Sailing the Noosphere

Ah, horrible recall last few days finally broken.

1. My friend P.M. is renting a camper from a couple of Russian guys. He drives me to it, but when we arrive it's really a dump. He brushes it off and says he has something more important to show me. He's apparently invented a time machine! The dream transitions to a futuristic room, containing a machine with five chambers. In one chamber, a man in Renaissance garb is sent to his native time. In another, an alien that looks like a dolphin is sent into the future. Yet another chamber contains a single banana, which is sent somewhere unknown. I crack a smile at that absurdity. Finally, two quarreling lovers are sent somewhere. I false awaken and start to dream journal about it, then actually awaken (big failed RC, and screw you subconscious).

2. I'm a journalist, currently skulking around an abandoned African city. I go through the corridors and stairways of a dark factory, looking for the focus stone of a changeling child.

1. I forget under what circumstances it happens, but I do the nose pinch reality check and realize that I'm dreaming. I do the standard hand rub to stabilize, then see a window to the side of me. I have nothing better in mind, so I jump through it with ease and emerge on the other side into a winter scene. I start to fly and surge upwards through a cloud of snow. I realize that it's really rather cold, so I focus and summon a pair of gray wool pants. They appear in my hands with proper texture, and when I put them on they feel very soft and warm. I think about going into space, and as I look around I see a balloon ship. I fly over to it and fire up its engines, continuing to rise all the time. I try to change my clothes into a spacesuit, but I feel myself losing control...

I false awaken, and emerge into a scene where my mom and I are baking, with flour strewn everywhere. I ask nonchalantly if she was in the previous dream, and she responds that she's skilled enough to manage her own control. I talk excitedly about the concept of shared dreaming, admitting that it's probably "metaphysical bullshit."

2. I'm with some girl in a room that seems almost like a temple. Around a central altar, where we both are laying, are twelve pillars that correspond to the signs of the zodiac. She is initially very aggressive and defiant, but I calm her down and it seems like we go through a relationship in superfast motion with stages informed by zodiac signs.

3. I'm playing a game of hide and seek (using parkour to maneuver) on the Havana map of Call of Duty. My team has my brother and a couple of professional wrestlers, while my mom's team has her old friends. I eventually manage to track their last team member down and deliver the tag in a room from my own house.

1. Playing D&D, which transitions from a traditional fantasy universe to a Western, and then into a LARP Western. I walk into a bar, where I meet a girl named Alice Smith, who's crying over some form that requires the sheriff's signature. I take up her case, and as I converse with her I read through a book of frontier law (failed RC). I eventually go get the sheriff's signature, but as I'm coming back to give her the form, I see a wanted poster for Alice as a Canadian spy. Disgusted, I leave, and meet up with the rest of my party in a nearby arcade. I notice a bunch of college friends at a restaurant table close to the arcade, but I don't go to meet them.

2. I come across two very attractive women on the porch swing at the front of my old house. They are disdainful of me, but after a bit James Bond falls from the roof onto the porch in front of them, completely naked. They start cooing over his manliness, and this is so ridiculous I sort of wake up. I almost manage a semi-lucidity and insert myself into James Bond's body, but this is more of vivid daydream level of reality instead of true lucid sensation. I can't honestly count it as lucid, especially with poor recall as to subsequent events.

I'm playing at Pokerstars on my laptop, and losing pretty bad, when my machine suddenly crashes with a blue screen of death. I panic and restart, then try and diagnose the problem. I find that I have a virus from the old music site Kazaa, and Google from another computer to try and find the solution. I realize my trusty flash drive has the antivirus software I need, so I grab it and jack into the laptop.

When I open up "My Computer," I realize that every machine on the botnet is listed, an endless list with constantly shifting names (failed RC). Finding my flash drive, with the appropriate software, will be impossible... The visuals for this are all very vivid.

My parents and I are at the Cincinnati Museum Center taking in an exhibit on history. Multiple periods are contrasted, from ancient Assyrian engravings to the civil rights struggles in America. The exhibit proper ends with a model of a very pretty African-American girl in pearls and a cocktail dress getting lynched... then opens into a gift shop. People are sitting on benches in the shop with laptops, playing poker on Pokerstars.net. My mom comments on this as rather silly, then goes to discuss some business about layaway.

Poker serves as a transition point to an outdoors scene, where I sit down to a large ring game of Holdem. My mom insists on joining me, and initially the other players are fine with it. However, she is slow at playing and screws up her deal of Omaha when it comes around to her. The game goes back to Holdem and I get AK in the hole. My mom goes all-in, and I look at my cards again (which have become AA, so missed reality check) and call. Other players are disgusted with me for some reason...

I false awaken into my room at home, then go downstairs. My brother and his friend are there and report also dreaming about poker. With some questioning I find that they shared my dream, varying in minor details. I freak out about this and wake up.

Shit, it's been weeks since I last posted... I should get back on the train, and nothing better to do so with than a lucid.

