CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #262: Arcade Action

I’m walking through an arcade, heading somewhere but in no particular hurry. It’s a huge place with a very high ceiling and lots of cool-looking games. I come to one beat-em-up game that looks sort of interesting. It’s got a pair of joysticks (one for each player) and a “Kick” button. The “Kick” button looks sort of messed up and mashed to one side.

I notice an odd message flashing on the screen: “Press Kick to Start”. It looks like someone left a credit in this machine! I look around to see if the credit belong to anyone nearby. There’s a black guy in his late 40s walking by and I ask him whether this is his game. He seems confused by my question, so I turn back to the machine, and become lucid as I reflect on my good fortune.

I press “Kick” to start the game, slightly nervous that the dream won’t be stable if I play games. I start singing an impromptu song about dreams and video games (in my lucid dream voice, which is much much better than my waking life voice!)

The game begins and rather than a beat em up, it’s some kind of shooting gallery game where you have a little video game hand with a gun. The graphics look 8-bit, and there are these little circular targets that I’m supposed to be aiming at. When I move the joystick, the gun moves, and pressing kick makes the gun shoot. I miss a couple of times, and then hit a target, which shatters!



The shooting gallery attendant walks out and resets the targets. Unlike the rest of the game, she’s completely lifelike, a petite Asian woman with a medium build, probably in her late 20s. I do another round of shooting. Aiming the gun is kind of a pain, but I eventually shoot two more targets, and the attendant walks out to reset the targets.

I think about trying to change the game into a beat-em-up, but the attendant turns to face me. I see that she looks Thai or Cambodian, and her appearance is very vivid and attractive. She asks me…

Spoiler for Sexytime:

... whether I want to have sex with her. I have no idea how I’m supposed to do this, but sure, I'm interested! As sexytime commences, I find that my dream body’s able to be in two places at once; I’m both standing in the arcade playing the video game and living in the game and doing things with the shooting gallery attendant. (This goes on for about 90 rather action-packed seconds.)

Afterward, I emerge fully back into the video arcade and wonder whether I can play the game some more. The attendant looks toward me, seemingly ready to set up another round. As I’m messing with the controls, the attendant wanders off, leaving the shooting gallery in sort of a half-ready state. I mess a bit more with the game controls, but I’m feeling less tied into the dream, and pretty soon I’m awake.

This lucid is from the morning of October 17th.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #246: Gimme Three

Wife and I are walking through a slightly crowded, nondescript room, being rapidly introduced to people. Some guy introduces me to his son, who looks like to be about 5 years old. “Gimme five, buddy!” I say, holding out my hand. But when I look down at my hand, I see that the pinky and ring fingers of my right hand are completely missing. I laugh, aware that I’m dreaming.

Most of the people in the room look sort of frozen now, so I walk out through the door to the top of a gently sloping wheelchair ramp. This young guy with cool hair is standing here flirting with two attractive young women. I want their help, and as I remember my goal to summon Dreamer, the three of them stop what they’re doing and turn to look at me.

I point down the wheelchair ramp, saying, “Is Dreamer right over there?” The guy nods, pointing just down the ramp at a woman who’s leaning against the wall. I approach her, and see that she’s in her early 30s, with short,very dark hair. She’s attractive but wears a pinched, almost grim expression on her face.

I just don’t feel like this is Dreamer. I say, “I’m going to keep looking,” and reach up to pat the woman on the shoulder. Somehow I completely miss and accidentally pat her twice on the left breast. I cringe with embarrassment and she mirrors my expression, but otherwise doesn’t react. “Sorry, not what I meant to do!” I say before hurrying down the ramp into an arcade.

I see a small group of young women playing skee-ball nearby and a little to the right, a couple more women in their 20s playing some kind of game where you skate back and forth along the floor. They look like they’re having a great time! It looks like a fun thing to join in on, but I’m also really eager to perform the Task of the Month (where you play an instrument that does not exist in waking life.)

