The Fourth Factor

I am somewhere like a dorm room, which I seem to share with around three other people. The beds are really low, maybe just mattresses on the floor, and we’re sitting on them, listening to a woman in some kind of position of authority who’s speaking to us. She takes a feather comforter from somewhere and hands it to me to replace my current one. My bedding is all extremely tangled and twisted - I’ve slept badly. I tell her that it wouldn’t be that difficult to untangle it, but she still wants to give me the new one, so I take it and set the old one at the front of the bed. She then leaves.

My old friend Ona, who seems to be one of my roommates, is trying to tell me something now, but she’s wearing something over her mouth sort of like an underwater breathing apparatus, so I have trouble understanding her at first. Eventually, with the help of one of the others, I understand that she’s saying something about a concert she saw me play in yesterday – also something about how she had previously been familiar with only one of the composers whose pieces were played there.

This next part may or may not be part of the same dream – there were definitely parts after that one that I forgot, anyway. But I’m in a restaurant now. It’s a large, bright space, lit mainly by daylight streaming through full-length glass windows, but a little crowded – all the tables seem to be filled, and there isn’t much space to move between them. Saimi passes by the table where I’m sitting and makes some kind of signal to me with her hand. This somehow clues me into the fact that I’m dreaming.

I get up and follow her out to the balcony to talk. As I pass through the glass window, I can feel some sensations from it, especially the dividing metal bars, which is unusual and a little surprising – possibly it has something to do with the overall level of realism seeming especially high this time. Saimi watches, pauses for a second, and then opens a glass door and walks out. I jokingly say that I haven’t used a door in a dream for years now.

We jump down from the balcony and walk around while we decide what to do. It’s now clear that the restaurant is located on a college campus – one that’s dream-familiar to me from at least one dream I know I’ve recorded. Saimi says that before meeting up with me, she was waiting for my Aunt O so that they could see something together. She seems to want me to guess, so I do. A play? No. A movie? Also no. Apparently, it’s something like episodes from a TV series being screened somewhere on campus. She still wants to do this now, while lucid. I don’t think this sounds like a very good idea – looking at a screen for any considerable length of time seems like a pretty good way of losing lucidity to me. It could be interesting to see if my aunt shows up, though, and to talk with her, so I agree to wait with her. Since they agreed to meet in the restaurant, we head back there, flying back up to the balcony and going back where we started.

I figure I should probably do something to keep engaged with the dream. This doesn’t strike me as a very interesting situation to work with initially. I wonder, though: what if I try to read these people’s minds? I look around the room, getting a read of the atmosphere – just in a way one might in waking life. How should I do this? I focus on one woman sitting at a table near me, trying to access her mindstate. What happens is that the dream imagery itself seems to transform so that now I’m seeing her in something like a large version of a baby’s high chair, chewing a mouthful of food with evident displeasure. So the form of the dream changed to reflect my intention, rather than my experiencing her thoughts as some kind of verbal overlay – fascinating.

I wake up soon after, but quickly fall asleep again and find myself in the same setting, this time with my cat Ronnie. I’m trying to tie something around one of his paws, but soon I remember that I’m dreaming. I wake up again before I can do much of anything.

-16.12.22

I’m in the house where my friend Saimi and her family live, near the kitchen, where Saimi and a couple others are. It’s an old-fashioned sort of kitchen with a fireplace and a pipe through which water is supposed to come—but right now, water isn’t coming in, even though it’s raining right now. It seems that something has clogged it. Nearby, in a living room area, my uncle is lying on a couch.

As I stand there watching, a small bird is fluttering around my face, very close. It’s annoying, and I want to wave it away, but that doesn’t seem right somehow. There must be a reason for this. I stand still and let my mind go blank. I can feel vague memories begin to stir—very old memories, stories concerning this kind of bird. And suddenly, it occurs to me that this is how birds behave when there’s a predator nearby. Am I being warned? And where could the danger be?

My attention is drawn to the clogged pipe. Slowly, two green heads are emerging from it—snakes. I tell the others what’s going on and run to the foyer, where I see what I’m looking for—an umbrella rack.

It is a sort of rectangular cage made of a brassy metal, very much like the one my family used to have. If it had been my family’s umbrella rack, it would have contained an assortment of swords, bamboo rods and a pair of snake sticks, the best possible tool for the task at hand. Disappointingly, this one is mostly full of umbrellas. But my sword cane is here, at least, and I can work with that. I grab it by the cobra head-shaped knob, which seems oddly apropos. I grab another long rod which seems like it could be useful and hurry back to the kitchen. Once there, I hand the sword cane to my uncle and we wait for the snakes to emerge.

Two of them do at once, and we go for them—the goal being to transport them outside again. My uncle doesn’t seem to have much trouble with his, but the one I’m wrangling—it’s green with white bands—is proving more difficult because it’s so small and fast. Before I can do anything, it’s crawled up the rod and onto my arm. I tell my uncle, and he pulls it off with the cane—but not before it bites me. It just feels like little pinpricks. Nothing serious—it probably didn’t even inject any venom. I say as much to the others as we wait for the next one.

This one is all green, and much larger than the others. I try to pick it up with the rod, but the thing seems much flimsier than before, and is constantly telescoping into itself. My uncle and the sword cane, which I could really use right now, seem to have disappeared. Under the circumstances, my chances of getting the snake safely outside aren’t good. I’ll have to kill it. Through a combination of the rod and my feet, I manage without getting hurt myself—and then wake up.

26.1.18

My old friend Saimi and I are sitting at a table by the city’s inner wall, having coffee. They are thick walls, built with greyish stone, and through a window in the wall—a rough hole with a metal grid across it—we can see something a little troubling taking place: a small group of oni is building a campfire there, in the courtyard area between this wall and the outer one. They’re larger than humans, with colorful skin and wearing rough clothing, some of it made from animal skins. It’s odd, I think to myself. It’s been ages since I’ve read, watched or played anything with oni in it. The ones I can recall looked different. And yet, these guys strike me as familiar—familiar as individuals, even. I can’t account for it.

Anyway, Saimi and I have business to take care of. I have been investigating a series of mysterious events that Saimi has been involved with in some way—something from a dream from earlier in the night that I can no longer remember— and since our last meeting, my research has turned up something quite interesting. We have two small pages of text with us that appeared when the events took place and that we suspect may be connected to them somehow—both the same text, but one copy in English and one in Korean. They seem to concern some kind of game.

The oni—whom we’ve been keeping a watchful eye on this whole time—are now entering through the gate, which isn't far from where we're sitting, and roaming the city square. Presumably, they're looking for someone to eat. Should we move? We decide not to. They'll probably be satisfied with only one person, and there’s only a small chance it’ll be one of us. We continue talking. But suddenly, I feel myself grabbed from behind and carried backwards. My espresso cup falls to the ground and rolls away. I call out something to Saimi as I struggle to get free—but then the dream shifts around us. I’m not sure now whether it was something I did intentionally or something that just happened, but at any rate, I seem to be better prepared for it than the oni are. While they’re trying to figure out what just happened, I break loose and run for it.

Or rather, my character on the screen does, since I’m now experiencing this as a video game. I get a few screens away, at which point I know I’m safe. From there, I explore the town where I now am for a little while, going into houses and talking to the people there—and then I seem to be on my computer, checking my email. As I watch, new emails are arriving in my inbox every few seconds, which is unusual. Something big must be happening.

And then I wake up.

(22.1.17)