CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #2??: One Last Mission

I’m heading upstairs to change my lightbulbs, but arrive to find that we’ve got tons of people upstairs visiting while my father-in-law changes them for me. I feel embarrassed, as if it looks like I never take care of anything around the house. He even somehow installed light bulbs with little solar panels attached to them, which I’ve never even heard of!

I head downstairs, feeling inadequate. I see that we have a big video screen that greets people at the front door. I see that it’s programmed to show a big story about turncoat spies within some US government agency. It’s some kind of huge story and these traitors are all over the news. As I’m heading into the kitchen, thinking about this fancy video monitor and the fancy lightbulbs, I realize that this feels a whole lot like a dream.

My father-in-law joins me downstairs and I say, “Hey, [Father-in-law], I’ve got an even cooler way to change lightbulbs!” I gesture at one of the recess lights in the kitchen ceiling and with a couple quick hand gestures, pull it out, summon a new one, and place it into the socket. It lights up!

He looks amazed and asks me how I did that. “This is actually a lucid dream,” I admit. “You can really do anything here.” He nods in acknowledgement, still looking impressed.

I recall my conversation yesterday with Iokheira where we were talking about cool dream ideas that people had never, ever done. I chose one of the ones we had decided was awesome enough that we were going to try: werewolf skydiving! :canislucidus: I phase through an external, curtained door out onto a back patio.

There’s a long row of side-by-side deck chairs here, with lots of people lounging around and relaxing. I look at the woman closest to the wall, but no, this isn’t Iokheira . One chair over, though is a group of three women sitting together, and on the left is Iokheira ! She hops out of the chair and we hug.

“It’s great to see you!” I say.

“Great to see you too!” she says and then starts nodding as I’m about to say, “Do you remember what we’d planned to try in this dream?” I can tell that she already knows the plan is werewolf skydiving.

Iokheira throws on a pair of aviator sunglasses, grabs my hand, and strides forward. We walk through a large yard into some suburban streets. She says, “Dylan (??) and Romero tried to tell me that this is my last mission. We’ll see about that...” I get the idea that she’s some kind of spy or secret agent. “The agency’s in [turmoil? chaos?] right now.”

I’m strongly sensing a backstory where she’s an agent in some kind of secret government agency. I wonder if it’s some kind of special division for werewolves. We go past a bus stop to a grassy field, while she continues to explain some more of the backstory. I wonder whether there will be a cliff at the end of this field for a possible BASE jump! Before we get to anything like that, though, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #265: Pinbasketball

I’m lying in bed in a false awakening, frustrated to be tossing and turning instead of lucid dreaming. I get a vague sense of floatiness and decide to roll out OBE-style. I imagine my legs oozing over the side of the bed onto the floor and now I’m on my feet in my bedroom, fully lucid.

I remember my intent to slow down and take my time, inspired by one of Dreamer’s recent lucid dreams (this amazing one.) I look back at the bed and see Wife still lying there. For some reason I feel a little scared to approach, like this might destabilize things. But no, the whole idea with this dream is not to be afraid of stuff.

I float up on the bed and stand over Wife. I watch for a moment just appreciating her beauty. I'm attracted to her and fascinated by her realism I don’t feel tempted to engage in sexy shenanigans. Wife opens her eyes a bit and looks at me sleepily. “Poo,” she says firmly. “Poo poo poo poo poo.” I laugh and say something like, “Okay, I’ll let you sleep…”

I phase through the wall into the night and the dream feels very dark. I don’t worry about it and instead just rub my hands together. They feel numb and distant, so I imagine that I’m wearing thick, leathery gloves, which I peel off. More hand-rubbing, vision returns, and now it looks like early morning on a mix between my street, an amusement park, and the Las Vegas strip. I walk for about 10 minutes or so, just enjoying this, passing opulent hotels, workers sweeping the streets, a stone statue.



Eventually I wander into a plaza that looks a little like a Disney World food court. I remember my goal of summoning Iokheira and transforming into wolves. :canislucidus: I hold out my right hand and look at the ground, expecting her shadow to form. But instead she bounds into the scene from the right and jumps right in front of me, smiling hugely.

I give her a hug and ask, “Did you want to do the wolf transformation right away or should we look around first?” She says that she’d “rather play” so we set off, looking around the park. We talk for a bit about lucid dreaming and (I think) video games. I describe how I’m trying to use Dreamer’s method of slowing the dream. I remark that we have “tons of time” and she agrees.

We wind up in an area filled with carnival games and enter a building that has this cool-looking game that’s a combination of pinball and one of those games where you have to shoot a basketball. In this one you throw the basketball into a hole, where it flies up a ramp, bounces off of a wall, and hurtles toward the basket. We play for a while, and I notice that when I get too into the game, both Iokheira and I forget to give the other person a turn.



We decide to keep looking around, and as we’re leaving I notice that Iokheira now looks a decade or so older than in waking life and I mention this. As we pass by a line of 5 women waiting in line to buy something, I see that she’s transformed further, and now looks like a completely different person, a woman with short brown hair in her early 50s. The woman looks like she feels ill and asks me to help her. I scoop her up and carry her outside where we crouch on the ground. She apologizes: “I’m sorry that I don’t look right. I don’t think I’m her anymore.” I tell her not to worry and that I’ll help her either way.

The woman lies down on her left side and vomits loudly onto the plaza stones. I feel enormous compassion, and I sit with her for a while, rubbing her back a bit until she’s able to sit up. She seems shorter now than before but also like she feels okay. She again apologizes for not being Iokheira anymore. I reassure her that “this has been a great lucid” as the dream starts to fade. As I’m pondering my next move, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #263: Judo and Giants

As I lay back down post-WBTB, I get the sense that I’m starting to fall asleep. Just before bed, Dreamer had skyped me her most recent dream where she transitioned to WILD by rolling onto her side and partly more onto her stomach. (This one!) I try the same thing, worrying for a second that moving will spoil things, but it’s all fine. There’s a low buzzing sound and a dream starts to take shape. After a little more patience, I find myself outside on a street at night.

