CanisLucidus

This was the second of two lucid dreams from last night. I'm excited about this new Great Barrier Reef teleport, even if it is very glitch at this point!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #131: Oceanfront Property

I'm walking through a university when I encounter the same male twins from my previous dream. They're dressed just as before and again they stare wordlessly at me. I remember this from the previous dream and become lucid.

"Who are you?" I ask them.

The twin in glasses only says, "Be careful out there," and together they walk off down the path behind me.

I immediately remember my intention to explore the Great Barrier Reef and leap up into the air to fly. I soar over a few buildings toward a shipping yard filled with shipping crates and huge cranes. I know that I have to be close to the ocean. Somehow the dream loses cohesiveness for a moment and I'm thrown into the void.

Rubbing my hands together, I think of what my fastest way to the Great Barrier Reef will be. After giving my dream body a quick probe, I pinch my nose shut and flop backwards like I'm plunging into water. This works incredibly, and almost immediately I'm swimming through clear blue water again, similar to the prior dream. But as I look around, I see that I'm swimming through an underwater version of my bedroom!

I swim out into the hallway, so surprised to be swimming through my house that I have no idea what to do. I keep colliding with random objects like boxes as I swim and I'm generally nervous about my navigation, so I decide to return to the master bedroom to phase through the window. Hopefully that'll be something like the open sea. I swim back to the window but when I get to the shutters I just bounce off of them. I'm having trouble believing that I can do it or imagining what it will feel like. I make another attempt at it, bounce off again, and worry that I'm going nowhere and that I'll just wake up. Inevitably, this leads me to a false awakening in a darkened version of our bedroom.

Wife has a little "dream checklist" that she's trying to go over with me. "Did you get to the Great Barrier Reef?" she asks, poised to check something off.

"No," I say, disappointed.

She frowns. "Did you ask about the meaning of life?" she inquires hopefully. It goes on like this for a while, but I don't remember what else happens afterward.

An insane chain of eight DILDs, DEILDs and false awakenings from this morning. Completely crazy! I apologize for the length, but it was a ton of dreaming. I gave the dreams headings to hopefully make the breaks clear. What a ride!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #129: Map of the World

Choline
I'm standing in the kitchen with Wife as she holds our two-year-old son "R" in her arms. She asks me when I was planning to take my choline bitartrate. When I tell her that I've already taken it, R starts to wail pathetically.

"How could you take your choline without letting him watch?" she says, annoyed at my apparent thoughtlessness. "You know that he loves that!"

I'm stammering out some excuse when it occurs to me that this has to be a dream. My vision goes a bit crazy and I go more or less blind. I fumble my way around the kitchen, feeling my way from the countertop to the breakfast table and sit down heavily in a chair.

"Are you okay?" asks Wife. I really think that I'm dreaming but I feel uneasy enough that I nose pinch and blow through. Suddenly, my vision is dominated by a huge still-frame close-up of my own unshaven face shouting something. Other than that, I'm still blind. "Are you okay?" she asks, more insistently this time.

Highlander
I have a false awakening back in bed, still suspicious that I'm dreaming. Wife snuggles closer to me and I hit the nose pinch, blowing right through again.

Wife rolls on top of me and sits up. I feel excited about where things seem to be going but rather than doing anything amorous she starts saying strange stuff about the Highlander series of movies: "Did you know that Michael let us borrow Highlander I through XV? I didn't even know there were fifteen. He and [female name] love those movies."

The Full Xanous
Another false awakening back in bed, and I roll out immediately. My vision is very blurry and the whole dream scene feels wobbly to me. I think that I need to get myself anchored in and I remember my intention to try the technique of "making out with the dream scene", suggested (jokingly) by DarkMatters and put into practice by Xanous. I'd promised to try to test this so I could talk about it on a future podcast.

I move around to Wife's side of the bed. I briefly that I can test this method by just making out with Wife instead, but I realize that I'm just telling myself that as an excuse to get frisky with her. Instead I attack the corner of the mattress, totally making out with it. The sheets feel like t-shirt material against my tongue. After a moment, all sensation disappears, and I'm awake, my mouth kind of moving around. (In waking life, I believe. Pretty embarrassing. )

22:48
I DEILD into a bedroom scene and roll out. The computer monitor on the nearby desk is on, which it rarely is. The computer is showing the old Windows XP "Bliss" background with the grassy hill. The computer's clock reads "22:48".

I want to get out of the house, so I try to dive through the window. It feels oddly gummy, though, and I wind up with my torso stuck through the window. On the other side I just see blackness. I decide to back out, imagine a new scene, and try again. I'm about to make another run at it when I sort of fall back into...

Amazon
A false awakening where I'm lounging on a window seat in a sunlit room. A group of three women are standing nearby, laughing and chatting over stories about their kids. I nose pinch reality check (blowing through) and get up from the couch. As I stand up to my full height, I notice that one of the women is really tall (probably about six feet even) and very fit. As I walk nearby, she turns to look at me -- long brown hair, probably mid-30s, and very good-looking.

She starts walking toward me and it occurs to me that if I don't get away, the dream's probably ending in this room. As she joins me by the window, my quick internal deliberation ends in a verdict of "worth it". After about 20 seconds of making out, I wake up.

The King of the Colosseum
I quickly DEILD into a scene where I'm standing in my bedroom. It's very dark, so I let the void overtake me and start rubbing my hands together. I get onto my hands and knees and feel the floor, imagining sand between my fingers, thinking that the Colosseum is all around me. After a while, I can see the sand, and then the stone walls of a huge chamber. It's not the Colosseum I see, though, but more like a huge throne room with no ceiling. It's close, but just not quite right.

At the other end of the room, a cartoon king sits on his throne. He's a slimy-looking Jafar lookalike dressed in flowing red robes, and I think that he'll make the perfect opponent for Europe Task of the Year (the Colosseum battle.) As soon as I decide this, he lunges from his throne and charges toward me, a scimitar in his hand.

As he closes the distance, I decide to summon NewArtemis to help with the fight. "Jafar" is moving too fast, though, and he's practically on top of me before I can even start the summoning. Not even close, I'm on my own. I try to swing a sword at him, but in spite of my expectations, my hand is empty. My movement seems to surprise him, though, and as he stands there unsure of how to react, I grab his hair with my left hand and strike him hard on the side of the neck with the edge of my right hand.

