Glieuaeiel's DJ

Cross-Dressing

A guest on a talk show demonstrates his attempt to dress like a woman. Then there's a video clip showing him in the outfit that the show's hosts create in order to teach him how to do it better. The outfit is red and black with bows in various places. I'm impressed. It makes a distinct statement while also seeming to suit the man quite well.

Group Project

We're working on our project (which is due soon) when suddenly we get assigned a new group member. That's really unfair. We have to add a new section on "Charm" (as in charisma) in order for there to be enough substance in the presentation to accommodate a new member. The rest of the group votes that I should work on this section, and it's clear that they mean this to be derogatory (by implying that my personality needs a lot of work). We sit in hostile silence for a few minutes. I decide to give them the silent treatment and work on my own for the rest of the project.

Saruman

I'm working with some friends on a level in a game. In a room near my character, a wizard starts leading a ritual which we cannot allow to be completed. We try to run amid the gathered orcs and kill things, but there are just so many of them! I score a lot of hits, but I can't see the health bars, so I don't know how much more work will be required. And I'm not focusing on just one target at a time, either: I'm just running in circles and loops, slashing at everything that I pass. I pass the wizard and take a swipe at him, but then I get a better look at his face. It's Saruman. I feel scared, now--I'm not prepared to face him.

Slightly Daring

I'm sitting in someone's lap. Feeling a bit daring, I squirm around a bit, ostensibly in order to get more comfortable.

Climbing

It's the beginning of the last level of a game. I have to climb up a rocky slope on a mountainside.

The Game

I'm in the house of a girl I knew in high school. Her parents aren't home, so we're hanging out. After a while, she walks up to the glass door and stands looking out the window. I walk up beside her and put my head on her shoulder. In turn, she rests her head on mine. It's a comfortable position, and I think we're both wondering what we'll do next.

She points out that there are some video cameras in the corners of the house. I'm worried and embarrassed, thinking that her parents will be able to see everything we've done. Then she reassures me that she'll make sure they don't get the footage. Then she invites me into her bedroom to "play the Game." Mentally, I test the phrase, translating it to Spanish: "el juego." It's a bit of a strange euphemism.

Close (7:05)

I've just come from a formal-attire event, so I'm pretty well-dressed for this birthday party. I'm introduced to a relative of someone from the year above me in high school; they look uncannily similar. In general, I'm seeing a lot of people here whom I haven't seen for a long time. Several of the girls are giving me smiles and hugs and other forms of physical contact. It's a good feeling.

I walk around the house and find an acquaintance alone in the kitchen. I don't know him too well, so it's a bit awkward trying to make conversation. Later, I run into that relative-of-a-friend again, but she introduces herself to me with a different name. I realize she must be a twin--I seem to recall them telling me something like that. "You must be ____'s sister," I say.

When I try to leave, I need to recover an ID card from somewhere. But when volunteers at the event were going around using the cards, they managed to switch everyone's around, so we're all walking around comparing cards and trying to find our own. I wish the volunteers had been more careful. I end up holding a set of papers held in sheet protectors, fastened by a key ring. Later I give them back to someone who lives at the house. Apparently they're letters he's received. He keeps them in sheet protectors because of their emotional significance.

Legacy (7:05)

Suddenly, Dad speaks up from his workstation to announce that he can't maintain the Quantz website anymore. (This website has to do with geology, not webcomics.) He goes on to explain that he forgot to add a "--" to a statement decrementing a variable, and he considers this a sign of his age. He doesn't want to keep coding, and he thinks it's time for me to continue the legacy. He's going to give me an administrator login. Behind him on the computer is the splash screen for the website, which currently shows an animation of my name, a password field with a blinking cursor, and the word "Soon. . . ." Family-run business, indeed.

