Recent DJ Posts

Monthly Humble Bundle
I'm looking at the Humble Bundle's site and see a game that both looks interesting and is available for Linux. I'm immediately interested and look to see which bundle I'm looking at and how much it costs. After a moment, I realize this is one of the games in the current monthly bundle. I can't remember if it's too late to take advantage of now, but I don't think it is. I finally find a price: $35. I'm surprised (and disappointed) it's that high - no way am I paying that.

Spent the night dreaming about honey, lemon juice and tea.
Woke up with a sore throat and midly dehydrated. Oh well.

"So then Andraste was standing there looking like a normal human being, and Divine Victoria had to figure out how to explain to everyone who she was. And that was important, because Andraste was assembling a team to save the world."

"Of course, why else would God come back as a snarky, gorgeous redhead?"

(Explaining my dreams to someone IWL.)

Andraste
Divine Victoria

I was in the mall with my mom and all the stores were having huge after-holiday sales. I was in the mall for what seemed like hours, going to different stores, and I noticed I wasn't getting dizzy. I went to Vic Secret and almost everything was sold out. I kept going through the undies to see if there was any I wanted. It seemed like there would be almost none left, and then more would appear. I saw nice sweaters on sale for 7$, now that was a steal. So I got one of those and got in line.

Then I woke up and was sad I didn't really get a nice sweater. This happens frequently, where I go shopping or somehow acquire clothes and I'm so happy but then wake up and realize I have nothing lol. Maybe my dreams are telling me I need a new wardrobe.

I had a dream that started out at my house. There was a problem I had in mind and I was trying to remain calm and find a solution for it. Meanwhile there was two supernatural beings staying in my house because they felt like it and had the power to destroy us if we tried to kick them out. One was a girl with unlimited power and the other was a guy with super strength.

I went into a room in the house to see what the guy was doing. The girl was present but said she would leave to go to the roof. I looked at the guy admiring him as he lifted a bed like he was lifting weights. But as he was talking to me I felt like I should say something when suddenly he let go of the bed and the floor collapsed. I saw from a distant point of view how the house was now a white apartment building collapsing one by one.

My point of view than changed back to a close first person view and I was inside the room again. Except there was now a giant hole and smoke all around. Not to mention scary music that showed the seriousness of the mood. I looked down and saw what was the mark of a hole in the floor. Somewhat like in the shape of the body.

The music gave me the impression that it was some type of ps2 game I was playing. I also got the feeling that my brother did not reach up to the level of the game. I heard the cry of a woman as I began to leave the room. Mixed feelings of continuing and being brave or running away overcomes me. I walked quickly out but than a spirit like character appeared asking me to take something. He was accompanied by another. I said no and he asked me if I was sure about my decision.
I than ran calling out for my older brother feeling scared if the game was actually coming into reality.

What I Remember:
My mom and I were out side at night and found a sick old lady and tried to get her to a hospital. She was turning into a zombie and she turned before we made it to the hospital and we had to kill her.

Weird.

Sooo spellbee2's competition requires me to start one of these here DJ things... might as well start it off with my first TOTY completion...

9/1/2016 (fri)

Before 5.30am
ND "Lunch with Ultron"
I am Batman, gliding through a city using my cape, in the style of the Batman Arkham games. A guy dressed like Black Panther is hovering around on a surfboard - like Silver Surfer but a bad guy. He is fighting with the police, throwing bombs and shooting at them with magic projectiles. Before I can join the battle it is over: The police knock him off the board and he backflips off it and runs away.

The board shatters into glowing shards which I collect, believing them to be a dangerous substance, possibly uranium. Down a side street is a figure lurking. I start to shadow him, just checking what he is up to. He passes through a pedestrianised area. I continue following him, staying one street away and always spotting him at the next junction.

He wanders into a small shop and attempts to rob it. With the shopkeeper and some other DCs we stop the robbery and the guy gets killed. The DCs tell me not to worry because the man was ex-military? We drag the body out into the street, which is now a muddy track with a grave dug in it. We dump the body in the ready dug grave and I start walking away.