Among the people going by, I see a lost boy wandering around calling out for his mother. I ask him who his mother is and he says that it’s RBBB, someone I know from college. I decide that she’ll be close by, and sure enough I see her kneeling in an alcove carved out of a nearby brick building. I bring the boy to her and say, “Hey, [RBBB]! It’s [Canis]. Your son was looking for you.” She gives me a curt, rather cold nod and goes back to fervently praying as her son curls up next to her.

I review my goals and remember my two main ones: first, my 5-year-old son E’s idea to find him, take him to a playground so he could play with Elsa and Anna from Frozen. Second, Iokheira’s (aka NewArtemis) idea to find her and transform into wolves. :canislucidus:

I head down the street to start looking for E, but the DCs on the street start running in terror from something up ahead. There’s a stone giant stomping along the road ahead of me, and he grabs a car from the side of the road and flings it across the street into a grassy courtyard.



He comes straight for me, and I try to think of some way not to turn this into a fight, but it’s just not coming to me. The stone giant seems way too hostile, and the only option that comes to me is to try to end the combat as quickly as possible. I move my hands away from each other in a ripping gesture to pantomime tearing the stone giant apart. It works, and the giant blows apart into a huge scatter of boulders and pebbles.

I hurry past, but almost immediately the rocks start rolling back toward one another so that the giant can reform. Soon I catch sight of his shadow chasing after me, but I resolve not to turn around and instead just ignore him. Sure enough, he vanishes!

I come to the top of a tall series of stacked platforms that descend into the ground, sort of like a reverse parking garage. Every floor is packed with these large, amazing water fountains that flow into one another. I drop down a few levels, expecting to find my son E. And he’s there! He’s curled up in the corner crying, and I scoop him up in my arms. “Hey, don’t cry, buddy! This is a lucid dream! I’m going to try to take you to meet Elsa and Anna!” This settles him down, and I leap off the side of the fountain structure, floating softly about 80 feet or so to the ground.

At the bottom is a playground! I hop up on one of the wooden structures and set E down so that he can walk on his own. Together we cross a wooden bridge and in the middle we meet Elsa and Anna! “[E], look who it is!” They look similar to their appearance in the films, although their facial features occasionally rearrange in unusual, Picasso-like ways. E runs up to them and hugs Anna around the leg.



A crowd of DCs start pouring in, and we get separated for a moment. I feel a loss of stability and grab onto this old guy’s stomach to restabilize. To my surprise, I can feel that he’s clearly got abs. I say, “Dude, you’re like 60! How have you got abs?... Oh right, you’re a DC.” He and some of the other DCs laugh.

I return to where E and the Frozen princesses were, but they’ve been replaced by clear imposters. (The Elsa imposter is non-animated, black, and in her mid-50s!) I talk with the imposters for a bit but decide to move on to Iokheira’s idea, so I leave the playground, finding myself walking down the stairs in a house.

Up ahead I see Iokheira sprint by! I follow her path into the shadows of a living room, but when I get there, she’s gone. I turn back and look around for a bit before someone else comes down the stairs I entered from, a young strawberry blonde woman in her mid-20s. I ask her where Iokheira is and the woman answers that “Sorry, [Iokheira] doesn’t live here anymore.”

As I’m turning to leave, the strawberry blonde woman runs up and starts aggressively kissing me. It’s exciting to some degree but also a little scary. She pulls away for a moment to admit to me that she’s a “very slobbery kisser”, and sure enough, she becomes quite slobbery. Then she says, “And check this out!” As I watch, her left eye moves into the center of her forehead. She checks my face, seemingly expecting a horrified reaction. Instead I laugh and for a moment she seems disappointed not to have frightened me. She returns to aggressive kissing, and after things move on to sexytime, the dream fades...

I hold on for DEILD and I’m quickly back. I’m roaming the hallway of a house, and I continue a room-to-room search for Iokheira. In one of the rooms the light switch doesn’t work and I remark out loud that “That’s a bullshit schema!” I leave the hallway and enter a huge cathedral-like chamber that’s snaked through with all of these suspended balconies.

I run along one of these balconies until I’m confronted by an archeress, a brown-haired woman in her mid-40s. I try to ask for her help, but she starts saying a variety of strange, threatening things and looks like she’s going to take a shot at me. I grab onto her and do a Dreamer-style sacrifice JUDO throw, and it totally works! The archeress is still yelling at me, but I run away from her into a new room as the dream ends.

Finally got one for the challenge! Now we've got a competition...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #214: The Challenge

I have a false awakening in the early morning, worried that I’ve run out of time to have another lucid. I get up, pee, and return to bed. To my dismay Wife has already removed the sheets from the bed. The clock says “5:50” and I complain to her that this is way too early to be up. “This is so unlike you!” I whine. She’s too busy to pay much attention.

I walk over to the gym and lay down on the floor, tossing and turning for a while. I have another false awakening in a field near a tent where a movie is being filmed. I walk around and explore for a while, feeling oddly comfortable and in charge, like this is my place even if it’s not familiar to me. I enter a nearby building where I’m required to remove my shoes, then move further on to find my friends PM and RP standing under an open rooftop. I try in vain to point out how much the clouds look like the ones we’ve worked on in our game project, but they’re too busy to pay attention.