I decide to humor him, so now we have to go outside and perform maintenance on the system. There's a sort of crawlspace near the driveway which is covered in cat litter. Dad says the inventor of cat litter lived here before us, so this crawlspace was the first of its kind. I can't see the bottom, so I take my time lowering myself into the area. It's awkward. The entrance is sort of like an oversized staircase, except that the ceiling isn't high enough so you almost have to slide down on your back.

Companions (7:05)

I'm in a neighbor's house. They have a lot of pets. I might even say, too many pets. There's a bird's nest in an upper corner. I can't see what's going on, but from all the noise, I suspect maybe the birds are having sex. There are some cats and dogs, and also a giant rabbit. The rabbit is vocally angry about being locked in a cage, except it's not actually in a cage, it's just lying in the middle of the living room. Someone who lives in the house comes over, and the rabbit hops away. I hope I didn't offend the person by implying that they don't take good enough care of their pets. The rabbit poops out what looks like a hot dog, and the person tosses it into a nearby pen containing yet more pets. Presumably they will play with it. I suppose it would be expensive caring for this many pets, so you would have to be stingy about things like pet toys.

At one point, I'm playing with my family's cat. He's lying on his back, swiping at me with his claws. I've never understood why this cat never learned to play less violently.

Meanwhile, in High School (6:59)

I'm sitting at a table in a room filled with tables, working on an assignment, when I see someone out of the corner of my eye. It's my mom, sitting at another table, trying to catch my attention by waving something. Exasperated, I acknowledge her, but she wants to start a full blown conversation. I pack up my things and say, apologetically, that "I just can't right now." Predictably, Mom gets furious. I walk over to her table (Dad's there too) and try to explain that I'm old enough now that she can't expect me to share every detail of my life with her. My voice sounds like maybe I'm about to start crying. Nothing doing, though. Looks like I'll have to pack my own lunch and find my own way to school, today.

I go back downstairs and check the time. It's later than I thought! Forget packing a lunch, I'll barely have time to shower and get dressed. I also think I should do my laundry, but when I look into the basket, I realize that I have more clean clothes than I thought. No need to bother, then. But later, when I actually go to choose an outfit, I have trouble finding clean shorts. I'll have to do my laundry tomorrow, which will be harder since it's a weekday and I'll be busy.

Dad drives me to school. I'm sitting all the way in the back of the car, and I'm surprised to see some orange traffic cones passing by my window. Some road work near the left turn just before the high school's parking lot. Looks like Dad's doing what he's supposed to be doing.

I take a seat in the classroom. I've decided that while I'm back home, I may as well sit in on some Spanish classes at my old high school to get in some extra practice. The teacher, a dark-haired man, begins the class by introducing himself and explaining about the course textbooks. Apparently he wrote one of them--part of a series of textbooks on a variety of subjects, all published in the same format but written by various guest authors. At one point, the teacher switches to English for a bit. His accent is kind of cute. Then we go around the class and introduce ourselves. I don't know anyone there, obviously. When it comes to be my turn, I explain that I'm actually a college student. There's something of a commotion from another student in the class, and I wonder if maybe he's doing the same thing as I am and I should have recognized him? That would be embarrassing.

At one point, the teacher's been talking about something, and he asks the class which of us consider ourselves to be "a member of that crowd?" I'm one of the few who raises a hand. A few minutes later, I realize that he might have been asking which of us have had sex, but with so much circumlocution that I didn't realize it at the time. Oops. Well, if so, I'm sorry for misrepresenting myself, but there's not much I can do about it now. Besides, I'm in college, they'll have expected it of me, anyway.

The teacher starts a presentation, and everyone puts away their drinks. Except one is still on the table, and one of the students accidentally knocks it over, spilling soda pop everywhere. The teacher interrupts his lecture to go find cleaning supplies, and I try to help out by mopping up some with a napkin. I hope that my helpfulness is a mark of being more mature than the majority of students in the classroom. But the teacher holds out his hand to throw away the napkin for me, and I let him take it, even though it sort of undermines what I was doing. Anyway, the napkin wasn't very absorbent, so now there's pop on my hands. I need to find a sink. I find one in the hall only a few feet away from the classroom.

