DarkestDarkness

Long days and earlier than usual mornings with quite a strict routine have made it difficult to keep recall consistent. Possibly better next week.

21st September 2020

Scraps:

Several dreams, recall faded as I tried to make note after an abrupt awakening because of having to go answer the door.

22nd September 2020

Fragment:

At a version of school. I'm either a teen or younger. Sitting a desk with my friend D. We're putting away some A4 sheets but together they are an A3 size. (not sure how I meant this, since that's simply a fact...)

23rd September 2020

Fragment:

Dream based on BL? Something about item stacks going up to infinity? Also something about some cylinders or tubes of glass that had something to do with game world generation; the tubes or whatever had to be filled with materials/items in order to work.

---

Notes:

- About the second dream. Strictly-speaking, the dream wasn't all that significant or unusual in terms of themes, but it's the only dream to date where I can remember actually feeling/being younger. This is in itself unusual for me, but I'm also not sure how I knew I was younger, my height I think? My friend was also the same relative age.
- I haven't spoken to that friend in years and he had become distant by the time we were in high school, I think in part because of the groups he hung out with but also because we were simply not having the same lessons at all.
- The general theme of the dream probably came about as some kind of reminiscence or nostalgia of the past.

Been pretty busy lately and too tired as a result, but still been able to make note of some loose fragments.

---

17th September 2020

Scraps:

In a town or city. Doing some climbing with my old school friend C, in some old part of a town.

Something about a "debug" viewmode of a landscape set used as a backdrop like in Freelancer (I think I meant like a skysphere).

Something about a physically encoded (computer) memory that could be transmitted by light. A prize?

---

19th September 2020

Fragment:

From a fairly long dream. In this part, the dream plot was about WW2. I was in Nazi Germany and I was coming out of a building just when I and someone I'm with suddenly receive word that America has declared war on Germany.

The two German soldiers (with their contextual Nazi outfits) standing guard by the doors just outside the building overheard this as we were coming down some steps and commenting or something. They turned their heads ever so slightly toward us, seeming surprised about the news but not moving an inch from their post. They turned their heads straight forward again as we continued walking and then we walked past them, into an open street, I think.

Then at some point, I and other dream characters thought it was "high time" that we returned to our original time, in the "future". We had to get back to some sort of time machine pod.

I remember being in the room with the pod and it could only take one person at a time. This place was hidden somewhere in town? It was a concrete room and was very well lit, with large white fluorescent tube lights.

---

20th September 2020

Fragment:

Something about plain old items being an example of how a new storage unit thing could store multiple types of items. Recall faded quickly for some reason. Some lingering feeling of being related to games I've played recently (BL, Fact).

30th August 2020

7:20

Dream:

Last part mostly. Not too interested in full recall. Was walking around somewhere with someone, an old schoolmate, maybe C? We're talking about buildings for some reason and then there's no transition but we're in "China" and I see Chinese soldiers in what looks to be a kind of ceremonial uniform.

Covid times in the dream. But nobody is wearing a mask, not even myself or who I'm with. We're at some exhibit building and it involves going down a long set of stairs underground. People don't seem to be respecting distancing rules and through all of this I'm getting casual contact with random people and I'm touching my face, for some reason. I become concerned, but feel that because there's nothing I can do now, I just carry on.

Eventually we leave back up the stairs. Even the soldier and the attendants don't care about distancing and contact, this bothers me on a very basic level. My dad then appears at some point and complains about it all.

Some transition and then Deus Ex themes and fighting Paul Denton, but I'm still myself? Before all of this, I remember roaming cobble pavements late at night?

I make note of the fact that it's the past, I just have this knowledge in the dream somehow, something like the 60s? Don't know exactly but some cars have unusual UV headlights or something, because everything that's got white on it lights up bright because of the UV headlights when cars go past sometimes. I distinctly remember old-styled cars and lorries.

There's a dog walker at some point while I'm walking along the pavements; we try to avoid each other and I'm on the grass.

---

Notes:
- There was a very loose and casual link, I think, between the Chinese soldiers and Deus Ex, since there are several levels in the game that take place in China. It was also a game that I played back when I knew C.
- Dad's appearance seems to just be a reflection of some of my own thoughts but besides that his behaviour was mostly as I might expect it to be.
- The covid themes in this dream I think were mostly part of a subconscious digestion of my own processing of certain situations in waking life.