I move further through the building, moving through a confusing maze riddled with dead ends until I emerge in a retro arcade. I stop at a machine that’s a multicade which features Street Fighter II and a library of 8-bit Nintendo games. I’m considering firing up Double Dragon when I realize that this has to be a dream.

I move outward from the arcade back to the main entrance. I’m still shoeless, so I produce some running shoes and walk off into the night. I’m on a concrete driveway and hordes of DCs on bicycles go whizzing by, not a trace of lights or reflectors on their bikes and bodies. They’re super hard to see, getting too close, and making me nervous, so I step off into the grass and move over to a sidewalk.

Now I remember my challenge goal of trying to summon Dreamer. I reach my hand behind my back, expect her to grab it, and immediately feel someone grab on. I turn around and she’s right there, purple hair and all! When I see her I exclaim, “Well that worked!” She seems to find this hilarious, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over with laughter. I try to say something else but the dream destabilizes into a false awakening at my parents’ house.

My mom asks me if I need to go to work and I tell her no, just let me sleep as long as possible. She asks me to help clean their now-green pool (false memory, they have no pool) but I tell her that I’ll do it after I get some sleep. I crash back down on the bed, transitioning into…

...a false awakening on a bare mattress in a dark, candle-lit room. I get up and see that there are 4 or 5 similar mattresses here, too. There’s an Asian woman in her early 50s laying on one bed, tossing and turning restlessly. Some unseen male narrator tells me that, “She wants to dream but in here, she can’t. In this place, nobody can.” I’m disturbed by this, and I move toward the wall, hopeful that I’m dreaming right now. I phase right through, and the wall crumbles in cubes around me -- lucid again!

I float about twenty feet down to a poolside area with ankle deep water next to wall covered by a large mirror. The dream threatens to fade but I rub my hands together and splash around in the water. I again remember my summoning goal and reach my hand behind my back, summoning Dreamer for a second time. For some reason, I point to the mirror to help “prove” to her that she’s been summoned and say, “Look! It worked again!”

Dreamer seems fascinated by this, reaching out to the mirror and then waving her hands back and forth. “Look at this,” she says, bending forward at the waist a couple of times as her reflection copies her actions. I wonder whether this counts as two points in the challenge or just one.

We walk back inside and it’s another creepy room with those anti-dreaming mattresses. Dreamer stiffens her fingers like a spear and drives them into one of the mattresses and digs around like she’s looking for something but doesn’t seem to find it. I ask her what she’s looking for but she doesn’t say. I sweep my eyes around the room but when I look back to where I expect to find Dreamer, instead there’s a brown-haired girl of about 8. I kneel down and ask, “Are you Dreamer?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look and then walks out of the room.

There’s a mirror on the wall here and I get the idea to try summoning NewArtemis into the dream now. I keep watching myself in the mirror as I try to perform this summon, but it keeps failing. I realize I'm making this harder for myself but I can’t seem to help it. I want to see what she looks like when she actually materializes. I give three separate efforts to summon NewArtemis, but they all fail. I feel like something is wrong with me or with this room. Now I try to summon Dreamer. Another failure.

I feel like my mojo is fading out in the room, so I run for the wall and throw myself through it. There’s a glass shattering effect and now I’m falling through the darkness, air rushing past me. I fall like this for a few seconds until I wake up.

A timely rescue from the "void"/re-stabilization thanks to NewArtemis!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #169: Second Rescue

I’m an astronaut being prepped for a solo spaceflight mission. On this mission, I’ll be studying how various things smell when one is travelling through space. This all feels incredibly important and the pressure of the job is starting to stress me out.

I do a simulated flight in some kind of simulator that is really just a cheesy little room with stars painted on it. Something about this freaks me out, and I leave the sim, hurrying down a hall and thinking I’m just not cut out for this job. Somewhere along the way it occurs to me that fortunately this is all a dream.

I end up in a two-story library, wood-panelled, and filled with quietly studying DCs. I’m walking along a broad balcony that encircles a lower part of the library that’s filled with bookstacks. Somehow the dream starts to feel like it’s destabilizing, and I grab onto the corner of a nearby table. The dream loses most of its color and the frame rate drops. I just see a slow series of static images, each one moving horizontally and unsteadily across my field of view for a second or so before the next grayish image pops up.

Everything feels horribly unstable and I’m sure it’s all about to end. I decide to just go for my old trick of directly appealing for help and call for NewArtemis. I hold out my right hand and call her as “NewArtemis” a couple of times before remembering to just use her real name.

It doesn’t seem to be working for a moment, but after I’ve waited a bit, it finally works! A hand grabs my right shoulder and another grabs my right hand. “I have to come a long way to get here! I was on my way the whole time but you have to give me a second.” She’s speaking very rapidly. “You’ll be fine, there’s nothing wrong with this dream, here, let me fix this…”

She grips my shoulder and just sort of shakes the hell out of me. It’s surprisingly strong and bone-rattling, but it seems to nicely stabilize the scene. I tell her something along the lines of, “You’re as strong as a chimp.” She laughs and makes some kind of response that I can’t remember.

We move along the balcony where a cop has posted himself. He looks over and makes a remark about how I’m supposed to be “doing my job” preparing for my trip into space. He’s very unfriendly, speaking and acting as if he wants to arrest me. “Let’s go down this way,” I say to NewArtemis, and we float down to the first floor. The other DCs view this with suspicion, and I try to keep myself from getting panicky and feeling persecuted.

We exit through an adjacent room, wood-panelled and very elegant. As we’re exiting, a hulking, ogre-like guy comes through the door toward us. I have a false memory that he and I are friends. “Hey man, there’s a cop behind me. Take care of him, will you?” He smirks and nods.

“You know that guy?” asks Art, referring to the ogre.