A lot of the students are handing out out here until the presentation starts again. I look around and see an office whose name plaque carries a very strange title. I wonder if high schools can hire people to do things as strange as that because they're government-funded. Someone walks past me and into the office, and I wonder. I also talk to one of the students outside. They tell me they wanted to go to the big concert today, because it featured a big presentation about Mormonism. I had heard about the concert, but I didn't know it was about Mormonism, and now I'm kind of sad I missed it, too. [IRL: The concert is this afternoon, and it has nothing to do with Mormonism.]

When we go back into the classroom, there's a stage at one end, complete with curtains and a podium. A man at the podium tells us that as a surprise, Mitt Romney has come with his campaign team to give a presentation. After this introduction, a few people walk out on stage. I'm not sure which one is Romney [although IRL obvs I know what he looks like], and the introduction kind of trailed off, so it's not surprising that the applause is slow to start. It's also very quiet, and peters out quickly. One of the campaign people says "Wow," loudly and sarcastically. Well, I'm not sure what Romney expected. We're mostly Democrats here at my university.

They launch into the presentation, which is an animated, rhetorical speech delivered while the campaigners circle and crisscross the room, making sure to invite each audience member personally to agree with what they're saying. It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Somewhere, I've found a pillow, and I clutch it to my stomach like it's some kind of security blanket. I stare at the floor, only half listening. I feel like I've read this argument before, somewhere, anyway. Something about how the Democrats are trying to convince you not to vote Republican because of what the Republicans /won't/ do, but when election day comes, you need to vote based on what /will/ happen. And so on. One of the campaigners notices my aloofness, so he gets up in my face and tries to engage me by giving me a manly punch on the shoulder. I look at him expressionlessly and say in a carefully controlled voice, "Please don't do that again." The man puts on a mock-surprised face and looks around at people nearby as if to invite them to start bullying me, but in the end he just leaves.

From behind, a woman crooks an elbow around my neck and good-naturedly shakes me a bit. Addressing herself to someone I can't see, she asks, "Is this called 'egging?'" (as in, "egging someone on"). Ah, so she's playfully imitating the campaigner. The person says yes, it is, so she laughs and releases her hold on my neck. Pressing herself against my side, she murmurs, "There's someone touching you right now, and you don't seem to mind." Bemused, I try to think of a socially proper way to respond that it's okay because she's a woman. But before I can, she lets go of me, and I can finally turn to get a good look at her. To my delight, I definitely recognize her from somewhere. While I'm snapping my fingers and trying to place where that was, she just introduces herself again as [XXXX]. Surprised, I tell her I remember her as a campaign assistant for [XXXX]. She laughs and says no, then dances off to the other side of the room with another girl. I'm reminded of the friendship between Meekakitty and Nanalew. Suddenly, the dream ends, and I wake up. For a moment, I think that it's only been about two and a half hours since I fell asleep. But that must have been a FA, because it was more like six and a half.

Supermarket (8:15) (LUCID)

I'm in a supermarket, and at some level I'm aware that this is a dream. As I walk through the crowded checkout lanes, I look closely at all of the faces that I pass. Each one is unique and distinctive and interesting, and I wonder whether they all come from people I passed on the street in waking life. I read somewhere on a forum that that's where they come from. The dream seems pretty stable, but I feel compelled to keep moving, or else it will fall apart. I walk up to a cashier and ask her for the credit card that a customer just gave to her. "Sure, one moment," she says, and then she hands me something, but it's not a credit card. I leave the checkout lanes and continue through the store. It crosses my mind that this counts as a lucid dream. Cool; I haven't had one of those in a while.