The road turns into a tunnel filled with fractal patterns. The whole place shifts and warps. I try to get out but end up being dragged into it, moving through this collapsing warping tunnel.

This abruptly ends as I get given a phone with a puzzle game on screen. I quickly solve the puzzle and AB, my partner, asks how long it took me. About 9 seconds.

We are now sitting at a dinner table with AB's family. Her father asks about smart watches and I'm about to show him my Christmas present - a fitbit, but everyone at the table has one. CL has one which is a flexible piece of plastic which shows a digital display on it. AB's sister TL then starts putting a stack of CDs into a drawer.

We walk through into a jail cell and get served lunch. Ultron comes and sits down next to me. "How's taking over the world going?" I ask him. He shrugs and replies "Okay." Seeing a robot shrug makes me laugh and wake up.

5.30-8am
Medium LD 330 "Big City"
Forgot most of the pre-lucid details... there is an old guy. He is skinny-muscular, sinewy, and everyone is referring to him as 'grandfather', though I know my grandparents are all dead. The room is a sort of kitchen and there is food on the table. I find a green plastic joke ring on my finger and take it off.

Grandfather asks how I want my room to be decorated. On a piece of paper I start to write "blue". The pen glides over the paper, smooth and effortless, barely touching it. My sister leans over my shoulder and starts writing "purple" instead.

The dream changes to me trying to sleep in a long large room filled with boxes and junk. Some DCs show up and start testing out some kind of electronic kit that creates background music during recordings. It is extremely loud. Pissed off with the noise, I get up and leave, becoming lucid.

Outside in the city I start talking to a guy and asking about the "grandfather" guy from earlier, asking what all that was about, but the DC doesn't give any useful answers. I start to fly through the city, which is vast. The buildings are all skyscrapers and it feels crowded.

Recalling the dragon TOTY I decide to give it another shot. The sky is grey and cloudy, so there is no shadow to focus on for the transformation this time. Instead I take some deep breaths to bulk up a bit. It seems a struggle to transform, so I ask a DC for help. He gestures vaguely in my direction. I feel my body shift and my arms turn into wings.

The city is still huge and the thought of trying to destroy all of it is a little daunting. I ask the same DC if there are any villages. He tells me to head south. I start flying but find my wings uncooperative, too small to lift my body. Also, the ends of my wings have reverted to hands.

I decide to try and get to a village first, then fix the transformation issues. Ignoring the wings I start to fly fast instead, rapidly moving through the city skyline. The city just continues on towards the horizon. The dream fades.

Medium LD 331 "Destroying the Town"
Familiar WILD sensations. The white ceiling bulges and distorts. I wait for things to calm down and stabilise before standing up and heading out the nearest window.

A garden surrounded by tall brick walls covered in vines is outside. I start to climb the wall, thinking again about the TOTY. There is gum in my mouth. I spit it out and decide to find something to eat to act as a transformation trigger.

On the flat roof I find some mossy plant thing and rip it out of the stone. It doesn't taste of much. While I'm chewing on the moss, a small silver dragon about the size of a dog lands nearby. It sits and watches me in silence. I copy it's form to transform into a dragon myself. This time the form has four legs, the wings are not my 'arms' .

Taking to the skies I can see this place is much smaller than the city from the last dream. It consists of an oil refinery type factory and a few smaller buildings. It seems someone is already doing my job: Hulk is ripping through the oil refinery and the structure is already weakening. You won't steal my task completion!

I join in and start smashing through the supporting pillars, causing the huge building to collapse into rubble. The devastation of the walls falls out over the other buildings, turning the entire area into a heap of tangled metal struts and broken stone.

While sitting on top of the enormous mound of rocks I see several DCs hurry into the wreckage looking for survivors. Hmm. What shall I do now? I wake up.

A few dreams I recall.

Monster from swamps

There were many rumors that a strange and extremely dangerous creature appeared in swamps to the north. Government sent special forces to get the monster, but all agents were slaughtered and it set loose. An alert was announced, as the monster was in my village. By midnight I decided to take some equipment and patrol around my house. I took an axe, a flashlight, and for some reason a point laser.

