Sailing the Noosphere

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. My brother, dad, and I are at the animal shelter adopting a new cat. For some reason my brother empties his pockets, but all he has in them is a large and unwieldy knife-wallet hybrid with a combination lock. An Asian man grabs the lock and starts cracking it. He soon solves it and tries to leave, but I hook my finger in the lock and pull to make him stay. We struggle for a while and he calls me racist names, then pulls out a pistol. I then proceed to knock him out with my other hand and escape with the family.

2. I'm playing DDR in an arcade with some of my college friends. It only costs two tokens, but the machine has been modified to float and is very unstable on a pool of water. My friend Q starts to bash arrows on the machine, and I try to stop him from messing me up. I lose my balance, however, and fall into what turns out to be putrid water.

3. I am watching a Tupperware container with a hot dog and a bunch of Cincinnati chili. Suddenly the hot dog grows a tiny mouth and starts to eat the chili, eventually leaving the container spotless!

4. I can see my own aura, and it is green. Someone else (unintelligible notes) also sees it and comments.

1. I'm making a thrilling video-game style escape from an industrial type level. I'm not so much running or parkouring, although there is some of that. Instead, I'm solving puzzles where the penalty is falling down large pits. For example, to cross one I have to latch a carabiner shaped like a hummingbird to the right track above the pit and glide across. Below me is a horde of giants, reaching up to grab my feet and eat me. I think I may actually have failed once, but I re-spawned and took the right path. In another puzzle, I have to figure out the motion of a series of ladders and trains. I jump from one to the other, whirling almost out of control before I land on solid ground.

Finally I manage to break out of the level into a building (which I recognize from another dream after the fact). I take the wrong elevator but eventually break out into my hometown. For whatever reason I walk through a combination strip club/liquor store, then exit from there into a strip mall parking lot. I get surrounded by police, who accuse me of shoplifting and try to tase me. I start getting really scared and half-lucidly force myself to wake up.

2. I'm at a beautiful Japanese university with Dr. C from my research station. He drops me off by a riverbank and tells me to wait as he performs some errands. I dutifully wait, pulling out my laptop and playing Age of Empires II to pass the time. My mom randomly shows up, bringing hometown pizza and her homemade pie, and asks about my general health. By eating and conversation I manage to ease her worries and she goes away. I then wander off to take a leak. When I return, I see two kids in a pickup truck have stolen all my stuff and are driving away!

Frantically I run after them and end up in the main building of the university. I find all of my stuff set up just as I had left it in a hallway of the building. I play some more, then talk to a janitor about the school's study abroad program. Soon I wander into a busy stairwell, where Dr. C passes by, then the two kids who stole my stuff. V passes by me; she then passes by me again in the same direction, and this time she kicks me into the stairs and starts screaming that I deserve the pain. Apparently she heard something I said as "I want a domestic divorce," but this was the opposite of what I meant. I panic to tell her the truth, but the dream ends before I meet up.

3. I'm in some cartoonish epic of wizards and wizardry. A white wizard (white as in race) is on the run from a horde of black wizards led by his archrival and former apprentice. He runs into his house and sets the locks just in time to have the horde crash on his door. He draws his wand, then turns to face the nemesis he knows has teleported right behind him. The two draw, and they launch volleys of magic meant to kill.

4. The scene is set in an exotic hotel, where people are exercising nasty fetishes about the Warhammer 40K universe. Soon things shift to the hotel's courtyard, where the lead singer of the band Foxy Shazam is teaching a dance class.

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.

It's evening at a summer camp, and I feel incredibly bored. My brother invites me to play video games with him, so I go to the living room of our house and join. It's some sort of superhero fighting game with SNES-level graphics, and I play as Wolverine against his Hulk. The cartoons have a good level of violence, with blood flying as my Wolverine claws dig into the Hulk's skin. Eventually I get bored again and wander outside.

I find a book of idea for things to do when bored just lying on the ground. I pick it up and start flipping through (yet another failed RC). One of the ideas is shooting a watch battery with a nail to produce some sort of cool reaction; the book warns that after the 41st nail is shot at any battery, both objects are coated with a slow-acting contact poison. I proceed to idly shoot the battery 42 times, watching sparks and corrosive fluids form, then touch the damn thing. Nothing happens immediately, but in a minute or two my left arm feels incredibly numb. I look down at it, and the skin is turning a sickly shade of blue (failed finger RC). I run to the camp's bathroom, but faint out of the dream.

1. I'm attending some sort of video game expo, watching a high-production pitch for a game that seems sort of a cross between Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto. During the demo, one of the military showpieces breaks. The presenter gets angry and shouts, "We'll make a fucking car!" A sports car proceeds to unfold from the wreckage of that showpiece.

2. I attend a showing of the movie "Beat It," a cartoon parody of Michael Jackson's life starring Wayland Smithers of the Simpsons in the main role.

3. I am taking part in the chorus of an opera, a modern-day production about the pirates of Africa. The pirate queen is making her grand entrance, cuing a major dance scene; I screw up my footwork, and although my fellows try to accommodate me, eventually the whole number turns to shit.

4. I'm walking around in Paris, France, when I see two men leave a nondescript building. I go to check it out, and find that the building is both unlocked and the French atomic research center. I do parkour down the stairwells of the building to find a top-secret biology paper (something about genetics, and text so a failed RC) lying about. I leave without incident and take the paper back to my rural research station, showing it to my professor K. (who reacts in IRL character).