I decide to call Mom on my cell phone. I worry that maybe I'm actually sleep-calling her in waking life, too, so I try to think of conversation topics that wouldn't sound too bizarre. Meanwhile, I'm still walking quickly down one side of the store, looking around at everything. The store's wide entrance is coming up on my left. I can't think of anything else to talk about, and Mom seems more confused than anything, so I just say goodbye to her and hang up. I leave the store.

Somebody's angry at me for turning out into the road in front of him, but I'm sure I wouldn't have done it close enough that you would actually call it "cutting him off." I decide to play out the scenario to see what actually happened. I get in the car and start driving toward the hilltop road that passes near the supermarket's parking lot. Indeed, there's almost a solid line of cars coming that direction, with one little space in the middle that perhaps I could grab if I timed it right. But there's something strange about the road configuration that makes me think I wouldn't be able to accelerate quickly enough to avoid pissing someone off. Okay, better to avoid that.

I stop the car and get out. There's a mid-sized lake to the right of the road with a big yacht anchored near the shore. A bunch of sailors are walking around over there, presumably on shore leave. I start walking along the narrow path between the lake and the side of the supermarket, going over to see what's going on. But then one of the sailors starts walking along the path toward me, shouting something about me not being allowed to come this way. An irritating fellow, but only doing his job, I suppose.

I keep walking, but suddenly I need to poop. I remember how in the past this has always made me panic and wake up, only to find that I didn't have to use the bathroom at all. Well, I know better, now, so I'll just go to the bathroom in the dream. I squat in the middle of a grassy lawn and start doing my business. The sailor is still walking towards me and shouting, so I interrupt him to warn him that even though I've avoided behaving "beaverishly," if he keeps it up, I may have to. (Apparently, in this situation, "behaving beaverishly" means that I'll strip totally naked just to annoy him even more.) Going to the bathroom is taking a long time. Some of the sailors are running close nearby. I hope for their sake that they don't accidentally step in any of the poop. The sailor still won't leave me alone, so I carry out my threat by pulling my T-shirt over my head. This makes my vision go completely black. Oh, darn.

I wake up to a confusion of covers. After a moment, I figure out that somehow I've come into a squatting position. Uh oh. Looking down, I see that my worst fears have come true--there's quite a bit of poop on my covers. Despairingly, I try to wrap up some of it using the sheets, but it's not enough. This will be hard to deal with. Then it occurs to me that there's something distinctly nightmarish about this situation, and I tell myself exasperatedly, "Come on, wake up for real." And I do. [No, I never did have to go to the bathroom. Why my dreams always do this to me, I don't know.]

Pop Quiz (9:42) (LUCID)

A smart math major I know is pacing the front of a classroom. He's quizzing me about details from my previous dreams tonight. I know I definitely missed a few when I wrote them in my dream journal, so this will be a perfect opportunity to recover them--my unconscious itself is telling me what they were! He mentions something about a homework assignment, and a few different people named Erik. [Ironically, I can't remember the details of these details.] It occurs to me to wonder if he's even telling the truth. I have no recollection of the events of which he speaks, so he could easily be inventing them, and I'd never know. Still, I wake up and write them in my dream journal. Only, it was a FA, and when I actually wake up, I can't really remember them any more.

Flute Solo

As a favor, I've asked a teacher to come play a piece of classical music for me. Now, another teacher and I watch as she performs an arrangement of it for solo flute. I had been worried she would refuse, so I'm glad she's doing this. She's quite good. In fact--is she somehow playing two lines of music at once? I listen closely but am unable to decide. Perhaps she's just switching between the two lines of music depending on which one has the moving notes. She reaches a climax in the music with lots of fast, leaping intervals. During the slower section after that, she interrupts the music to say to me, "Have fun practicing that." (An ensemble in which I play will be learning the same piece, soon.) A phrase later, she stops playing again to say something else, and eventually she stops playing the piece altogether, once it's clear that there are just a few slow chords remaining. The other teacher, who has been holding up a triangle in preparation to play it with the last chord, mimes teetering on the brink of playing then falling over from the waist. She's obviously saying she's disappointed that the flautist didn't properly finish the piece. After this, I think there's one more piece for us to go over.