26th August 2020 DFLN

Long dreams, poor recall because of noisy workers outside.

Fragment:

Remember being at my old best friends' house. His younger brother was there too, but was older?

I think I talked to my friend about my art. I thought about showing him some drawings, I remembered he used to draw a bit, including by tracing.

---

Notes:

- Back when we were actually friends, I considered tracing to be a "cheat", a notion I have dropped in recent years.

4th August 2020 8:30

Dream (Fragmented):

Fairly long and vivid, completely continuous all the way through, though I remember the last parts better, mostly.

+ The very first bit I recall, was in a maintenance tunnel of sorts. It was a typical grey-white looking tunnel, painted brickwork, artificial and cold lights, but quite bright. There was piping painted the same way. I was configuring a gun that fired four shots simultaneously and each barrel could be re-rolled to have a random element. I remember testing the gun each time I re-rolled the stats.

+ In one earlier bit I was around my old home area and was going to play basketball with some black friends, after I'd asked what they were up to or something. We got to a basketball arena of some kind, it looked odd, it was indoors now and was all rusty and/or fleshy. I didn't care much. In the end the game was more like half basketball, half rugby and somehow I needed my sibling T's help to finish the game so I had to go find him or something.

Then, the last part;

I was at some sort of religious gathering, there were pews and there was a seat reserved for a representative of each major religion and some seats reserved for representatives of other smaller religions, but the representatives themselves were absent. A woman appeared, she was dressed in what I can only remember as a "revealing" dress; she was a seductress of some sort and teased these religious representatives. But they knew her as is if she did this regularly and they let themselves be entertained by her presence.

I was stuck behind a screen of some sort, like an acrylic screen. Then I got out of that place somehow. My old school friend, JC, appeared at some point when I was outside. Dark and moody streets, maybe a bit wet even. Night time but lit by neon signs and other such things. Me and JC knocked someone out and I remember shooting a group of patrolling guards in a line, taking each one out. Then JC took a hazmat from one of these guys.

(Cut some of this bit short because of my pain)

We walked at brisk pace, for quite a long way; through a city, then a mall, a toilet roll store (with vividly coloured packaging), then a baby store, inside an ASDA/Walmart place and then we get held up in some queue for the supermarket. So we started running and jumped over a balcony or stair bit onto an outdoor area, and the crowd stuck in the queue got angered by this for some reason and many of them followed suit. It was day time, I remember around noon or afternoon. Sunny and I recall the grass by the side of the pavement and general greenery.

I tried to sprint. Running felt slow, but not as bad as in nightmares from my childhood. It mostly just felt annoying, but someone nearly tripped me up from behind (stepping on my heel). I didn't look back but sort of had a rear vision? JC caught up to me and took off the hazmat mask. We approached a gas station next to where his home supposedly was in the dream. JC shot a guard that he'd initially forgotten was there. I told him he was an idiot, because they had cameras at the gas station, and what had he just done? Taken his mask off.

But we were on the final stretch to getting to his home and I woke up, sweating, as seems to be normal when I have these vivid and intense dreams.

---

Notes:
- I haven't seen JC in a dream in a while but oddly enough his likeness was very much as I remember it from my teens, when I was at school with him. He was slightly shorter than me too.
- The basketball arena was odd but I think it probably came from recently playing certain games; for some reason the concept of arena was enough to cause the two things to associate this way.
- T's appearance matched the dirty and partly grotesque appearance of the arena.

- This DJ entry is called pre-cursor because of the next entry, which took place today too.

Two or three dreams. Initially didn't hold on to details so recall is a bit fuzzy overall.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was in dad's scenic, sat at the back. Someone else, too, maybe my sibling T? Mom was on the drivers seat, which was on the wrong side for the car.

We're in the middle of some city. It feels like a familiar place but doesn't seem to be anywhere specific; it's sunny and I remember green trees. We're close to some parking spaces. Mom gets a call on her phone and has to take it so for some reason she gets out of the car.

I step out too and with a gesture suggest that I can park the car. She gestures back a "sure, whatever", obviously concentrating on the conversation on the phone; I then get in the driver's side.

At first I drive forward a bit and then start reversing and turning into one of these parking spaces that was free next to some other parked cars. I get it nearly right, smack in the middle on the first try but I remember feeling the pedals and that reversing felt a bit jerky, so I tried to take care. Still, I managed to let it jerk at the end of manoeuvring, making the back hit a stone wall that ran along behind the parking spaces. I could feel it was a small impact and only the plastic bumper would have touched the wall.