There’s a low stone wall here, painted white. I try to show off a little dream control and take a big bite out of it, but the taste is dull and chalky. Suddenly, a set of double doors opens to my left, revealing a long hallway. I run toward it then just for some laughs I bellyflop onto the floor and slide the length of the hallway on my tummy.

At the end of the hall, I open another set of double doors that leads me into a large cafeteria-like room that’s filled with DCs. I don’t make my way very far into there before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #222: The Australian Odyssey

I’m standing in line with my friends SC and MR along with some other people that I false remember as people from my past. I’m trying to introduce these “old friends” but it’s hopeless because I can’t even remember their names. Very embarrassing, and to my relief the line moves ahead and we walk into a large video arcade.

SC, MR, and I watch this one game for a while that’s a cross between a sandbox-style game, a racing game, and a platformer. I get confused after a while and wander to another part of the arcade, when some creep elbows me aside and then flicks me on the back. The creep stares at me as he walks by with a “what are you gonna do about it?” look. He’s a short little guy with a mustache. “You’re short,” I observe out loud.

This enrages him, and he charges at me, taking an unbelievably slow swing at my head. I push him gently aside and he falls to the floor. “Stop it,” I tell him. “I don’t want to get arrested.” I move away from him down a hallway but he chases me down and tries to hit me again. I scoop up his right ankle and he falls backward to the floor.

I say, “I’m not hurting you because I don’t think you can hurt me.” As I’m walking away I start doing some pondering out loud: “But… what if you try to hit me 5000 more times? Wouldn't all of that practice make you dangerous to me?” Convinced by the dream logic, I pick up a toddler-sized chair and say, “Next time, I’m going to hit you with this chair! In the face!” I shake the chair for emphasis. He ignores my warnings and again comes charging for me. I smash the chair into the center of his forehead and he crumples to the ground.

I walk off down the hall, hoping nobody saw me do that. Something about all this strikes me as completely crazy and I become lucid. I walk down a long hallway lined with school lockers, and at the end I find a dirt ramp leading downward. I follow the tunnel downward into a large temple built with big stone blocks. There are gaps in the stonework near the high ceiling and shafts of sunlight cut across the room from above.

It’s a beautiful place and I begin slowly flying around the room, overcome with joy to be lucid. “Fucking lucidity!” I say, feeling like I might cry with emotion. After flying around for a bit, I walk outside of the temple to find myself in a Venice-like city of canals. A few boats drift gently by.

I look back at the temple and see a large, golden statue of an angel sliding down a ramp from the ceiling to the door right in front of me. From somewhere a voice says, “Although we recognize Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we believe this church is powered by the Holy Spirit.” I get the sense that the voice is trying to explain what they use for electricity. After admiring the statue for a few moments, I step into one of the boats and set off.

It’s not long before I find myself at the edge of the city, heading out to sea. I get the feeling that I’m in Australia and the beauty of the story and the scenery eventually drain away my lucidity. Dreamer starts narrating: “Parts of Australia are dirty, polluted, and not as nice as you might think.” As she says this, I notice oily water lapping against the side of the boat.

I set sail away from the city, staying close to the shoreline, Dreamer narrating here and there. The water is clear and beautiful now. Dreamer says that I’m trying to find my way to the islands of the “Hawthorne Formation” but I don’t know my way there. The sea is calm and I feel peaceful and relaxed. Eventually my boat lands on a sandy beach where Noah Bennet from Heroes is working at a carpentry table. I think he’s my dad and that he’s counting on me making this journey to the Hawthorne Formation to get help for my mom and sister. (100% false memories and characters.)

“Son,” he says, “draw me a map of where you think you are.” I draw a globe on a piece of plywood and sketch out Australia. I think it looks pretty good until I see all of the lines of longitude converging in its center. I realize that I’ve put Australia where Antarctica is supposed to go and feel really embarrassed.

Noah Bennet sighs. “Here’s the Hawthorne Formation,” he says, drawing a series of 4 islands off the southwestern coast of Australia.” He draws an arrow pointing northeast into the middle of these islands.

