Sailing the Noosphere

I'm walking the streets of London at night in my awesome long coat, when I'm suddenly struck with the urge to break off a piece of a building. This I do, and it feels heavy in my arms as I carry it into a nearby library. There I find an excellent book on poker, which I tuck into my backpack along with the building fragment and take without checking out.

I false awaken into an apartment in Cincinnati. I wander down to the riverbank, where a festival has set up. Two massive swings are on either side of a roller coaster shaped like a snake and themed "The Garden of Eden." I choose to swing, and get massive air, clearing the top of the coaster as I flip in midair and throw the metal horns with my tongue sticking out.

I'm playing at Pokerstars on my laptop, and losing pretty bad, when my machine suddenly crashes with a blue screen of death. I panic and restart, then try and diagnose the problem. I find that I have a virus from the old music site Kazaa, and Google from another computer to try and find the solution. I realize my trusty flash drive has the antivirus software I need, so I grab it and jack into the laptop.

When I open up "My Computer," I realize that every machine on the botnet is listed, an endless list with constantly shifting names (failed RC). Finding my flash drive, with the appropriate software, will be impossible... The visuals for this are all very vivid.

The title pretty much says it all. I'm dressed in all black, stalking into my old high school with a flute in my hand to play for their Christmas concert. The place is well lit and pretty busy, so I sneak into a stairwell and slide underneath to hide in the darkness. I feel the approach of something evil, so I sprint up the stairs to the top floor. When I look out, I see that the whole floor has been cut away, replaced by a huge hole and some unknown machine surrounded by catwalks. Scientists in white lab coats surround the machine and enlist my help in turning it on. This I do, and an energy beam shoots out from its center and starts to cut through everything in its path. I realize that it's supposed to drill to the center of the earth.

I'm hanging out with one of my advisers from my summer internship. He's filming a documentary about global warming, and he walks through the halls of his university as I follow him in a powered wheelchair (having great fun as I do this). He and the film crew then take off for London, and I follow them onto the plane. I realize that I haven't packed anything for the trip and start to freak out.

My parents and I are at the Cincinnati Museum Center taking in an exhibit on history. Multiple periods are contrasted, from ancient Assyrian engravings to the civil rights struggles in America. The exhibit proper ends with a model of a very pretty African-American girl in pearls and a cocktail dress getting lynched... then opens into a gift shop. People are sitting on benches in the shop with laptops, playing poker on Pokerstars.net. My mom comments on this as rather silly, then goes to discuss some business about layaway.

Poker serves as a transition point to an outdoors scene, where I sit down to a large ring game of Holdem. My mom insists on joining me, and initially the other players are fine with it. However, she is slow at playing and screws up her deal of Omaha when it comes around to her. The game goes back to Holdem and I get AK in the hole. My mom goes all-in, and I look at my cards again (which have become AA, so missed reality check) and call. Other players are disgusted with me for some reason...

I false awaken into my room at home, then go downstairs. My brother and his friend are there and report also dreaming about poker. With some questioning I find that they shared my dream, varying in minor details. I freak out about this and wake up.

I'm watching a TV ad for a new day care center, showing itself as "fun" for the kids. The babies enter the building by a catapult launcher, which throws them headfirst into tubes that then slow them down before depositing them in a central play room. All fine and good, but then the dream shifts into something more sinister. Babies keep on coming, row upon row of identical babies with blank stares. This continues until someone decides the only way to deal with it is to flood the world, and water pours over the packed babies to suffocate them all.