CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #252: The Struggling Artist

I’m power-walking up a hill with Mom, describing a dream from earlier in the night where she’d had me take her to a spooky house to ghost-hunt. “That’s just over the hill!” she says, and as she walks up ahead, I become lucid.

She speeds away over the hill, which now looks oddly vertical and impassable. When I follow the line of the hill all the way up, I see a ceiling, and realize that I’m now indoors. It looks very much like my childhood home. I remember my intent to try bonus Task of the Month (play an instrument that doesn’t exist in waking life) with Dreamer, so I attempt a summon, saying something about how now we’re going to do the concert that we talked about. I also dimly recall that Dreamer is actually playing music right now in waking life. (True!)

I try a few different varieties of summon, first assuming she’s there, then reaching my hand behind my back, and finally the old “spin around, there you are!” Each time, I get a flicker of presence but I’m just not able to properly finish the summon. I wander into a version of my parents’ bedroom and I see Dad snoozing on his right side. Through the window I see that it’s morning outside.

I still want to try playing a dream instrument, so I hook my right pinky and left thumb together to form a pantomime trumpet. I blast a few notes into this “trumpet” and it sounds like very realistic but very, very poor trumpet-playing. I’m pleased that I made some dream music this way, but I still don’t consider this to be the success that I was going for.

I walk past my blissfully snoring dad to the window and start phasing through. I briefly get hung up on the mini-blinds but after a moment of calming down, I’m all the way through. I drift down to the ground (for some reason I’m on the second floor, unlike waking life where this room would be on the ground floor.) I again attempt to summon Dreamer, by imagining that she’s behind me. It doesn’t work, and I spin around for a few more of these attempts before deciding to focus on the instrument for a bit.

I hover on my back for a while, looking up at the reddish early morning sky, imagining that the dream instrument will take shape in my hands. I feel a sensation like bubbles pressing gently against my fingers, but I can’t seem to turn this into anything musical. I descend back to the ground, coming back to my feet again. There’s a pine tree here like when I was a kid, and I grab a hunk of bark off of the tree in frustration and stuff it in my mouth to gnaw on it. It tastes about like you’d expect, and I blow the chunks of bark out of my mouth in a big, satisfying spray. I’m not sure what to do now and I move half-heartedly toward the deck as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #245: The Third Arm

I’m sitting next to Wife at a little craft table, both of us working on our laptops. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I seem to be writing some code for the game. My iPod is laying on the desk next to me, and I try to cue up some music on it. I swipe and poke randomly at the screen, and a song starts playing. Horrifyingly, the performer in the song is me! I’m braying out some horrible-sounding song that’s a cross between “Tribute” and just random squawking.

I desperately stab at the screen to try to make this stop. Now some British synth-pop is playing instead, much better. I note how strange the screen appears, and I remember to look for the dream. I stand up, and find that both Wife and the craft table appear to have vanished. I remember my intention to summon Dreamer and attempt the bonus Task of the Month (to find and play a musical instrument that doesn’t exist in waking life.)

For some reason, I have this very strong belief that the dream is taking place in my childhood home and that it’s completely empty. I affirm that Dreamer is already here in the room with me but I don’t believe it. I walk from room to room, saying things like, “[Dreamer], you’re right around the corner…” but never quite believing it.

I look down at my hands and say, “[Dreamer], you’re walking right beside me.” As I say this, a third arm extends right out of my chest, lining up its palm with my own palms. The upper part of the arm is covered by the sleeve of a purple polo shirt. I wonder whether this is Dreamer’s arm…? The purple sleeve seems really promising, but the arm kinda has a man-hand that looks more like mine. I think about what I can do with this to complete the summon, but can’t quite figure anything out before the arm vanishes.

I proceed into the den, saying out loud again that I’m expecting to find “[Dreamer]” here (using her waking life name.) I say something about her being “purple”, and expect to see her. As I turn my gaze around the room, I spy a purple director’s chair in the corner, but no Dreamer sitting in it.

Again I expect to see “purple” Dreamer, but instead I summon a purple trampoline, leaned up against the wall! And now look, there’s a purple wall hanging over one of the windows. I peer through the window, seeing only darkness beyond. I feel like there’s no certain dreamworld beyond this house right now, and even though I consider the idea of leaving, I feel nervous about trying this.