“Yeah, that’s a buddy of mine,” I say, totally buying into the false memory. We go through the door into a darkened restaurant. Through a glass window on our left we see a brightly-lit daycare center. A little girl looks out at us and waves. We wave back as we walk toward the back of the restaurant.

We approach a booth where a man is inspecting an old record album. The cover is this incredibly vivid picture of a blonde woman in her late 30s apparently named “Ezzilon”. I’m amazed by how vivid the picture on the album is. I’m thinking that we’ll phase outside through the window when I notice that Art’s reflection has changed and she now looks like a mix between herself and “Ezzilon”. It’s a surprising effect and as I’m turning to check for myself, the dream ends.

Long dream! I think that in all this dream may have gone for about 30 minutes. It's got me excited about the Great Pyramid Task of the Year again!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #139: Kunoichi

I have a false awakening in some kind of luxury hotel suite, feeling frustrated that I failed to have a lucid dream. All of the lights are on, and a digital clock on the kitchen counter tells me that it's 4:45 AM. Okay, I still have a little time left to have a lucid dream.

Suddenly I realize that Wife isn't here and I panic. I have a false memory that she went out just as I was going to sleep and I start freaking out that something has happened to her. Two men walk into the suite from the adjoining balcony and I run at them, demanding that they tell me where she is. They look bemused by the intensity of my reaction and I wonder whether this could all be a dream. I try the nose pinch reality check and become lucid.

Ignoring these two random guys, I phase through a glass door out to the balcony. Rather than go leaping off, I float up a few feet first (just to be safe) before flying out into the early morning sky. I'm about 80 feet up, and I swoop down toward a park that I see below me, landing near a tree. I notice that the tree looks amusingly pixellated and I remember my goal of trying to maximize dream vividness. I focus on drawing out the detail of the tree, feeling its bark and studying its needles until it becomes extremely vivid.

I follow a dirt path toward a mall, scooping up a handful of reddish dirt and (for some reason) popping it into my mouth. (It tastes about like you'd expect.) At this point, there's a long segment of the dream where my memory gets a little hazy, but I recall that it was fairly long, involved me travelling through a shopping mall and flying around a bit between levels. I remember flying close by a harried-looking mom struggling to manage a pair of kids and a pair of shopping bags, a bright central area, and at one point a black guy in a purple dress shirt gives me a thumbs up when I fly by.

Finally I leave the mall through an emergency exit and emerge in an alley. A man slouches lazily against the wall and farther away a dark-haired teenage girl is sitting on a stack of shipping palettes. I look at each of them in turn and they immediately return my gaze. I'm struck by the subtlety in the way their faces move, blink, and shift so realistically.

As I'm deciding which way to go down this alley, I remember the Africa Task of the year (fix the Great Sphinx then ride her to the top of the Great Pyramid.) I decide that the Great Pyramid is just at the end of the alley, imagine it in detail, then turn around with the image still firmly in my end.

I'm shocked by how well this works. I walk out of the alley onto a windy landscape of sand dunes. In the distance I see an enormous version of the Great Pyramid dominating the horizon, probably four times larger than the real thing. Dark storm clouds roll violently above the Pyramid. At the top of the Pyramid, the wind is so strong that I see stones rolling off of the top and tumbling down the side.



I run over the dunes toward the Pyramid and as I get closer I see not just one Great Sphinx but probably a dozen of them scattered near the Pyramid's base. Some of them are in a horrible state of disrepair, but this doesn't worry me. If I can fix her nose, I can fix everything else too.

As I'm approaching the top of one dune, a pair of female ninja dressed in red appear and come racing toward me, each wielding a pair of sai. The first one leaps at me and I force-push her to the side so that she flies past me. The second I force-push directly forward and she flops onto her back on the dune. I walk past her and I watch over my shoulder as the two of them regroup for another attack. I hold out my hands toward them and jokingly say "Now kiss!" They glare at me like I'm a huge pervert and I feel a little embarrassed. (This is a nerdy reference to this meme.) One ninja gives the other a quick peck on the cheek and then they return to glaring at me.

I say something about how I was only joking and that I drank a lot of peppermint tea before bed, and as I'm going on and on explaining myself, the two ninja start making out. I realize that all my blah blah blah is only making things worse and I'm feeling sexy and distracted. I turn back toward the Pyramid but the landscape doesn't seem stable anymore. I wind up in the void.

I rub my hands together to stay locked in and start feeling the floor, trying to turn the ground back into sand so I can return to the Pyramid. I go at this for a good while. After roughly a full minute, the floor starts feeling like carpeting and I emerge in what looks like a dormitory. I walk out into a nearby hall and run into a college friend that I've lost touch with (and is notorious for being hard to reach.) I ask him how he's been and he gives me an email address (!) and promises to respond if I email him at that address. I make him repeat the promise (which amuses him) and bid him goodbye before phasing through a glass door to a second-floor walkway.

My father-in-law is standing nearby with a few elderly Asian men and women. I jump onto the railing and start pulling myself onto the awning when I feel hands grasping at my legs and shouts of "You'll hurt yourself!" and "Are you crazy?" They pull me back down to the balcony and my father-in-law starts explaining to the other DCs that I'm "special". I fly down the walkway to provide a visual aid and the DCs react by speaking in astonished Mandarin. I think about how amazingly realistic this Mandarin sounds but then think, oh yeah... of course it sounds realistic to me. It's what I think Mandarin sounds like.

I fly off of the walkway, landing in front of an entrance to the same mall I was at earlier. I decide to retrace my steps through the mall, and I pass through a store that sells little pet sweaters for tiny dogs. Little sweater-clad dogs roam everywhere. I exit the store and it isn't long before I have a false awakening back in the same dorm room, no longer lucid.

