Sailing the Noosphere

My dad has taken the family out to the farm, but he needs to go back into town. I drive a regular-sized car to show him the way, but he's driving a massive tractor or threshing machine. Eventually we arrive in town, and for some reason pull into a construction zone. Dad starts to pull monster truck rally tricks with his vehicle, and continues without interference until quitting time for the construction workers. They kick us out, and we have to return the vehicles to the farm.

The dream begins in an animated style, borrowing from the Arthur cartoons on PBS. Arthur has just moved to a new city and joined a swim team, but he just lost his swim shoes in the water filtration system. A maintenance man digs for them in the machinery, but he just can't find them. Arthur runs from the swim club in anger, exclaiming that "It's only been four days!" since he moved into the town.

As he leaves, the dream switches into live action and first-person, and I view a large and bustling cityscape. Streetcars full of people pass by; along their tops are emblazoned the names of famous authors (Marcel Proust, for example) and my friends (text, so YET ANOTHER failed RC). I excitedly hit the streets and head to a nearby cafe. When I stand in line, however, I realize that all the signs are in a foreign script and all the patrons speaking a foreign tongue. Unnerved, I head back onto the street, and in a daze wander to a market. A smog descends on the dream, and I recall exotic (but pleasant) smells from the stalls and headscarf-clad shoppers.

Luckily, I find my mom also in the market. She clarifies that I'm in the country of Turkey and reunites me with my brother and dad. She also seems to have an excellent grasp of Islamic law, for as we're about to enter a shop where we can see women, she holds us back and goes in first to make sure it's alright. She encourages the family to "act Canadian" and respect their customs (a behavior not at all like real life).

I'm waiting for my brother to pick me up at home and take me to the mall. He's running late, so I go downstairs and fire up my computer. It has a projected user interface, as in Jarvis from the Iron Man movie, and a very large high-def monitor. I start to browse Wikipedia (text, so failed RC), looking up Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and from there link to an obscure Japanese game that takes place in the Kingdom Hearts universe. It download it and proceed to play.
The only relationship to Kingdom Hearts is the use of the Gummi Ship. This vehicle is presented in top-down perspective, scrolling in a traditional manner as in Galaga or Galaxian. The enemies follow colored tracks along with a soundtrack, as in Audiosurf, and special flight maneuvers are also order with the music as in DJ Hero. The interface is intuitive and the gameplay frantic enough to keep me engaged for several rounds, and I start to reconsider going to the mall at all.

This seems to be a dream within a dream; I start playing Dungeons and Dragons at my research station, choosing the dwarf artificer as my character. Perspective quickly shifts to being the dwarf in a fantasy worldscape. I'm heading with my party into a mining town, which has as its access point an impressive tower that lowers into the mines. I enter and begin walking down the stairs to my assigned bunk. It seems to take ages, and as I pass the other adventurers who have already gotten bunks, I notice that their names are written on whiteboards in the style of a college dorm. All of them have names of people I know from my college, as well.
When I arrive at the bottom of the stairs, I find my real life name written on a board beside a bunk. The space is very spartan, and in the back of my head I wish there were a faucet to wash my hands. When I turn around, lo and behold, there is one! I remember the "turnaround summon" I've read about on the Dreamviews forums, and this reality check lets me realize that I'm dreaming. I get about a second or two of true lucidity as water pours over my hands, but after that I wake up. My eyes are still closed and I try fervently to get lucidity back, but the images I'm conjuring are just like those of a waking daydream and not the full-sense immersion of a lucid dream.

I false awaken into my bedroom in my old house. I know one of my friends is taking me to a concert later in the day, but it's really early, and my first instinct is to jack off and kill some time. I grab a porn story printout from my bedstand and go to my basement, but I can't focus due to all the the noises and creaks down there. I spend the rest of the dream trying to stop those noises, turning various switches on and off to silence the washer, dryer, and buzzing fluorescent lights. Here are about ten consecutive failed RCs, as I realize these switches seem to take random effects on the machinery.