His head pops cleanly off in my left hand. There's no gore involved, and the injury doesn't seem to slow him down much. The head spouts a series of angry curses at me before suddenly changing into the head of penguin. This shocks me into...

Map of the World
Another false awakening in my bedroom. I decide to get out of the house the direct way this time, running out of the master bedroom, vaulting over the baby gates as I move down the stairs (both gates higher than in waking life), and phasing through the back door into the yard. It's early morning now, and the pool has overflowed into the now-swampy back yard. Random objects like boxes and beach balls float in its waters. Floodlights are strung up in the trees all around me, shining brightly down on the yard.

I marvel at these changes before hopping over the fence. Rather than the neighbor's yard, I find myself in a construction site near a pile of steel girders. I try to fly, but I can't seem to get off of the ground. I walk for a while, moving past a cage composed of chainlink fencing where they're holding some kind of Little League practice. As I pass by, the kids and parents keep trying to talk to me about baseball, but I ignore them, trying to stay focused on the Colosseum.

As I walk further on, I somehow end up on a ledge on the side of a building, high above the city, with nowhere to go. I try to fly again, and this time it's easy. I shoot upward to an incredible height, moving all the way past the clouds, higher and higher until I can see the world laid out under me like a map. Some of the continents are even labeled in flowing calligraphy. I pick a spot below me, deciding it's the Colosseum, and fly downward. I'm shocked, though, when I land after flying only a few feet downward. Now I'm standing on an enormous stone floating through space. The "world" has disappeared entirely, and I'm walking on a painted mural of the Earth.

With nowhere to go, I suddenly remember the success that bemistaken just had with closing her eyes and mentally teleporting. I close my eyes, imagining the Colosseum. Without meaning to, I think of the possibility that I'll wake up when I open my eyes. I'm really worried about this, and I start hurrying. This flows into...

Commercial Break
A false awakening in what looks like an office kitchen. It's the early morning and Wife is here with me eating a bowl of cereal and watching a small, staticky television set. On it, two Russian men are arguing about photo editing software.

"Sorry if I woke you," she says. "I knew you'd want to see this!"

"I wish you'd let me sleep," I whine. "I was having a lucid dream."

"Oh really?" she says. "It sounded like something erotic was happening."

I think of saying something like "I only made out a little with a six-foot-tall woman" but this doesn't seem like much of a defense. So I just say, "Well, that's embarrassing."

"Ew," she says, wrinkling her nose and going back to her television program. I finally nose pinch, realizing that the teleport didn't wake me up at all! All of this was expectation. I get excited thinking about this, and the dream falls apart, finally ending this crazy chain of dreams...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #127: Hagia Sophia

I'm touring a new school for my son "E" that's exclusively available to children who lucid dream. E is in his "level 2" class, and his teacher, a short, friendly, gray-haired lady is showing me around the room. It's a large classroom with basic carpeting and lots of little beds and sleeping nooks everywhere. All of the kids are running around, and I remark that if I had the opportunity to just sleep all the time for school, I'd definitely do it. It occurs to me that I might be dreaming right now... and it turns out that I am.

"I'm having a lucid dream right now," I tell the lady, and head for the exit door without waiting for a reply. I phase through the glass to find myself standing by a harbor in the early morning. There are two amphibious helicopters floating idly in the water, pontoons on their skids. I wonder whether this kind of helicopter really exists.

I remember that I want to find the Colosseum, so I start flying to get high above the water. I emerge from a light covering of fog that I hadn't even noticed, finding myself in a landscape of gently rolling hills that are covered with tightly packed buildings. I tell myself that the Colosseum is one of these buildings and that all I have to do is find it. I see a building that catches my eye, but instead of the Colosseum, it's Hagia Sophia.



"I know the Colosseum is here," I say, expecting it to glow (a trick I've used in the past.) "Show me where it is." A small site off to the side of Hagia Sophia starts to glow. It looks too small, but I fly toward it anyway. A sudden gust of wind starts pushing me in the opposite direction and turning me away from the glowing site. I decide that this wind is trying to carry me to the Colosseum so I won't get lost. It turns me all the way around so that I'm looking out over the endless ocean. I'm worried for a second that it's going to leave me facing out to sea, but it dutifully turns me around and starts moving me back toward Hagia Sophia and the glowing spot nearby.

The wind carries me all the way to the spot, and it's nothing more than a tiny plaza with a small raised platform of stone. I land, and when I examine the platform I find a small button with what looks like a glowing, golden bear's paw on it. Okay, hopefully this button will take me there. I press the button, and my vision is covered by a pop-up message like something from a video game.

The message contains two lines of text and I feel really intimidated at the thought of having to remember it. I try to lock the words in place but I feel like every word I'm not looking at is trying to change. Keeping them all steady feels like playing Whac-A-Mole and it's dawning on me that I should stop obsessing about this. As best I can remember the message says: "Use 4 parts of Vendarite to increase strength"

I'm not sure what this means, but I figure that in a lucid dream I can be as strong as I want to be (and have as much "Vendarite" as I like, for that matter), and will the message to close. I feel like something is happening to the plaza and that it's shifting in some way, but the dream soon ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #126: Mad Dog

I'm sitting in my childhood bedroom on my old bed. I look out the window and some thug-looking guy in a tank top is standing outside by a parked car, loafing around with a somewhat overweight girlfriend. As I'm trying to figure out what's going on, I unintentionally make eye contact with the guy and he starts mad dogging me. I quickly look away but out of my peripheral vision, I see him walking aggressively toward my room. Great, what's he want?

The guy reaches behind his back and draws a revolver from the waistband of his pants. I dive out of the room into the hallway as a gunshot blows through my window. I'm surprised by how soft the sound is. I think that it's so quiet that nobody might hear it. Will anyone even hear it and call the police? I duck into the bathroom, waiting there for a bit before baaaarely peeking my head around the corner to look out through the office window down the hall. But the guy is there, too, and fires immediately.

I scramble to the back of the house into my parents' bedroom, but I see the guy circling around to the back yard. I can't believe how hard he is to shake, and I realize that this is all a dream.

Relaxed now, I head back to the front of the house, walking through the hallways, through the den to the front door. I phase through the front door out into the street to find the car (and my assailant) gone. I'm trying to remember my goals but absolutely nothing is coming to me. I don't remember the Colosseum, I don't remember my intention to summon NewArtemis, nothing. I think that I'm supposed to be working on Advanced Task of the Month and that it has something to do with California. (Totally wrong.)

