at me while I sat in the back. In the second movie there was a weird romantic tangle and I had a set of cheat cards with the character faces and names of my partners, because there was not going to be any other way to recognize them under all the makeup. Those cards were in plastic badge holders and kept popping out of my shirt. We finally got the idea to rubber band them together and safety pin them to my t-shirt.

Second String

I was with a group of people, all of us in our twenties. (It was nice to feel young again.) One of the women of the group had run around sticking a string in everyone's hands. "So who's going with me?" she shouted and tugged on the string, which broke and all the people let go of their part of the string. The other end of her short remaining bit fell to the floor. Most of the group looked at her like she was nuts. She looked like she was about to cry. I bent over and picked up the other end of the piece she was holding.

"I'll go."

The Girl from Yukishima

J and I were starring in a Jimmy Stuart style black and white romantic musical comedy, "The Girl from Yukishima." I don't remember much of the plot, but a good deal of it centered on the antics of J and J's (in the film) younger sister. In the film, J's sister was home during a break from her much beloved Yukishima Blue Monkey University, where she was attending their College of Western Studies -as in the American Wild West. Much of the file she flip-flopped between traditional Japanese and American (movie) Western outfits. J changed between a black evening gown and a Grey puffy sweater over skinny pants. I seemed to always be in a narrow-striped grey three piece suit with a black bow tie. If I was outside, I was wearing a matching pinch-front hat.

There was a particularly rousing pseudo western number (in Japanese and English both) at one point where everyone in a recreated "Rick's Cafe Americain" was joining in and singing along. J played quite the rabble-rouser in the film and when she and her little sister, who was actually taller than me in her heals, got going, all sorts of musical mayhem erupted. Like a Jimmy Stuart character, I kept finding myself in the eye of this blonde, musical, two-woman tornado. I was forced to run to keep up, lest I be engulfed by the surrounding storm. In the tradition of such films, I was working much harder than I would if I'd just let myself be swept up and carried away by the events around me, and that created the central engine for the comedy.

It's been a long time since I've had an all black and white dream, and even longer since I had one with an opening title and end credits. I wish I could remember more than the title. One of the neat things about this dream is that we were playing characters our own ages.

I would go see this film in the theater. *****

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.

Elementary Independence Day Pageant

I had loaded six POE switches onto the back deck of my Little Red car and headed out to an elementary school to replace some of the older switches. (Putting in some new wireless and expanding the phone system as well.) When I got to the school, there was traffic control. I was directed away from the back parking lot, then told I had to wait until they had a white car and a blue car to go with me. They were having their Independence Day pageant, and wanted me to drive in their parade, because there was a shortage of red cars. I asked where the non red white and blue cars were parking, and the person indicated they were using the lot across the street. I didn't really want to lug six switches all the way across the street so decided to play along.

As I was waiting, two lines of moms went by, each in white with red stars halter tops,  blue and white striped shorts, and cork-bottomed platform clogs like the '70s. There were close to 150 of them, all with slender, nicely curved figures. Waiting suddenly did't seem like that bad of an idea. I wondered how they'd found so many good looking moms, but then remembered there were over 600 families at the school, so there were lots to pick from. There were a half dozen dads thrown in, they were in white shirts, red and blue suspenders and similar blue and white striped shorts. The dads weren't in platforms, but red and white boating shoes with one red sock and one blue sock. The men weren't uniformly attractive like the women.

We followed the parade into the main parking lot and were directed to park in our red, white, and blue order. I got out and opened up the hatch so I could carry in my switches. When I turned to head into the school, I noticed the people in costume were walking along a makeshift runway, constructed of boards and chairs, people had to step from chair to chair to make their way to the stage. I felt sorry for the women in their platform clogs, but it was quite the bouncy and shimmying spectacle. I waited for the procession to go into the school quad and then followed on with half my load of switches.

As I passed by the quad I noticed the principal trying to convince an older woman in a bright green and pink sari to move out of the front row - so that she could have people dressed in red white and blue sit there. I just shook my head, knowing that might not end well.

I swapped out the switches and decided to pop into the quad to see more of the patriotic display, the moms were waiving sparklers or pom-poms, dancing four to five on raised platforms around the quad. The principal was speaking on the center stage, and then a Sousa March started playing and the principal was marching through a number that culminated with her being lifted up by the six dads while simultaneously changing into a liberty hat and sparkling torch.

When I got back to the office I was telling J about the display with the older women and she mentioned that the principal and performers there were way out of our class, so likely wouldn't even have a second thought about asking grandma to move.

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.

Not Safe For Work

Dreamed I was going back to work at one of my old job sites. There was a big difference, however, and it involved a large number of people with an extraordinary amount of skin showing. The were engaged in very non-work like activities. It turns out I was supposed to be fixing the script, acting coach, and doubling up on lights and sound as the budget had been cut and the producer was unable to afford a full crew.

The director was an old classmate of mine who had a history of film experience, but on the other side of the camera, showing her then extraordinary skin and flexible talents. I would have to say that, in this dream, neither of us had aged well since then.

We had a very strict schedule to keep, as we only had the rooms for a few hours and had to be out and completely cleaned up before sunrise. The pressure made this all a lot less fun than the theme would otherwise indicate.

Birthday Surprise

I dreamed it was my birthday. I was just about to graduate with my degree in, of all things, law. In this dream I was about twenty seven, and was trying to get a birthday date with a cute little blonde girl who I'd taken a fancy to. Unfortunately, she wasn't that interested in me (too old) so arranged to trade places with another woman.

