DarkestDarkness

11th July 2021

~7:30
Fragment:

Transitioning from the TBC era to WLK era. T is there as his paladin at one point. There's something very Roman-esque about the setting? We need to complete some gold-payment quest to continue on into the city. There's a group of randoms with us, part of our party.

Fragment:

In a place like L, by the pier area I think. There's a lot of commotion because of an upcoming football match. It's dark-ish, twilight-like, orange and purple hues in the sky? I want to take the subway to go somewhere, but first I got into this church. Many people are leaving an on-going service in the church but many still remain.

Aunt G enters the church, I notice her and approach, getting her attention. She eventually recognises me and I tell her we should go somewhere together (to make up for lost time?) because I realise this place is actually quite crowded. I don't entirely feel safe, I think. Someone, an older lady but not as old as my aunt, she's putting up cordons and tells us we can't go in a certain area of the church. She had white hair, maybe tied back.

The church is artificially lit, quite a warm light which contrasts with the twilight. Originally I wanted to move towards one of the areas that was cordoned off. We end up leaving the church and heading down a nearby subway entrance.

(recall gap)

We are next to a guy who's a pipe maker. I tell my aunt how many churches just can't afford new pipes, even though they'd benefit from them. The pipe maker gives us a statistic; only about five-hundred thousand out of one and a half million can afford such things. I realise and remark that it's only a third. I also remark that the distribution is going to be geographically unfair or disproportionate, too.

(after writing these two, I got up and had thoughts about WBTB as I got back in bed)


~10:00
Fragment:

Visiting a church with H. In the dream, I had a dream where I'd visited this church and it was sort of empty. So, when we're there together, I already know the layout. During the dream, this made me vaguely think of "vision quest" dreaming and that sort of thing (no doubt related to reading Dreamgates before bed). The church has an odd layout, the rooms are laid in an inwards spiralling fashion. One of the back rooms we go through is tiled and looks a bit industrial.

It has four big cylindrical tanks, all white. They're about twice and a half our height. I understand them to be part of some boiler system. A man, possibly the warden, is showing us around the church, some kind of introduction.

Before this, me and H are outside. We just got out of the van. It's dark? I don't remember the grounds too well but there are tall trees and low dry-stone walls. H shows me something about a painting, which resides out here, on the external church walls. The painting is very big, mostly vertical. It's about one yard wide by four yards tall.

The painting itself is kind of sepia in tones. It has a sketch-like look. At first I just see some eyes at the top, like part of an incomplete portrait, but as I move it around (because I'm moving it to hang it on another wall), the image changes. On some level, this makes me think of those "holo" images.

Fragment:

At a mall place with H. We live in a flat inside the mall, accessible via an escalator through a store, it's either a clothing or jewellery store. Some people I know from school are here, there's some interaction. Rest of recall is gone.

---

Notes:
- We went today somewhere that took us the same road that we can take when we went to see a pipe maker. This was recently, so I wonder if that dream theme was influenced by this.

- The TBC->WLK dream theme probably came from a nostalgia of the actual WLK period and from having some interest in its classic revival. On the other hand, I have little or no interest in paying to play the game, especially since there's very little social motivation for me to do so. The last time I went on, the atmosphere was more "toxic" than I recalled, something I found hugely disappointed, making me feel like some people just never grow up. Perhaps when I played many years ago, I was just that much younger that I didn't think much of it/just ignored it or maybe it wasn't that far removed from daily life, but now it would just bother me.
-- I still find WoW dream themes to be fairly enjoyable, since they do tend to focus on the sense of adventure, combat or exploration, which were feelings that were much more present in me when I was younger. I haven't felt a genuine sense of wonder about anything at all for many years.

- In the area where I used to live, the mall has flats over it. Although the mall in the dream had a more "airport-shops" feel to it, the rest of the associations seemed fairly close to memory of home.

2nd July 2021

Fragment:

In Outland. Some alternate version of Helfire I've dreamed of before, years ago I think. It's a mix of Netherstorm in terms of landscape features but looks like Helfire. Something about me trying to get to level seventy but I find out that eighty is actually the maximum level, through seeing other players I think.

There's a back-and-forth mix of D3 and WoW. I'm both trying to create a level twenty or so questline involving dragons, for the zone I'm in, I think; but also trying to work on an art project about an erotica comic in a M/M theme.

