Sailing the Noosphere

1. I am in jazz band, and my bass skills fail me rather epically.

2. I'm drinking with my friends, in what amounts to a rehash of the truth-or-dare game from the night before.

3. I visit a shooting range with my dad and pop off a good deal of rounds fairly accurately. I note that instead of my meager 22 rifle, I could be renting Uzis and machine guns! Before I can do so, a whole busload of deaf and dumb people pour out onto the range. They talk in sign language to each other and begin to shoot.

1. I'm dressing in my room to go to my old high school. I'm indecisive, and wind up taking clothes with me into the school bathroom. I change several times, but the bell rings when I'm in a long-sleve shirt, shorts, and gym shoes with long socks. This is an ugly combination and I have a minor panic attack as I have to go to class.

2. I'm walking the streets of a generic city with my mom. Together we enter a Jamaican-themed hotel, where a steel-drum fronted band is playing a tropical tune. My mom steals the bass and rips off a solo, then throws the bass to me. I miss, and the bass crashes to the floor. We leave and go to eat, and I am rude to her as dinner conversation continues. She reaches a breaking point and tells me tearfully that she's hidden three divorces previous to my dad and my own conception.

1. I arrive at my college for a new year, but as I'm unsure where to go I end up meandering through random hallways. In one of them I find my friend Mary T, who directs me up to her room. She's very happy to see me, and we hang out by playing a music theory game using a piano controller against another friend via Skype. Soon we start to cuddle, but as we do we're rudely intruded by an orientation activity. The RAs are leading a "Parade of Geeks," dressed in suspenders and huge glasses. They take my friend CW from the room after asking "Is anyone weird?" and Mary and I join him in support. I get lost on the way and stumble into a succession of other rooms on the floor. One contains freshmen girls from my old high school, another is an office space, and another is an apartment housing my roommate from the research station and his father.

2. CA and I are the only survivors of a pandemic that is changing all of my college into gibbering lunatics. I commend her as she singlehandedly diagnoses the disease and develops a cure.

3. I'm present in the final level of a Paper Mario game that takes place in the bar level from Guitar Hero. I am playing bass in the background, but when the final boss shows up I start to interact in the Paper Mario world. My dialogue is extremely cocky as I fight rather poorly, but as people criticize me I say I'm roleplaying. Another band leaves in fear and I insult them, leading to one of their members and I exchanging insults. He ends up kicking me in the face, which loosens the glasses I'm wearing.

4. I am watching a dinner show at the Dollywood theme park. Each guest is given a light gun to interact with the show as it goes on. As the show starts, the main character boasts how presidents (Bush father and son) and other dignitaries love it. The seats then move backwards to proper viewing distance for a massive screen, where a trippy music video appears. In the video, a redneck pharmacist has placed the world in a stupor by distributing colorful pills in colored Solo cups. The audience seems to enter the music video, and there's a crowd marching single-file through a large mansion.

At this point, I remember the main character declaring that the whole thing is a dream, and I feel a mild awareness for the rest of the scene. However, I don't feel any control and the faintest of physical sensations, so I'm not counting it as a true lucid. For some reason, I know my name is Vincent in the dream, and my body has split into several selves. One looks like the waking me, but several are burly black men and one is a golden robot. I feel pulled away from the march through the mansion, and my other selves go exploring with me. The robot leads the way to a golden cabinet, where I see a camera and a cell phone. Out of the corner of my eye I develop an X-ray vision and see the two objects go down a shelf in the cabinet. I know that to go further into the mansion, I have to move the objects myself, as the vision was an illusion.

1. Some sort of cartoon/live action switch thing is going on in this fragment. It takes place in a world where our superheroes are revered as vengeful and fearsome gods. Batman, with the epithet "Scientific," can swoop from anywhere to show his wrath. Superman's X-ray vision can see anywhere to reveal embarrassment and sin. The Green Lantern is a trickster god; he is shown using his powers to unwillingly jack off men at unfortunate times.

2. I'm watching Futurama. Fry is on the run for some sort of debt (notes unintelligible). He is without transportation, so the going is slow. At one point he comes across a dragon pulling a rickshaw, but the dragon is high on drugs so Fry continues on foot.

3. I play bass in a School of Rock style concert, closing with ACDC's Shoot to Thrill (sounds fantastic). Backstage, Dan C from high school shakes my hand and a number of teachers congratulate me. The teachers are talking not only of the show, but also of the insurance scam they are pulling. By burning their houses, they've made enough money to take luxurious vacations!

1. I'm sitting in my college dorm room, wasting time on my computer. On Youtube, I find a claymation music video for "Master of Puppets." Cliff Burton is playing the guitar lines on a bass harp, which I think is incredible. I watch and call some friends over, but they don't seem to get that the video is claymation! I notice that one of the professors from the research station whom I dislike greatly, Dr. McK, is hovering over one of their shoulders. I wake up and try to record this dream, but am too tired to do so (false awakening).