I decide to explore, hoping it'll come to me. I fly up into the air for a while, soaring over my old neighborhood. I fly over a creek at one point, but I don't get to explore very long before the dream ends.

These were the most realistic non-SSILD false awakenings I think that I've ever had. Made for a fun series!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #121: Barefoot

I'm dimly aware that I'm dreaming in some scene that I can't remember, and as I become lucid, I'm thrown straight into the void. I hang on for dear life and start rubbing my hands together like crazy. It feels solid and realistic and pretty soon I feel comfortable that I'm anchored pretty well into the dream.

Right away I remember that I want to get to the Colosseum. Like the previous dream, I want to build the Colosseum scene from the void. This time I choose to do so by constructing the Colosseum's inner stone wall. I reach my left hand out and yes, it feels like it's dragging along stone. I walk along this wall, dragging my fingers upward until they reach a... ceiling? No, that's wrong. I deny the ceiling's existence and after a bit my fingers keep climbing until they reach the wall's top.

Now I'm feeling the top and side of the wall with both hands. It feels very realistic now, and the scene comes sharply into focus. I see that I'm rubbing some isolated piece of stone that's standing in a modern-looking, well-lit library. It's very cleanly decorated and only sparsely populated with bookshelves, and two spiral staircases lead up to a second floor. I see a couple of friends standing around. Near a table is "AJ", and standing across from her is "LS". Neither notice me. Further away I spot an extremely attractive female stranger (Asian, mid-20s, long hair). I suppress a strong impulse to approach her for "that thing" and instead turn toward the glass door, phasing through to the outside.

Outside is a plaza with a broad set of bricked steps leading down to a grassy area. At the top of the stairs to my right, two teenage girls are seated at a white metal table having a meal (lunch?) "Which way to the Colosseum?" I ask them, and one girl points immediately across the plaza, swallowing like she has a mouthful of food she wants to down before speaking. "Thanks!" I say, and start flying in that direction. I get high enough to spot a distant tower and a tree-lined street nearby, but the sound of a wet sneeze over the baby monitor sends me into the black. I keep my eyes closed, trying to DEILD, but I hear Wife groan unhappily, and now I don't think I can get back to sleep.

I open my eyes and find myself lying in bed in our darkened bedroom. (False awakening.) I get out of bed and reach over to grab my journal, expecting my Kindle Fire to be on top, but it's missing. Where the hell did it go? I step into the master bathroom, close the door so I don't disturb Wife, and try to flip the light switch on. Instead the fan comes on. I try the other switch. Fan again. Come on, what the hell? I'm going to forget everything. Both switches at once, and still no light, just the fan. I hit the nose pinch and blow through. Amazing.

I go back to the bedroom and it's brighter now. Wife's missing, and the shutters are open. I leap up, phase through the window, and perch on a dream balcony that's outside. The balcony overlooks a courtyard far below, very much unlike the geography of our real house. I fly out over the courtyard, soon coming to a forest of extremely tall trees. The trees are like pines that stretch far into the sky, coming close to touching the cloud cover. I think that if I can just get over these trees, I'll be able to look down at a huge chunk of the landscape, spot the Colosseum, and fly there for Europe Task of the Year.

I fly higher and higher, trying to crest just over the treetops. I get close to the top but keep feeling resistance. I know that it's mental, so I keep shrugging it off, insisting to myself that I am flying higher each time. I approach a cloud and do this flailing little grasp for it. For some reason, I briefly see stars and get the sensation of my heartrate increasing. This takes me straight into...

A false awakening in our bedroom. I look at the clock and see that the screen's completely dark. I nose pinch and blow through. I approach the window, phase through, and hop out onto a ledge. I'm over another courtyard (this one with a pool), and about 3 stories up, suddenly feeling very nervous about attempting flight. I just became lucid. Am I sure? I hit a secondary nose pinch and make sure that this feels vaguely like "dream gravity". I think about the phase and the multiple nose pinches, and decide that I should be okay.

I'm still nervous, though, and when I jump, I float to the ground rather than fly. The landing's soft, and I'm sure that I'm dreaming, but I decide not to push it with the flying just now. I walk around the pool, scanning the crowd for a while, seeing many familiar faces -- my friend "The Dragon" and his wife, my father-in-law, and a couple of other friends that I can no longer recall. I walk past the shallow end of the pool, past where some kids are playing some game with a ball. At the edge of the courtyard is an ivy-covered archway that I'm planning on walking through, maybe turning it into a gateway to the Colosseum.

I remember to try to summon NewArtemis. As I pass by the stairway out of the pool, without stopping, I extend my hand toward the pool, and say, "[NewArtemis], are you ready to go?" It works! Art emerges from the water, walks up the stairs, and hops out of the pool.

Her voice is faint, but as she walks along she says, "Don't want to wear shoes. Don't like to wear shoes."

I don't know what to make of this, so I just go back to my stuff: "The Colosseum's right through here. You ready?"

"Yeah!" Her voice is still faint, but much more enthusiastic. As we approach the doorway, the dream ends.

Angel Falls!! Finally on the scoreboard for Task of the Year!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #119: Angel Falls

Wife and I are driving in a car through a field. Somehow, we believe that we're experiencing her brother's future and what will become of his life. The mood is relaxed and exploratory -- we're journeying with of a sense of curiosity rather than concern or foreboding.

I veer off on a path that goes to the left. "Not that way! The zoo is this way!" Wife grabs the wheel and yanks it back so that we're going straight once more. We follow this dirt path for a while before emerging onto a suburban street.

Somehow we're now pushing a big lawnmower rather than driving a car. The left side of the street is taken up by an angry-looking giant while the right side is littered with "doggy clean-up bags" that are filled with poop. Wife thinks that we should steer toward the poop bags and I think we should head for the giant because the poop will be too gross on the lawnmower wheels. We're not sure what to do, and as I examine the situation, I realize that this has to be a dream.

I'm slightly unclear on what happens from here, but I know that I was lucid for a good while, flew, found our 4-year-old son "E", and lost lucidity. Much later I'm walking through a train station with E when I remember how recently I was dreaming and realize that I still am. "[E]", I say, "I'm dreaming."

"That's a lucid dream!" he responds, and hops a little bit.

"That's right, buddy," I tell him. "Come with me outside. Remember that you can do everything that I can do." (I'm speaking to E, but mostly trying to remind myself.) I'm holding E's hand, and together we start flying toward the exit. A few DCs glance at us as we fly, but most ignore us. For no reason in particular, my flight momentum cuts out, but I focus on the street outside, thinking, We're out there now.

