Sailing the Noosphere

1. I'm watching an old couple do a live broadcast of some comedic radio show. They only get a couple of lines in, the last of which is "He's always so polite," before I false-awaken into my bed. I start to write it down in my dream journal, when suddenly I hear "Habenera" from Carmen blaring in full orchestral beauty. This causes me to check my dream journal, and sure enough, my handwriting is unstable! I get lucid and try to stabilize, rubbing my hands together and feeling the bed beneath me. Things are solid and quite real feeling, and I try to engage as many senses as possible. I start thinking about where to take the dream while still stabilizing, and this continues for a good twenty seconds. However, I lose control before I'm able to do anything.

2. It's after the civil war, and my embarrassed family is ordering drinks from our former slaves who are now free employees of a restaurant.

1. My brother and I are at a theme park that seems to be based on world War II. As we walk along, our eyes are caught by what looks like an indoor mini golf course. When we enter, however, the attraction is a kind of real-life platformer. Fiendish puzzles of moving boxes are suspended above pits of water or water colored to look like "lava." It takes a lot of time and creative thinking, but we clear a bunch of levels together. Eventually, however, we reach the final stage, presided over by a cigar-smoking wax statue of General George Patton. In this stage, we have to carry a box of supplies over a very unstable path of floating and sinking boxes. I empty my pockets, knowing that I'll probably fall. They have my real-life every day carry in them, including my wallet, cell phone, keys, and Swiss Army knife. My brother and I then start to carry the boxy, but soon we simply give up.

2. I'm exploring the University of Tennessee in a kind of Space Station 13 style setup. The dream is set during a Latin convention, so the place is crowded, and I get up to a variety of hijinks. Highlights include leading a round of spiritual songs on the dance floor, climbing up recently painted ladders, tracking my friend H's little sister, and causing sonic annoyance on the football field. Lots of activity, but little in my notes.

3. A suit clad woman is driving a car of research station students back from a movie. The scenery isn't rural at all, but instead a kind of cyberpunk corporate hellhole. She convinces us to make an unnecessary fast food stop at a White Castle, and we enter the drive through. As we do so, however, she nonchalantly says "By the way, you're dreaming." I realize that yes, I am, but having a DC tell me straight up is enough to snap me out.

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 finally have returned from my research station, and I meet up with my old friend W at his house. He's suitably curious, asking all about my experiences, if I got lonely or bored and what I did for fun. I show him some of the things my parents brought me to make the time more enjoyable. This triggers a question of advice for his own presents, as his girlfriend's birthday is coming up. She's a nerdy actress, and he shows me two things he's considering.
One is a portable stage light that casts a brilliant circle on demand. The other is a bath towel with a built-in calculator (numbers go crazy, so another failed RC). I laugh at both and suggest the light as better. We continue to discuss girls until my mom interrupts us. We adopt a stony silence and sit awkwardly until W breaks it with a cheesy one-liner. I laugh so hysterically I fall out of the dream!

2. I make a trip to the Louvre in Paris with the students from my research station. I wander aimlessly along the corridors of art until I find a computer lab, in which everyone is hanging out. I feel mildly annoyed that we came all this way for everyone to ignore the art. In any case we all go outside, where Paris is covered in snow. This doesn't stop me from renting a bicycle and barreling down a sick hill with epic jumps. Eventually I wipe out in a crazy fashion, landing somewhat on my neck, even though the snow cushions my fall.

3. I'm on an Amazon river canoe trip with my advisor, and tensions are running high.

1. The family is visiting me at my research station. My brother says he needs to talk, and he tells me that his friend A is growing more distant with him after breaking up with K. The dream fast-forwards to the next day, where we all go out to eat at McDonald's. The brother orders poutine (suggesting we're in Canada?) and we talk about how relationships seem to chain down from one person to another. The parents eat calmly downstairs.
When he and I go back down, a waitress (with a nametag reading Skilscience, so a failed RC) is talking in a Norwegian accent to my dad. It seems that he's been rude, and she's trying to instruct him in manners. He ignores her while asking for more gravy, and she snaps. She jumps up on a nearby table and starts shouting everything wrong with McDonald's. The cheese is fake, the beef is tainted, employees spit in the food, etc. Soon the rest of the employees join her, shouting "Down with Wal-Mart! Down with McDonald's!" The family leaves in a huff, and the dream fades out over Anti-Flag style punk music.