(recall started fading at this point) At one point, I'm working on this comic project and alt-tabbing between games and drawings for reference and then H comes in to this odd office room I'm in and starts talking to me. The room is very wooden? A dark-ish stain, probably? H is kind of having a go at me for "not doing much". I feel annoyed and partly insulted, since I try as much as I can. Constant interruptions occur (not just or only from H but something else) while I'm trying to work on this questline thing.

The dream eventually deviates into some other bit in a town.

(recall gap)

I'm in a subway starting at my home town and I'm sort of composing a train run schedule that will go from a yellow line to the blue line? Stations seem dark and unfamiliar, not to mention cramped, they seem more like my vague memory of the London underground and some other generic subways I've seen.

I'm alone in this train with the conductor, I'm just in the passenger area at first looking at the maps. Then I knock on the door to the cabin or something and I tell him about what I'll be doing. I can see through the front glass that we are arriving at a station full of people, mostly university students or something, people in school uniforms. I tell the conductor that we can't stop here for now because "that's too many gamers" and that I'll add this station later on into the schedule.

And I think about how they'd probably end up giving this new route I'm making a very bad reputation and causes issues later on. So I think to myself that they'll just have to catch a different train for now.

---

Notes:
- Feels like it's been a while since a proper subway dream, though I suppose I have had a few not that long ago, that come to mind.
-- As always this should be enough of a cue to question reality, but it never seems to be enough, nothing seems to be enough.

- Again, dragons. Dragons are rarely the central topic in my dreams. This time they weren't the focus of eroticism but seems there was still a loose link since I was working on both their questline and the erotic comic.
-- This thematic could relate both to my difficulty in sticking to a single project and to the fact that I always want to do really involved things. Doing either a comic or a full questline are projects that require a lot of time and attention. Relating to the difficulty in sticking to a project, I often lose track of myself and my attention to things when things start feeling long.

- Unusually, the train was symbolically under my control though indirect influence of its compliant conductor, maybe a metaphor about navigation, guidance or inability to lead action directly.
-- Relating to this, I have found that I am much calmer and more able to work effectively if I'm not directly in charge of something. If I am in advisory or assisting role, I tend to be able to remain emotionally detached for better results. Thinking further about this, ironically this is not the case when it comes to doing artwork for others, since that's still primarily based on my own ability to lead artistically (since I'm not being asked to emulate another artists' style).

- When in the dream H has a go at me, I think this is actually a metaphor for me having a go at myself. I do sometimes think I'm not trying as hard as I could be. I often think about how it feels like I'm not leading myself anywhere but also about how it feels so hard without anyone guiding me.
-- The irony to me feels like even under guidance I still feel like I'm not getting guidance, which makes me feel like it's a problem relating to myself only and not to others and their interactions with me.

10th May 2021

Dream:

I'm on some cliff-top in a surrealist environment. There are many cliffs which are mostly straight up vertical and the height of mountains and the cliff I'm on is the same. There's a blue (cyan tinge?) but desaturated sky. I fall down to a lower rock platform on the side of the cliff but then I use drilling tools like the ones from DRG, quickly making my way back up through the rock. I make a guess as to where I'm going (based on some environmental factor?) and there are some parts where there are large swiss-cheese-like holes and openings in the cliff that I avoid.

I then find and head inside some structure which has some hallways within. There's a clay-like tone to this structure? There are also some window openings in the walls but they are sort of perfectly squared off and have no glass or frame, but I don't recall wind or anything of the sort. There may be some lights inside the structure but I'm not sure. Then, there's a counter just by a hallway corner.

On this counter-top, I place two kitchen knives. One is like our metal bread knife and the other is like one of the coloured knives, about the same depth, so probably the magenta one? Some dream characters appear behind me and they seem to be passing by, but other characters are just idling around. I interact with the passer-bys and they ask me casual questions, which I answer. They fit into the archetype of some of my black friends from school, but they are not these friends specifically. We just know each other in the same way.

Then I move away from the counter. Someone shows up, I think AM (mom's friend L's daughter) But her skin is not as pale white as I recall it (don't notice this specifically in the dream?), her hair is darker and more like mine and she's a bit chubby. I say something about waiting "fourty years for my wife" and think about how different she looks. She sits and reclines on top of the same counter from before, her feet are bare.