Maybe I just need to try calling her “Dreamer” instead of using her waking life name. I try this for a while, too, but I’m having a terrible time shaking this idea that the house is empty. I sense that I’ve let myself get stuck and that I should be able to think my way out of this. I call out a few more times, noting that I’ve actually had quite a bit of dream time. I worry that I should have done more with the third arm or that cool-looking purple trampoline. It isn’t long before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #223: Final Heart

I have a false awakening in my childhood bedroom and as I’m contemplating going back to sleep, I realize that no way am I really sleeping in my old room. I become lucid and attempt to get out of bed, which fails. I try rolling out OBE-style and after some clumsy attempts, I’m finally on my feet.

I walk out to the living room, looking at my hands. They’re darker and more grayish than they’d be in waking life, but other than that they look pretty much just as they should. The dream’s feeling a bit dark, so I shout, “Let there be light!” Embarrassingly, nothing much happens, so I just wander around in the den some more, trying not to focus too much on this.

I look to my left to find my doppelganger (a lookalike or double of me) standing at the door I emerged from. He’s dressed like I do to sleep and he’s sort of got bed head. He smirks sleepily at me and I walk toward him, but as soon as we get close to each other, I snap suddenly to his perspective (more or less) and find myself alone again. I drift toward an external wall and phase outside onto the street.

Outside it feels like early morning. In the neighbor’s yard I find a woman in her late 40s standing around as 4 small dogs scamper happily at her feet. She nods a casual greeting. I remember my goal of summoning Dreamer, so I say to the woman, “Ahh, you’re Dreamer.” She seems confused at first, but even as I watch I see her becoming friendlier, younger and more familiar. She’s starting to look like Dreamer, but the transformation’s not complete.

“I will be soon,” she says, smiling. I smile back and we walk through the yard together. I drape an arm over her shoulder as I explain (to her and to myself) the plans for this dream. I lose the dream, though, and wake up.

I sit tight for DEILD and wind up back in the kitchen of my childhood home. A couple of Brazilian men are sitting at the dining room table saying unkind things about my brother-in-law “Muppet”. One sarcastically calls him a “phenomenon.” I feel myself becoming invested in this plotline, but no, let it go, it’s a distraction.

I phase back outside and it’s nighttime now. I want to find Dreamer again and for some reason decide that a playground or dog park is the way to go. I fly up high into the air at high speed, piercing the cloud cover. When I look back down, I expect to see a park but nothing is showing up. I try to pretend that I already see it but when I pierce back through the clouds back to Earth, I’m half a block away from where I started.

There’s a badass three-wheeled police car here that looks a little like The Dark Knight Batmobile. It appears to be stuck because it hit another car and the officer seated inside is berating a teenage girl, blaming her for what happened. I just want the car, though, so I open the top of the car and boot the cop out of the driver’s seat with my left foot and drive off down the street.



I have a fun time driving for a couple of blocks until I come to an intersection where a cement truck is gushing this huge, oozing wave of wet cement everywhere. I avoid it by driving up onto someone’s yard and going around, but all the bumping seems to make the car sort of disappear within a half block or so.

I walk out onto DA street to see this amazing parade of armored elephants going by. There must be dozens of them, marching slowly and regally in single file. There’s something sad about their demeanor and from out of nowhere Wife is standing next to me, saying, “This last march they do is called their ‘Final Heart.’” She’s moved by what she’s seeing and I am too in spite of not really understanding it.



Further down the road I encounter a vertical sandstone wall with small outcroppings that could be used as handholds. When I look across the street to my left, I see my doppelganger already climbing up an identical wall! He looks over at me and grins. I decide that this is a great opportunity to practice my dream climbing, so I make my way up about twenty feet or so. I keep looking over at my double as I go, a little envious of how quickly and confidently he can make the climb. As I’m climbing, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #151: Door Delivery

I'm walking out through the front door of my childhood home, moving toward a bike that's parked next to the curb. I need to take the house's front door with me in order to deliver it somewhere, so I lift the door off of its hinges and clamp it in my right hand. I jump on the bike and start pedaling, my right hand still clamped onto the door, which drags alongside me as I go.

I turn around through the cul-de-sac, question what I'm doing, and become lucid. The door feels light and hollow, like an incredibly flimsy interior door. I toss it aside, and it disappears soundlessly behind me.

