CanisLucidus

The second of two LDs from the morning of 05/18/2013. This was a big, big dream, and this dream and I did not always get along. This was my first serious attempt at meeting NewArtemis for a dream sharing attempt.

I also got into a big fight with a powerful DC that escalated into a me against the world situation. I could have handled this a lot better. My self-control wasn't what it should be... but it was still kinda awesome.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #96: Clash at the Alamo

I'm Marty McFly from Back to the Future, driving my DeLorean on a set of rails that stand hundreds of feet over a bay. The DeLorean starts to shake as it picks up speed and before I can make a time jump, the rails end and the car goes plummeting toward the sparkling water.

I brace for impact and the DeLorean flies to pieces as it strikes the bay. Miraculously, I'm unharmed, and I thrash about for something to hold on to so that I can get my bearings and figure out what to do. One long, fin-like piece of metal from the car bobs to the surface and I grab onto it. The moment that I do, an unseen engine roars to life and takes off like a jet ski.

As I'm racing across the bay, I realize that this has to be a dream. After riding for a moment, I'm perhaps a hundred feet from shore. I leap off the impromptu "jet ski" and fly the remaining distance, landing in a stone plaza that stands at the water's edge.

I remember that I'm planning to meet NewArtemis at the Alamo for a shared dreaming experiment. I turn toward the water, raise my hands up in the air, and make an announcement to all of the DCs. Most of the passerby stop and turn to look at me. "The Alamo is right behind me! That's right -- Alamo right behind me!" I imagine it in detail, rebuilding my mental map, forgetting and scrubbing out the buildings that were there before and replacing it with my image of everything that I remember about the Alamo. I continue this until I can think of nothing of what's behind me except for this image of the Alamo.



I turn around, expecting to see the Alamo... and there it is! The stone's a little darker and the construction looks a little too new to be quite right, but it's more than close enough of a lookalike for me. I walk around past the front entrance to a courtyard. The geography is different in this dream from that of the real Alamo, and I come to a stone wall with a little alcove and a bench. There's a woman sitting on the bench and we look at each other immediately.

She gets up and approaches me right away. She doesn't look like NewArtemis' DC has in the past, but I'm not sure of anything yet. She speaks first: "I'm here to meet someone. How about you?"

"So am I," I say, studying her. She's roughly the same height as Art's DC but her skin is paler, her hair curlier, her build heavier, and her face is different -- broader, different nose, different shape... just different. "But you're not her, are you? I don't think you're [NewArtemis]."

She smiles noncommitally, but I continue. "That's okay," I continue. "Let's still do the passphrases and gestures." I speak my chosen word to the DC and perform my chosen gesture. She doesn't bother speaking a passphrase in return but she does perform a gesture. (These have been reported to a 3rd party who is not NewArtemis just in case she's able to guess them.)

"Well, I need to go!" the woman says. She walks out of the alcove and passes me. As she goes, she becomes a much older lady, blonde, mid-50s. She grows to an enormous height, probably close to 8 feet tall. She's wearing shorts and I see that her legs are covered with a crisscrossing patchwork of scars.

I contemplate following, but I'm distracted by a man who's sitting at the top of a stone wall nearby, staring at me with a malicious grin on his face. He's in his late 30s with close-cropped reddish-blonde hair. The guy keeps staring at me with that joyless grin and I know that he's looking for trouble with me. I want no part of it, so I turn and walk away.



He hops down from the wall and grips my right forearm with his right hand, twisting my arm around so that my hand is near my head. I try to pull my arm out of his grip but when I yank, it doesn't budge. He laughs, shaking his head as if he can't believe that I would bother trying to defy him. "You're never leaving here," he says. "I mean it. You are never leaving here." I yank my arm again but I feel as weak as a kitten.

I know I have to turn this around fast. I grab him by the back of the head with my left hand and begin to imagine my adversary as frail and lethargic. "You're so weak and tired," I tell him, trying to sound compassionate, even though I'm boiling with rage. "There's just no strength left in you at all." And I gently move to lay him down on a nearby table. I think of him as totally weak and barely able to move. His grip slips from my arm and he flops backward onto the table.

"And small," I say, pressing on his head with one hand and his feet with the other. He begins to shrink. His hair has turned jet black now, and his eyes close. I squeeze him together, thinking of him as so tiny, and soon he shrinks to the size of a child, then to the size of a baby, then disappears into his clothes entirely. My self-control cracks and I ball up his clothes, throw the bundle on the ground, and give it a vicious stomp. I wonder for a moment whether I've gone too far and hope for a moment that the bundle was empty. I walk through a nearby archway, not sticking around to find out more.

I emerge in a cafeteria. A table of 6 or 7 teenagers immediately looks up from their meals at me. "It's him," one of them says, and they all get to their feet and come after me. I fly through a nearby doorway and emerge in a large, empty room with a skylight. I fly up to the skylight, intending to phase through it, but something seems to restrain me from getting high enough. I run through a doorway into a drugstore that dead-ends in a frosted glass window. I vault toward it, phasing through onto a street scene.

There are police everywhere on the street. I know that they're looking for me. There are strange little ball-shaped hoverbots scanning the streets with cameras, also trying to track me down. I sprint up to one and kick it against a nearby wall. With a pop, it breaks into two smoking, fizzling halves.

Everything seems to be happening too fast for me to control. I run down the street, looking for some way out of this fear. I want to buy time to calm down, so I phase through the door of a nearby house. Cops are turning the place over while the family, a husband and wife and their little girl of about 8 are glued to the TV. One cop notices me as I walk in, but I swoop in on him, grab him from behind, and choke him unconscious. The other two cops don't seem to notice any of this, and the little family stares obliviously into their TV sets.

I watch the TV for a moment. It's some sort of political propaganda which claims that the moral code of their "great society" is built upon a foundation of classic arcade games like Centipede, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. I'm torn -- on one hand, I find top-down, statist morality codes repugnant. On the other hand, I sure do love classic arcade games.

I phase out through the back of the house into the yard. The cops yell at me as I pass and I hear them calling for backup. The back yard is peaceful for a moment before the wail of what sounds like an air raid siren fills the air. I look up at the sky, feeling helpless, trying to find peace for a moment. But all I can think is They're coming for me. The dream ends...