A team of cowboys is riding through a heavily forested area in what is clearly a Wild West setting. The team encounters a group of Indians who live on the land, and their first interactions are rather peaceful. Some of the cowboys feel that the Indian elders are plotting against them, but then again, the cowboys themselves are plotting too. They want to take over the land; both cultural assimilation and fighting are suggested.
Soon, one of the cowboys pulls up a tree from the ground, a oil starts to bubble up. He says, "The Federal Reserve is buying this, we're gonna be rich!" The cowboys claim the land, causing the Indians to join with local townsfolk and fight back. The townspeople are dressed in their everyday attire; I notice a lawyer, a banker, and a baker (complete with chef's hat). A crazy firefight ensues between the sides, with no resolution before the dream ends. One of the coolest moments is when the scene suddenly turns into LEGO bricks and goes slo-mo! The shooting continues, and the baker's hat deflects a bullet. Snaps back into real action after that.

1. I'm washing dishes in the research station kitchen, when V comes in and says "I like your orange skirt!" I think she says "shirt," so I look down and see that I'm wearing my Star Wars band photo tee along with blue jeans. I respond that I'm confused, but she keeps repeating the phrase a couple of times until I realize that there's an orange ring around the bottom of my tee, presumably from a bad wash process.

2. A kindly and eccentric professor is taking my class outside to do some reading. We emerge into a wood that looks exactly like the backyard in my old house, except there is a huge cliff off to one side. Some people try to climb it and fall, but I ask him how to get to the plateau at the top. He shows me the easy rock stairs on the other side.

V and I are attending a movie, a biology documentary about wetland habitats. The screen is huge and very high-definition; underwater photography, alligators, and birds are all shown in stunning detail. After watching for a while, we move closer and closer, and finally close to kiss. The ensuing makeout is full of energy and passion, and I vividly feel both tongues writhing. There's so much energy, in fact, that she knocks out the filling from my front tooth. Its texture, hard and ugly, now enters the dream, and my brain pulls me out presumably to avoid that feeling.

I wake up (IRL, not a false awakening, thanks to RCs and my own dream journal), but when I go back to bed the dream has continued with a shift of scenes. We're now in the bathroom of the movie theatre, preparing to have sex. I try to hurry up and begin to piss... and I keep pissing. I notice, too late, that the urinal I chose has someone's shit blocking the drain, and soon the water starts to overflow. I have no choice but to continue, but as V knocks on the door to check on me the urinal breaks out of the ground! Water, piss, and shit start flowing everywhere, and she steps in the refuse with her heavy boots. The mood is, to say the least, ruined. I stumble out of the toilet trying to clean myself up and salvage the night, but another student from the research station, S, is crying to herself and washing glassware in the sink. I have no peace and wake up very frustrated.

1. It's nighttime. I'm sitting around drinking something with a friend, when suddenly I start to feel pretty bad. The dreamview switches to a close-up of my digestive tract, which shows itself to be swollen and red and close to exploding. This continues for an uncomfortable time, showing different organs, when the view suddenly goes third-person. My body explodes, splattering blood on the dream "camera" and causing an elderly couple to comment on my rudeness.

2. My brother, my roommate, and I are chasing the girls who live at my research station around the halls. Eventually they start to fight back, and I do parkour down the (IRL nonexistent) basement stairwell to hide from them.

It's evening at a summer camp, and I feel incredibly bored. My brother invites me to play video games with him, so I go to the living room of our house and join. It's some sort of superhero fighting game with SNES-level graphics, and I play as Wolverine against his Hulk. The cartoons have a good level of violence, with blood flying as my Wolverine claws dig into the Hulk's skin. Eventually I get bored again and wander outside.