Then dad appeared, walking across the front and commenting something? I sort of proudly told him about how I did or something.

Dream Fragment:

Some other dream. I remember being at my old home, in my former room. It's dark, the curtains are closed. I'm uncertain about what version of room layout this is in the dream. I was looking at texts on a phone, my first phone maybe? It was a red phone. I am my current age, however.

I was checking a text from my childhood and school friend, Di. Looking back on texts before his reply, I had apparently messaged him, ages ago.

He was now finally replying, saying he was sorry, but that he was now pan sexual or something. That didn't make much sense on its own, but I understood it to mean that he had become trans (similar sound?). Further, he said that he wouldn't be able to meet with me [ever again] because of [two letter acronym?].

I forget the rest of the text exactly but I remember feeling disappointed somehow. I had a number of passing thoughts about potential replies I could give, or whether it would be worth bothering at all. Other passing thoughts about how I used to remember him, and about how I could mention some funny memories in a text reply.

Dream Fragment:

There was a third dream but even though it was the last one, I don't really remember anything except that it was a city-building sim game of some kind.

---

Notes:

- In the second dream, I remember I felt overall sad and disappointed. I was happy that my friend had moved on or something, but I suppose I've never really let go of how our relationship as friends just evaporated over a number of years, for no special reason that I was ever able to discern.
- In the first dream, while mom did use to drive, that was years ago before I was born. My mom hasn't driven since then at the very least.
- Mom's distraction with the phone somehow feels related to how she's been behaving lately when she speaks to me on the phone; it's not that she's distracted from me, it's more that she's distracting herself. Some element of worry present here.
- I and H have been playing a city-building game quite a bit lately, which is probably what the third dream was based on.

Some fragments. Recall seemed better for the second and third dreams on waking up.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was in the kitchen. It was a bit dark but not night time. Like very early morning just after sun rise, and with the blinds rolled down. I remember standing by the fridge, naked I think? I remember seeing my feet and legs. For some reason, I could hear in my head what I thought at the time to be a theme song for the TV show called Roswell, a show I never watched myself, but I know of it. I don't actually remember what that music sounded like but it seemed familiar in the dream, in a way that makes me think that it had nothing to do with that show, but I'll have to try and find it after writing this DJ.

Wedged between the fridge and the counter it is adjacent to, I remember noticing one of the wooden grave markers H's dad was working on yesterday when we went there. The cross was upside down and it looked like we had just shoved it in there in a hurry to make some room in the kitchen. The fridge is a fridge on top and freezer on the bottom and I remember seeing the logo somewhat distinctly in the dream.

No idea how this dream went on or ended.

Dream Fragment:

I was entering some sort of supermarket, it felt like it was underground. There were quite a few people here, seemed like a popular place. Looked a bit like the cheap supermarket I go to but for whatever reason my old friend from university, R, was walking along with me. We both had a trolley.

I was very confused by the layout, first there were mostly energy drinks and then soft drinks. I think I commented on them being crap but I also felt hungry more than anything else. We continued on and eventually we got to a very odd bit, where I had to watch what other people were doing to understand. There was like a sort of circular checkpoint thing that we had to go into in queues. I grabbed some big and fresh looking pears I spotted to my right, and apparently some bananas too. I knew immediately the pears would be sweet, as I prefer them, and not at all wooden. There were some fake metal barriers to enforce queues.

I got to the centre of this checkpoint thing. There was a woman on a swivel chair? She was wearing a cap but had curled hair tucked into it or something. She was in the middle of this four-section rounded island with shop scanner things on each of the four sections. I remember giving her the fruits or placing them down on the metal/glass surface.

She scanned the fruit somehow and I continued off away from the checkpoint thing.

Dream Fragment:

Some kind of mix of GTA and other games like Deus Ex. I remember being on a completely unknown city and having a map divided into levels, like there used to be in Zelda's dungeons. 1F,2F, etc.

There were some ghoul like enemies at some point and a UDamage pickup, which when I tried getting, some quick imp or rat thing got it and scurried off.

I remember being on some sort of snow bike and using a turbo mode that activated an orange energy saw and killing some of these ghouls. This was an enclosed area, with many narrow paths and with an underground feel to it. At the end of it I found a portal marked by an inverse encircled pentagram, which was a path to hell. I decided to not go through yet but would come back to it when I felt stronger.