I went to my garden, and saw a woman running to my house. I moved back and tried to talk with her, but she was hostile to me. I ran back to garden, and realised that I'm the monster from swamps. I decided to catch that woman, as she might call for help and bring special agents on me. I watched from behind some bushes as she was making a shelter in a building close to my house.

Then I decidd to strike, and chased her around. She tried to blind me with point laser, when suddenly I've stumbled upon a dead agent. I searched his body, and found a pistol with sleeping darts. As soon as I met that woman, I shot her and she went asleep.

I dragged her body to carpentry workshop of my father and placed her on the floor. She had bright hair, and was wearing a pale-blue shirt, jeans trousers and brown shoes. I stripped her of her clothes and it really turned me on, but sex with her wasn't feeling as good as stripping her.

Guerilla Bunker

The world was dominated by a mad scientist and his army of uber-soldiers and mutants. There were many guerilla groups fighting him across the world, but we've lost contact with them. I opened a heavy, metal hatch of the bunker and went to the surface to look around.

The bunker was placed in badlands and was surrounded by hills. There were no trees or any other vegetation. I looked at the sky - dark, heavy clowds were a sign of gathering storm. Our bunker was surrounded by metal barricade.

Suddenly I heard an alarm. I heard explosions, and I couldn't see anything through smoke. I readied my assault rifle, and waited. When smoke dispersed, I saw a huge army led by the mad scientist himself. He shouted "All other bunkers were destroyed, you are the last!"

I ran inside the bunker - walls and floor were covered with gray-blue tiles. There were bedrolls scattered around. I closed hatch behind me to get some time, but suddenly i heard another explosion. Diggers opened a tunnel to bunker and a king cobra mutant appeared. It was purple, wearing pink sunglasses.

It chased me around the bunker until I thrown it at someone. The mutant bit his head off and placed it's tail inside the corpse's throat to take control. Then it chased me around repeating "Fish" to itself. Soldiers entered bunker and killed guerillas, then I pointed my finger like gun and killed some of them. Mad scientist entered bunker, but I escaped through hatch.

Falling crane, fish mutants

I was in school. It was warm, spring day, though wind blowing from east was a bit cold. I thought that I should see a doctor, just in case. I heard from someone that one has it's building behind school, and went to search for him. I couldn't find it however, as there were only seaside ruins behind my school.

I wandered slowly, looking at ruins of colliseum, abandoned buildings, ruined flats, and a huge crane towering over abandoned shipyards. Vegetation around was dead, with gray grass and nearly no trees. Suddenly the earth started to quake - the crane was falling!

I almost fallen into a sea, but I held on. I took a phone out of my pocket and made some pictures. Suddenly strange mutated fishes were jumping out of sea nad running around, and vegetation changed a bit. There were holes in the ground surrounded by plants similar to heath, but should you fall down, you'll be devoured by these plants.

I had to find some way out of shipyards. I avoided a huge, blue whale-like fish and small half lizard - half fish brown creatures and run away from there.

First lucid dream of the year!

I don't have much time to describe it, so.

My cousin was gonna be a daddy. I sent him a message to congratulate him, but I messed it up. Then, I asked him if we could be business partners.

After that was done, I went to a weird room where two people who were supposed to be my best friends were. One of them said they wanted to play a game, but the other said they were too tired. We decided to play one round.

The game was weird and boring, something about poetry. There were other people there, plus my dog. I was weary of a cable, and I started thinking that one of my best friends wanted to kill us all.

Then, my other best friend mentioned the storms. I had no idea what she was talking about, so I went to the window and opened it. The roads were covered in... I dunno. It looked like the city had been taken over by a swamp. I looked at that and thought "OMG THIS IS SURREAL HOW DID IT HAPPEN BECAUSE OF ONE STORM THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE"

"...wait a minute. THAT. IS. IMPOSSIBLE. THIS IS A DREAM!" So I slapped myself in the face a few times and felt no pain. I decided to jump through the window and fly. I did that and, as I was falling, I thought "well, I didn't REALLY do a RC, so I may have just killed myself..."