11th May 2021

Fragment:

Something about being with a big group, in a subway. Queen Elizabeth II is with us and is a part of our group. We board a train (looks like L subway) and the passengers who are already inside are staring and openly voice that they can't believe that it's actually the queen. She takes a seat and I sit beside her. I talk to her and tell her some story from my life, from years ago. She doesn't reply to anything I say and I interrupt myself remarking "you've probably heard it all before I suppose", realising that she is just that much older than me and must have heard and known the life stories of hundreds or thousands of people.

---

Notes:

- The night before the 10th, I was practising anatomy drawing and there was a woman in a reference image that fit the same typical appearance as what AM appeared like in the dream.

- In the fragment's dreaming context we were on some kind of tour and the subway was a connecting point to get to somewhere else.

- When I woke up, I think I had lingering feelings and found myself surprised at the dream passengers' shock for seeing the queen. In the dream the whole context felt absolutely normal and day-to-day.

- I don't think I've dreamt of Elizabeth II before. In the dream she was much like my paternal grandmother in some respects, possibly even physically, but as a character she seemed tired, worn out.
-- This probably comes partly as a result of having heard of the prince's passing but also a general curiosity about old age, partly mixed with my own feelings about how it must be very wearing to lead a life that is meant only for duty.

24th April 2021

Fragment:

In a train station hub or maybe it's a subway. It's a vast place, made mostly out of concrete as far as I can remember. Either way, it's busy. I remember daylight shining through in places and I am walking in a tunnel of sorts with someone, maybe JoCo.

Fragment:

I'm in the kitchen, looking in the cupboard with the tinned and packaged food, I think? I notice some tortellini packs are missing most of the tortellini and they look vacuum packed. Some have like three or four bits of pasta at most and that's it. I feel annoyed that I somehow missed this detail at the shop and feel it'll be annoying to have to return these. I think to myself something like "they clearly aren't fit for having a full meal like this".

Note:

- Later the same day I think, I was talking to H about the second fragment and it was pointed out to me that the tortellini is always vacuum packed. I had not consciously realised this until that point.

20th February 2021

Dream:

Me and H are a nightclub which we own in the dream. It's like an expanded and stripped out version of our kitchen. It's a shady place. Though we don't allow drug dealing, it still happens, some people even talk openly about it in front of us. The lighting is moody; a mauve or red-like ambience. We have just recently installed some kind of small curtain things around these arcade console things lining the walls of the club.

The place is very busy, packed pretty much. I recall seeing people were playing WoW in some form on these arcades, the curtains were supposed to provide a bit of extra privacy at a glance, but they didn't drape very far down, so someone standing up would mostly have the upper half of the screen blocked from their view.

Eventually me and H cease to exist and it becomes more like I'm watching something I think. There are still two club owners, now they are a couple too, a tall and muscled man and a woman, somewhat Arabic in look. Both could be from my native country.

Some person they talk to at one point who is using one of the arcades, reveals something important about gossip that's going around? This person asks the wife if she is wearing the new... whatever it's called in the dream, but it's slang for a skirt-type of clothing which is now considered to be sexy and naughtywear. More stuff happens at the club but I don't recall it.

(recall gap)

Then like I'm watching a dramatised documentary of some kind, there's an implicit feel of it being in some place like Jerusalem or Russia. I see backstreet, vacant type of places.

Small bits of life for people of different religious backgrounds are shown. It's implied that in groups, sometimes people bully single individuals of other groups, despite the fact that this place is supposed to be a place for all to come together. I recall a scene where this Catholic boy is being chased away by some Orthodox teens or something.

Fragment:

An earlier dream. In a subway, me and a large organised group of individuals, part of some stealth ops type of thing and with appropriate gear. We are boarding a train and I remember we go through tunnels. Recall is too vague for details though.

9th November 2020

Initial note: Some parts of the dream were clearly about having to get ready in the morning but other parts felt more random. I didn't sleep through the whole night, having struggled to fall asleep and to stay asleep for most of the night, but only recalled the morning dream.

Dream:

The entirety of the dream takes place in what seems to be a subway and in some parts there's a feel of it being mixed with the layout of my old home.

I remember being naked and at one point there's some kind of mini game thing happening and

Spoiler for semi-graphic:

eggs are appearing like pickups would in a game, on the floor; I have to grab these eggs, about the size of a regular hen's eggs and put them in my vagina before they hatch by themselves, but apart from that I note that I am male. None of this makes me question reality and whenever I put one of these sort of off-green coloured eggs inside myself, they get pushed back out some moments later, feeling quite nice but with a somewhat "raw" sensation, on the edge of being an uncomfortable sensation.