Standing Room Only

People standing in the back are having a hard time seeing the presenter, so they keep shifting around in a counter-clockwise direction. Even though I'm back there with them, I think the constant shifting is more annoying than not being able to see. Cynthia, standing next to me, agrees. (Cynthia's a college housemate of mine, a year older than me.) Suddenly, the whole audience starts moving. Apparently the presenter noticed all the milling around in the back and decided to try to fix things himself. So now those people have made him interrupt his presentation. I hope they're happy.

As we're moving around, I stretch my arms over my head. Realizing that my left arm is behind Cynthia's head, I decide I might as well put my arm around her shoulders. It's a bit of a cliche, but I need all the help I can get. At first, Cynthia doesn't react. Then she moves my hand from above her shoulder to under her armpit, and says, in a surprised voice, "Glieuaeiel, you've put your arm around me." Like she's known all along that we're interested in each other, and the only slight surprise is that I would choose now to make a move. Then she calls me a first-year, which is an unfair dig at the fact that I'm younger than her (since in fact I'm a third-year). She's always been one to worry about not acting her age, though, so maybe it really does bother her. Anyway, it's actually a bit uncomfortable walking around in this position. [I guess the arm-around-the-shoulder thing is best used when nobody's moving.]

The presenter is saying something about wizards and what effect the concept of wizards had on our childhoods. Shortly, everyone starts moving around again, and I get separated from Cynthia. I wonder if I should try to find her again, but I decide she'll be fine on her own. I try to help out by moving some music stands, but then I realize that I'm not sure where they should go. Still holding the stands, I find a seat near the front of house left, then set the stands in front of me. Someone reaches past me to grab one of them, and I realize that the stands were supposed to be distributed so that everybody gets one. I keep one stand for myself and hand the last one to another person sitting near me.

Frags:

• A survey about preferences in fiction genres uses the word "tranny" to mean "the protagonist of a science fiction novel." It must have been written by someone old, who didn't realize that nowadays the word is an offensive term for something entirely different.

Date Reservation (LUCID)

As I walk past the front desk of a cafe, I see a high school classmate whom I've always thought quite attractive. I haven't talked to her in a long time, but unfortunately I'm busy. So when we make eye contact, I only say "Hi!" and indicate that I don't have time to talk. A few steps later, though, I regret it. It seems really rude to pass up the chance to catch up with an old acquaintance. I wish I was in the sort of world where I could just walk up and cuddle with people and no one would care. But wait, I am! I'm dreaming! I don't even bother with a reality check before I turn around and walk back towards her.

Hesitantly, I sidle up to her and put my arm around her waist. Her shirt feels like it's made of some kind of silky fabric. Her only reaction to this seems to be resignation; she continues talking with the front desk clerk, with occasionally a few words for me. I stare at her eyes. They're pretty, and I think green, but it's like looking at a picture. Nothing moves much, and I can't read anything from her face. Eventually she says, "Come on, our table's this way." I guess she's done arranging things with the clerk.

We have a circular table right next to a window. Every other table in the cafe has a dark surface, but ours is quartered in primary colors: one quadrant red, one green, one yellow, one blue. "Of course," I groan. Of course our table would be singled out in the most gaudy way possible. And when we get nearer, I see that my chair is covered in crumbs and other meal residue. Ugh. "Well," I say, "the only thing to do is wipe it off." We commence using our hands to brush the crumbs onto the floor. It takes a while. [Clearly I wasn't very lucid by this point.]

Meanwhile, the girl is giving me a few warnings. She says, "If this is about Uncle Bill, please don't be too awkward about it." Somehow she's romantically involved with him, I guess? It's become clear she's rather uncomfortable with the whole situation, and I'm starting to get uncomfortable, too. I wonder if maybe I should try to do some other dream goals, like swimming beneath the ocean. Maybe I could take her with me; she might like that. I ask, "Do you . . . want to go . . . somewhere else, after this?" But whatever her answer, I wake up a few moments later.