I walk outside to find that it's daylight out. NewArtemis and her husband are standing nearby. We say hey, not at all surprised to see one another. Art lays down on the sidewalk, still participating in the conversation but also trying to sleep by curling up with this big canvas bookbag she's holding. I tell Art and her husband about the dream I just had, mentioning that I went through a store "that sells sweaters for those little yappy dogs". Immediately a little white yappy dog comes crawling out of Art's book bag, dressed in a green sweater. "Seriously?" I say, feeling like a jerk. "I'm sorry." She laughs and says it's cool.

Art seems to kind of fall asleep and I talk with her husband for a while about dogs, telling him they did the right thing by not getting huge, crazy dogs like us. I look down and notice that Art's hair has changed and become really curly and sort of red. It seems weird to me but since her husband doesn't say anything, I figure this is normal. He and I talk about other random stuff for a while until 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.

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.

Finally broke that dry spell! This was a really fun one. Emotions got the best of me at the end, but it was great while it lasted.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #113: Woodrow the Giant

I'm in a first-person shooter video game where I'm entering an airport. One of the people I'm with slips some kind of blaster into my pocket as we're walking through airport security. Won't that set off the metal detectors? I think of all this as just a game, though, so I give it a try.

An alarm sounds, surprisingly soft but unmistakable. I keep walking, just in case they think it was someone else behind me. As I head into a broad, bustling concourse, I see a few security guys heading toward me from different directions. They're dressed in plain clothes, which makes them seem less official and more menacing. I change directions and they change with me. I know I'm caught. One guy has his hand on his right hip like he's ready to pull a gun, so I decide to be first. I pull the banana-shaped blaster out of my jacket pocket and start shooting. My first shot catches the guy right in the chest and he crumples to the floor.

I immediately realize that this isn't a video game, but a dream. I remember goals: meet Art at the Alamo and Tasks of the Month. Since this is already a video game scenario, I think that it'll be easy to pull Art in. "[NewArtemis], I know you're right there behind me." No response. By now the other security guys have drawn their guns, although they oddly have not fired yet.

I shoot one more of them and he collapses to the ground. Still, nobody returns fire. "[NewArtemis], a little help!" A woman walking nearby turns around. She's wearing jeans and has dirty blonde hair, not at all the usual hair color for Art's DC, but it's definitely her!

"Hey there!" I say, thinking that it'll be fun to have her take care of the last of these security guys. But when I look for them, they're gone -- everyone is walking through the airport concourse like nothing has happened. I turn back to Art. "You dyed your hair...?" I half-comment, half-ask. (I sincerely doubt this.)

"Hey," she says, with a wry half-smile, ignoring the whole hair thing.

We hug and I say, "Okay, that's Basic. You feel like punching Woodrow Wilson?" (Advanced Task of the Month.)

She nods. "I'd love to punch that guy." (We have never discussed Woodrow Wilson, so I'm likely projecting here.)

I glance around for Wilson. "Let's do it," I say to Art, and then call out to the crowd: "Woodrow Wilson! I know you're here!" We walk along the concourse for perhaps twenty feet when I spot a huge man to our left. Somehow, even with everything around him brightly lit, he's hidden in shadow. The man is at least ten feet tall, probably closer to twelve, and he's flanked by two normal-sized men who don't look like they're doing anything in particular.

"Is that you, Woodrow Wilson?" As soon as I say this, the man's face is illuminated and it's definitely Wilson -- long, expressionless face, glasses, the whole bit. Weirdly, he's dressed in the style of a Catholic priest with a cassock and clerical collar. He strides toward us quickly and moves up very close to crowd me.

Wilson doesn't attack but just stands there towering over me, no expression on his face, his eyes unfocused. I've lost some emotional control and I'm starting to feel fearful. Art circles around on my right, grimacing a little, her hands balled into fists. She can help me, but I know that for Task I know that I need to hit the guy. I try to calm myself down while imagining myself leaping up and doing some kind of superman punch. I'm freaking out a little bit, though, and the dream falls apart.

Although this wasn't the right location, I did at least successfully find/conjure/whatever NewArtemis. Forgot all about swapping gestures and keywords, but it's all good... dry spell broken!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #99: Walking the Path

I'm walking a beautiful nature trail. I sense that this is a place of peace and sanctuary outside of a hospital. I remind myself that I need to be sure that I'm not dreaming and I quickly realize that this is a dream.

I hear two female voices from the trail up ahead and somehow I know that this is NewArtemis and her cousin. (No clue whether she even has a cousin IWL.) Art's cousin appears first, with Art trailing maybe 15 feet behind. "Come on!" calls Cousin. "You were right! It worked!"

Cousin walks right past me, saying, "Hey! I'm [NewArtemis]'s cousin. She was so nervous this wouldn't work. She's been spinning her ring nonstop. That's what she does when she's nervous." With that, Cousin disappears from the scene, never to return.

"Hey, [NewArtemis]!" I say, giving her a hug. "Good to finally see you!" ("Finally see you" is a little weird since I've encountered Art's DC a bunch of times -- was I implying this was "the real her" for the first time? Or just flapping my gums?)

"Did you just break your dry spell, CL?"

"I did!" We continue walking in the direction Art and Cousin were going, which has me doubling back toward wherever I came from. "Dude, I'm trying so hard to remember what I was supposed to do when we met up. I remember parasailing but I don't think that's right."

She rubs her forehead or kind of scratches her head. "I don't remember anything either. Definitely not that we're supposed to go parasailing." (Art called this one right -- the parasailing thing was Task of the Month, not anything we'd talked about.)

I hear road noise from nearby and I make some kind of comment about wondering where it's coming from. The scene shifts to where we're walking through the corridor of a hospital. I remember something I wanted to ask. "Hey, is it true what your cousin said? That you spin your ring when you're nervous?"