And then the egg thing would hatch and a prize would come out of it, like a kinder-egg prize toy or something, but the prizes were completely random. As I kept doing this, things like bathroom spray cleaner bottles and other mundane objects would be "spawned" by the hatched eggs I was using. I think to myself very clearly "wow, it's almost like magic, but how do the companies make them appear as if they spawn from thin air from these comparatively very small eggs?" I add to the irony of this by then thinking "it must be some kind of quantum gateway tunnelling, I think", completely missing the cue.

Then I remember getting dressed with my usual clothes, the ones I'd be wearing today basically. I don't remember putting socks on but I know I hadn't put on a top just yet. I recall an escalator which I go down on, it goes a long way forward and not very far down so it has a very small degree of elevation per step. The subway area itself is very much like the ones I've been used to from my old home area but far more vast and of incredible depth/height. For a while I'm the only person in the entire place.

Then I hear dad calling for me and telling me about how we had to get on with it and get ready. (prior to this whole dream I had a waking moment where I had checked the time and it was still more than an hour's time away from my alarm going off) Mom is also here now and she's telling me about how T lost his citizen's card/ID in the subway just recently. I comment that I couldn't possibly lose something like that out of my wallet because it's all stuffed in quite tightly.

Dad seems disappointed that we (me and T or me and H?) weren't ready sooner, but I tell him it's not even 8AM yet and he doesn't really change his tune, insistent that we should be more prepared or something to that effect.

My recall faded a bit but eventually I had to go back to get a hoodie and I'm trying to not get lost in what seems to be an Escher-like maze quality that the subway seems to have. The entire underground area is very well lit but I'm left with an impression of darkness and recall the construction was primarily concrete, so it felt like a recent or cheap construction.

I recall that at some point, there were some more particular things that had hatched from my eggs; one was a bony black creature with wings, like a dragon, but not. It had a frayed look, worn. At first I genuinely thought it was a toy because it started out inanimate and in a sort of fetal position? But when it started moving around I began to hope it wouldn't cause any chaos or mayhem while we were away for work today (pre-lucid thought).

Another peculiar item that spawned from the eggs was a very authentic/official looking piece of scrap paper telling a military person who he should be looking at and what he should be doing when activating a nuclear arsenal. The paper had Spanish writing but it was mostly in English. The other military person mentioned was a "Dahlia" something or other, of an enlisted rank (sergeant comes to mind?).

At the top of this thick paper were two groups of Hebrew or Jewish 6-point stars and taking up the right half of the document were some watermarked bald-eagles or something, but the paper was torn around this area. I couldn't make up my mind on where this document could possibly originate from, thinking about Mexico, the USA, Israel and other places. But I remember being amazed by the document and trying to tell H about it in the dream.

---

Notes:

- In the dream, I don't recall any of the "subway" area actually having any rail tracks. It just had the same feel as some stations I've been in, but on a bigger scale. I never did reach a terminal at any point in the dream, nor did I see any trams/trains. The whole place was very bare. Although subways used to be a common dream sign for me, they rarely feature quite as much as they used to a few years ago, probably since I don't use them currently.

- Apart from how it felt physically, there was nothing particularly sexual about the mini-game thing.

- I think part of what brought about the small dragon-like creature was the fact that H's cat had to have some emergency care very recently and so was looking quite "patchy" and ruffled when I saw a picture.

- Part of what brought about the very peculiar military document was probably because I was reading about colonising of the Americas in general last night and also looking at different maps about the subject. Dahl and its variations is a name I find interesting but apart from the similarly named Borderlands fictional military-arms company, I'm not sure what would have prompted a character to be called Dahlia in one of my dreams, but it's not the first time a random word has been put together.

- Although I don't recall what it was anymore, something did happen if I didn't use the eggs and just allowed them to hatch by themselves and from my perception (with it being a mini-game of some sort) this was "bad".

- At the time of this dream I had recently been speaking to a transgender friend of mine, whom I hadn't spoken to for quite some time.

Just a dream fragment. Recall was a bit poor this past night and the night before, maybe because I've been a bit restless.

---

Dream Fragment:

I'm at an alternate version of the big square in my old home town. An older version of it, I think? I got in a car with one of my aunts (B). It was dark. We drove somewhere underground, where it was also particularly dark but there were a few lights here and there at foot level or something. There was a green hue to everything.

The underground area was like a tunnel at first, a bit like some of the subway tunnels in the town. But then it became narrower and more like a sewer of some kind.