I thank him and return to the boat. “Good luck, son,” he says, and the dream fades.

The second of two LDs from the morning of 05/18/2013. This was a big, big dream, and this dream and I did not always get along. This was my first serious attempt at meeting NewArtemis for a dream sharing attempt.

I also got into a big fight with a powerful DC that escalated into a me against the world situation. I could have handled this a lot better. My self-control wasn't what it should be... but it was still kinda awesome.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #96: Clash at the Alamo

I'm Marty McFly from Back to the Future, driving my DeLorean on a set of rails that stand hundreds of feet over a bay. The DeLorean starts to shake as it picks up speed and before I can make a time jump, the rails end and the car goes plummeting toward the sparkling water.

I brace for impact and the DeLorean flies to pieces as it strikes the bay. Miraculously, I'm unharmed, and I thrash about for something to hold on to so that I can get my bearings and figure out what to do. One long, fin-like piece of metal from the car bobs to the surface and I grab onto it. The moment that I do, an unseen engine roars to life and takes off like a jet ski.

As I'm racing across the bay, I realize that this has to be a dream. After riding for a moment, I'm perhaps a hundred feet from shore. I leap off the impromptu "jet ski" and fly the remaining distance, landing in a stone plaza that stands at the water's edge.

I remember that I'm planning to meet NewArtemis at the Alamo for a shared dreaming experiment. I turn toward the water, raise my hands up in the air, and make an announcement to all of the DCs. Most of the passerby stop and turn to look at me. "The Alamo is right behind me! That's right -- Alamo right behind me!" I imagine it in detail, rebuilding my mental map, forgetting and scrubbing out the buildings that were there before and replacing it with my image of everything that I remember about the Alamo. I continue this until I can think of nothing of what's behind me except for this image of the Alamo.



I turn around, expecting to see the Alamo... and there it is! The stone's a little darker and the construction looks a little too new to be quite right, but it's more than close enough of a lookalike for me. I walk around past the front entrance to a courtyard. The geography is different in this dream from that of the real Alamo, and I come to a stone wall with a little alcove and a bench. There's a woman sitting on the bench and we look at each other immediately.

She gets up and approaches me right away. She doesn't look like NewArtemis' DC has in the past, but I'm not sure of anything yet. She speaks first: "I'm here to meet someone. How about you?"

"So am I," I say, studying her. She's roughly the same height as Art's DC but her skin is paler, her hair curlier, her build heavier, and her face is different -- broader, different nose, different shape... just different. "But you're not her, are you? I don't think you're [NewArtemis]."

She smiles noncommitally, but I continue. "That's okay," I continue. "Let's still do the passphrases and gestures." I speak my chosen word to the DC and perform my chosen gesture. She doesn't bother speaking a passphrase in return but she does perform a gesture. (These have been reported to a 3rd party who is not NewArtemis just in case she's able to guess them.)

"Well, I need to go!" the woman says. She walks out of the alcove and passes me. As she goes, she becomes a much older lady, blonde, mid-50s. She grows to an enormous height, probably close to 8 feet tall. She's wearing shorts and I see that her legs are covered with a crisscrossing patchwork of scars.

I contemplate following, but I'm distracted by a man who's sitting at the top of a stone wall nearby, staring at me with a malicious grin on his face. He's in his late 30s with close-cropped reddish-blonde hair. The guy keeps staring at me with that joyless grin and I know that he's looking for trouble with me. I want no part of it, so I turn and walk away.



He hops down from the wall and grips my right forearm with his right hand, twisting my arm around so that my hand is near my head. I try to pull my arm out of his grip but when I yank, it doesn't budge. He laughs, shaking his head as if he can't believe that I would bother trying to defy him. "You're never leaving here," he says. "I mean it. You are never leaving here." I yank my arm again but I feel as weak as a kitten.

I know I have to turn this around fast. I grab him by the back of the head with my left hand and begin to imagine my adversary as frail and lethargic. "You're so weak and tired," I tell him, trying to sound compassionate, even though I'm boiling with rage. "There's just no strength left in you at all." And I gently move to lay him down on a nearby table. I think of him as totally weak and barely able to move. His grip slips from my arm and he flops backward onto the table.