Then I was outside and it was night time. Everything was brightly lit. I remember fighting some guys at a bridge over a wide channel of water that looked like it had very strong currents, as it was quite foamy and uneven.

Much earlier in the dream there was an area of sort of open field but I don't really remember any details. Too tired to write much more.

---

Notes:
- I'm not entirely sure what prompted the appearance of both the cross and the pentagram (both inverted) in two separate dreams, but yesterday H's dad was making about twelve of these cross-shaped grave markers. I remember asking if they were consecrated or blessed in any way once they were done. I was told that there's no point, since they are just temporary markers. This might account for the marker's appearance in my dream, as I had some interest in them since he was basically working on them all day and we were there for most of it.

- The third dream was a mix of many, many games, far too many to actually describe in reasonable detail. But the part with the UDamage and the inverted pentagram was most definitely based mostly on: DOOM, Daikatana and Unreal (Tournament). All of these have some themes in common, but the game engines are also all quite similar in some aspects. Hell and unholy motifs such as ghouls are closely related to DOOM of course and they also feature in UT. Some time ago I was working on a cathedral level for UT, but abandoned the project due to its complexity for my current skill level. The level featured an underground hellish portal that would take players to the top of the level.

- The Christian-type symbols probably also made their appearances because last night I spent a fair bit of time speaking to H about how I have often felt, and often still feel, because of my constant pain issues. There is a somewhat subconscious link between pain and some version of hell, for me.

- In the second dream, I seem to remember R was wearing his typical leather jacket. I don't remember seeing his face much in the dream.

- In that same dream, many of the dream characters seemed to be some type or another of friends or acquaintances I used to have. My mom appeared in that dream at some point, near the end, along with some dreamed up ogre-like uncle of some kind.

We had a bit of a tidy yesterday and I had somewhat strange sleep because of a supplement I took that I even forgot I had around; but I'd also forgotten why I'd stopped taking it. I had extremely vivid dreams but unable to really stay asleep. The first two fragments were from some of the awakenings and were actually really quite long and detailed dreams, just as the third, but I didn't memorise enough of them since I didn't write them down when I had them.

---

Dream Fragment:

Was in my old home area. For some reason I managed to get a job as a secretary for some important person (politician/businessman?) and I was being interviewed by a woman with tied up hair and glasses; very similar to the secretary in the original Deus Ex game, come to think of it.

For whatever reason I was using an alias, a French name going just by "Sís", even though I was uncertain myself how I should pronounce it. I remember being asked about speaking French, and I said (roughly) in French that I could speak the language poorly.

I remember the room I was in was office-like but sort of well decorated as I'd expect for my native region.

Dream Fragment:

I wasn't a character myself in this dream. It was more like watching something. It was in China or a place like it and I was seeing inside an office at a business skyscraper. Two men were discussing (in English) about how a brand new government law was going to make everyone's life hell, basically. They could see it being announced on a TV at their workplace. Everyone was becoming afraid of speaking to anyone else but most people were uncomfortably relaxed in a sense, seemingly they felt safe in this place anyway.

I remember one of these two men making a comment saying "I don't even want to take anyone in my car with me anymore."

Then there were some scenes outside, scenes of traffic and of dead vegetation/landscapes. It was a gloomy day-time throughout this dream.

Dream Fragment:

I am somewhere underground, at some kind of mixed restaurant/convenience store place. I'm with my family, and I'm making small talk with the shop lady. She's interested in my phone and asks if I can get her some extra ones of the same model. I say sure, but then question if it's worth it. I tell her that if I get them at a "brand new price" there's nothing in it for either of us. Before she can give me a reasonable idea of what the agreement would be, my phone "rings" (vibrates, more like, I think).

It's an old friend, someone I haven't spoken to in over two years in waking reality. Da is calling me and I try to answer but somehow I tap something that says "delete contact" right under "accept call"!

Feeling frustrated by the fact I just made such a mistake I try to get the number back somehow from the log and then try calling back. He answers and I try to speak but he can't hear me.

I walk outside from this shop, still underground and take a left and then a right and go up some stairs. I'm outside now. I don't remember what it looked like exactly, but get the feeling of "arid".

I speak again, and Da hears me now. I ask, "Hey, how are you? It's been a really long time." He says "I'm ok, I guess." He makes some sort of ironic and witty but also serious remark about how I hadn't been in contact. I try to explain that I did try communicating over the last two years, but that every time I did, I never heard anything back.