Then I remember being on foot on my own. There were narrow concrete straits over darkness below. There was green-ish looking water coming out of cylindrical openings in some of the concrete walls.

---

Notes:

- Although I didn't realise it on waking up or during the dream, it made sense that the underground area resembled the subway tunnels, because under that square in waking life is where the station is.
- I remember having some conversation with my aunt, but can't even remember what about.

Non-dream stuff - woke up at about 9:00, remembering one long(ish) non-lucid dream. Some details lost.

---

Sequence:
I remember being in a variation of my current home. I was in the kitchen. I remember a big man, he was a friend of ours; I think he was of some african ethnicity but he wasn't that dark - he had short hair and brown eyes and big hands; his girlfriend, who was of similar ethnicity was there too? She had long curly hair and brown eyes also. I think the kitchen lights may have been on, but it was day outside, maybe clear but very early.

I remember they were talking and then it turned into an argument and I joined his girlfriend's side of the argument for some reason. Then I asked him to leave, and I realised I was a bit angry, so I immediately calmed myself down, touched him in the arm, as he was upset too, and I said "I'm sorry about that." - then everyone was a bit calmer and for some reason he had this bag full of chestnuts covered in sugar that had been deep-fried. They looked delicious but I commented that they looked nice, but unfortunately my mouth didn't agree because of all the sugar.

I tried to make light of the situation somehow but either way, I then went through the main hall; the front door was open and as I walked out, the scenery was different from what it should be; our side of the street was still a row of terraced houses but the opposite side was just forest/green, and the road was wider (2 lane instead of single lane) and the pavement was much wider. My partner was parked up to the right in the car. To the left was some sort of factory (maybe tire factory, there is one where I live, but not that close).

The factory was not open, as all its (visitor?) parking spaces outside were empty. I thought it had closed for the day, though the dream-time seemed like morning, my assumption was end of day time in the dream. Opposite to the factory parking spaces was a wide bit where a bus/coach could stop. Then the road did a curve as it went on.

My partner was on the phone and had sunglasses on in the car. Opposite me, the other side of the road was some Korean man, he smiled a lot I think. Some children were playing too, I remember a little girl for some reason. I remember my mood outside was a driven one, I was looking for parking for the man inside the house, and I concluded there was none apart from the factory's spaces, so I walked back in and was going to tell him, but I had some doubts it was "ok" to use those spaces, but I think I could hear my partner's voice saying it was fine, because everyone had left. (another hint that the dream time was end of day, really)

Transition of some kind or missing detail...

I remember being with a group of people, my dad was one of the people but I don't remember who else, I think just dream characters. Of note was a man older than my dad. We were in a mall (this could have been a more obvious dream-sign on its own, plus the presence of my dad) and then we went up some concrete stairs and we were in an overhang tunnel, that went over some street or something. It wasn't very long but had angular corners. I walked next to my dad and as we were crossing, he pulled some sort of lever and the tunnel bridge started to rotate its middle section; I looked behind to see if the other DCs were able to get on.

We walked to the other end and there was a stairwell down. Then I remember being outside of there and it was like some sort of campus... I looked around (I can't remember my motivations or intents) and ended up going down some more stairs into a dark place, a subway. The tracks were at the same level as the platform, i.e. there was no stone/concrete lip over the tracks. There were quite a few people at this tiny platform that was no bigger than a small room. The tunnels were equally dark, maybe brighter somehow. I think I had stepped on someone that was sitting down at some point, though I don't remember apologising, for some reason. I couldn't see them, still.

Then I went down more stairs, to a similar sort of platform, also dark and small with several people waiting. I realised I was in the wrong place "that's the yellow line... I want the blue line" I thought, after seeing a yellow line along the tracks. I went up a level again and concluded that platform wasn't right either. I had the impression that each track was for the same line but went opposite directions.

I got out to the surface again, this campus place, but everything looked... fake, almost plastic-like. I walked along the pavements between the grassy bits and there were people around. I reached a point that had one of those blocks you can hit from Super Mario. The dream started to look a bit Minecraft-y, with voids in certain spots on the ground, sky visible. I fell down by accident into a small void pit but fortunately there were some stone blocks there. I climbed up the opposite side and continued walking.

Dream details are starting to go really fuzzy now, remaining memories of particular note only being one of a sword or something and of walking into a different place.