Now we're moving through the air again. I hear a DC shout "No!" and a hand grabs my ankle. For a moment this slows us down, but I think Bullshit, we're flying just fine... and right away we're moving perfectly again.

We land outside on a peaceful street scene. It's cobblestoned with no cars, just pedestrians. A river runs through the center of the road, running past the obelisk of a town square on our right, flowing toward a bay that's on our left. We follow the river, which grows broader and flows under a bridge before ultimately joining the bay. I decide that this river is perfect. This is the place where Angel Falls will be.

I turn back toward the distant town square and shout to the crowd: "This is Angel Falls! It's right here at the end of this river." And I unironically add, "Watch meee!"

From behind me I hear the thundering of a massive waterfall. Now when I look back toward the bay, everything looks strange. The original river is standing still, almost like time has stopped. But now there's a second, wilder river running right beside it. The bay has dropped completely out of sight, like we're at the top of a mesa. E and I fly over the calm river toward this new river and I can see it -- the top of an enormous waterfall! This is it!



I land close to the waterfall, realize that I'm no longer holding E's hand, and look for him. I want him to come with me, but I won't wait long. I'm too desperate to complete this task! Fortunately he's just behind me. "[E], hurry!" I tell him. "We're going over this waterfall!" He doesn't hesitate, scurrying up to the waterfall and leaping off in a clumsy-looking froggy posture. I plunge over the side, just behind him.

I'm freefalling now, soaked and yelling with excitement. I'm speeding toward a vast, green valley below me. I make no attempt to control my descent, move, or do anything apart from enjoy the sensation of falling through this curtain of water.

Suddenly I hit a pool of water below and instantly enter the void. I can still feel water all around me and for a moment I think about trying to reemerge. But no -- I did what I wanted to do. Time to wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #118: Water Slide

I'm walking down the central aisle of an airplane when I hear a voice to my right: "Hey [CanisLucidus]! Check out this view!" I look to my right and NewArtemis is waving me over and pointing at the window. "Have you ever seen Los Angeles from the air before?"

"[NewArtemis]!" I take the middle seat and say something about the last time I flew into LA. I talk about how it's been a long time since I was there and ask her what she's doing in LA.

"Same thing you are," she says. "The gymnastics conference." I feel like this is totally unexpected and don't know how to respond. Why don't I remember this? Since when do I care about gymnastics? Art points out the window again. "Look, that's the Staples Center!"

As I'm checking out LA through the window, a flight attendant makes an announcement that the plane will be landing shortly. Art stares at me pointedly, not saying anything. "Am I supposed to be doing something?" I ask, not following what's going on.

"Are you just going to leave your son all by himself while the plane lands?" Now I'm sure that my 2-year-old son "R" is all by himself several rows back. Panicked, I run toward the back of the plane without saying goodbye. When I get back to my row, I see some guy in the window seat and R crawling around freely on the middle seat. The guy turns to me and says something odd, and I wonder whether this is all a dream. As soon as I ask myself the question, I know the answer.

I look out the window again, and the plane is on the ground now. Passengers are starting to stand up at their seats and in the aisle. I stand up in the aisle myself and say, "[NewArtemis], come back this way. I'm going to Angel Falls." Almost immediately she slips past some guy standing in the aisle and appears near my row. I start narrating partly to her but mostly to the dream itself. "Okay, this plane took us right to Angel Falls." We walk through the doorway of the airplane and down a short set of stairs covered by a canopy.

"Can you fly?" I ask her. But I correct myself: "You can fly." And she floats past, bouncing along the canopy ceiling before reaching the end and floating up temporarily out of sight. Now I hear the roar of a waterfall and I'm feeling really excited. I start flying, too, and I wind up bouncing along just like she did before I break out into the open.

The waterfall is there, but it's really just a waterpark slide sitting on an open stretch of runway. The ride's about 30 feet tall, quite steep, and looks like fun. It's got a banner stretched over its exit with its name... something like, "_____ Raging River _____", with a couple of words I can't recall. Art and I fly over to the top of the slide, me just slightly in front. It's 4 "lanes" of slides right next to each other, and I take the 2nd from the left. I think that Art wound up further behind me in the same lane. I reach the bottom, zooming past a couple of portly kids in lanes #1 and #3.

As soon as I hit the bottom of the slide, I hop up again, expecting Angel Falls to be in front of me. And indeed, in front of me is the top of a huge waterfall. This one's got a banner stretched over the top of it, too: "Angel Falls". But it's still some kind of ride, not the real waterfall. It's close. A very impressive, realistic (almost scary) ride, but still a ride. I shout something back to Art about how this probably doesn't count. She says something I can't remember and indicates she's still here.

The dream still feels really stable and vivid, but I'm reluctant to waste any time, so I leap over the waterfall feet-first. Immediately I'm drenched and in freefall. After a few seconds of that, I land smoothly on some kind of big, steep plastic slide and travel along it for maybe another 20 seconds before things flatten out just a bit and the slide takes me underground. I'm still moving at a good pace but no longer at the crazy speeds of before.

The slide flattens out and broadens, and I slide past a few other riders that I'm sharing the slide with. When I feel myself slowing down, I find that I can sort of spin on my butt and gain a little speed. One DC that I pass asks me how I'm doing this and I tell him that I'm having a lucid dream.

After a while, the slide narrows and finally ends. There's a long line of DCs waiting to exit the "ride". I think about whether I should wait in line, then remember that I need to still find the real Angel Falls. I'm thinking about how to do this when the dream ends.

This one was a lot of fun, in large part because it was the first time I managed to really modify terrain in a major way. I still can't believe that I fell for the last false awakening, especially after catching the others.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #117: Carving the Coasts

I'm standing on a bus, blathering some false memory to the other riders about how a friend of mine was on an episode of Friends. I suddenly realize that I've missed my stop by miles, we're in the final bus terminal, and everybody's getting off. A middle-aged bald guy hands me a bunch of coins, including a JFK half dollar and a weird coin with a hole in the middle of it, and announces that he's paying everyone's bus fare. I hand the coins over to the bus driver, who takes them all. Once we're outside, the bald guy asks for his change and then berates me when I say that I gave the driver everything.