"And small," I say, pressing on his head with one hand and his feet with the other. He begins to shrink. His hair has turned jet black now, and his eyes close. I squeeze him together, thinking of him as so tiny, and soon he shrinks to the size of a child, then to the size of a baby, then disappears into his clothes entirely. My self-control cracks and I ball up his clothes, throw the bundle on the ground, and give it a vicious stomp. I wonder for a moment whether I've gone too far and hope for a moment that the bundle was empty. I walk through a nearby archway, not sticking around to find out more.

I emerge in a cafeteria. A table of 6 or 7 teenagers immediately looks up from their meals at me. "It's him," one of them says, and they all get to their feet and come after me. I fly through a nearby doorway and emerge in a large, empty room with a skylight. I fly up to the skylight, intending to phase through it, but something seems to restrain me from getting high enough. I run through a doorway into a drugstore that dead-ends in a frosted glass window. I vault toward it, phasing through onto a street scene.

There are police everywhere on the street. I know that they're looking for me. There are strange little ball-shaped hoverbots scanning the streets with cameras, also trying to track me down. I sprint up to one and kick it against a nearby wall. With a pop, it breaks into two smoking, fizzling halves.

Everything seems to be happening too fast for me to control. I run down the street, looking for some way out of this fear. I want to buy time to calm down, so I phase through the door of a nearby house. Cops are turning the place over while the family, a husband and wife and their little girl of about 8 are glued to the TV. One cop notices me as I walk in, but I swoop in on him, grab him from behind, and choke him unconscious. The other two cops don't seem to notice any of this, and the little family stares obliviously into their TV sets.

I watch the TV for a moment. It's some sort of political propaganda which claims that the moral code of their "great society" is built upon a foundation of classic arcade games like Centipede, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. I'm torn -- on one hand, I find top-down, statist morality codes repugnant. On the other hand, I sure do love classic arcade games.

I phase out through the back of the house into the yard. The cops yell at me as I pass and I hear them calling for backup. The back yard is peaceful for a moment before the wail of what sounds like an air raid siren fills the air. I look up at the sky, feeling helpless, trying to find peace for a moment. But all I can think is They're coming for me. The dream ends...

The good news for this LD is that the light switches worked great! The bad news is that my prospective memory wasn't the best and my DC summons didn't work like they should, but I had fun trying. Some more focused mental prep and reminding myself of my goals would have helped, I think, so I'll just blame the short WBTB.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #89: Under Construction

I'm walking down a hall in my office with my friend "Leroy" and one other guy. The hallway is dimly lit and even though we're far from any windows, somehow I know that it's night outside. We're looking for some room that we can use to host a remote meeting that's scheduled to start in a few minutes.

The door at the end of the hall has been replaced with a thick sheet of plastic and the entire area looks like it's under construction. I think, "How do I know that this isn't a dream?" and I become lucid. I run my fingers over the wall, and it feels just like the walls at the office. "[Leroy], I'm having a lucid dream." Leroy doesn't respond and just stares robotically ahead. I continue to mutter about how I'm dreaming, but the target audience is really just me -- Leroy seems to have checked out.

We reach the end of the hall and I phase through the plastic into the next room, which should be a large, windowed room of cubicles, adjoining offices and meeting rooms. The windows are there but all of the furniture is missing and the room is incredibly dark. I reach for a switch on the wall without looking, knowing that it will be there, and flip it. The lights come on and I watch as the room quickly populates itself with gym equipment! I see a treadmill, a couple of stationary bikes, and a weight tree with 45-pound plates appear. I stare at the weight tree for a moment, and the image wavers self-consciously, forming odd little rectangles and finally disappearing entirely.