---

Notes:

• When I was thinking why I didn't want the chestnuts the reason was a valid waking-life reason, as I currently have some mouth ulcers that I really shouldn't "feed".
• It is peculiar that chestnuts appeared, especially prepared in such an unusual way. I haven't had chestnuts in quite a while, but I haven't been thinking about them. It may be an automatic craving, as this is about the right time of the year, when we used to have chestnuts at my childhood home.
• The Korean man was a waking-life remnant because a friend of ours was discussing the North Korean leader in passing conversation last night.
• The subway, tracks, etc all were very obvious dream-signs that I missed as always. As I was thinking about that part when I was writing it, I was realising that when I've seen trains recently (mostly in games) I've never remembered to do a RC.

Non-dream stuff - woke up at around 8:30 with the normal alarm but still fell asleep and woke up again about 2 hours later. Some non-lucid dream fragments from both awakenings persisted.

---

Fragment:
I was in a mountainous area, and there was a town or something. There were rocky overhangs and the landscape looked like something I'd only see in games in general; the stone was mostly all like limestone, which reminds me now of an area in Dark Souls III. It was a bright and clear day.

I remember fighting some sort of blue dragon, not unlike some of the Rathians in Monster Hunter. It got tired or was scared off and flew away eventually.

Fragment:
I remember briefly a subway train station, similar to the last one I've dreamt of, but in no particular way other than how it felt; the lighting was perhaps a bit dim, like the other one. Then a train was arriving and it looked full-ish on some carriages and there were plenty of people on the platform; but I chose to go to a carriage that was not as close to me and it was much emptier.

The seats were in groups of 5, with their backs toward the windows. The seats were low and sort of cushioned. I was about to sit down when a woman on this row of seats said to me "could you please not sit down on these two", gesticulating at the particular seats; so I sat on the 2nd seat of the row, and she was sat on the 4th. She said something like "I'm sorry" and "... my assessment ...", the implication being it was some sort of benefits assessment. Somehow I knew she had children though they were certainly not here. I'm sure the train had set off at this point but I don't remember noises, come to think of it.

Fragment:
I was in some version or another of World of Warcraft and I was in a player group. The group consisted solely of my character, which name I don't remember reading, and another player/character whose character name was simply "Marshal". My character was a warrior, and the other player was another plate-wearing class, maybe a paladin; both characters were human.

We entered an Arathi Basin battleground together, but a lot of it looked subtly different; I remember both me and the other guy had full grand marshal equipment (which is the highest PvP rank for the Alliance faction), and I had two of the great-swords. We went separate ways but I sort of patrolled on my mount around the central blacksmith (which in the dream was more like a lumber mill) and the gold mine.

Oddly enough, despite being in a battleground, I don't remember seeing any enemies, though I know that our team was fighting some on the other side of the map.

---

Some notes:

• Subway train stations are one of my most obvious dreamsigns, but I always seem to miss them. Part of it is because I don't expect them to come up, even though they are fairly common, but another part of it is that whenever they do show up, I had not set any sort of intention to recognise them as a dream-sign. They are a dead giveaway of the dream-state these days because I don't use the subway where I live (because there isn't one).
• I can't remember what the woman in the train looked like exactly; but she looked local to where I live. I remember feeling sorry or perhaps worried for her. Recently a friend of ours had an appointment for an assessment for benefits, so perhaps part of the context here is because of that.
• I haven't played WoW in quite a while now, and truthfully I don't think I will play it much more in the future; but I played the older versions a lot when I was younger and my dreams about the game are invariably about some sort of nostalgic feeling of those old times.
• I never attained the highest PvP rank in the classic game, but my eldest sibling nearly did.

Non-dream stuff - Woke up at about 9:30 and got up to write this long non-lucid dream, that I've split into 3.

---

Dream part 1:
I remember being at the place that used to be a store, on the ground floor of my childhood home. in the dream this place was just a room, like a dining room. An old school friend of mine was there and he was sat down at a table and I had been too but now I was preparing some meals, like sandwiches for a trip. I remember I made 8 buns and 4 of something else. I distinctly remember putting the buns in kitchen paper and folding pairs over themselves.

Then I remember needing to go to the bathroom or needing the attention of my dad or one of my siblings for some reason, and they were in the bathroom. I remember it was dark. The previous room was bright, it had a light on or something.

