CanisLucidus

Yet another near miss on Task of the Year! I really need to work on learning to close these. Lots of fun though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #193: Magic Carpet School

I’m part of a large parenting group that’s exploring a gloomy cavern illuminated by translucent pools of water. After quietly exploring this place for a while, we all wind up back at one of the mom’s houses. Somebody suggests that we do a group hug, and we all awkwardly move toward the middle of the room.

I notice that Andy Bernard from The Office is part of the group. He looks sweaty and awkward and I think, “Hey that guy who plays Andy Bernard sure looks sweaty and awkward in person.” I do a quick mental check to see whether this is a dream and decide that yes, it definitely is.

I walk out of this living room into an elementary school classroom that’s in the middle of some kind of lesson. I pass through without interacting with any of the dream characters, wanting to get outside for a Task of the Year attempt. (The Aladdin’s lamp task with a magic carpet and three wishes.)

Leaving this classroom takes me to a second classroom and I start worrying that I’ll spend this whole lucid wandering through an endless series of grade school classes. I head for a wall, announcing that “This is a phase outside,” before plunging right through. I wind up in the void, but my hands and forearms are still brightly illuminated and clearly visible.

I rub my hands together and slowly the void becomes filled with a swirling field of stars. This fades into a scene from the Matrix that has the Youtube logo and controls underneath it, and I see that I am watching a video whose length is “0:98”. I briefly wonder if I went to bed wearing VR goggles or something and that the images are penetrating my eyelids. Scenes from The Matrix flash by and the image slowly rotates.

Now there’s a crackling sound and my vision fills with a series of strange characters that I can’t identify. I feel a sharp tug backward and I wait for the new scene to form. My vision reforms into… another elementary school classroom, this one a little bigger with an adjacent windowed playroom. I head immediately for the exit and I’m pleased to find myself in an entrance area. I bolt through a set of glass doors and now I’m outside.

Immediately I start attempting the lamp summon by “finding” it behind my back, but my hand just keeps coming back empty. After three failures, I’m really frustrated by this. On the last attempt my hand comes back with some little piece of dirty, wooden-looking junk about the size of a sugar cube. This time I pretend that this is the lamp but it’s just way too small. “Bigger… bigger…” and do a little magician-esque gesture. It plumps up nicely into a real magic lamp! It’s way too light to be realistic, but who cares, next step!

I rub the lamp, wishing for the magic carpet. I decide to be really specific, saying, “A magic carpet. Make it rolled up.” A simple little rolled-up rug appears on the ground. I immediately think, Why’d you ask for it rolled up? That’s just a pain in the ass. I expect the magic carpet to unroll and it does, so I quickly sit down. As I do, it lifts me up into the air and starts flying leisurely forward.

For my second wish, I quickly say “Delicious cookie!” and a tiny little sliver of cookie appears in my hand, like someone had already eaten most of it. I find this awfully stingy for a magic lamp but I stuff it in my mouth. It’s chocolate chip, not bad at all.

I think about how close I am to completing the task and the excitement gets the best of me. I get one last look at the roof of a one-story building as I float over it before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #186: Michael Scott Vs. the Zombies

The cast of The Office is sitting around in a big room that looks like a warehouse with a random bathroom stall stuck in the middle of it. Michael Scott is attempting to give a rousing speech to cheer everyone up but instead just makes everyone feel really uncomfortable.

“Cheer up, gang,” says Michael, flashing a toothy grin. Everyone slinks down in their seats. Stanley looks back disdainfully. “Everyone, you are about to experience one of the best things about my youth… the 1980s.”

The scene changes into a video game where I’m now playing as Michael Scott from a first-person perspective. I see some cash lying on the seat of a toilet. As I gingerly try to pick up the money, I realize that I can’t take it because my cash is already “full” in this game.

There’s an abrupt shift into the front of a restaurant. An unseen female voice narrates: “In this scenario, Michael must act violent and unstable so he can gather information about <something something>...” I see a zombie shuffling around at the base of a short set of nearby stairs. I vault over the rail and kick him in the face mid-leap. This is great fun. I remember my intent to have a lucid dream, so I decide that I can’t get too into this video game or I might forget. And it finally hits me that I’m dreaming right now.

A huge, balding zombie comes shambling toward me and I punch him in the face. I leave the room and move into another hallway, relaxing my mind until the zombies stop coming toward me and instead just pass harmlessly by without paying me much attention.

I reach a bend in the hall, rub my hands together, and move toward a large, open area. Just then, a female zombie puts a hand on my shoulder and groans. I’m relaxed about this and say, “You,” (I point at her), “are a dream character!” She smiles, her face changing until she looks like my high school English teacher. Then she walks away.

The room I’ve entered is a huge atrium with a glass roof, 5 or 6 stories high. Two young women, maybe college age, are seated at a table handing out some kind of literature. I’m mildly curious what they have to say but I see a nighttime street scene just through the door. I’m having huge trouble remembering my goals so I think it’d be better to get outside.

I get outside, start to fly, and then abruptly have a false awakening back in bed. I’m staring at the alarm clock. Oddly, rather than showing the time, it’s counting down from 9. I have no idea what this means. I hear Wife whimpering in her sleep next to me. She says, “If people look into my brain, they’ll steal my ideasssssss…”

The alarm clock hits 1, goes dark for a moment, and then starts at 9 again. I realize that I’m still dreaming, but it’s just a moment before I wake up for real.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #182: Office Snacks

I walk into a meeting where most of the attendees are cast members of The Office. I realize that this has to be a dream. Jim Halpert is leading the meeting and as I enter, he says, “Glad you could join us.”

The meeting drones on in the background, but my attention focuses on a large box of snack foods. Each kind of snack food is in its own big cereal bag, clipped shut with a clothespin. Interested, I grab one off the top, remove the clothespin, and open it. The bag has to be unrolled several times (enough times to worry me), eventually unfurling to a length of about two feet.

The bag is full of some form of Chex Mix, and I happily start munching away. As I’m eating, Michael Scott takes the floor and says that “And of course, Pam’s default job will be in engineering.” Most of the meeting stays as a drone as I crunch away on the snacks.

My vision fades out after a bit, but I’m able to keep eating, so I just plow right on ahead. Now the Chex mix that I pull out seems to contain peanut butter on the inside! It’s incredibly delicious and I just keep shoveling it down my pie-hole until the dream ends.

This is a dream from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #175: The War of Red and Blue

I’m in a building that looks like my new office, sitting next to my friend “Leroy”. He complains that his chair is uncomfortable and moves to a row of tables that’s just behind us. While Leroy goes on and on about how much more comfortable this part of the office is, I notice that Dwight Schrute from The Office is sitting here as well. I know that this is wrong and become lucid.

I walk over to the window and phase out to the street. The roadway looks similar to the one that the android and I saw in the previous dream, but now everything is vivid and quite detailed. It’s night and in the distance I see what looks like a spacecraft. Soon I see more and more ships flying through the sky. Before long they’re shooting at one another!

I take to the sky to get a better view and see that the sky is filled with blue and red ships firing at one another. Each building in the city is also apparently affiliated with either blue or red. You can tell because each window, rather than being simply transparent, glows brightly in either a blue or red.

I fly for a while and at one point a trio of red ships spot me and train their fire on me (just as I worry this will happen.) Fortunately, I shrug it off, feeling nothing more than a slight impact.

Flying higher, I soar over the top of the conflict. It’s just war as far as I can see, blue vs. red. Ships explode and buildings crumble, but from this high up I feel distanced from the whole thing. In spite of all the carnage below, the feeling is almost serene. I fly like this for a while, just observing until the dream ends.