Sailing the Noosphere

I'm hanging out with one of my advisers from my summer internship. He's filming a documentary about global warming, and he walks through the halls of his university as I follow him in a powered wheelchair (having great fun as I do this). He and the film crew then take off for London, and I follow them onto the plane. I realize that I haven't packed anything for the trip and start to freak out.

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. 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. 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. I'm at a football stadium in the desert. The Cincinnati Bengals are playing a game against an unspecified team, and I'm on the field as a Bengal's lineman pushing against the enemy offense. I actually do an OK job, and as the downs progress I get teammate support in a kind of military, "Hoo-ah!" way

2. I'm watching what seems to be a fight scene from an X-Men comic or movie taking place in a desert. The choreography is stunning, as is the skill of the mutants. The fight ends with Jean Grey drawing all the combatants towards her in a massive display of psychic power, then throwing them apart in a sphere of blue light. The Silver Surfer rides by, quipping, "And I thought I was overpowered!"

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.

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).