She shakes her head. "No, that's total bullshit. My ring is kind of loose in the winter though." On the nature trail it felt like spring to me, and I'm able to remember that IWL it's summer.

Art holds up her hands to demonstrate and I see that she's wearing rings on four or five of her fingers. Then she kind of wiggles her hands and now she has even more rings, including a thumb ring. She does this ring reconfiguration trick a few more times and I think it looks super cool. I wonder whether she's got the right number of fingers but she's moving around too much for me to count.

We come to a T-junction where another hall comes from the left to meet the one that we're walking. I see my two boys E and R running off down the hall to make mischief. Art asks why we wound up here of all places rather than the Alamo. I say that I don't know. The dream 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.

This WILD was amazing. Very vivid and realistic, rich content, successful summoning, and a Task of the Month success (plus a failure.) Forgive the length of this entry, but the dream was 25-30 minutes, and a lot happened! (Edit: After further review... best LD ever.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #90: The Night of the Weredog

I experience a sharp transition that feels like a short fall face-first onto a paved surface. My arms are splayed out over my head and I can't move. I can see just a bit and it looks like I'm on a basketball court at night, but I'm afraid to open my eyes more to look around.

I'm totally paralyzed. I'm conscious and aware but for some reason can't move, and I think I'm experiencing something similar to REM atonia. I know it's all in my head, though, so I start peeling my dream-arms out of this fake physical body by rotating them forward into the ground using thought rather than my muscles. It takes a little effort, but eventually I feel this set of "dream-arms" separate out and move independently. Soon the rest of my dream-body follows and I'm able to exit completely and get to my feet.

It is a basketball court -- four of them in fact, all arranged together in one giant rectangle. I'm alone on this court but teenagers are playing small, informal games on the other courts. The courts are surrounded by concrete stands and a metal railing. For fun, I stunt-jump off of the metal railing and land back on the court, then see Wife approaching out of the darkness. She's dressed for bed and looks groggy. "You're still up?" she says. "Shouldn't you get to bed?"

"Shhh, it's okay," I say. "Go back to sleep. I'm having one of my dreams." She nods, yawns, and wanders off into the darkness. False awakening averted.

I roam around the basketball court for a while before regaining focus on my goals for the dream -- summon NewArtemis and have her do the werewolf tranformation for Advanced Task of the Month. I put my right hand out for the handshake summon and look away, pointing my gaze over my left shoulder. I don't feel anything at first, but I'm relaxed about it. I know it'll work if I just give it time. I imagine the sensation of a hand pressing into my palm, and then slowly, vaguely it takes shape. After a few moments, I give the "hand" a squeeze and it squeezes back.

Without looking, I check for a forearm, probing all the way up to the elbow. "[NewArtemis], is that you?"

"Hey! Yeah I'm here!" Cool, I think, but I want to be sure the summon's really solid before I look. I check the DC's arm -- quite thin, but it's there. I reach her shoulder and I'm a little worried when it just feels like bare skin.

"So before I look... uh, what's the story with your clothing situation?"

"It's fine, I'm dressed!" she says. "Come on, quit worrying so much!"

Slowly, I turn to look. I'm shocked to see that I'm shaking hands with a short, middle-aged woman in a blue business suit. There's about a half second of sudden blackness and then a hard scene transition -- now I'm shaking hands with NewArtemis (no longer the businesswoman and back to her usual DC appearance) on some beachside boardwalk at night. Success! "Told you!" she crows. "Let's go!" She sprints past a burly, mustachioed man eating an ice cream cone, heading toward the sand. I follow, flying to keep up.

As she reaches the beach sand, she notices that I'm flying. She looks annoyed. "You know, I can't seem to get my flying to work right now." I notice that I'm unable to fly more than a few feet off of the ground. I try a Hulk jump and can only manage a measly 20 feet or so. Seeing this, she tries a Hulk jump of her own and manages about 50 feet. "Ha!"

There are some dunes along the shore and we practice competitively Hulk jumping up and down the dunes as we continue along the water. After doing this for a bit, we come to a long line of black-robed cultists standing at the top of a dune in a long series of rows, torches in hand. They're droning and chanting, obviously in the middle of performing some dark ritual. There are probably 50 of them in total and I think that this looks like a perfect place to go for the "mythical creature" Task of the Month. "[NewArtemis]! Do your werewolf transformation! These guys are just begging to get eaten by a werewolf."



She looks doubtful. "I'm not so sure," she says. "Isn't this just a bunch of college kids doing a fraternity initiation?"

Just as she says this, one of the "evil acolytes" flips his hood back. He's a friendly-looking blonde guy with a goofy smile. "Hey guys! Sorry if we freaked you out! We're just a bunch of college kids doing a fraternity initiation!" (He uses her precise wording.)

I sigh. We continue for a little while longer, coming to a well-lit swimming pool. "Maybe we should go ahead now and do your werewolf transformation while we're thinking about it," I suggest, and the moment I say this, she changes fast into a big, black dog, bounds ahead of me, and leaps joyfully into the pool! She splashes playfully in the pool for a while, panting and grinning.



But as she kicks up more water, the playful splashing turns into thrashing and now the black dog has turned into my 3-year-old son and he's sinking fast. I'm still aware that it's a dream so even though I badly want to pull him out of the water, I don't feel as freaked out as I would in waking life. I dive into the pool and even underwater I can hear my son calling to me. I can see and breathe without any trouble and I swim to the bottom of the pool, scoop him up, then fly back out of the water, landing poolside to tend to him. He seems unharmed and the moment I set him down, he runs off into a nearby grotto.