We get into small talk and his behaviour over the phone seems more normal, less upset as it seemed like initially. I can hear he's playing something on a console. "Is that Tekken you're playing?" He doesn't answer immediately, concentrating and then says he'll be finished shortly and then we could do (whatever it was) that we were going to do. I quickly realise internally that it couldn't be a Tekken game. All the sounds are too sort of retro and synth-like.

I remember pacing around outside while on the phone, something I do anywhere whilst on the phone. Everything feels vivid and somewhat real despite the fact that the place I'm at looks somewhat alien. The structure of this place on the outside is some sort of hard compacted sand and I'm on some kind of platform. There are metal beams or girders somewhere as part of the structure, but I forget the details now.

It's kind of daytime, but there's a strange light. I don't remember anything else now but this fragment was only the second half of this dream.

---

No notes for now.

Non-dream stuff - woke up earlier than 10 a couple of times but got up at about 10:10. Was having a non-lucid but some details are missing.

---

Dream:
I remember that this was the start of a transition between two dreams, and I was walking to a gravel car park. It was day, and I had a backpack, full of stuff, whatever it was. Then in the car park were two of my old school friends. At first they didn't notice me because of the distance, but I hoped they would because they were walking away from the car park in my general direction but I also wanted to leave my backpack in their car.

As I approached, I remember I was struggling with walking; it felt like it took a long time to get to them and they had at least spotted me. They walked back a few paces with me to their car, which looked like the car my dad has in waking life. One of my friends opened the boot and I dumped my heavy black backpack in there, remembering I still had some lessons that day, so I took out a couple of my pencil cases, ones which in waking life I use to keep pens and pencils separately and that I've always used.

Then there was either a transition or it was implied we walked somewhere else.
We were in an old building, ruined. There were more people, and now this was some sort of game. Me and my two friends ran out of the building first and it looked like it was some sort of hunger games/battle royale thing, so the three of us had an advantage for getting out first and we went through areas of a ruined city. I remember seeing our health numbers, 64, 40 something and another. I spotted some monkeys or something and decided to make them friendly with us; my friend asked what the point was, and I explained that as the other people came by, the monkeys would attack them and weaken them, without putting us at risk.

Then the rest of the groups started arriving in a scattered manner. I grabbed a stone and watched each person cautiously. Many of them went by ignoring me, running and looking for things to use. I went past a girl with a dog, that initially was on a lead, and then the lead vanished. The girl went one direction down some steps and the dog went another direction, where I came from.

Then there was some sort of flat area lower from where I had been, and everyone was here now. In a way it was like people had a short field of vision, like they couldn't see how close I was, like how ridiculous stealth can be in some video games. I remember the stone I held was limestone square cobble; it had a very sharp edge. I slashed a girl on her naked back and prowled away; the girl became complaintative to the rest of the people something like "how am I going to win now?!" with some sort of moody attitude.

The slash I'd inflicted on her was quite deep along the spine, but in retrospect she didn't seem to struggle or feel too much pain about it. I remember as I prowled around the area that these people all looked like former classmates or were simply random dream characters. My two old friends, I couldn't spot anywhere.

Then I remember I cut two other people, on their shoulders and arms. Not as serious, more like scratches. I seem to remember either everyone was naked or something. I think this was inconsistent in the dream.

Then there was a group of 5 or 6 older adults, in their 40s, 50s, 60s. They stood straight and graciously at one end of this area and one, a white, large lady, barked some complaints she had about something. Another, a black man, disagreed with her and said something about mental illness, and the reality of it. The comments were all related to the "game".

---

Notes:

• In this dream sequence, my old school friends would probably have been the best cue for RCing. I have not seen or spoken to them in several years now.
• I think that to make the monkeys friendly with us I had given them something they could eat, though I can't remember what.
• Through the whole second part of the dream I was mostly calm but in that mode where one observes everything very carefully as if anyone could be a threat. It's a basic instinct feeling, which is not surprising given the dream's context.
• I'm not sure why I cut the others with less force than that first girl; I remember the cut on her spine looked a vivid red. I think I felt like perhaps I'd caused too much harm, even if I should be concerned about my own "survival". I could have just killed any of them, but I didn't, and I don't know why.
• I think the man at the end was making a point that conflict could make us mentally ill. That's how I felt about it, somehow.