I pedal along for a bit, thinking over my goals for the dream. I remember wanting to summon a witch to cast a spell on me for Task of the Month, so I decide that I'll stop the bike in order to use a handshake summon. I stop my pedalling and imagine that the bike is no longer there. Its presence fades and I now feel like I'm doing some combination of walking and floating. It feels like my brain's still making up its mind as to what I'm doing.

For no reason in particular, my vision swivels smoothly around behind me while I continue moving in the same direction. It's like I'm drifting backward now. For a moment this frustrates me but I let it go. It'll be fine.

The movement stops and I decide to try for the handshake summon to pull in a witch. I feel out of practice and my confidence isn't where it should be. I don't feel so much as a tickle in my hand. I give the summon two or three tries, turning to get a different visual perspective each time but it doesn't seem to be happening. I'm not interested in getting too hung up on the summon, so I just continue walking down the street.

The scene's very vivid and stable, so I take things slow, enjoying the detail of the environment. I keep having random jolts of fear that the dream will stabilize and become a little scared that this will screw up the dream. Luckily everything holds together fine and I walk slowly along to the next street.

The righthand side of the street still has the suburban look of waking life but the left side of the street is lined with industrial-looking buildings. This makes me want to explore, so I fly up above these buildings and look out over the city. There's a tall glass office building nearby and I fly past it, now hoping to see the Colosseum somewhere in the cityscape.

I'm flying over a construction site toward the sunrise. A very deep, neatly-carved hole has been dug into the dirt of the construction site and as I'm flying by looking at it, the dream ends.

I'm back from vacation and I've got some catching up to do! Hope everyone's been well and I'll be checking what I missed in everyone's dream journals soon!

This dream is from the morning of September 2, 2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #140: Rooftop Surfing

I'm attempting a WILD and get some fast hypnagogic imagery of standing near the wall outside of my childhood home. I reach out to touch the house's wall and it's real. Climbing up to the roof feels natural and easy, so I clamber up to the top and look out over the old neighborhood.

The roof of my house seems to go on forever, somehow connecting with the roof of the neighbors' houses. Off in the distance I see what look likes breaks in this ocean of roofing shingles, and as I focus on them, my feet start to slide smoothly along like I'm surfing. I go with it, imagining that this is taking me toward the Colosseum for Europe Task of the Year.

The rooftops have a smooth rise and fall as I skate over them, moving me up and down. There's a big, fancy house in the distance that I'm steering toward, and I insist that it's right next to my goal. The house acts sort of like a mirage, though, fading out of existence when I get anywhere near it. I'm left with just that endless sea of rooftops. Eventually another house appears in the distance, and I move toward it now.

After a while, the rooftop starts sloping downward and my speed picks up. Now it's not a rooftop anymore but just a blue plastic slide. I try to slow down a bit. This seems to work but these doubts keep popping into my head and then I'm careening downward again.

Now the blue plastic slide is slick and wet like a water slide, heading almost straight down. I splash into a shallow, watery pool in some kind of indoor amusement facility. There's a teenage girl here in a yellow shirt and tan slacks who looks like she works here. Before I can say anything to her, a little girl who's about 6 years old runs up and pushes a button that's just outside the pool of water.

"That means you have to wait here," says the teenage girl.

"Sorry, I'm not doing that," I respond, getting out of the pool. I check her expression to see whether she cares about my rule-breaking. It looks like she couldn't care less.

I walk down a little foam ramp. This place looks like some kind of cross between a gymnastics studio and a water park. There's another girl who works here at the bottom of the ramp, dressed in the same yellow shirt and tan slacks.

"Which way to the Colosseum?" I ask her. She immediately points to my left, where I see a pit of foam blocks and two more girls in this worker outfit. I'm walking toward the foam pit when the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #135: Caught in a Net

I'm in my childhood home, discussing a business venture with my friend "Leroy" and another friend "Crispy", someone I lost touch with a few years back. I have a false memory that we've been in business together for a long time and we're discussing the fate of a fourth partner, a guy I knew in high school that we'll call "Lucky Bastard".

Crispy wanders off somewhere and as she leaves, Lucky Bastard joins Leroy and me at a small conference table. Lucky Bastard reveals that his plan for the business is to inject hostile code into the video game Trine and upload it to a file-sharing service. I ask him how this is supposed to make us any money. He has no clue. Leroy and I look at each other. I tell Lucky Bastard that he's fired. He cries a bit and shrinks down, turning into a small gnome-like creature. I find this awkward, so I leave the room and walk down the hallway.