Insomnia

Spoiler for Insomnia:

[After waking from that last dream, I tried to picture it in my mind as I fell back asleep. But that only made it harder for me to fall back asleep, I think. I don't remember when I finally dropped off, but this next dream was probably inspired by those feelings of frustration.]

It's almost dawn, but I'm still awake. I woke up a while ago from a dream and I haven't been able to get back to sleep. I'm using the computer. Watching videos. Mostly porn. One of the "related videos" on the side has a title that starts with "OMG OMG OMG" and I'm very tempted to click it, before I realize that's exactly what the title's intended to do. The video's probably really stupid. I must be really tired, if I almost fell for that one. I don't watch it.

Later, I find a porn video whose title includes the name of one of my high school crushes. And the thumbnail even looks like her. I'm intrigued, so I watch it. It's kind of sexy, although she never takes off any underwear. I probably should have expected that. She was pretty classy when I knew her.

I look out the window and see one of my roommates coming up the driveway on a motorcycle. Huh. I hadn't realized he wasn't home. It's almost seven, so he must just be coming to grab his stuff before going to class. It's a school day. I suppose he slept at some girl's place last night. I'm a bit jealous.

I look back at the video. Surprisingly, now her bra is on backwards, although it has a wide strap. I hadn't noticed that, the first time through. She takes it off entirely--that takes a moment to register--then turns around and leans over. I lean closer to investigate, but a moment later I wake up. (Messily.)

House of Spirits

I'm playing a game where you live in a house with a bunch of spirits. Most of the spirits are evil, so you have to fight them. It's multiplayer, and there are a few other people in the house with me right now. We're going through the rooms trying to roust all of the evil spirits so that none of them will surprise us in our sleep. Usually they don't wake up if you just walk through the room, but they will if you say anything aloud.

While sort of alone in one wing, I accidentally talk to myself, and a spirit starts to coalesce out of the air. Oops. He offers to duel with me, and he even offers to let me use a pretty nice weapon (like a crowbar or something). That's much better than the weapons this game usually lets you use, so this sounds good to me. But spirits can be tricky, so I ask him what his own weapons will be. "Oh, just this metal letter opener and [some other sharp household implement]," he replies. Then he attacks, before I have a chance to realize that his weapons are much more dangerous than mine.

We battle through hallways and rooms. Some other people see us and shout and point, and try to come to assist me. In the end, we defeat the spirit. The rest of the group continues looking for other spirits, but I suddenly realize how silly all of this is. Ghosts aren't real, and I'm tired. I just want to go to bed. My dad sees me abandoning the hunt and starts arguing with me. In response, I try to explain to him that this house isn't even real. It's virtual. Not worth worrying about, see?

Summer School

On Monday, we have an orientation. Then I go to bed to get rested for classes tomorrow.

For the first day of classes, we have to get in line for some kind of check-in. The line moves slowly, and by the time it's 8:25 I'm still a few places back from the front. My first class is at 8:30, so I think I need to go. I pick up my bags and leave the line, but one of the check-in ladies intercepts me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have an early appointment today?" she asks.

I'm confused, because I don't think class counts as an "appointment," and doesn't every student in this room have class at 8:30? But we go through check-in anyway, and when we're finished, suddenly I remember that I was supposed to set back my watch by forty-five minutes. So I'm actually not late at all. No wonder no one else was worried.

I head to my morning class, thinking I'll be early. But when I get to the room, there are already a lot of people there. What? It's not even 9:00, and this class doesn't start until 10:00! But then I remember that this class is usually MWF, and we couldn't have class yesterday because of orientation. So the professor is squeezing in an extra session on Tuesday morning to make up for it. Hmph. Maybe he ought just have planned to have one less day's worth of material in the course.

