Sailing the Noosphere

1. I'm playing Unknown Armies with the usual suspects in a bedroom at my old college. As the session draws to a close, people are getting ready for bed. I unfortunately have to share a bed with K.R., who is quite a large fellow, while everyone else has separate sleeping arrangements. He has a scar on his back, and when I touch it in curiosity he screams out from sleep. M.G. and V.W. walk in to say goodnight; V. looks particularly attractive in a one-piece nightie. I can't sleep, so I go out into the night. I end up in a dorm that seems to be having a Homecoming party.

However, everything is in 19tth century military style, almost Napoleonic. H.B. is dressed in epaulets, playing odd military boardgames with people I don't recognize. The bathrooms are also odd, and I really need to use them. I end up avoiding the matter entirely and pissing on an inconspicuous wall looking out into a courtyard. Of course, a group of other friends, (Q., N.H., M.T.) take this opportunity to walk by (dressed in regular clothing). They look and laugh at me, and I turn away in shame.

I start to almost float, bouncing off the walls as I move down a different hallway (everyone is back to normal). There's a bunch of rowdy old alums making too much noise, and I get past them to a proper bathroom at the end of the hall. There are posters hanging across from the sinks for odd metal bands, including the real-life band "Bigelf." The venue, however, is the fictional "Redneck Mountain." As I look in the mirror, I realize that I look like another student, a Jacob E. I do a double take, and recognize that it's a reality check to go lucid. I start washing my hands, expecting the activity to stabilize me, and I do feel the sensations of running water and friction. However, at this point I've been dreaming for over 10 minutes and I can't hold on any longer.

2. Fragment of a dinner with my future grad school mentor and family. He stays quiet throughout the meal until we ask about his work. When he talks about genes that manage magnetic particles, I stand up in amazement.

1. I'm talking about traffic density with one of my brother's classmates, Sam S. We have a nice visual aid as we discuss, a projected map of Earth with different traffic patterns as different colors. There are black/white and red/blue modes that show routes of transit quite clearly. Sam gives the example of dogsled races as an unforseen variable that brings lots of traffic to untraveled areas, and illustrates this with the map. The display changes to a 3-D view, showing the swath of tree destruction caused by tourists to the races. Obviously I'm disturbed by this, so I get my family to travel to Alaska to check it out.

Transition to outside the home of one of Alaska's most prominent breeders. We talk about the science of breeding; for whatever reason my parents call heritable traits "actions." Conveniently, the breeder has a poster that's basically an illustrated Punnet square for nose shape, with each genotype's phenotype shown and discussed. My dad talks about technique, and speaks of backcrossing by "taking the best female dog and getting offspring with her son."

We continue to walk to the breeder's backyard; I feel a cool breeze quite vividly. Finally we see the breeder, who is on a deck high above us. He pays us no notice, as he's managing an owl on his shoulder with an unusually big head. He releases the bird, and as it flies down to earth it seems to grow larger. It's practically human sized as it hits the ground in the neighboring yard. This belongs to an apartment complex, and two pretty girls clad only in towels giggle (and maybe flash us) as we look up at them. I comment to myself that it must be cold up there, but the owl has my attention. I marvel at the breeder and say "I want to be the guy!" My dad smirks and says, "You probably already are." Dream ends, but that's probably the best dialogue recall I've had in a long time.

2. I'm playing a Terminator 3 arcade game. It's quite high-tech, with Kinect type technology, but it keeps glitching and showing the body recognition data instead of the game proper.

The dream starts in my ecology classroom. The teacher has just handed back an exam, and I've done particularly poorly. I start to complain, arguing for several of my answers, but the teacher doesn't budge. I become louder and more forceful, flailing my arms and even screaming. My classmates start to look at me funny, but I don't care...

I wake up into the same ecology classroom. I realize that the previous dream had been caused by me falling asleep in class, and I'm quite embarrassed. The teacher scolds me while handing back the actual test, on which I've done well. It seems that I actually moved a bit while dreaming, and I apologize. This is, of course, a false awakening, and I soon wake into real life.

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.

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).