2. I'm browsing TV channels in a hotel room with my mom and brother. Soon I come across a black and white film that appears interesting. It's about a very attractive MILF who tries to seduce two young boys. One of them falls deeply for her, but the other retains his honor with great difficulty. During the film I have to leave to go to the bathroom, but I try to hold it too long and end up shitting down my jeans leg. Mom is embarrassed to watch the film with us but doesn't ask to change the channel.

3. I am inside a fighting video game set in Wisconsin. An evil mastermind has stolen a McGuffin and is holding the entire state hostage. To defeat him, I lead a three-person squad in hand to hand combat from a third-person perspective. An avatar of me is the head of the squad, and I hold back no punches in the fighting. One of my foes, a huge strongman, seems to wait until he's badly hurt before he starts fighting hard; he says this is the only way to be "fair." After I beat him, I find two magic blocks of wood. They seem to work like magnets that I can turn on and off, and they grant me the power of flight. I reach a huge elevation and see the mastermind's lair in a green tower at the edge of the horizon.

1. I'm buying mirrored sunglasses in a Walgreens.

2. The Offspring are opening a concert for Rush by playing an ACDC cover. The sound is fantastic, just like real life.

3. Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi are fighting to keep their spots on a crowded passenger starship.

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. My research station colleagues are heading to a lecture on the different layers of the sun, but I am too busy to go. I need the information for a future test, so I manage to get a handout with lecture notes on it (failed RC). I work for a good bit and get tired, so I take a break. I get on my computer and go to YouTube, where I start to watch videos from Renaissance festivals.

I find a video from the start of the Ohio Renfest, taken from the Queen's box for a panoramic viewpoint. An old man delivers a witty poem about mortality and time, then the crowd separates into four factions grouped by color. At the man's signal, they begin a massive LARP battle, and after the dust clears the blue team is victorious. The old man then continues his poem, ending with the line "Watch out for that grandfather clock!" He then roleplays his own death very convincingly.

Somewhere in all of this, my viewpoint has transferred into 1st person on the grounds of the Renfest. As I walk away from the old man, I run into MB. She's dressed in blue, but her face is very red and I can see she has been crying. She greets me sadly but without any great surprise, even though I haven't seen her in many months. I ask why she's crying, and she says "We were supposed to meet at 6:30. It's 7:30." She then walks away, saying she isn't OK.

2. I'm in an alternate-universe Chicago university, where my band is preparing itself for a benefit concert. It's something to promote world peace, as in this universe the Cold War is still boiling. The concert doesn't help, and soon the Cold War erupts. My band escapes from the city as radio reports tell of millions dying.

1. My brother and I, both living at my research station, have started a band called "Acid Warning." We're preparing for a big concert and are trying to recruit as many audience members as we can before the show. We take a break from practice to go watch TV with our dad. The first show is Jeopardy, and after we finish, Alex Trebek himself comes by the room and just laughs at us. We are nonplussed and continue watching, this time seeing Dr. Who.

Afterwards, Mom joins us, along with a professor from the station and his wife. Subtle, barbed insults are exchanged between the adults, making my brother and I feel very uncomfortable. We exit, but soon the parents follow us. Dad orders us to leave, saying that he can't stand to spend another day here.

2. My brother and I discover a website with every N64 game ever made. We hook up the computer to the TV and start to play; I start off with Pokemon Snap, but he soon changes the game to Star Wars Battlefront.

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.

Absolutely horrible recall, but I post what I can.

1. I'm playing a rock concert in an elementary school. I remember it's very cheerily decorated, which clashes somewhat with the music I decide to perform.

2. I miss a Monday softball game for my research station's team.

3. I find myself walking down the halls of a local college, where I meet my old cello teacher. I continue, then meet scores of people from my research station. They confront me about my behavior at a Saturday night party, and my mom finds out about my transgressions. I feel horrible.

1. I'm reading a comic targeted at bass players, in some world where music is much more prevalent than it is here. Tabs are printed in comics like the one I'm reading, and the lessons show different famous groups' interpretations of the same song (Thelonious Monk's ensemble, as an example). The other page of the comic has parody scenes of real world comics, including a Peanuts parody in which Snoopy is preparing for anal sex. There are words printed, so I fail that reality check chance.

2. I see, in sequence, two car accidents. The first is horrible and flaming, but the only other spectators are a car of punk kids wearing sunglasses at night. They deem the chaos "awesome," and their dad, driving in the front seat, cries behind his own sunglasses. Secondly, I come across another flaming crash. This time, I go to help, but the passengers (all women) are unhurt and manage to walk out easily, disdaining my efforts to help.