I feel like an idiot and everyone's staring at me, so I slink away and walk outside, wondering how I'm going to get home. On the corner I see a gang member carrying a pistol and wearing a blue bandana face mask. He jumps out from behind cover and starts firing at some unknown enemy. I think that this must be a really bad neighborhood and that I'd better get out of here. I look up at the sun to figure out which way is east, but notice that the sun's too low in the sky for the brightness of the day. The sun self-consciously moves higher in the sky to match my expectations and I realize that I'm dreaming.

I'm walking by an apartment complex with a little playground filled with grade school kids. I start flying to look for Angel Falls and one of the kids says, "It's Superman!"

"That's right!" I say, and start "bah bah baahhh"ing the original John Williams Superman theme. I decide that I want to hear the real thing and immediately my subconscious produces the original soundtrack (or close enough to convince me, at least.) I fly off, the Superman score playing in my head and filling me with nerdy confidence.

I come to a broad river with some low hills along the water's edge. I fly along the river until I come to a coastline, proceeding along that for a while, looking for Angel Falls. I start eyeing those low hills and think about whether I could turn them into Angel Falls. As I do this, they start growing taller, and I find that I can raise and lower the height of these hills just by thinking about it. Something seems to stop them from getting up to full mountain height, but I can still get them high enough to impress myself, at least. I keep flying along the coast, building the hills taller and watching as the occasional small waterfall even erupts from the side. These waterfalls are all pretty modest, though, and not nearly high enough for Angel Falls.

As I'm happily traveling down the coast and raising the hills up to the sky, a group of elderly people that look like tourists start flying in front of me, way too close, and blocking my view a bit. The tourists are pointing at the hills and reading some kind of guide book, and disturbingly, one of them is only wearing a diaper. I maneuver past a couple of them, but the old man in a diaper won't get out of the way. I say, "You want to land," and he immediately banks to the left and drops out of sight. Satisfied, I continue flying and trying to make the coastal hills climb higher and higher. I can't get enough of watching this! As I'm raising one set of hills really high, I start to see water cascading off of it, and I think that it's going to turn into Angel Falls. As I look up and up, my perspective suddenly clonks onto its side and I'm pitched into the void.

I rub my hands together to make sure my dream body's ready to go, then I try to find the floor. I imagine my hands rubbing against the smooth rock of a river bed, but the sensation I feel is different. More like cloth. Soon I can see out of my left eye, but only in a small circle. Right eye's still blind. It looks like I'm laying facedown on our comforter -- false awakening. It's morning and I'm alone, laying across the bed.

I get up and check myself in the bedroom mirror. I've got a bunch of blankets and sheets and stuff wrapped around me. I put my arms out so they can fall to the floor. I look just like myself except that my eyes are filled in with black and these dark wisps of smoky electricity-looking stuff are crackling around my head. Overall effect: badass. There's still something wrong with my right eye, but I just tell myself that the blankets are gone and I can see fine. Pretty soon, I do.

There's a new door in the wall of our bedroom, and I walk through it into some kind of sunroom. (This is strange since our bedroom is on the 2nd floor.) My friends "Leroy" and "Leroyette" (husband and wife) are here working on some kind of art project with a bunch of strangers. Everyone's working away with scissors, paper, and cloth. I call out, "[Leroy]! I'm having a lucid dream."

"Here, let me get the door," he says, undoing a bunch of strange locks on an external, glass-paned door. I step outside and there's a small waterfall, about 15 feet high, going in a small garden. I'm wondering how to turn this into Angel Falls when the scene goes dark right before...

I have another false awakening in my master bedroom. The door to the sunroom is still there, and I head through it again. There, again, is Leroy. This time I try undoing all of the locks myself. There are an unbelievable number of curtains, locks, and shutters covering the door, and I'm finding it really frustrating to mess with them. "I don't recall your doors being covered with this much bullcrap," I whine. Leroy chuckles and tries to help me. (Apparently I thought this was his house, but it doesn't resemble any room in Leroy's home.) "You know, I could have just phased this whole time. Sorry, man!" I phase through the door onto a grassy lawn, jump into the air, and start flying again. After flying for a short time...

Another false awakening, this time in the sunroom. Embarrassingly, this one fools me and I'm non-lucid. An overweight bearded guy in his 20s is dressed in a wookiee costume (sans head.) He's complaining about how girls are always too interested in lucid dreaming. Don't they understand that stuff is just fantasy? He puts the head of the wookiee costume on and poses for a photograph, doing his best Chewbacca cry. Cameras flash. The dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #115: Sandwiches for Skeptics

I DEILDed during this dream and wound up really scrambling the beginning. Pity. Anyway, I think this was a DILD. I remember something about a prison, finding my way through an office building, and being attacked. Somewhere along the way, I find Wife and my oldest son E. My memory becomes very clear here: It's morning and I'm walking through an empty, gray city with Wife and our oldest son E. I hold E's hand as he bounces and scampers beside me, pointing and jabbering excitedly.

We pass under a bridge and walk up a sloped street. All around us are gray vacant lots, brownstone tenements, and the occasional piece of newspaper carried on the wind. The one swatch of color is a bus stop to our left that bears a beautiful ad for Arby's. Below the Arby's logo it reads, "Sandwiches for Skeptics".

I find this very amusing but also really unlikely to be the new Arby's slogan. I tell Wife that "I'll have to google that later" but she doesn't respond. I run my fingers over the sign, appreciating its detail. There are even some air bubbles underneath the paper as if it wasn't pasted down all that carefully. I take my time with this, thinking that it can only help to draw me into the dream.

Task of the Year occurs to me. I'm fired up about going to Angel Falls, and I imagine that it's out there, just past the vacant lot and a row of buildings. As I do, I see little sprays of water coming up from over the tops of the buildings. I'm amused that the "graphics" for this water are absolutely terrible. The little puffs of water look like repeated, low-resolution particle effects with no animation.

Okay, enough thinking. Time to fly. I consider summoning NewArtemis to join us but then remember that I need to stay focused -- I'm already trying to bring two DCs with me. A summoning is pushing my luck too much. I take to the air, still holding E's hand, and his reaction is surprisingly subdued. From the ground below, I hear Wife say, "Oh okay... bye, guys!"

"Just follow us!" I shout back to her.

There's no reply, though, so I focus on flight. Looks like it's just me and E now. As we fly high enough to look over the tops of the surrounding buildings, I see that the entire city rest atop a huge mesa that rises high above an ocean. At the edge of the mesa I see a waterfall -- Angel Falls!