It still looks like my childhood home and I pass by a guest room. There's a queen size bed in there now and I see Crispy lying in it next to a man and a child, neither of whom I know. I worry that Crispy will be upset that I fired Lucky Bastard without including her in the decision but as I consider telling her, I see that she has disappeared. I become lucid.

I wander back into the hall to the living room. It looks the same except for the fact that all of the furniture has been removed. Something makes me worry about the stability of the dream, so I rub my hands together a few times. This helps, and I remember my plan to use my voice for added stability. I do a really loud yell and it comes out really low, roaring, and generally bad-ass. The walls of the house shudder.

Now I'm feeling like a bigshot. I try to yell "Clarity now!" but the words catch in my throat. I try again, and once again there's this awkward catch in my throat when I try. I feel humbled and a little embarrassed. Not wanting to get too caught up in this, I phase through the window out to what should be the front yard. Instead of this, though, I find myself standing by a pool.

A few different people are sitting around the pool in beach chairs. One guy who looks sort of like Jared Leto asks me whether I'm "from DreamViews". I tell him that I am and he says that he is too and that he used to go there a lot back in 2010. I don't really believe him but I decide that it'd be smart to give him some kind of password just for fun. I make something up and say it to him, and he nods, committing it to memory. (Too bad I forgot it immediately afterward. )

I stand at the edge of the pool, preparing to jump into it for Task of the Year Australia. I want to put a bunch of sand and corral into it and make it turn into the Great Barrier Reef like NyxCC suggested. As I do this, a tan guy dressed like a lifeguard stands there watching me. I'm a little uncomfortable that he's staring at me, but I go ahead with jumping into the pool.

I jump in a cannonball style so that my butt will strike the water first. But just as I hit the water, somehow the lifeguard is scooping me out of the pool with a leaf net. He says something about how unsafe what I'm doing is. I'm very annoyed by this and as I stand at the side of the pool contemplating what to do, I wake up.

I hold still for DEILD and after a little bit, a half-dream of an alleyway starts taking shape. I can navigate a bit but I'm not yet part of the scene. I can feel my arm sort of tucked behind the pillow and I try to imagine it waving around in a repetitive motion, hoping that this will draw me in. I try for a while, but after a bit the alley scene collapses.

I go for DEILD again, and get sharp auditory HI of my son "E" going "Yeah!!" followed by Wife saying, "Don't teach him that kind of thing!" It's very realistic and I'm pulled too far out to continue the dream chain.

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.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #114: The Vampire Apocalypse

Wife has opened a restaurant and somehow all of the recipes have been lost. She and I are in some place that looks like a choir room, desperately searching through a pile of hundreds of envelopes for the one that contains them. Suddenly I become lucid, but it's a very low level of lucidity. I grasp that I'm dreaming and I understand that this gives me awesome powers, but I have no idea that I could just ignore this whole recipe thing.

I point at the pile of envelopes, willing the recipes to emerge. One of the envelopes floats a couple of feet in the air and opens, freeing a few sheets of paper that I know have the recipes on them. I grab them out of the air and hand them to Wife. She starts talking excitedly and waving her hands in these grand gestures, but I soon wake up.

I hold still for DEILD, but after a brief wait emerge non-lucid sitting in a small, boxy room that's shaped vaguely like a confessional booth. My friend "Dragon" and I are laughing and swapping stories of all the stupid stuff we did when we were kids. From outside my friend "RF" knocks on the booth and then sort of phases or melts through the wall. I realize that this has to be a dream but immediately wake up.

Back down for DEILD, again winding up in a non-lucid, this time in the hallway of my childhood home. Our neighbor "Mr. G" from when I was a kid is wandering around in our backyard, holding a bag of lawn clippings. I know that he's helping me try to find a 4-leaf clover in this bag of clippings. He becomes angry that I'm not helping and starts throwing the lawn clippings everywhere. I suddenly remember trying to DEILD and become lucid again. There's a door at the back of the house that's not usually there and I walk toward it, preparing to phase. The door swings open just as I approach, though, and again, the dream ends.

I look for another DEILD and again come up non-lucid. I'm at home with Wife now and she's telling me a story of how someone was attacked by a vampire downtown today. We worry about what this means and whether she's safe going to work.