Dream part 2:
Then I remember being underground, at a subway train station. I was walking toward where I knew the platform to be in the dream. It was a long journey, it felt more like I was at an airport terminal, in that sense. I remember thinking the way was through a certain place but it was just a bread shop and actually it was a dead end full of bread stands. I turned around and went toward some stairs up that then had escalator stairs down...

I remember being at the platform now. There was a massive red train waiting at the platform but on a rail that wasn't right next to the platform, then another slightly taller but much much thinner train was arriving, and everyone was thinking this one was gonna stop and be the train to take them where they needed to go. I thought maybe it would be, too, and got closer to the edge as it was going past, but it never stopped. It was a very odd train and I wondered how it even looked inside with the shape it had.

Looking around, the platform was only one of several. This was in some sort of enclosed valley. Surrounding the platforms were walls of stone but the top was open sky. Past the closest rails was not another platform, but a cliff, and down there were more platforms in different orientations and directions. It was night, but I could see clearly, though I don't remember illumination posts.

I was annoyed it had taken me so long to get here, and I remember I was carrying a backpack, presumably with all those food things I made. I was looking at a tiny unfoldable map, which I remember being an unsaturated magenta colour, like a light pink, and it felt more like it was for a cd to be in it, but there was no cd. I faffed on with it trying to understand it but gave up and a boy came up to me and mocked me and we got into a bit of an argument and I said something like "this map doesn't make any sense!" at which point the child agreed with a grin.

I remember I was sitting down now and there were many other sitting down too, seemingly students of some kind. One was arriving now and showing people this transparent but large crystal, with an oblong shape with beveled edges. He said it was part of the research he did with some old guy. Then he addressed a girl there and showed her the crystal, saying like: "this is what your grandfather and i worked on" and she took the crystal into both her hands and examined it.

At some point I was holding a beer, like a pale ale.

Now I remember only seeing a machine of some kind. A portable machine, made of glass or clear plastic, and the machine took liquid inputs at the top and they'd go down into larger tubed areas and then down into a tiny transparent chamber, where there seemed to be a mushroom, for each of the chambers. I remember 4 inputs, tubes and ends. The mushrooms seemed to magically absorb the liquids, mostly water.

Dream part 3:
Then an instant transition as far as I remember. I was seeing like a film scene but I was in the role of what was a future sci-fi German tank driver. The tank looked high tech and the metal plating had a blue hue. The tank was being dropped off into a warzone in a city in Poland or somewhere like that by a plane or helicopter.

On landing, the driver looking around for targets, mostly infantry on the ground or on top of buildings. The view zoomed in on a police car that was wrecked, then on a door, and then on some rooftops, as seen from the tank's position. There was some infantry on top of the buildings and the cannon was aimed and fired at the rooftop. Then looked around for more targets and didn't find any so moved on through the road, into a parking lot. Going up the parking lot twisty ramp, met with a mech armed with machine guns and rockets, and it outmaneuvered the tank easily but the tank kept the cannon aimed at it as well as possible; then the mech jumped and latched onto a wall, and the tank was in a bit of a bad position, stuck, and the mech was about to fire its weapons, and took some shells from the tank but without really doing much damage. I remember going "no, no, no" and bailing the tank very quickly. Now I was still the driver but I had some dual machine guns and fired on the mech which quickly destroyed it.

I continued on foot up the parking lot. Then I saw some agents, and I tried fighting them and did manage to get them but there was a sort of paralyising trap that proved to be difficult during the fight. My memory on the details here has been lost a bit. Then I just remember going out of the parking lot building at a higher tier and it was night but it would be day soon, and I was walking around past the edge of some kind of military base where there were several agents.

The last part I remember was some mutated war dogs that tried attacking me, and then a worm that came out of the ground and got me. The dream didn't end there but I don't remember what came next.

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Some notes:

• The old school friend was the first potential cue for a RC. He was one of my closer friends during college.
• As soon as I was underground at the subway station, even before the platforms, it was a good cue to RC because I know that train stations are very rarely that big.
• The trains were an obvious dream-sign, one of my more common ones. Though it was the first time they had such weird shapes.
• In the third part, the dream was initially the context of some kind of future world war, like a hundred years in the future or something. The country the tank was deployed to was not an enemy, but an ally being invaded, in the dream context.
• The final context of the third part was that it was a digital thing, like the Matrix. Because of the contexts, I don't think I'd be likely to have noticed any RC cues at this point.
• I remember a music playing the last dream part. It was a mix of the soundtrack from the film "Fifth Element" and something else more dramatic. I can never remember music clearly after a dream ends.