The Falls are a long way off, so I focus on flying faster and faster. We get up some good speed, but the dream is starting to feel thin and insubstantial. All I can think to do is speed up, but I'm not fast enough. We're still about a quarter mile away from the falls when I feel the sensation (real or imagined) of my eyeballs moving around and I'm awake.

I relax and go for a DEILD. I quickly enter a new dream scene, flying again, but this time as an observer with no dream body. I'm on a long, spiraling slope built out of stone blocks. The sides are unwalled and I can see that this tower stretches far above the clouds. I slide smoothly upward along the slope, making at least 3 full revolutions. I'm aware that I'm dreaming but I make no attempt to exert control. I'm content to just know where the tower leads. I keep spiraling upward and either lose lucidity or slip into the darkness between dreams...

This is probably the first time that I've done high speed flight since I flew into space so long ago. Very exciting to experience!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #112: Water Pressure

It's the middle of the night and I'm walking around the front yard of my childhood home. The sprinklers are all on and it's my job to somehow turn each sprinkler head off by touching it. As I do this, I'm narrating out loud to one of my waking life friends what I'm doing. (Can't remember which friend this was, since they were "off camera".)

"These big sprayers at the front of the yard are the worst ones!" I explain to my friend. As I approach the sprinkler head, it hits me with a powerful jet of water that starts pushing me away from the yard and out into the street. "See what I mean!" I shout as the jet continues to shove me.

Pretty soon I'm tumbling and sliding all the way down the street, trying to fight my way back to the yard. Okay, this has got to be a dream... The spray continues to hit me, pushing me along faster and faster as I slide down the street. Somehow it's not getting me soaked but it is pushing me at an incredible rate of speed. I'm sliding past houses like I'm on a bobsled attached to a rocket.

I leap into the air and start flying, still going really, really fast. The speed is absolutely dizzying, easily ten or more times faster than any lucid flying I've ever done. I soon leave civilization behind and I'm flying at super speed over grassland and hills. The sun is now up and early morning light is illuminating the landscape. My flight control isn't perfect and I do a couple of unintentional barrel rolls, fly higher than I mean to, then lower than I'd like.

Just as I'm flying over the top of another set of hills, I find myself in the void, suddenly moving much more slowly. Except it's not a complete void. I see a distant dream scene in front of me, almost like something I'm watching on television through a long, dark tunnel. I'm moving toward this new scene, rubbing my hands together and preparing to enter it.

It's a scene from some sort of grand luxury hotel, bright and really classic-looking. The men look sharp but indistinguishable from one another and the women are dressed in crazy feather- and sequin-clad dresses like something from the Roaring 20s. I'm now a part of the scene, standing in this hotel lobby, looking up as these amazing DCs pass by on the balconies above. I try to remember what I'd intended to do next, but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #105: The Souvenir

I'm walking along the sidewalk of a street near the neighborhood where I grew up, contemplating a job opportunity. I've been offered a job as muscle in a mobster casino. The pay is less than what I'm making now but it's all "tax free", if you know what I mean. I feel like this is a strange thing to be thinking about, and when I also notice that gravity feels a bit different, I become lucid.

It's early morning and the sky hasn't hit full daylight yet. I decide to head for my childhood home, making my way quickly along the street by jumping along in 30-foot segments. I take a right, proceed for a bit, then a left, all along familiar roads. I know that my old home is just the next block over, so I fly over a couple of houses and land on the next street over.

My childhood home is here but it's different. It looks almost dilapidated and the windows are all dark. The parts of the house that were brick are all siding now. I prepare to go inside but then I stop myself. What am I looking for in there? I can't think of any reason to go inside.

I try to remember what I wanted out of this dream. I remember that I'm trying to meet Art at the Alamo. Then I remember how NyxCC teleported by turning a model of a scene into a true, immersive dream scene. I decide that I'll try conjuring a model of the Alamo and then attempt to teleport into it.

Reaching my hand behind my back, I imagine that there's a model of the Alamo sitting in it. But my mental image of what a "model of the Alamo" would look like is very vague and keeps changing. First it's a small ceramic, then it's a larger, hollow tin thing with no bottom and sharp edges, then it's tiny and solid stone. I check my hand but see nothing but an insubstantial outline that evaporates the moment that I look at it.

Okay, no good. Hand behind the back again, and this time I envision a ceramic souvenir, rough and unfinished on the bottom. I feel it taking shape but as I'm trying to focus, a strong wind picks up and tickles my hands and forearm. The souvenir disappears from my hand before I can look at it.

Frustrated, I gaze up at the sky. It's growing darker, like a storm's approaching. I think that this could be a fun time to try flying, but the dream ends before I get up into the air again.

Another swing and a miss at meeting Art at the Alamo. But the good news is that I managed to remember (and execute) Basic Task of the Month!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #104: Reservations

I have a false awakening at home and stumble out of bed. I'm disappointed and slightly grouchy that I failed to achieve a lucid dream. Feeling unmotivated, I wander aimlessly through the house, contemplating how late for work I probably am. I think that it's Friday, though, and I'm looking forward to ordering pizza with the guys at the office and shooting the breeze for a while. (Nope, today's Wednesday!)

I wind up in the exercise room but the power rack and dip station are completely missing. It's halfway converted into an office and I see the guts of a half-built computer on the floor. I kneel down to work on it, seeing that the RAM is missing and that the box is full of dust like it's been sitting there for years. I finally grasp how dreamlike this all is and become lucid.

I rub my hands together and assemble my goals. Two come to me fairly quickly: 1) meet NewArtemis at the Alamo 2) go water-skiing. (Oops, Advanced Task of the Month is actually parasailing.) I move into the master bedroom where I see Wife standing nearby as my two young children E and R run around the room. I announce that I'm having a lucid dream, eliciting an "Okay!" from Wife. I phase through the external wall of our house. I'm on the 2nd story, so I drift down to the driveway below, lightly brushing the branches of our oak tree with my fingers as I pass.

It's a bright morning outside and I'm preparing to fly off for the Alamo when I hear the voice of my son E behind me. "Daddy, wait! Daaaaaaddy!" I think that it's probably smartest to ignore him but I can't help looking back. Somehow he's followed me outside and I see him standing about fifteen feet away, looking so small. He looks at me with enormous, pleading eyes and says, "Daddy, can I go with you?"