But, at the last second, I started flying. I flew around the destroyed roads and, for some reason, sang the Dragon Ball Z theme. It was fuuunnn!

And that was it!

Morning of January 9, 2016. Saturday.



In my dream, I am, for whatever reason (and with a presumed but undetermined back story) on a tourist bus somewhere in South America. I am not sure of which country though the odds logically favor Brazil.

I am with my two youngest sons, though the bus is crowded and people are mostly in random seats apart from each other, including a group of girls who talk to each other from different parts of the bus. There also seem to be locals (of whatever region we are in) on the bus. My two youngest sons are the only other dream characters that are familiar in any way.

The bus is apparently on its way to the airport where people will then get to their designated flights. However, when the bus driver gets off the bus due to difficulties with a semi blocking the grassy parking area exit to the road, the bus starts to roll a bit down an embankment until it hits a large tree covered with vines. When I look out the door of the bus to the right, as I am now near the driver’s seat to see what is going on at the front of the bus, I see that the semi is actually turned on its side. One of the tourist guides, a young male (probably not even as old as twenty), who is sitting on the overturned semi-trailer, tells one of the female passengers to shut up when she reminds the bus driver that the arrival at the airport needs to be at a certain time. The person looks a lot like an obnoxious and evasive co-worker I had years ago when I worked at the Onalaska Cemetery even though I do not make this direct association during my dream.

The bus continues to remain in its position and the driver does not return. Soon, about five local South American police officers board the bus for an unknown reason. I get the impression my sons and I will miss our flight back to America (even though I live in Australia in real life). I decide we will walk to the airport even though it is likely miles away. I ask one police officer (an older chubby dark-skinned male with a mustache) if my sons and I can leave the bus and he nods to me in a friendly manner.

After I get off though, I notice my sons are not with me so I call to them and they get off the bus and join me. I had gotten off from the side door from the middle of the left side of the bus even though the door near the driver’s seat was on the right side. I do not know if there are any buses designed like this as it would not be sensible, though it may be a distortion of having been on both American and Australian buses. The police had mainly come in through the back of the bus as well as a couple from the side door.

My sons and I go down a steep embankment with high grass in a somewhat jungle-like clearing. I realize that it will be very difficult to walk to the airport (north of our location), and it looks like the bus will not move for a long time. No one has come to offer help regarding the overturned semi that still blocks the tourist bus’s path as well as police cars and a couple military vehicles. My sons and I were the only ones allowed to leave the bus for whatever reason. All of the people on the bus are considered as suspects and witnesses of an unknown crime.

I decide that I will use teleportation (even though I am not lucid) to take us all home. I close my eyes and concentrate on getting home and as I open them again, there is a shift in consciousness. I open my eyes and the three of us are in the living room on Loomis Street (where I have not been since 1994). I know my wife Zsuzsanna will be returning from the store soon.

Teleportation, flying, and telekinesis are extremely common even in my non-lucid dreams, but what gets me is the continuous recurrence of places (and unusual composites that utilize their features) where I have not been in over twenty years. Because the Loomis Street location is where many of the miraculous and unexplained links to the Source occurred, there may be some relevance there rather than as just a setting. More on this will be in another entry of this date and the difference between teleportation events and flying events relative to locations.

---

This morning, I dreamt of three of my previous homes and my present one. Loomis Street, King Street, Barolin Street (Australia), and our present home.

---

I followed two of my former best friends up a staircase to the very top floor of a library. They didn't see me following them so I felt sneaky. When I got to the top floor I stopped when I saw a vending machine with very discounted prices. I thought the prices were discounted because not many people went to the very top floor of the library, which was smaller than the other floors. I bought a chocolate bar for 7 cents. My former friends had walked into the library. Then I walked into the library and saw a former boyfriend sitting at a table. I sat down beside him at the table and ate my chocolate as he was writing. He tried to ignore me but I could tell that he was disturbed or annoyed or something like that but I was content eating my chocolate and thought his annoyance was humorous.

