DarkestDarkness

28th July 2021

Several bits around the same theme of survival.

Fragment:

I'm watching a video, or TV broadcast. It's about a survival show on a large island. They're saying "in our previous show only a few survivors could manage to scratch a living but now up to seven million tribals will be competing!", something like that. There's this image super-imposed over a panning view of a tropical island. The super-imposed image is an idle animation of some white tribals posing together, forming a sort of pyramidal composition as is often seen in group photos. I think to myself that the older existing tribes won't take kindly to such a number of newcomers.

I also think to myself that I'd rather be there myself, playing, rather than just watching TV.

(transition or recall gap, chronology got messed up in recording the dream)

I'm on a sandy and sunny beach, it's near noon judging by the sun. I later become aware that to my left there is a jungle or forest area and further left and close-by is a ruined town or city. I came out of some kind of drop pod and I see someone else who just has too. I'm not sure whether or not I should trust someone else at this point.

Then some raptors about our own size appear and they start harassing each of us. I hit them with something and try to grasp them by the neck and try to twist and break them. I possibly kill one or two and help the other person out, a woman. Then when we're in close proximity, one of the raptors is trying to steal something from me, and it succeeds. I try to catch the raptor and it behaves like a cheeky dog and I may be slightly annoyed. The woman recommends I let go and don't bother chasing the animal. I eventually let go and the raptor stops being cheeky and just ruins off into the ruined city.

(recall gap)

Still with the same woman? She needs to send an e-mail to someone and I know there aren't many places where she can do that, here. We go into a building that I was in before at some point in the dream. Inside, it's dark. Lots of dark brown colour, like rust. There are many mechanical mechanisms and there are a few desktop computers set up in a cramped corridor.

There are many things here that I know to have been set up by H in the dream. I sit at some chair or something in front of a computer. I'm trying to change the plugs around back so that she can use this old Windows 95 machine, because I still don't fully trust her and figure that this way she won't be able to release any viruses intentionally, or accidentally. For some reason I'm struggling with the plugs. The video connection coming out of the W95 machine is almost like a USB but the shape is slightly different and won't fit into the even weirder input shape on the other computer, or screen.

I eventually give up and just let her use the normal computer, feeling that I can trust her just enough anyway.

(recall gap)

Something about another building or another part of this same building. There's some small weird water gremlin bug thing... In actuality it looks a bit like a grey coloured shrimp but in the dream I think of it as crayfish. I am nervous around it because it moves erratically and I don't like its look and the look of its "whiskers".

---

Notes:

- The next day, I was using some Firewire stuff with H to set up a microphone for me to use. At the time, that made me think of the USB-like plugs in the dream, because Firewire is not too different in the physical look of the ends and its intended purpose is similar anyway.

- My nervousness around the grey creature was related both to shallow standing water in that area and also to the residual feelings of fright or jump-scare I still get from, for example, some arachnids.
-- I do not particularly like shrimp, neither in look or smell, though I can't say I recall their taste. I always thought they looked a bit too "bug"-like to eat, despite their popularity in my native region.

- I had to look up crayfish because I couldn't actually remember what they looked like; the dream creature really didn't resemble them.

Non-dream stuff - I wrote most of this non-lucid dream on a tablet while cooking lunch, as I didn't get a chance to do so before that. Managed to remember a lot of detail, but not some missing bits from transitions and the like, unfortunately.

---

Dream:
I remember being some place outside. I was getting a big weapon. The poor memory I have of the outline makes me think of a black bfg. I had a small van like the one my partner has. It was a cloudy and grey day. I put the weapon in the back of the van.

I remember the presence of my middle sibling and I think we spoke at some point, about the weapon. It was very rare and valuable.

Then there's a transition and it implied I took it some place else. I was now in my "lair" and I was a dinosaur/monster like something out of the game Monster Hunter. The weapon was on a rock, safely secured somehow and I remembering seing an orange glow on its outline, like an item pickup in a game.

Then I looked at the top right corner of a visual interface and it said 33,000,000 or so, and it was money I had.

Another big black monster that looked like a Komodo dragon or some sort of lizard appeared and he wanted the weapon. I remember he had a deep voice but I don't remember any words. He wanted to take it by force so we fought for a bit and he tried to attack the things making the weapon secure, without much success. I think he ended up scurrying away.