I start feeling all melty-hearted and I know that resistance is futile. It'd probably be amusing to see E and NewArtemis' DCs interact anyway. "Sure, buddy," I say, scooping him up and placing him on my shoulders. I hop up into the air and we fly together over the neighborhood, heading vaguely northwest. The city's different in this direction, and we pass a park and a block of tall buildings. I decide that the Alamo is in the next block and I tell E this to cement it further in my mind. "Uh-huh!" he enthusiastically agrees.

When we hit the next city block, though, I'm disappointed to find no sign of the Alamo. There's a river running east-west with a simple stone bridge crossing it and a walkway on either side. I shout down to the DCs milling around below: "The Alamo's supposed to be right here! Which way is it?"

A blonde lady walking with her daughter points westward toward the bridge. "It's that way, just past the bridge!" I thank her, land, and walk under the bridge with E still on my shoulders. We emerge to see the Alamo up ahead but there's some kind of enormous line out front. I feel the urge to get in line and patiently wait but remind myself that this is my dream and it is therefore okay to be a bit of a jerk. I stride to the front of the line where I find a restaurant host holding a clipboard. It's apparent to me that the Alamo has been converted to some sort of amazingly popular restaurant.

The host asks me whether I have reservations. "Of course," I say. "Check under [CanisLucidus]."

"Ah yes!" he responds. "Party of fifteen. Your table's almost ready."

Fifteen people? "[NewArtemis] is in our group, isn't that right?" But the host wanders off, saying that he'll "be right back."

I decide to give him a moment before prodding the dream plot onward. I remember Task of the Month (speak gibberish to a DC and see how they respond.) A sour-looking girl of about eight with brown hair and freckles is waiting nearby, sitting on a piece of luggage. "Ooooooga booga booga!" I exclaim.

She looks very annoyed. "Can we please just skip the whole 'Mess with DCs' show?" I hear her fine, but her response shocks me into just saying, "What?" She sighs dramatically and repeats herself: "I said can we skip the whole 'Mess with DCs' show? Have you seen how long this line is? I am not in the mood."

Amused, I turn away. Good enough for me. I want to keep things rolling, so I announce to the unseen host, "So my table's ready then, right?"

The host scurries back into view. "Sorry for the wait, sir. Mr. Graham was napping and needed to be woken up. Who schedules a lunch for a nap?" he says with a laugh, even though I haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about or who "Mr. Graham" is. "Right this way," says the host, and I follow, now holding E by the hand. We're moving through a wood-paneled hallway into the restaurant interior when the dream ends.

Looks like I need to go back to my "stop falling for false awakenings" and "stop missing dreamsigns" fundamentals. Still a fun dream, and got to try out a new teleport method (with mixed results.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #102: El Camino Real

I'm at a lucid dreaming camp with lots of people from my past. Throughout the day, we swim and boat in the lake, walk by the lakeside, and do various crafts. I tell everyone that "it's too late for me. I took galantamine and it didn't work. Let's get the rest of you lucid." I teach them about dreamsigns, awareness, and even supplements. I'm frustrated that I've failed to have a lucid dream but I figure maybe I'll feel better if some of the other camp participants can have a lucid.

This goes on for a really long time and eventually I run across Britney Spears eating a blueberry muffin in one of the hallways. She complains that her career is in a slump. I suggest that she would be a perfect spokesperson for blueberry muffin sales. She's thrilled with the idea. In celebration, she takes a staggeringly huge, very unladylike bite out of the muffin, paper and all. I feel incredibly savvy and very proud of myself.

From there, I have a false awakening: Wife and I are starting our day and she switches on the TV. (She never does this in the morning.)The music video for Madonna's "Like a Virgin" is playing on the TV. Her love interest is the guy who played the mummy in The Mummy movies. After the first verse, the TV switches to a 3d rendering of The Killers performing in front of the university Wife and I attended. "That's The Killers," she says. (She doesn't know what they look like.) We're sitting in a cafeteria now, watching people order food while I complain about how I failed to realize I was dreaming just a moment ago when it was so obvious. Some guy carrying a tray of food totally wipes out and gets spaghetti all over himself. Wife laughs when this happens, which seems cruel and out of character. (Big dreamsign. She thinks the part in Karate Kid where Daniel-San spills spaghetti on himself and everybody laughs is super mean.)

Now I'm staring out of a window in some kitchen, feeling sorry for myself that I didn't get lucid. I think that I could be dreaming right now, but everything is just too vivid. And yet... it finally dawns on me. I look over at Wife preparing food at the kitchen counter and it's so real that it almost costs me my lucidity. I decide that I'd better get moving.

The next room is a darkened dining room with an elegantly set table and an unlit candelabra. It's dark in the room and I decide that it would be best to leave the house, so I head for a wall and phase through it. There's no scene beyond the wall, and I wind up in the void.

I quickly rub my hands together and keep walking, thinking that I'll try a new teleport method out of the void, building on an idea that PennyRoyal had suggested. I place my fingers in front of my eyes and imagine them gently wiggling. Pretty soon my hands take shape in front of me and I begin to imagine a new scene behind them -- the Alamo, the arranged meeting spot with Art. Once I feel like the scene's ready, I move my hands aside and find myself in...

... Silicon Valley, walking along El Camino Real. There's even a roadsign marking out the intersection of "82" (El Camino Real) and "93" (unknown road.) It's a beautiful day, typical perfect weather for the South Bay. I jog up a residential street, and a lady power-walking with her dog gives me a friendly wave. I wave back. I know that I have tasks that I'm forgetting, but they refuse to come to mind.

Moving a bit further along the street, I pass my old friend Wang. I ask him how he's been and he says, "I can't talk right now. I've got to be careful not to catch a cold." When I accept this, he breaks into a laugh like he really pulled one over on me. "I'm just kidding!" he says. "I know that you're dreaming this!" He shouts across the street to a lady who's watering her lawn. "Do you know he's dreaming all of this?" I'm a little distracted by how hyper-realistic Wang looks. His lips move flawlessly with the words he's speaking. I wonder how it's possible for all of this to fit inside my head.

The woman is dark-haired, mid-40s, clad in sweat pants. "Oh, like that 'lucid dreaming'? I've always wanted to do that." I respond with a few encouraging words and jokingly say something along the lines of "better make sure that you're not dreaming right now, too." She and Wang laugh and I say, "You know what? Let me show you guys a couple of things." With that, I hope onto the trunk of a parked car and leap to to top of another parked car, intending from there to take off in flight. For some reason the flying doesn't happen, though, and I wind up hovering face-first a few inches off of the ground. Fortunately, this is still cool enough to impress.