I find a book of idea for things to do when bored just lying on the ground. I pick it up and start flipping through (yet another failed RC). One of the ideas is shooting a watch battery with a nail to produce some sort of cool reaction; the book warns that after the 41st nail is shot at any battery, both objects are coated with a slow-acting contact poison. I proceed to idly shoot the battery 42 times, watching sparks and corrosive fluids form, then touch the damn thing. Nothing happens immediately, but in a minute or two my left arm feels incredibly numb. I look down at it, and the skin is turning a sickly shade of blue (failed finger RC). I run to the camp's bathroom, but faint out of the dream.

1. I'm attending some sort of video game expo, watching a high-production pitch for a game that seems sort of a cross between Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto. During the demo, one of the military showpieces breaks. The presenter gets angry and shouts, "We'll make a fucking car!" A sports car proceeds to unfold from the wreckage of that showpiece.

2. I attend a showing of the movie "Beat It," a cartoon parody of Michael Jackson's life starring Wayland Smithers of the Simpsons in the main role.

3. I am taking part in the chorus of an opera, a modern-day production about the pirates of Africa. The pirate queen is making her grand entrance, cuing a major dance scene; I screw up my footwork, and although my fellows try to accommodate me, eventually the whole number turns to shit.

4. I'm walking around in Paris, France, when I see two men leave a nondescript building. I go to check it out, and find that the building is both unlocked and the French atomic research center. I do parkour down the stairwells of the building to find a top-secret biology paper (something about genetics, and text so a failed RC) lying about. I leave without incident and take the paper back to my rural research station, showing it to my professor K. (who reacts in IRL character).

I visit a mall, one derived from the Florence Mall in Northern KY that has served as a location for several previous dreams (failed reality check). As I wander around, I hear some snippets of conversation that seem familiar from real life (another failed reality check), including someone explaining their confusion about my roommate's name. The mall is nearing closing time, so nearly everyone is there to exercise. There are runners, walkers, and a large contingent of skaters inside a cavernous skate shop made entirely of wood. There's even a group of people on old-school penny farthing bicycles!
I start to join in the activity by doing lame parkour moves on the planters and benches. I know I could do better, but I'm wearing leather loafers, a blue long-sleeve dress shirt, and khaki pants. Suddenly, my friend C comes running out of nowhere, his impressive red mane streaming from behind him. He starts to race me through the mall, and he puts on a burst of speed I know he could never have in real life. I fall behind, panting and angered, as he runs out of the mall.

1. I'm reading a comic targeted at bass players, in some world where music is much more prevalent than it is here. Tabs are printed in comics like the one I'm reading, and the lessons show different famous groups' interpretations of the same song (Thelonious Monk's ensemble, as an example). The other page of the comic has parody scenes of real world comics, including a Peanuts parody in which Snoopy is preparing for anal sex. There are words printed, so I fail that reality check chance.

2. I see, in sequence, two car accidents. The first is horrible and flaming, but the only other spectators are a car of punk kids wearing sunglasses at night. They deem the chaos "awesome," and their dad, driving in the front seat, cries behind his own sunglasses. Secondly, I come across another flaming crash. This time, I go to help, but the passengers (all women) are unhurt and manage to walk out easily, disdaining my efforts to help.

This isn't as complete as it should be, considering my memory is impaired from copious amounts of booze. Anyway:

Dream takes place in some sort of fetish cheerleader movie, where the main character is a sweet, dumb, and large-breasted girl. I find that by pricking myself anywhere on my body, I develop a black PVC skin over that area.

My dad and I are walking the streets of Covington, KY, and talking about what I call "middle English" slang after he uses the word "gazooks!" However, in the dream I understand "middle English" to be Wild West or Industrial Revolution times. I make a joke that we're going back to 1865, like the cast of "Back to the Future" visited the frontier. Exactly after I do so, we find ourselves walking in the Covington of the past. It looks like a typical frontier mining town, and we go on a quest to find his grandfather who is living there. We interact with the bums to find this information, and eventually are led to a saloon. Both of us sit at a rather uncrowded long table, and I request a hard cider. The pretty barmaid smirks at me and says "Take off your glasses, Mr. Mafoy," with the unspoken assumption that they make me look younger than legal drinking age.