I then was in a human form and in a black mustang-y type car, seeing it from third person like in many free roam games, and I drove at some speed toward a "waypoint" where I would find the black lizard. I was driving through a city and it was a bit dark at first. I got to a wide river, and I remember I could see an industrial estate type place across the way. I couldn't cross with the car and "remembered" I could summon a jet, so I summoned a bomber jet and got in and took off; the city was more like a complex megapolis now and it was a clear and sunny day.

Somewhat unexpectedly I wasn't controlling the jet too well, and had a few near-hits with buildings; there were drag forces I don't remember noticing before when flying these in games and the tall and branched buildings made it difficult to navigate at high speed but after through the mega city jungle I was arriving over my waypoint so I jumped out of the jet, landing somewhere near my waypoint, which was a bunker entrance. It became night again and there were military personnel that didn't look like they were going to let me inside but they didn't threaten me with their weapons so I rushed through the entrance, into some dark and dimly lit concrete halls. The few lights that existed were weak fluorescent lights.

There wasn't much staff inside this bunker and I seemed to have lost the guards. In this section of the dream I can't actually remember what form I took, possibly alternating between human and lizard form; but I found the black lizard in a small room behind a classroom place that had window panes to an "open" underground area. It was still very dark but there was bright blue light from the large underground area. I assumed some kind of high tech generator though I don't remember looking.

The black lizard was smaller than before, but though he was the same one as before, it was like he was younger now, hence his reduced size. I remember confronting him with more aggression and likewise back at me. I also remember thinking "why couldn't he just pay me a few millions for the weapon", also making me wonder how much money he had, which I assumed to be a lot.

Unfortunately I can't remember what happened next in any detail and the dream ended shortly after.

---

Notes (going into a bit of dream interpretation more than usual because of the dream's plot/context):
- To me, the jet, the military staff and bunker are clearly based off my recent experience of playing Just Cause 3. Other elements from games are obviously present, like the weapon.
- In the dream I did expect the jet control to be a lot more intuitive than it ended up being, but the giant branched buildings were very unexpected, because when I was on the ground I never spotted any.

- Black seems to have been a very prevalent colour in this dream.
- Black BFG, black lizard, black car, grey rocks, lots of places of darkness... Of contrast was the white van, the blue or tan jet and the shiny city buildings and blue sky when flying the jet.
- Of note to me is that I immediately referenced the black lizard as male, and the fact that I was a lizard too, of some other colour, probably yellow or orange, indicates to me that the black lizard was likely a part of my Shadow and that I was playing some sort of Hero role.

- I find that the Hero as represented by my less conscious mind tends to be too antagonistic towards the Shadow. This may just be a reflection of Hero portrayals in many typical stories. I personally see the Shadow archetype in general as a poor repressed fellow who needs attention or affection, rather than violence.
- In my childhood pre-sleep lucids, the form of choice was usually a giant black lizard/dinosaur.

- The last part of the dream has the most significance to me and follows a general pattern that my dreams sometimes take;
-- The underground bunker goes down and deeper and gets darker and darker, which is a common process in my dreams, but the presence of a bright blue light at the end when confronting the black lizard in the darkness was somewhat unusual. I do usually have meaningful interactions with dark characters in these dream stages however.
-- The fact that the black lizard was smaller and/or younger at the end makes me think that it is a part of my childhood that I've lost that I haven't been able to regain yet. As a child I was easily angry and aggressive, which was more or less the behaviour of the black lizard.

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Edit from 2 years after having first made this entry (altered some spacings above and corrected typos too):

- As I re-read my dream and the notes, I realised that not once did I actually mention the colour of the black lizard's eyes, but I think due to some "memory corruption" I have mistakenly defined them as being blue. I think my error came from the memory of the light in the final scenes of the dream, where there was that incredible bright blue light beyond the glass.

- My only guess is that my brain linked the two things together to define that the lizard's eyes were blue of the same colour. I think I am fine with this association either way and perhaps while it wasn't the actual colour in the dream, it doesn't really matter seeing as it was my subconscious that made that association to begin with!

- Although I didn't describe it as such in the entry, I do remember that it was a semi-spherical room that the blue energy was contained in. It was a room of very large proportion, definitely based on some sci-fi stuff I've seen.