I decide to "give the room a moment", and look over my right shoulder at the wall for a few seconds and then look back. The room is still mostly the same but now there are five or six arcade-style redemption games arranged back to back in a circle in the middle. (The sort of ticket-winning games that you might find at Chuck E. Cheese's.) I take a quick lap around the games to size them up. During the lap I notice that Leroy is still standing by the room entrance and still seems unresponsive, so I don't worry too much about him.

I have the nagging sense that I'm supposed to be doing something but I can't remember what it is. I try to think of the tasks that I had planned but nothing comes to mind, not Task of the Year or Task of the Month. I remember talking with NewArtemis about trying to see whether her DC could shapeshift the way that she can in dreams, so I attempt a handshake summon, averting my eyes and extending my right hand. I do it incorrectly, though, more asking for her to show up rather than expecting that she will. Nothing happens for a while and at the end I rather pathetically say, "[NewArtemis], don't leave me hanging!"

Now I've become fixated on summoning so I decide to try getting Xanous to join the scene. Again I do the handshake summon, but the result's the same. I think of shapeshifting again and realize that Xanous can do this too. For some reason I remember that he uses the term "blutbad" in conjunction with shapeshifting so I randomly blurt out "Blutbad!" like that's going to help somehow. No idea what that was all about, but it doesn't work!

Edit: I remembered one more part of the dream. I give up on the summoning for a moment and try speaking directly to the dream. "Show me something important!" Nothing happens, though, and I try this twice more before giving up.

Amazingly, the thought of simply phasing through the walls and flying off into the night doesn't occur to me. I turn my attention to the redemption games, hoping that this could be fun and might even reanimate Leroy. I stand in front of one machine that's about 6 feet high and has a joystick on the front and a tall, tapering tower of lights inside its case. The lights are illuminated in a wave that moves repeatedly from top to bottom. I place my hand on the joystick, noting the little red button on top, and the dream starts to fade. I feel it coming and ready myself for DEILD, but when I emerge from the dream I'm too awake to go back in.

This was a short but pleasant lucid after drinking a 3-bag brew of peppermint tea during my WBTB. I woke up for the WBTB on the late side (4:45 or so), so I didn't stay awake for very long. Probably because of this, my waking life memories were a little tough to access.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #64: The Menthol Arcade

I'm in a dark arcade playing Street Fighter II with my friend SC. We're talking smack and he says, "I bet you can't win a sumo wrestling match." I say something really brilliant like, "Bring it!" and the game starts.

I'm on the righthand side and both of us are playing as E. Honda. I look down at the game's controls and I'm disappointed to see that it has no joystick and each side has only 3 buttons instead of the usual 6. The weirdness of this sticks in my mind and after thinking it over, I realize that I'm dreaming.

The game starts and neither of us moves at first. I jam on the buttons a bit and my player starts E. Honda's signature "Hundred Hand Slap". I will him to start drifting to the left and he slides along for a few seconds.



Before I can land a shot, the screen goes black. I look over to my left and SC has vanished. I'm completely alone and all of the machines are off now. I turn away and start to explore the rest of the arcade.

The arcade's divided into two sides, and the side that I'm on is arranged around an enormous air hockey table that's at least 4-5 times larger than a normal one. I wonder what someone would do if the puck got stuck in the middle of that huge thing. On the opposite side of the room I see an emergency exit. I think about exploring the other side of the arcade but it occurs to me that I probably have goals I want to work on, and outside seems like a better bet.

I keep verbally reminding myself that this is a dream until I reach the exit. I push on the crash bar, the door swings open, and I'm staring out into a milky gray void. I'm nervous about walking out there but I feel like there's no going back now.

There's a bit of a drop as I step into the void, but my feet land on something solid a couple of feet down. I feel like I'm wearing my work shoes. The scene goes totally dark, but I'm ready to DEILD. I start swinging my arm around, imagining that I have a gladius. Nothing happens for a few seconds, but I still feel relaxed. I start swinging harder, throwing in a few man-grunts for emphasis.