Time advances, and now it's early morning. The sun's just coming up and I'm at the back door, looking out over our back yard toward the horizon. I see a swarm of bats approaching and I know that overnight vampirism has become a plague that's spread throughout the world. I tell Wife that we have to hide, and we run upstairs to the bedroom to bunker ourselves in.

Once upstairs I peer out of a tiny window to the street below. About a dozen vampires are congregating on the street with a handful of human prisoners. The leader of the vampires, blonde and dressed completely in black, shouts bizarre warnings and threats to those of us holed up in our homes. He kicks one of the prisoners, a middle-aged man, to the ground, sprays him with liquid from some kind of squeeze bottle, and lights him on fire.

I duck down from the window, shaken and frightened. "They're killing everyone," I say to Wife. "Is this like what happens in The Passage? I haven't read that far yet." (The Passage is a book that I'm slowly reading.)

Wife nods. "It's exactly the same."

"Okay," I say. "What did they do? How do we fight these things?"

She shakes her head gravely. "I can't give spoilers."

I think this makes complete sense. "You're right. Maybe if we shoot them in the head...?" I now have the AR-15 in my hands.

"That won't work," she says. Then from out of nowhere, she very graphically and directly demands that we have sex. This is so completely out of character (particularly in a vampire apocalypse) that I realize it's all a dream.

"Don't worry," I say. "It's just a dream." I kiss her for a moment. In spite of her earlier insistences, the mood is completely non-sexual. I stand up, thinking about phasing outside.

"What are you doing?" she says. "Stay down!"

"This is a dream. There's nothing to worry about." But I can see that she doesn't believe me. I know that she's just a DC, but at this point I'm really attached. I decide that I'll just carry her out of this scene, change locations, and hopefully this nasty dream plot will die off. I kneel down to scoop her up as the dream fades...

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.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #101: Choke

I'm sitting in a car with Dad at a place that's a cross between Sonic and a Chinese take-out restaurant. We're pulled up next to one of those mic/speaker combos where you place your order and I'm debating whether to order sweet & sour chicken or just get a giant bucket of tater tots. (I don't actually eat like this. )

A guy who looks like Mako Iwamatsu sticks his head out of the main restaurant building and shouts something about "three orders of sweet & sour chicken". I get out of the car and approach to hear him better. Then Mako makes some remark about our order and something about dreaming. It's semi-amusing, so I chuckle politely and look up at the night sky. The stars look artificially bright and the moon has been replaced by a flying saucer! "This is a dream," I say, and immediately start walking.



I leave the restaurant parking lot, moving through an alley that dead-ends at an open door into a house. I go inside, exploring the house for a bit. It's nicely decorated and very realistic. I'm pleased with how vivid it looks -- classy carpeting, great lighting, really tasteful decor. I wonder why I suck so bad at decorating IWL if I can imagine scenes like this. It occurs to me that no matter how many LDs I have, part of me always thinks They can't really look that good, right? But they can and they do.

I'm a bit lost in the house and as I turn down one hallway, I suddenly find myself in a noisy European street scene. It feels like Germany. The fast transition surprises me and before I can think to speak gibberish to these DCs for Task of the Month, I round another corner and wind up back in the house again. Well that was weird.

For some reason this reminds me of my intent to get to the Alamo and meet up with Art. I decide getting outside will be the best way open up the map and get where I want. The closest internal wall of the house is brick (oddly enough), and without hesitating, I phase through it. There's nothing on the other side of the wall, though, and I wind up in the void.

Rubbing my hands together, I continue walking through the void. I imagine that I'm walking along a street outside. I can feel the roadway underneath my feet (which feel like they're in nothing but socks.) I keep walking forward, waiting for the new scene to form. After a while, I see a pattern of squareish lights that coalesces into the window of my darkened childhood bedroom. I leave immediately, phasing through the window into the street.

It's late at night and I'm outside on the street where I grew up. I try to figure out which way San Antonio (and the Alamo) would be from here... and totally get it wrong. When I look out at the horizon, I see a huge observation tower surrounded by some scaffolding, like it's under construction. Was there some kind of tower in San Antonio? (Yes, it turns out -- the Tower of the Americas.)



I start to zoom-teleport to the tower but the moment I begin to move, I swallow my gum. Swallow my what?? Did I go to bed chewing gum? I try to remember, worrying that it's now lodged in my throat IWL and that I'm about to be in big trouble. I freak out and the scene goes black. I manage to calm myself at the last minute but the dream is too far gone and quickly ends.