"Guys," I tell them, "I'm going to try another teleport. It was good talking to you." They say goodbye, and I put my hands over my eyes again, trying once again to imagine the Alamo. I give it a little longer to incubate this time, waiting until I can "see" the structure fairly well in my mind. But when I remove my hands, I'm somewhere else near Palo Alto. I can see the Stanford Foothills. The vision out of my left eye looks odd, sort of like I have one messed up contact lens. I ignore it, take to the air, and fly just a bit before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #100: The World Is Yours

I'm flying high in the sky around what looks to be a computer-generated globe that's populated with little dots. I feel like I'm on a plane with Wife but I don't see a plane. It's just me and my floating perspective as we circle slowly and gracefully around this globe.

I tell Wife, "This is a music video for a Phil Collins' song called 'Julia' from 1980." (Not true.) The song immediately starts playing. In it, Collins sings of how this globe is "not CGI" and that the dots represent people around the world. He sings that the dot he remembers best ("the one I best recall") was one of him over the ocean, flying on a plane to be reunited with his beloved Julia.

As the song ends, I suddenly find myself falling downward out of the sky. I hope that this is a dream, I think, and of course it is.

I immediately halt my fall and find myself hovering over a huge, vivid cityscape -- highways, skyscrapers, cranes, bridges, traffic jams, all arrayed for me down below. I want to fly around and explore this city, but when I attempt to fly, I'm unable to move. For some reason, I feel totally confident that I'll come unstuck. Stop asking, I think.

I ignore what the dream is telling me and I imagine that I'm already flying Iron Man-style around the city. A second later, I'm flying effortlessly, cruising anywhere I like. I get briefly stuck a time or two, but I just ignore it, imagine that I'm succeeding, and immediately start flying again. Eventually, the little glitches stop.

I see a tower that I remember from waking life -- it's one that I pass during my commute. I fly up to the top and circle around it. I glide low over roadways and high above a cluster of skyscrapers, then descend back to one of the bridges that spans a piece of some unfamiliar bay.

My confidence is soaring, and I decide try some large-scale dream control. I put my hands out in front of me and then bring them apart like I'm performing the breaststroke. As I do, I rake cars off of the bridge in either direction and dozens of them go plummeting toward the water. I bring my hands back together and I watch as time rewinds and they return to the bridge, unharmed. I fly back toward the skyscrapers, select a pair of them, and then begin moving them up and down, one for my left hand and one for my right.

I look to my left and see an enormous fire ogre (a la "Orcs Must Die") stomping toward me down one of the city streets. He towers over most of the nearby buildings, at least 100 feet tall. I wonder whether maybe I'll be fighting him later. I feel no fear at all. I reflect for a moment about what it would be like to have this much control and confidence in every LD. Nothing could stop me. What sort of things would I do if I had years of this kind of power?

Leaving the fire ogre behind for now, I fly over my city for a while and just let my dreaming brain show me what it can do. I look out at the waters of the nearby bay and think about using all of this overflowing confidence for some Task of the Month parasailing, but the dream soon ends.

Although I didn't get my goals accomplished in this lucid dream, I did meet my first supposed "dream guide". Not as... competent as I might have expected.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #94: The "Dream Guide"

I'm walking down a sidewalk past a construction zone. One of the construction workers is crouched down low to measure something. I notice that he's using our diaper bag to make the measurement. I wonder what on Earth is going on but I'm in a hurry. You know what? I don't even want to know. I wait until the worker isn't looking and then just swipe the bag, throw it over my shoulder, and forget about it.

A little further on, I pass a couple walking with their daughter, a blonde girl of about 7 or 8. The girl glances at me as I pass. I think nothing of this at first, but after a few steps, I'm overcome by this feeling of being watched. I turn around to look behind me and the little girl is following me now, floating a couple of inches off of the ground. She has an unsettling, dead-eyed expression, and I hurry to get away. She's faster than I am, though, and as she seizes my hand, a horror movie "dun DUUNNNN!!" soundtrack plays. At first I'm spooked, but the effect is so ham-handed that I become lucid.

"This is just a dream," I tell her.

She smiles happily, no longer the fright figure of just moments ago. "It is!" she exclaims, dropping my hand and raising her arms over head triumphantly. "And I'm going to help guide you through it!"

Cool, I could use some help... "So that means you're a Dream Guide?"

"Oh, okay!" she says, not inspiring my confidence.

"Can you help me out with teleportation?" I ask, walking down the street with her. The road soon turns to cobblestone as we move away from the construction site. There are fewer people around now.

She shakes her head. "I haven't learned that kind of stuff yet..."

"Okay," I say. "Well, my goal for this dream was..."

She interrupts and speaks really rapidly: "You're going to summon NewArtemis and have her turn into a werewolf!" She grins, proud to show off her ability to read my mind. (She refers to Art by her DV handle.)

I smile, amused. "That's right... [NewArtemis]. The plan is to use a handshake summon. Can you help me do that?"

"Oh no," she says. "I haven't learned how to do summoning yet."

The street seems to be ending so I hop casually over the buildings at the end of the street, float over them, and land on another cobblestoned street just beyond. The little girl follows, floating just slightly behind. We're at a T-intersection and to my left is the mouth of a dark tunnel. I say, "How about I show you how to do that handshake summon?"

She nods eagerly and I extend my hand off to my right, out of sight, and repeatedly imagine NewArtemis performing the handshake. After a while, I feel the beginnings of a handshake. The little girl gasps and claps her hands. "What's it look like?" I ask. The girl doesn't answer and as I look at her now, I realize that she looks like a teenager and that her hair has lengthened and changed color. "Am I changing you?" I ask, starting to feel confused. It occurs to me how confusing it is to look at the girl while trying to imagine NewArtemis. It's like trying to remember how a song goes when something else is blaring on the radio. I feel like I might be morphing the girl into NewArtemis but I'm unsure whether I should switch to trying that. I'm becoming distracted.

I feel an insistent tap in the palm of my hand, as if the middle finger of the person I'm shaking hands with was repeatedly poking me and trying to get my attention. My mind races between the summoning effort, the tapping in my hand, the girl's shifting appearance, and my own indecision as to whether the summoning is ready for me to turn and look. Soon, the dream collapses.