[Notes]:
- Not much to say. I'm pretty surprised I remember anything at all; I went to bed at 1:30AM.

Lucid Non-lucid Non-dream
[Dream begins]:
So I'm at MPROD and A decides we have to go to my house to meet. It's a post-apocalyptic world, kinda like Fallout, and we drive up to some barn. I disarm some tentacle-mine things... yeah.
[Dream ends...]

the dream began trying to run and play games with my family at my deceased grandfather's house. I had something wrong with my lower back and in the dream it really hurt to run, a deformity that a dream character told me about later. I was trying to get the attention of some girl by playing football
but with my short leg, and deformed hip i could not run very far.(There is nothing wrong with my leg in reality) At this point I realize this is not my body. I went inside and sat at the table.
I was at the table, there was a game and i was playing with, it was circular and it had bb's in it. i tried to throw it back
on the table and my dad who is deceased, told me take it to the store and pay for it, i said no. He again repeated louder, "take it to the store and pay for it"
i repeated NO!. I got up from the table, give him the finger and walked outside. I thought for a second, and then ran away. I took off my shirt for some reason and put on a halloween skeleton mask and started running down the road i lived as a child, i ran along the road and realized i was a child now.
I found a bow and arrow and grabbed it then started running down the hill. I saw some arrows in someone's fence line and grabbed them and ran. At the bottom of the hill
were several fences i had to jump
I then found my tree fort after climbing down into the woods.

Then the dream changed into a parking lot and i was a spy infiltrating a building by going through a gated parking lot
i had some help by a couple of people in a white truck. i ran into a room and sat down, i was wearing some raggedly cloths and everyone was sitting at a long table,
wearing blue sport coats and ties. i was listening to a speaker 'talk about how the military was recruiting these guys, and everyone was taking turns talking. when it came time for me to talk everyone got noisey and i told them i was already part of a fraternity and didn't want to join, i told them it was the one
with bones. they tried to get me to tell them my name and i told them "not a chance", i saw one of them write down ?FRANKLIN on a yellow folder.
i told them i was leaving and one of them said we will tail you. i told them you wouldn't know a tail if it bit you on the ass. Thats when i started running.
everyone chased me, about 30 people. i was jumping through doors, swing on bars in the ceiling, and thats when William, a friend of mine walked up
and started helping me. i got outside by running through a sanitary zone as you see in a hospital
i got back to the two guys outside and they helped me get through the gate. police showed up and started shooting, i jumped on a motorcycle and took off..

After my WBTB, I WILD into my living room at home. I realize that I’m an idiot and didn’t pick anything to do for this lucid (maybe because I wasn’t entirely expecting another lucid so close to the last one). I try to think of anything that might be interesting to try out. I somehow recall a lot of people on the forum saying that meditating in a lucid is an awesome experience, but considering how I don’t meditate in real life (and when I try to, I get too distracted by my ADD thoughts), I’m not sure if I should try. But, no better options come to mind, so I figure, what the heck. I sit down in the classic meditation pose, and I actually start to levitate off the ground a bit. The sights and sounds around me seem to get much clearer. So far so good, I guess. Surely this’ll be easier than in waking life with all of its distractions.

In this case I was wrong. My dad walks in the room. (Story Time: Whenever I’m home on break from school, I’m basically full-time tech support for my parents. Apart from fixing computers/phones/TVs/cable boxes/etc., my dad will often interrupt whatever I’m doing about every 10 minutes to ask me some question about his phone/computer/Facebook. The answer is always something so simple that he could’ve Googled it himself, but he insists that I help him. As you’ll see, this habit of his has carried over into my dreams…) He sits down and immediately starts blabbing something about his phone acting up. I remind myself that this is a dream and try to ignore him, but it seems to make him louder. I finally get up and walk out of the room, but he follows me out, still talking about his phone. I run upstairs, go in my room, and lock the door. I can still hear him outside the door, now raising his voice to a shout. Ugh, this is ridiculous. I crack open the window, get a running start, and jump outside, flying off away from the house. Unfortunately, before I can get back to meditating, the dream destabilizes and I lose lucidity.