Some sort of wind sweeps up from below and picks me up off of my feet. The wind starts to swirl and soon turns into a cyclone. I can feel myself spinning and spinning, and I think that this is great -- LaBerge suggests spinning as a way to change scenes. I'm confident it will work, and sure enough I see a colorful, spinning scene start to emerge.

The wind dies down, the spinning slows, and I'm gently set down on a vast, jeweled mosaic that stretches in every direction as far as I can see. There's a slightly reddish glow on the horizon and what looks like a set of distant mountains. I'm awestruck by what I see, but it's just a few seconds before the dream ends.

This was the first of three LDs from early Christmas morning. This was my first time directly experiencing a creative work of my subconscious. I was grateful for the few minutes that I got, but I'd have enjoyed more. Some other night!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #48: The Arcade of the Subconscious

I am "in" a side-scrolling video game that's drawn in the style of a pencil sketch. My avatar is a small stick-figure man who runs, jumps, and shoots his way across a grassy landscape where boulders roll and hop all around, presenting a constant danger of smashing him flat.

I dart back and forth as boulders bounce over my head when I randomly realize that this is all a dream. The dream stays perfectly stable and I am able to continue playing further into the game. I (or my stick figure man) shoot at a boulder that's rolling toward me and find that within four shots it bursts into harmless fragments.

I continue running further along the track and all the while more and more boulders make their way onto the playfield. It's getting difficult to avoid them and I'm starting to feel pretty stressed by the difficulty. A new enemy presents itself, some sort of mole that tunnels underneath the floor where I'm walking and blasts a huge column of dirt up at me. It's a big distraction, and it's not long before a boulder strikes my player, knocking him horizontal (and presumably dead.)

The game ends immediately and cuts to a title screen. Why can't I remember the title? I watch the title screen, hopeful that it'll let me continue playing. After a few seconds of this, the game switches to a demo mode where I am no longer in control. I'm contemplating what to do about this when the dream ends.

During my two-month dry spell between LD#1 and LD#2, I'd come up with a long list of experiments that I wanted to perform in a lucid dream. I managed to try the "level of detail" ones here.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid Experimentation (June 24th, 2012)

I'm attending a black tie party with Wife at some palatial estate. While we're exploring the grounds, I decide that I need to use the restroom. I tell Wife I'll meet with her later and go in search of the facilities.

I find them at the top of a long walkway filled with classic arcade machines ("Millipede" was definitely there.) Through the walkway door is an enormous, low-lit video arcade filled with machines and players. I find a light switch and flip it so that I can see better. Instead of lighting the room, this winds up turning off every machine in the arcade and the angry patrons look around, cursing. Badly embarrassed, I duck into the bathroom.

A Japanese couple follows me into the bathroom but instead of berating me for my stupidity, they request help with a tapioca pudding recipe that they're working on. I suggest that we return to my kitchen to work on it. We somehow blink into the kitchen and I immediately realize that this is a dream. I push my finger through my palm to RC and the left hand stretches like taffy around my finger. The Japanese couple smiles broadly and stands back to wait for me to try whatever it was I had in mind.

I experiment with clarity, committing to memory my in-dream assessment of how detailed / realistic everything appears. I say that everything looks crystal clear and can be viewed to an arbitrary level of detail. I am unprepared for how clear everything is. I study my hands (which have an unusual bend and one extra finger on the left) as well as the brushed metal refrigerator (which I assess as 100% realistic at every level of detail I try.)

My vision briefly collapses into milky gray but I manage to restabilize by rubbing my hands over my forearms. I quickly realize that the Japanese DCs still need my help. I will their tapioca pudding recipe to be fixed and they laugh, smiling gratefully. I then think about how I can rejoin Wife at the party since I no longer know how to get there. Soon afterward, though, I find myself awake back in bed.

I quickly grab the dream journal and start excitedly writing. About three lines in, I notice unusual notations in the margin. I don't understand them and have no memory of making them. Scanning back over what I've already written, I realize I can no longer make sense of any of it. I wonder whether I am actually awake. I immediately wake up (for real this time), reality check and go for the dream journal. A great way to break a dry spell!