Sailing the Noosphere

A large crowd of kids from my high school have planned to go to a mall, then the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and a ballgame. I am with them, but am rather low on cash and already have the giveaway bobblehead from the Hall of Fame. When they leave for the Reds, I stay to bum around in the mall. I head to a Barnes and Nobel to buy a copy of the Tao te Ching. When I get to the shelf where it's kept, I'm accosted by a clerk who says I tried to shoplift it earlier and thus am not allowed to buy it. I get angry and start to make a scene. I notice that mixed with the books on the shelf is a poorly written journal (text RC failed); its owner, a cute black girl, returns to claim it and takes the Tao te Ching along with it. Now I'm really pissed, and I go to pick a fight with a random customer. I soon realize he outclasses me in every way, but I refuse to back down and lose pretty badly.

1. Mom and I are doing my back to school shopping at the mall. I wander off into the mall proper while she stays in the department store; when I return she has a $150 gift card to the store! We leave the store, and on the ride back she tells me how she saw a fight between a shopper and an employee. She was called to witness in a trial of the employee and got the gift card for her time. The prosecutor in the trial, however, was her former boss as a paralegal, and she expresses sorrow that she didn't continue her own legal career. When we get back home (to our old house), Dr. C from the research station is pulling out of the driveway in the station van. We wait for him to move, then I move in. As I do, however, I scrape the bottom of our new car.

2. The whole family, along with my (deceased) maternal grandma are going out to the movies. The film we see is made from a collection of short subjects. The first is set in the British Museum. In the movie, Mom and I often shop at their gift shop for ice cream and cupcakes. One day, after we buy our sweets, I'm suddenly attacked by velociraptors! I run and flail my arms wildly, still carrying my mom's credit card in one hand. Someone offscreen then throws ice cream at the raptors, which seems to pacify them. Relieved, I move to exit, but as I do I'm told that I owe over 24 pounds. Apparently waving the credit card orders food for whatever I "circle" with it. I refuse to pay, and finally it dawns on me to ask why there are dinosaurs in the museum. The film jump-cuts to a London park, where a young bird skeleton is shown stripped from escaped raptors. The short ends without resolution, cutting to a static screen where the audience is advised to use hand sanitizer. This I do, but the rest of the family looks at me rather oddly.

Soon enough, however, the second short begins. This takes place in Soviet Russia. The camera descends on a snowy provincial capital as a voiceover comments on the permanency of the ruling party. Something to the effect of if 30 members were removed from office, the party would still remain in power. The film cuts to inside the capital building, where the Russian government is in session. A senator from Kamchatka has something to say; one of his counterparts snarkily remarks how a disabled person could take the podium if they had wheels. The senator announces some sort of breakthrough, but promptly falls dead. His aide throws a white sheet over him, then pulls it off with a magician's flourish.

The senator is alive, but as the sheet is pulled further back, we notice he isn't quite right. In fact, he soon turns out to be hideous. He's a hermaphroditic freak, with breasts studding his body in odd places and an extra penis hanging off his chest. Somehow the whole family is now present in the movie and recoils at revulsion towards the sight. My grandma, a devout Catholic, starts screeching "That's heresy!" as I lose the dream.

1. The whole family is going on a visit to the King's Island amusement park. We pull into a far away parking lot shared by a strip mall and several megachurches. My mom expresses concern about all the black men loitering in the lot, but my brother and I don't care and start to wander. We pass a local music shop, which seems to be having a going-out-of-business sale. Outside of the store is a row of basses with prices (failed RC), and I give them a good examination. As I look at them, one of the office ladies from my high school walks by and says "I know you and who's with you!" Cut to my high school's office,, where Mom and the lady are talking. It's the last day of school, and she's complaining about how only one student has wished her a good summer. PV, who she's nicknamed (appropriately) Big Chunky," is that student, and he comes from the back of the office to greet my mom and I warmly.

2. I'm watching a suspended roller coaster that seems inspired by a fight with a dragon. There's a lot of flat preparation at the beginning, followed by a crazy drop and a series of loops. Some bullies from my grade school are riding it, and when they get off of it they start to make fun of me.

1. Once again I find myself in a mall arcade with my parents. I find a DDR machine where someone has left credits, and happily I jump on and select double mode. I have a lot of trouble selecting my first song, though (and with text menu, another failed RC), ending up on a Paul McCartney solo work. The stepchart is silly, and I barely manage to pass, feeling acute embarrassment. For my next song, however, I go to my old fallback "Heaven is a '57 Metallic Gray" and rock the house. Arrows seem smaller than in real life, but otherwise the interface is fine.

2. I play the main role in a music video for one of my favorite bands, The Dear Hunter. I don't remember details, but I do remember that it ends in a passionate and particularly real-feeling kiss.

1. I'm completely out of money at a mall, so I get my dad to give me some quarters. I then take these to go play DDR at an arcade. I'm able to find a freestyle hands-and-feet mode (menu is in text, so failed RC) and happily punch in to play. I am disappointed, though, since the interface isn't the clean shining one I know and love. The whole thing is grainy, and there are no arrows, only solid streams of pixels for notes. I enjoy the techno nonetheless, performing for my parents and some random guy, and I get a high score. As I enter my name in all caps into the machine, my dad makes a wisecrack about how freestyle should be "horse behind the ass" style.

2. Mom is having an affair with some man in New England. She hides it for a while, but eventually she's found out to be pregnant and everything turns to shit.

I'm waiting for my brother to pick me up at home and take me to the mall. He's running late, so I go downstairs and fire up my computer. It has a projected user interface, as in Jarvis from the Iron Man movie, and a very large high-def monitor. I start to browse Wikipedia (text, so failed RC), looking up Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and from there link to an obscure Japanese game that takes place in the Kingdom Hearts universe. It download it and proceed to play.
The only relationship to Kingdom Hearts is the use of the Gummi Ship. This vehicle is presented in top-down perspective, scrolling in a traditional manner as in Galaga or Galaxian. The enemies follow colored tracks along with a soundtrack, as in Audiosurf, and special flight maneuvers are also order with the music as in DJ Hero. The interface is intuitive and the gameplay frantic enough to keep me engaged for several rounds, and I start to reconsider going to the mall at all.

I visit a mall, one derived from the Florence Mall in Northern KY that has served as a location for several previous dreams (failed reality check). As I wander around, I hear some snippets of conversation that seem familiar from real life (another failed reality check), including someone explaining their confusion about my roommate's name. The mall is nearing closing time, so nearly everyone is there to exercise. There are runners, walkers, and a large contingent of skaters inside a cavernous skate shop made entirely of wood. There's even a group of people on old-school penny farthing bicycles!
I start to join in the activity by doing lame parkour moves on the planters and benches. I know I could do better, but I'm wearing leather loafers, a blue long-sleeve dress shirt, and khaki pants. Suddenly, my friend C comes running out of nowhere, his impressive red mane streaming from behind him. He starts to race me through the mall, and he puts on a burst of speed I know he could never have in real life. I fall behind, panting and angered, as he runs out of the mall.