I’m now in this movie theater with a couple friends to see the latest Disney-Pixar movie. It’s supposedly an IMAX movie theater, even though it’s really just a really wide curved screen that stretches across the entire front of the room. The room is much larger than an actual movie theater, and it looks like it seats a few thousand people. Me and a couple friends are off to the left side, about 10 rows from the front. For some reason, though, the seats are angled off towards the left wall, so I only see a small portion of the left side of the screen until I turn my head really far to the right to see the rest of the picture.

We sit through the first few minutes of the movie, when the movie pauses. Some lady walks to the front of the theatre, and 3 more flat projector screens lower from the ceiling, showing a slide about some charity organization. I can somehow see her nametag from where I’m sitting, which says Hanna on it. She introduces herself as Hanna Montana. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m missing the last ‘h’. So no, I’m not a widely-adored pop superstar.” I turn to my friend next to me. “To be fair, neither is Miley Cyrus.” My joke made 3 rows around me start cracking up, and my friend even spit out his drink from laughing so hard.

We sit through the movie (which amazingly is only about 10 seconds long), and me and my friends kind of hang out in the theater for a few minutes afterwards. A police officer walks up to my friend Joel and tells him that he’s gonna have to come with him. I try standing up for him. “What seems to be the problem, officer?”
“Well, this hooligan was spotted last night causing a ruckus during a showing of Star Wars, and so he’s been banned from the building. Yet somehow, he managed to crawl his way back in here past our security.”
Joel walks out into the aisle, with the cop behind him. He gets to the top of the stairs, and suddenly makes a run for it. The cop quickly pulls out his taser and shoots him before he even gets out the door. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see Joel falling to the ground (because man, that would’ve been hilarious to see IRL).

After the movie, I head home, jump on my computer, and play some Minecraft. It’s a weird version of Minecraft in that it’s played from a top-down perspective, making it kinda hard to see what you’re actually building. I somehow discover a secret passageway that leads under this nearby lake, but when I travel down it, I get stopped by this massive scorpion. I’m now fighting it in first person, but I realize all my weapons are gone. The scorpion has pretty strong armor too, so it’s gonna be impossible to fight him in this state. Still, I give it my best shot. I run around him, dodging his tail strikes. He charges towards me, knocking me down, though I do manage to land a few punches on my way down. It doesn’t hurt, obviously, since it’s just a video game, though everything else about the experience feels pretty realistic. After a trading a few more blows, I’m down to one health, while the scorpion has barely taken a scratch. Oh well, it’s not like I had anything valuable in my inventory, guess I’ll just die then.

Suddenly, a glowing arrow shoots from the entrance of the passageway, one-hit killing the scorpion. I look in the direction the arrow came from, and see this guy with jet black hair and a leather jacket standing at the entrance, bow extended toward the monster. I go to thank my mysterious savior, but he just raises his nose at me. “Ha, how could you even come into a level 12 cave without any weapons? Maybe you should go back and do the tutorial levels, you noob!” The world around us fades out before there’s a bright flash of light.

Fair warning, the next part reads like a novel. It was a pretty long, detailed section of the dream. I don’t remember all the dialogue that occurred, but I do remember most of the emotional connotation of it, so I based the dialogue on that.

I’m now in this huge wooden cabin, getting out of this strange white capsule on a metal track. As I get up, I have a rush of false memories in my head that give me a context of what’s going on. I don’t really know how I know these facts, I just kinda suddenly know them. I’m somehow 50 years in the future - I have no clue how I got here, but I’m here. Much like in the book “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline, the world thrives entirely off of virtual reality. People basically live their entire lives in their personal VR capsule. The cabin I’m in is an “access point”, a place where people can bring their capsules and connect directly to the “hub”, the worldwide center of VR activity. The tracks on which my capsule was positioned were used to physically take users to the hub, and during the journey, the capsules would begin the boot-up process before finally being connected at their destination.