I follow my son into the grotto, a low-ceilinged cave with a shallow pool of water, partially bricked walls, and some form of dim light that reflects off the water and plays across the cave ceiling. I find that my son E has changed back into NewArtemis in human form. "Sorry about the pool thing, man," Art says, rolling her eyes. "Hey, do Task of the Month on these DCs!" She gestures at a family of tourists that are exploring the grotto. (The task is to tell a DC they're not real and see their reaction.)

I'm impressed that she reminded me of this. "Good idea! Hey kid," I say, addressing a boy of about 11, "you're not real."

"Nuh-uhh..." the kid counters, looking cross and uncomfortable. Okay, that should be good for a Basic completion, but I'm looking for more.

Now I address a bearded man in his mid-60s, who I assume is the boy's grandfather. "You're not real. This is all happening inside my dream."

"Nonsense," the grandfather says, "you're not real. I'll prove it." He flicks me on the left arm, looking proud of himself. I counterargue by levitating him a couple of feet off of the ground and setting him back down. He blubbers for a moment, then looks off at one of the cave walls, mentally processing this existential crisis. I feel a little bad for him.

"[NewArtemis], you should do this too, get those Basic wings," I say, only partly joking. She doesn't respond, and when I look over, she's changed into a man in his late 20s, short-haired, prematurely balding, and slumped against the wall in fatigue. He mumbles something about how long the dream has been and how tired it's made him. I throw the guy over my shoulder and carry him out of the grotto. When I set him down outside, he's turned back into a tired-looking NewArtemis. "Are you okay?" I ask. She says that she is, but everything has started to feel wobbly and unstable.

Suddenly, the whole scene rocks and something pitches us forward. We both yelp and I fall flat on my face, my hands flailing out in front of me. I'm semi-paralyzed and the scene has gone dark, but I've managed to grab onto NewArtemis' left ankle where it feels like she's wearing some kind of thick winter sock. There's a loud rumbling in the background that sounds like an earthquake. "I can still move!" yells NewArtemis over the noise and she drags me slowly forward across some kind of rough gravel. My face is smashed down into the gravel so I can't respond. She keeps hauling us forward for about 15 more seconds before the scene collapses into...

...a false awakening in some unknown house. Mom is here and I excitedly start telling her about the incredible LD that I just had, going over as many details as I can recall. She tells me to keep my voice down -- my son R is sleeping in the next room over. I apologize, continuing the recollection in a softer tone of voice. After a while, this scene fades, too, and I'm awake.

This was a great LD for breaking a dry spell! No progress on tasks, but some fun action, a DV member cameo, and what feels like progress on keeping caffeine dreams stable. As usual, the last thing that I read during WBTB (in this case, a Visitor Message from NewArtemis) has a significant impact on my dream content.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #79: The Hall of Letters

I'm sitting on the side of the mountain, looking across a green valley at another mountain that's dotted with caves. A person sits in each of these distant caves. I recognize my college friend RS and somehow I can talk to him even across this huge distance. The weather is sunny, clear, and beautiful, so I casually say to RS, "Isn't the day amazing?"

"It is!" he says, and suddenly blankets and rugs come pouring out of the mouths of these faraway caves. The blankets and rugs go tumbling and sliding down the side of the mountain to the valley below. Fascinated, I wander into the valley, not sure what to make of what I'm seeing.

Now the valley is teeming with hundreds of people. Each of them spreads out a picnic blanket, removes their shirt, and flops down onto their stomachs to sun themselves. I see RS take a spot of his own ahead of me and to the left and I realize that I am now holding a blanket as well. I start scoping out a spot of my own.

As I'm looking around, I see AA, a mutual summer crush from high school. I want to say hi but when she removes her shirt I see that unlike the rest of the female DCs, she's not wearing a bikini top underneath. I turn away, not wanting to get caught staring. I lay out my blanket and remove my shirt, looking forward to feeling the sun on my skin. But when I check, I find that I have another shirt on underneath my original. "This is a dream..." I tell myself, and almost immediately Hulk-jump out of the valley, thinking of the Great Wall of China.

As I'm soaring through the air, the scene quickly darkens and soon I'm in the void. "This is fine," I tell myself, "I can do this all night." I rub my hands together and feel my forearms, drawing myself into my dream body. With my left hand I reach down and massage my knee cap, extending my right hand for aid. I beg for help, saying, "Bail me out. Pull me into a new scene."

A smallish hand, seemingly female, grips mine and yanks me forward. A voice says, "Hey! It's [NewArtemis]! I know you can't see yet, but we need to keep running!" I obey, and I sense that we're running through the hallways of some building.

I start getting flashes of imagery -- signs with arrows and strange, all-caps letter patterns like "ABCD ->" and "<- PQDELJH ->" (the first one was definitely in the dream, but the second is a reconstruction/guess.) Seconds later, I'm in the halls running, my vision restored. Art says something along the lines of, "Okay, you're good now," and drops my hand.

I hear the running footsteps of pursuers, so I begin floating so that I can get a look behind us. I move a few feet ahead of Art, turn around, and start floating backward. A squad of frightening-looking Enclave Soldiers (from Fallout 3) is pursuing us, perhaps 50 feet behind. "It's those guys from Fallout," I say, not able to remember what they're called. Art doesn't appear particularly concerned about this, so I figure this isn't as big of a deal as I'm making it out to be.



At the end of the hall, we take a right turn into a circulator elevator with a bumpy, cylindrical metal pole in the middle of it. I feel the bumps with both hands, and the texture is like that of a cheese grater. "You should do this," I tell Art. "It really helps with stabilization." Feeling confident, I boastfully add, "This is making my dream so stable. Try it." She laughs and shakes her head like I'm really failing to grasp something basic.