2. I'm a bassist in a successful rock band with a large crew of student roadies (all of whom I recognize as fellow students IRL). We're recording a new album, and in the studio other members of the band are listening to Led Zeppelin for inspiration. We start to record, but the drums just aren't working properly. We waste hours of precious studio time, and I drive away from the studio frustrated.

3. Movie-style voiceover shows an epic tale in the Star Wars universe. Two Jedi, dueling hardcore, got frozen in a block of ice; their bodies rotted, but the lightsabers still burn today. I lead a team of explorers to find them, but as we retrieve the blades one of them somehow cuts through the other. This releases a huge fireball of energy, and my crew races to escape while being pursued by ninja stormtroopers.

1. I've taken the day off to go shopping with the parents. We go to a Wal-Mart, and as usual I start goofing off. However, I soon find myself in a section of the store I've never visited before. It's a "premium" section, one for the extremely rich, even though the prices are still advertised as rollback (Fuck me, another failed text RC). They're selling things like ultralight airplanes and antique cars, but in the back I find a couple of Tour de France level bicycles. The first one I try has the wheels attached backwards, making it impossible to use, but the second is allright. I take it and start riding around the store with the wind in my hair, and feel silly but happy.
As I ride back to return the bike, my cell phone goes off (with the RL ringtone). I pull it out of my shorts, but with only one hand on the wheel I have no way to control what happens next. I crash through two panes of heavy glass in the back of the store, and stumbling from the wreckage fall over a plane! The manager comes up, angrily demanding that we pay, but my Dad only has $400 on him. I start to freak out.

2. I'm answering questions on Twocansandstring.com (an awesome website), when someone asks about spinach and Popeye. I start to answer, but wander outside to underneath a tree at my research station. V and one of the grad students wander over to me. V makes awkward small talk as the grad student strokes her, and I feel extreme jealousy.

3. Las Vegas has become a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by pop-punk style overlords. The streets, however, are filled with legions of metalhead zombies. Something happens to one of the rulers, and I see the teeming throngs rise up to take back control of the city.

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.

1. I'm walking on the halls of the research station, and I see V coming back from a lover's tryst. As she climbs the stairs, her low-cut shirt reveals her cleavage, and I am overcome with jealousy. I then catch a glimpse of MB, living in a different room, and my vision zooms in on her computer, where she's texting a new interest.

2. V and I are playing D&D on the overpass of a local highway. Each of us pulls out a D20 and rolls, heedless of the cars streaking past us. I'm low to the ground, and as the dice stops, I notice the cursive 11 on its side slowly morphing into a 7. I PASS this reality check, and realizing I'm lucid, I manage to resolve the scene around me into waking-like focus and feeling. The pavement feels grainy and coarse, the sun is mildly hot, and I feel in perfect control of my arms and legs. Suddenly, she tells me to run for a football pass, and as she does I feel the ground beneath my legs and run. I feel the impact of the ball in my hands, and somewhat inspired by this, I do the turn-summon to place her in a cheerleader's outfit. It's blue and gold (colors with no particular importance) and very revealing. Confidently I stride up to her, and we engage in a passionate kiss. It feels just like waking life but when I try to turn things towards actual intercourse, I lose lucidity and fall out of the dream.

1. I'm reading (Failed RC) an advertisement for some sort of new pen and paper RPG. The class system is based around kitchen tools, with knives, can openers, nutcrackers, and even rolling pins getting mentions. Each of them has a fanciful history based on a real-world group; I think the nutcrackers are Russian mobsters?

2. I'm traveling in Canada with some friends and take a lunch break. I get very angry, as the only available shops are two Burger Kings on either side of the street, and both of them are selling a mixture of disgusting seafood instead of burgers.

3. I'm with my family on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart. We buy several things, including a ceramic piggy bank, a cute figurine, and a diabetes tester for dogs. All failed RCs, of course.

1. Mom, my brother, and I are driving around downtown Cincinnati, when I notice some interesting graffiti on the side of a tall building. Everyone gets out of the car and starts to climb the building, eventually reaching an outcrop near the tags. One is simple to interpret and just says "Rage," the other is a design that looks like two capital "A" letters that share a leg. I think that the latter symbol is the tagger's way of representing A=A, the Objectivist tenet. This is backed up when I find (and start leafing through, missing a RC) a philosophy textbook. Details afterward are fuzzy, but the conversation among the family turns to something horrible, and I remember a crushing sadness. The textbook falls and shatters as we climb down, and eventually I start to sob.