Speaking of capsules, mine wasn’t the best. I seem to recall getting one of the cheaper ones - it was enough to successfully connect to the hub, but it wasn’t meant for the incredibly realistic experiences boasted by VR companies. The screen in the eyepiece wasn’t that high of a resolution, and haptic feedback - the equipment that simulated a sense of touch - was pretty terrible. Everything you touched, from a hard granite countertop to the soft fur of a kitten, registered as the same stiff poke - there was no variance on how hard it poked you, you just knew you had touched something because you were poked. But I was fine with it, I couldn’t really afford much more than that.

And of course, my “mysterious savior” was Johnny Blade. Of course, that wasn’t his real name, but he had used that username to climb the e-sports ranks, so it was what everyone knew him as. Because of his gaming success, he had a ton of sponsorships from all the major e-sports advertising companies, and was on the cover of just about everything. He was a pretty big celebrity. Unfortunately, he was also a pretty big douchebag too. His hair color - which was reflected in all of his video game avatars - was an obnoxiously dyed shade of black that apparently made some sort of fashion statement. That, tied with his signature leather jacket, made him look like a mix between a 1950’s greaser and Biff Tannen from Back to the Future - with just about the same attitude. Lucky for me, he exited his game of Minecraft shortly after I left, and just so happened to exit to the same access point as me, conveniently on the track next to my capsule.

“Well, the least you could do is thank me. I saved your precious level 1 armor,” he sarcastically remarks. “We all know you must have spent a long time on acquiring it, so I didn’t want you to have wasted your life. Lord knows you don’t have much of life to waste.”
“Oh, rest assured, if I had half as many sponsors that you have kissing all over your disgusting feet, I could’ve just bought all the armor in the shop. And I guarantee I wouldn’t be half the snob you are about it, either.”
“Jealous, much? Maybe if you spent as much time practicing as you do whining, you might be able to make a name for yourself. Anyway, I don’t have time for this. Network interviews, photo shoots, you know how it is… Oh wait, no you don’t. Adios, peasant!”

Oh man, I want to slap him so bad. I don’t care if he has lawyers at his beck and call, someone needs to teach him a lesson. I walk back over to my capsule, ready to go back into the hub, when I spot Johnny’s capsule still on the track, unlocked and open. I hesitate for a moment before walking over to inspect it. As to be expected, his capsule was state-of-the-art. Stater-of-the-art than state-of-the-art, in fact, as his sponsors often gave him plenty of new equipment prototypes months before they hit the markets. Well, if someone needs to teach him a lesson, I think I just found my curriculum.

I size myself up - we have pretty similar builds, even though I’m about an inch shorter than him. I lay down in the body-shaped contours of the capsule. It’s a tad snug, but it’ll work. I sit up to press the launch button on the side of the track. I always thought that was kind of a design flaw - that you or someone else had to press the start button on the track outside the capsule before it would launch. I guess I never had that problem on my capsule, since the door closed pretty slowly on it anyway, giving me plenty of time to position myself correctly. Unfortunately, the capsule door shuts almost immediately once I press the button, shoving me into it in a weird, squatted position. My head didn’t even make it to the head portion of the machine.

This is bad. For one, I’m quickly feeling uncomfortable, as the cramped position I’m in is putting a ton of pressure on my arms and neck, so I don’t know how long I can stay stuck like this. Second, I can feel that the capsule has already launched down the track, meaning in a few seconds I will be connected to the hub. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but in my current position, I have no way to get to the controls to close the connection, return to the access point, and exit the capsule. Meaning I will most likely be stuck there a very long time, with no way to escape.

I manage to tilt my head upwards towards the head hole, and push upwards with my legs until I can kind of wiggle my way upwards. Thanks to the anatomy of the human body, and the human-body-conforming shape of the capsule, I can’t squeeze my head through the neck hole. I can barely look up through the hole and see the boot-up screen on the display. It’s fairly simple - a plain black screen with some green text in the top left corner, probably to show version info and all that. I also manage to see some kind of emergency-release latch in the neck area. Hoping that the latch will help enlarge the neck hole so I can slide my way up, I pull it. The capsule door flings open, and I’m quickly thrown out of the machine. I quickly realize what’s happening, and try to grab onto the door as I’m flying out. My hand just barely scrapes the edge of the door, but I ultimately miss and watch as the empty capsule continues rolling down the track out of view.