The man in the house neighboring my childhood home has passed away. The dream goes into a sort of news-style overview of his life, complete with interviews from people who had known him in the past. He's apparently been a recluse for the past several years, his only intercourse with the world a mail slot through which he got movies, books, and food. The dream then cuts back to first-person as I start to explore his house. I enter his library, stacked floor to ceiling with books. As I look around, I notice that the titles on the spines are different every time I look at a particular shelf. I pass this reality check!

I start to walk around the house, leaving the library, and I enter into the hallway from my own house. I think about what I'd like to do, and decide I should try some dream combat. I try to turn-summon an awesome sword from the closet in the hallway, but for all I try nothing appears in my hands. I then decide I should do something before I lose lucidity, so I jump down the stairs and start to fly. I pass like a ghost through the wall, then pull up sharply in a breathless rise. It's nighttime, and the moon is huge and full. It illuminates a towering cloud that looks like the Grim Reaper! I get a couple of swoops and whirls in before I wake up.

1. I'm taking a trip with my college friends into New York City. We ride the subway, then get off and start to negotiate taxi prices to get to our next destination. There are 15 of us, and the lady at the counter just kind of laughs when we ask if we could get a decent rate. At this I snap, and pull out a sniper rifle. I order everyone to the roof, and they obey fearfully.

Everyone lines up along the ledge of the roof, while I take a fortified position near the back. I start sniping, one after another, and feel great sorrow when I catch one of my friends with a bullet. Soon the police arrive, but without proper backup, and I snipe several of them. I then notice a stunning woman in a white dress swinging her legs out of a nearby window. I put my scope on her, but then notice she too has a rifle. She smiles at me and starts shooting at the crowd. Eventually the police get a machine gun emplacement set up and start to pepper my position, and the concrete blocks that shield me start to give way.

I awaken into my dorm room at college, where I get up and breathe on a mirror. I start writing the salient points of the dream in my breath as my friends are playing Mario Party in the background on the N64. It's hard to get the words to stay (failed RC), but I feel satisfied at some point. I then real awaken, angry...

2. I'm playing backgammon and discussing world issues with former president Bill Clinton.

3. I go to a concert in Columbus Ohio where Avenged Sevenfold is doing an experimental set and recording it directly to Youtube.

I'm in some massive factory where robots are being reconditioned after mechanical failure. They shuffle through a row of men and women in white lab coats holding scanners, and above all the bustle is an official-looking man holding a digital watch (time RC). When a robot is identified as needing repairs, it's taken to the side. All the others are stuffed onto a train and sent whistling through the underground complex. The goal is to get each batch of robots done in five minutes, but this rarely happens.

1. It's a boring night at the research station, so to pass the time I lean my face against the window of my room and watch people come and go through the courtyard below. CA goes to do laundry, then John L and Joe C go out to find stray animals. They return to the kitchen, where my dad is present to tell tales from the hometown animal rescue. The rescue clinic was apparently so successful that it was able to "hire" concerned volunteers at a dime a pop. After this I false awaken into my bed at home. I get up to brush my teeth, but I don't spit right and swallow the disgusting toothpaste. When I look at the mirror, I see Chinese characters with subtitle translations that say "That toothpaste was disgusting." (A failed text and mirror RC if I ever saw one)

2. I'm walking through Cincinnati with P at night. We have been shooting at an Astro van with our guns to try and get it to explode, but nothing's been happening. We decide to head into a foreigner-owned restaurant for greasy fast food.

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.

A large crowd of kids from my high school have planned to go to a mall, then the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and a ballgame. I am with them, but am rather low on cash and already have the giveaway bobblehead from the Hall of Fame. When they leave for the Reds, I stay to bum around in the mall. I head to a Barnes and Nobel to buy a copy of the Tao te Ching. When I get to the shelf where it's kept, I'm accosted by a clerk who says I tried to shoplift it earlier and thus am not allowed to buy it. I get angry and start to make a scene. I notice that mixed with the books on the shelf is a poorly written journal (text RC failed); its owner, a cute black girl, returns to claim it and takes the Tao te Ching along with it. Now I'm really pissed, and I go to pick a fight with a random customer. I soon realize he outclasses me in every way, but I refuse to back down and lose pretty badly.

1. I'm attending the Cincinnati Bengals training camp as T. O. For some reason I slap my thigh, and the sensation is enough to send me momentarily aware. I lose whatever lucidity I have before anything happens.

2. I am browsing a massive flea market full of books. I find an Unknown Armies monster manual for a cheap price (so much text with failed RCs), but before I can buy it my Mom approaches along with several college friends.

3. I am trapped inside a crumbling barn. As it falls around me, I manage to peel out of the twisted wreckage.

1. I'm trying to hack around in Facebook to find a way to see V's profile again (after she's blocked me IRL). Soon, however, I don't have to hack, as she re-adds me just long enough to send a poorly written but very painful letter (I fail the text RC).

2. I'm biking with E and C from the research station in a upscale community, trying to make a lunch date with the rest of the crew. In retrospect, the community has been a dream location before.

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.