2. I'm watching a movie-style overview of an epic bike race in Africa. Things quickly go over-the-top; one bike is a robotic monstrosity, one is ridden by an ape-man who carries jungle animals with him, and one is ridden by Spiderman. Crazy hijinks ensue, but details are kind of fuzzy.

The dream begins in an animated style, borrowing from the Arthur cartoons on PBS. Arthur has just moved to a new city and joined a swim team, but he just lost his swim shoes in the water filtration system. A maintenance man digs for them in the machinery, but he just can't find them. Arthur runs from the swim club in anger, exclaiming that "It's only been four days!" since he moved into the town.

As he leaves, the dream switches into live action and first-person, and I view a large and bustling cityscape. Streetcars full of people pass by; along their tops are emblazoned the names of famous authors (Marcel Proust, for example) and my friends (text, so YET ANOTHER failed RC). I excitedly hit the streets and head to a nearby cafe. When I stand in line, however, I realize that all the signs are in a foreign script and all the patrons speaking a foreign tongue. Unnerved, I head back onto the street, and in a daze wander to a market. A smog descends on the dream, and I recall exotic (but pleasant) smells from the stalls and headscarf-clad shoppers.

Luckily, I find my mom also in the market. She clarifies that I'm in the country of Turkey and reunites me with my brother and dad. She also seems to have an excellent grasp of Islamic law, for as we're about to enter a shop where we can see women, she holds us back and goes in first to make sure it's alright. She encourages the family to "act Canadian" and respect their customs (a behavior not at all like real life).

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.

This seems to be a dream within a dream; I start playing Dungeons and Dragons at my research station, choosing the dwarf artificer as my character. Perspective quickly shifts to being the dwarf in a fantasy worldscape. I'm heading with my party into a mining town, which has as its access point an impressive tower that lowers into the mines. I enter and begin walking down the stairs to my assigned bunk. It seems to take ages, and as I pass the other adventurers who have already gotten bunks, I notice that their names are written on whiteboards in the style of a college dorm. All of them have names of people I know from my college, as well.
When I arrive at the bottom of the stairs, I find my real life name written on a board beside a bunk. The space is very spartan, and in the back of my head I wish there were a faucet to wash my hands. When I turn around, lo and behold, there is one! I remember the "turnaround summon" I've read about on the Dreamviews forums, and this reality check lets me realize that I'm dreaming. I get about a second or two of true lucidity as water pours over my hands, but after that I wake up. My eyes are still closed and I try fervently to get lucidity back, but the images I'm conjuring are just like those of a waking daydream and not the full-sense immersion of a lucid dream.

I false awaken into my bedroom in my old house. I know one of my friends is taking me to a concert later in the day, but it's really early, and my first instinct is to jack off and kill some time. I grab a porn story printout from my bedstand and go to my basement, but I can't focus due to all the the noises and creaks down there. I spend the rest of the dream trying to stop those noises, turning various switches on and off to silence the washer, dryer, and buzzing fluorescent lights. Here are about ten consecutive failed RCs, as I realize these switches seem to take random effects on the machinery.

V and I are attending a movie, a biology documentary about wetland habitats. The screen is huge and very high-definition; underwater photography, alligators, and birds are all shown in stunning detail. After watching for a while, we move closer and closer, and finally close to kiss. The ensuing makeout is full of energy and passion, and I vividly feel both tongues writhing. There's so much energy, in fact, that she knocks out the filling from my front tooth. Its texture, hard and ugly, now enters the dream, and my brain pulls me out presumably to avoid that feeling.

I wake up (IRL, not a false awakening, thanks to RCs and my own dream journal), but when I go back to bed the dream has continued with a shift of scenes. We're now in the bathroom of the movie theatre, preparing to have sex. I try to hurry up and begin to piss... and I keep pissing. I notice, too late, that the urinal I chose has someone's shit blocking the drain, and soon the water starts to overflow. I have no choice but to continue, but as V knocks on the door to check on me the urinal breaks out of the ground! Water, piss, and shit start flowing everywhere, and she steps in the refuse with her heavy boots. The mood is, to say the least, ruined. I stumble out of the toilet trying to clean myself up and salvage the night, but another student from the research station, S, is crying to herself and washing glassware in the sink. I have no peace and wake up very frustrated.