Art shifts to where she's out of sight behind the pole, and when I look around the other side to find her, she has completely vanished. The elevator doors have shut now and I'm on my own. There are buttons with weird symbols on them and I start pressing them at random. Each one lights up as I touch it and soon I feel a faint vibration from the elevator like it's moving.

I wait a long time, hoping that the elevator doors will open, but nothing seems to be happening. I begin to fret that I'm in a bad situation now -- stuck in a small room, inactive and waiting for something to happen. The dream begins to feel thin, goes dark, and my half-hearted DEILD attempt fails. I'm awake now.

This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night. I've had a very irritating cough the last few days, so this gave me the perfect excuse to combine menthol cough drops with my usual Wednesday galantamine night. And yet again, the pre-game LD psych-up session with NewArtemis not only helps me get lucid but also makes her pop up as a DC!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #76: Prison Break

I'm experiencing hypnagogic imagery that involves some dark, concrete courtyard. I go through some transition (not sure whether DILD or WILD) but I somehow wind up in this scene, fully lucid.

I'm crouched in the shadows by a low stone wall. I'm dressed all in black and I have a submachine gun or carbine (with suppressor attached) clutched in my hands. I don't want to use it unless I'm forced to -- I know that I'm here to break someone out of prison and if I'm forced into a firefight I'll be surrounded by guards in minutes.

I become aware that I have an earpiece in my left ear and NewArtemis is radioing instructions to me on how to pass through the prison undetected. Her voice is calm, clinical, and precise. "Stay low and keep close to this wall. Stop before you get to the light."

I stay crouched down and creep along the wall toward a well-lit spot near a gap in the wall. My footsteps are alarmingly loud, like I'm wearing some kind of clunky loafers. I wince at the sound. I decide that I want to be barefoot and immediately I am. I skulk even more carefully this time, trying to move sort of like what's-his-face from "Splinter Cell". Now my footsteps are completely silent. I feel really smug about this.

I stop just before reaching the spotlit area. Pausing for a moment, I rub my hands together to stay connected with my dream body. NewArtemis again: "[CanisLucidus], check your 2." I take this to mean "2 o'clock", and indeed at 2 o'clock I see a darkened guard tower. A lone guard with a rifle patrols here and I'm surprised to see that he's completely black-clad just like I am. I think that I have a good shot at killing him pretty cleanly from where I am, but I don't even want to go there.

"He's turning. Go now." I think about rolling for a moment but decide that's too fancy-pants. Instead, I just scurry across the lit area and into a new set of shadows.

"Good. Stick to the wall and head to the opposite end of the exercise yard. The way inside will be on your right." I move along the wall all the way to an ultra-dark corner of the yard. The doorway is about forty feet away, a pair of solid-looking steel doors arranged like the doors of an elevator. I'm wondering how I'm going to get in when I awaken in a fit of coughing.

I was talking with NewArtemis yesterday about mantras and lucid dreaming and apparently the conversation stuck... well, for me at least. Popped a B6 and chowed down on some raisins before bed and got this pair of dreams. This is really a micro-lucid followed by a full LD, but they're so related that I'm just journaling them together.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #74: Mantras in the Green Valley

I am in a large, brightly lit room of white marble. There are a lot of strange, rectangular foam blocks lying around. I decide that they represent sleep cycles or maybe chunks of REM. I say out loud, "You will have a lucid dream!" I feel like this mantra is very important. Who am I saying this to?

Now I see NewArtemis perhaps ten feet away, standing there looking sleepily around, apparently not noticing me. She has one or two foam blocks at her feet but I think she needs more. I toss a couple more of these at her and they bounce off of her and land nearby. I'm disappointed that I can't seem to add REM (or whatever) to her sleep. I say again, "You will have a lucid dream!" but it seems to make no impression on her.

I decide that she's already asleep and dreaming. "You're dreaming right now!" I tell her. "Don't you remember your mantra?" I put a hand on her left shoulder and she gives me this bleary-eyed look. I suddenly get it straight that I'm the one who's dreaming. "This is a lucid dream! Okay, now you!" I say, but she stares at me uncomprehendingly. I quickly wake up.

Try to DEILD but accidentally think about work. (Gah, rookie mistake!) Awake for a while. Then back into a non-lucid...

I'm in the back seat of a jeep that's pulled over on the side of the road. The jeep is being driven by my friend TB. Someone I don't know is in the passenger seat and he's pouring his heart out to TB because he had to shoot someone in self-defense. TB tells him not to worry about it and makes some sort of slightly offensive joke about it. The passenger gets even more upset, but TB calms him down.

TB puts the jeep back on the main road and ahead of us is a one-lane bridge with 10-feet concrete walls on either side of it. Looking further out, I see that we are in the most beautiful green valley that I've seen in my entire life. I feel like it's the most brilliant green that I've ever seen in my life and realize that I have to be dreaming.

Now the jeep has become a long van with four or five rows of bench seats. I float out of my seat and swim toward the front of the van. TB is still driving, but the passenger is someone else. I think it's Xanous.

As I pass the third or so row of seats, I see NewArtemis to my left, looking out the window at the green valley. "[NewArtemis]! This is a lucid dream." She looks at me, then looks back out the window, then back at me again. But now she has transformed nto a blonde woman in her mid-40s. I decide that this isn't working, so I swim further up.

I make it to the second row of seats, w/ TB and (presumably) Xanous right in front. I look out the window and see a mountain rising in the distance. Now I realize that we're driving toward Angel Falls for Task of the Year! Things start feeling unstable, and I reach out to grab onto something. I grab onto a nearby female DC (a stranger) to bring myself back into the scene, but things don't stabilize. The skin on the lady's face begins to glow slightly orange, and everything fades out but this glow. Then I'm awake.