I'm not sure how they thought I wouldn't notice.

The woman she was trading places with was someone I knew, but I hadn't known she had a pretty severe crush on me. She even dyed her hair blonde for the switch. As I arrived to pick up my date the room exploded into a surprise "masquerade" party, and my friends slipped a mask on me.

Despite the masks, I could pretty easily tell that the buxom blonde wasn't really the woman I had hoped to spend the evening with, but until the masks came off I didn't know who it was. We danced and had a couple of jello shots, and slipped out onto the balcony to talk for a bit. I had figured out that my original date had slipped out of the party early, so had decided to make the best of my evening with who I thought was a stranger. We went for a walk, as the noise and the crowd were obviously making her uncomfortable.

It was a delightful walk, and her mask had some sort of electronics in it that disguised her voice, giving her what I thought was a rather borg-like sound. We chuckled at that. 

The clock tower in the commons struck midnight. and we turned to one another to take off our masks. She made me promise not to get mad at her and the little friend, as I had hinted that I was well aware that they were not one and the same.

I was quite surprised, and delighted, when I discovered my friend under the mask. I wasn't sure I liked the blonde hair more than her original more maple colored hair, but her outfit did an amazing job of reining in her normal curves. She opened up her overalls and showed me that she was wrapped up in bandages from hip to underarm. 

"That can't be comfortable, can it?" I was wondering how she'd been able to breathe all night.

"I could use a hand getting out of it. Would you like to unwrap your birthday gift at my place or yours?"

"You don't have too... ah, my place." She lived with three room mates, one of whom was my original date. I didn't want that confrontation just yet, so offered an arm and led her back to my place.

As we walked back arm in arm, I realized that I did, in fact, want to unwrap this birthday gift.

Strangled, Reclaimed House

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

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

-----

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

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

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

"Sure."

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

Water Damage, Virtual Damage

I dreamed profusely, but only remember two little snippets. The first was being pushed into the water at a lake. I got out quickly, but my medicine bag was wet. I quickly dumped the contents, but wasn't able to prevent the water from getting into the pill box. I didn't care about the Benadryl as I had a sealed bottle in my car, but the sildenafil I didn't want to go to waste, as they were the only one's I'd brought on the trip. I scooped them out before they were just mush and was going to take them.

"You can't take those NOW!"

"The effects last a while, we'll be back to our cabin in a couple of hours."

It was a pretty funny moment.

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Just before waking I was playing a video game. The game was a sort of World of Warcraft and Defiance mash up with a little bit of Diablo III or Torchlight thrown in. There was the steam punk sort of vibe mixed with the gun show and over the top magic effects all thrown in. Characters could be "pure" or mixed, and the system seemed pretty balanced except for certain challenges. I was showing one of those challenges to J. A mission where you cleared out a cave and defeated the boss, but when you went to leave, there were nearly a hundred regular mobs outside, rushing the cave. If you didn't have an Area of Effect spell or ability, it was very difficult to get out. I showed her with a Magic using sort with big AoE spells, and it was easy to let the enemies bunch up and then blow them up, retreat, and repeat until you got out.

I then showed what it was like for a non-AoE character. I had beaten the boss, then was showing how you had to lure the bad guys in and then lead them through the tunnels to thin them out so you could take them on one or two at a time. As the first bunch approached the entry to the cave, I suddenly saw the flash of a green/gold enchanted blade sweep through my character from behind, killing him in one shot. I sat, stupefied, looking at the creature with the golden glowing name over its head, it was doing a victory dance on my corpse. J was asking "what's wrong, can't you just start over?" I'd done this mission a couple of dozen times, and something like that had never happened.

A rare champion creature had spawned, without notice, right behind me in the entrance. I hadn't even had the chance to notice it was there before it struck. The game popped out to the "Your Deeds of Valor will be Remembered" screen, where it displayed the one hundred forty plus hours and all of his gear as well as naming the mob that had killed me (a golden named unique creature.) This particular character was a "hard core" character, and his death was final, no restarting, except to restart from nothing and build back up again.

"Ah, Sweetie, I'm going to need a moment..."

Convention Meeting

I dreamed that J and I were on a bus travelling to a convention or conference of some sort. We were invited to act as chaperons for one of our local HS groups. Ordinarily I wouldn't have done that, as I don't currently know any of the kids in the schools, since I haven't worked there in a dozen years or so. J signed us up, however, because it meant that we would get a free room out of the deal. I tried to point out that it also meant that we had to work from Ten to midnight checking each of our rooms randomly at least once an hour, so we wouldn't have time in the evenings to spend together, and wouldn't be able to attend any of the conference's evening events other than the ones our students were involved in.

Still, it did save us a bunch of money. We arrived by bus, another cost saving, and the kids piled out of the bus first. I had some trouble getting out of the narrow stairs from the top level of the bus, until I noticed that the hand rails were adjustable, I called down to the bus driver and he helped me move the rails apart. (They were about 10 inches apart, and there was just no comfortable way to go down the stairs without being able to move my legs past one another.)

We got the kids checked in and were about to escort them up to their rooms before the first set of meetings, when I heard a familiar voice calling my name. N was there. She was being "fake nice" as she used to put it, but it was obvious that I was the last person she'[d hoped to see at this conference.  I introduced her to J. They sized one another up for a bit and I made my excuses and interjected myself into a luggage kerfuffle, not so much because I was needed, but to get away from the two women. I figured J would debrief me on what she discovered/thought when we got settled into our room.