The morning class involves a running game where there are a lot of items strewn around a medium-sized room with a grid-patterned floor. Sometimes new items appear in the middle of the grid squares. There are certain items we're looking for, worth more points than the others. We're competing to see who can collect the most points.

The first time I play the game, I think I did pretty well. But it turns out another guy actually won, because he grabbed the items worth the most points. I hadn't even known what those were, but now that I do know, I want to play again. The second time, I notice that there are people stuffed into lockers along one wall of the room, and some of them are worth points. The animation for the game is pretty good, and rather charming.

Now it's time for the afternoon class. I'm skeptical about this one, because the subject seems like total hocus-pocus. I'm not even sure what it is, actually. The professor tells us to take out our textbooks, and the whole class groans. We remember this book from yesterday. The title is completely nonsensical, and by now I'm pretty sure this class will be full of New-Agey crap that doesn't have any business being taught in a university. Good thing I'm sitting in the back.

During class, I notice that the girl sitting on my left is resting her head on my leg and dozing. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, because it's almost like cuddling, and I'm glad she feels that comfortable around me. I'm also amused to confirm that she's just as bored as I am. She notices I've noticed, and she smiles. But it doesn't last too long, because the professor has the class break into groups for discussion and disperse to different rooms.

After discussion, there are still maybe twenty minutes left of class, but I don't feel like going back to the lecture hall. Everyone else leaves the discussion room, but I just spend a long time re-packing my backpack. I'm enjoying being lethargic, but I also hope that the professor doesn't take attendance at the end of class, so I don't get caught.

Later, I'm startled by a student coming into the room. But he's just there to move the front table back to where it was before discussion started. How responsible of him. Anyway, I guess that means class is over. Time to leave.

Seven Keys

A middle-aged man hands a young boy a pistol, warning him never, ever to speak a word of what has been done with that weapon. Presumably it was used to commit a murder of some kind.

In the very next scene, the boy brings the gun to another, older man, telling him mischievously that something terrible has been done with it. When the man asks what, the boy says, "We blue'd it," and takes out another of the same kind of pistol, except this one has been painted blue. Amusedly, the man pretends to be horrified by this action. The idea is that the color blue isn't very aggressive or serious or anything, so it has no business decorating something like a gun.

The boy pretends to aim the gun behind himself, but then coincidentally a spider the size of a small dog comes running into the hallway right where he's aiming. The man's face abruptly becomes very serious. Fighting these spiders is the main purpose of this community, and he says to the boy, "You may fire." But the boy, not having seen the spider, is just confused. Instead, the man lifts his own gun, takes careful aim, and shoots the spider.

Now, I'm in the final stages of a game involving these spiders. The building I'm in has seven levels, and in order to get a good score for the game, I have to collect one key from each level. The trick is that in order to reach the next level, you have to use the key from the previous level, and in the process of using it, you have to leave it behind. So there's got to be some kind of secret passage I can use to go backwards from the end and pick up all the keys. I'm running all over the building trying to find this passage, and I have to restart a few times from a save point near the top of it. There are about five or six other people helping me out with this.

This time, I try using a sort of wooden fire escape on the outside of the building. It's very reminiscent of a treehouse, spiraling around a tree and built entirely out of two-by-fours. There's one other person following me down. On one landing, there's a dead spider, lying in a pool of its own fluids. "Watch out!" I call over my shoulder. "Spider juice!" (It's very dangerous.)

Once on the ground level, I go inside to find a lot of people in a large room. They want something from me; they're expectant that I've gotten the keys; or something. In response, I start taking off my shirts. I'm wearing seven of them, one for each level in the building. But taking them off is actually very difficult. I can't quite seem to pull the first one over my head. A thirty-ish woman, someone I know, asks me what's wrong. I reply that I don't know. I tell her that apparently my arms just feel very tired and I can't muster the force necessary to take off a T-shirt.