I take a moment to assess the gravity of the situation. Or rather, the lack of gravity, because I soon notice that I’m just floating, almost like I’m helplessly drifting through space. The track that the capsule was on simply fades away, and I’m left floating in a sea of black, with nothing around me. Until I notice up in the sky, off in the distance, floating green text. The boot-up screen? But, I’m not in the capsule. And even if I was, I shouldn’t be able to see this, I’d still be cramped in the bottom half with the display out of sight. Yet here I was, floating in a surreal sea of nothingness. I pondered this until a bright flash of light brought me back to my senses.

I’m now riding a motorcycle down this street in a suburban neighborhood. Behind me is a cop car with its lights on behind me. Oh great, they found out I stole Johnny’s capsule, and now they’re taking me in. I contemplate running, but I decide to play it cool, it could just be whatever game Johnny was playing last (besides Minecraft, I guess). It’s probably best to just wait it out and see what happens. I pull over to the side of the road, and the cop pulls up behind me. He exits the car and walks over to me.

“Johnny Blade?”
I stay silent. I don't want to say anything that might give me away.
“Your presence has been requested. Follow me.”

He gets back in his car and pulls ahead. I follow behind him for a bit, until we pull into a driveway in front of this red and white dojo, which seems somewhat out of place in a suburban town. The cop gets out and motions me towards the front door. I dismount my motorcycle and walk up the stairs of the porch, and slowly open the door.

The inside is a bit of a pig sty. The carpets are covered in cigarette burns and assorted stains, some of which look to be of questionable origin. I walk into a room to the right, where there’s a group of men wearing white suits and sunglasses. The leader of the group, who looks slightly like Mark Wahlberg with a beard, laughs and motions to his cohorts, who quickly point their weapons at me. “Well well well, Johnny Blade.” Why does everyone keep calling me that? “I haven’t seen or heard from you in years. Didn’t think you had the nerve to show your face around here.”

He stands up and walks slowly towards me. “Did you finally decide to hold up your end of the deal? Or did you already forget?”
Holy crap, what did Johnny get himself into? I have to keep up the charade, since everyone seems to think I’m the real Johnny Blade, just because I stole his VR capsule. But I have no clue what he’s talking about. I should probably play it safe, just say something non-threatening to disarm the situa-
“Well it was kind of hard to remember it in the first place, considering all the bull crap you were spewing last time I was here.”
Of course. Let me just piss of the first guy I meet here, with all his friends ready to blast holes in me with one innocent flick of a finger. I rest assured in the fact that I’m still in the VR capsule, so any “pain” will be nothing more than a few shocks or prods to my chest from the haptic feedback.
The guy laughs again, and motions to the guy next to him, who pulls his trigger, firing a paintball into my ear. Paint splatters all over the side of my face, and my ear starts ringing from the impact. I wince in pain - that actually did hurt quite a bit. “That was a warning shot. Kind of a warm up for my men. Rest assured the next bullet will be very much real.”

I reach up to wipe the paint off the side of my face, when a very scary thought crosses my mind. See, VR capsules, no matter how advanced, don’t have haptic feedback around the ears or face. This is both a safety measure (you don’t want people poking each others’ eyes out in VR) and a technical limitation of the equipment (there’s too much stuff like visual/audio/olfactory equipment and oxygen tubes in the way for there to be any haptic equipment there). Yet I definitely felt that paintball hit and splatter, I definitely feel the paint running down my face, and my ear is definitely ringing. There’s no way to simulate that. This has to be real.

But wait, what about Johnny Blade? They all called me Johnny Blade. I definitely don’t look like Johnny Blade; how could anyone make that mistake? Plus the whole boot-up screen. This couldn’t be real - I’m still in the machine. Aren’t I?... aren’t I? I am saved from answering this question, as I soon wake up.