lucid

In my dreams last night, my mind crafted for me a perfect tragedy. I will recite it now.

It begins with a simple thing. I am going to university, and it is my first day on campus. I am moving into my new dorm room. It's on the ground floor of a nice building I've never seen before, but as I'm bringing my bags in I realise that I am on a floor that is filled to the brim with pretty ghetto dudes, like my childhood neighbourhood. I have no problem with it as long as I stay unharmed. I get my bags and head to my room, not sure of what to expect. On the way down the hall, however, one guy starts paging me, asking me to give him my knife. This is because before going to bed I was thinking about the rap battle on Hollywood boulevard I had when that guy asked for my sunglasses.

I gave him the knife so he'd leave me alone and went about unpacking. The first day we had off, so I went to the movies. The theatre was full of people playing this iPhone app that was all about sex and crime and loaning money and making money. I'd never seen it before but it was like the next Pokemon go. Just as the movie started, some hoodlums went backstage and started screwing around with the operation, so they shut the movie off. I was hitting on the mum next to me but she had her sons with her and she had to keep it tame. After 5 minutes I just gave up on the film and left. I was going back to my room when I realised something. This app was more than a game, it used real world money and pretty much encouraged actual crimes to take place to offset the virtual ones made. As I walked down the hall the guy who took my pocket knife was begging another guy for a 3% loan. The dude shook him off, so he started following me along with another dude. They started yelling about how hard their fathers worked to get the money for them to attend this school. They told me to give them my easy money. I told them to kindly fuck off and make their own. They grabbed me and pulled knives. Somehow, in slow motion, I grabbed my knife from the guy then grabbed the other one, and stabbed them both to death while they held me tight. The knives moved in and out easily, and their grips slowly faded as they fell to the floor. What the fuck. I'm so fucked. I just killed two guys. I go to my room and call campus police, tell them I was being mugged and had to kill them. "Sounds like a likely story, two young black men attack you and you defend yourself, eh? You sure that's what happened there, son?" Fuck that guy. I'm no racist and I'm not about to go down for it. I flag down the officers he calls in, explain it to them every step of the way, and get the fuck out of there.

Then the story changes. Somewhere along the road after that incident, I bumped into Anna Kendrick. I saw her in a movie last night and was thinking about her a lot before bed, and here she was. I thought she'd be a huge diva in person, but this version of her was just so sweet and amazing. Like a movie character. And suddenly it was my life. I pulled off some grandiose romancing and managed to get the girl. She and I fit together like two peas in a pod, but more than anything she was just so beautiful I couldn't look away. After some time, we retired to my room. Passionately kissing her, we slowly disrobed, and I entered her.

And then I went soft.

For a man, this is pretty much one of the worst things that can happen. The anxiety that it causes pretty much secures the fact that you will not be recovering from this. She starts to blame herself, stating she isn't pretty enough, she isn't doing the right thing. I am just losing my mind. I'm still kissing her all over and generally enjoying having this absolute unicorn in my arms but I can also feel everything falling apart. We try and try, and we go to a hot tub and we try in there. Nothing. Finally, I say that I'll take the old man pill, and I know I have a couple left from when I did ecstasy and my guy gave me some as a 'backup'. I pull it out, pop one, and now I know we need to kill 30 minutes. A man comes from out of nowhere asking what I just did to the water, I try to explain it was a medication that I took but he thinks I poisoned the water, so we get out. We have lots of time anyway.

As soon as we get out of the hot tub, with the timing of a Shakespearean death, everything changes. Out of absolutely nowhere comes Javier Bardem. Before he speaks I know that something massive is about to happen and I can already feel the heartbreak. He approaches me as if he knows me. As if everybody knows me. I nod back to him, and he smiles. "Mr Bingus. Your work here has become most groundbreaking, and it has not been ignored by those in power. I have a proposition for you."

I know this feeling in my gut. Anna has her arm around me. She is shaken, confused, she just wants to go back to my room and feel loved, like it isn't her fault. I owe her this so much. I think to myself VERY clearly,
"No matter what he says, ignore it and go back with her. She is what matters. I am self-aware of this right now, and I will not allow this turn to ruin everything when I am so close to happiness."

Javier goes on to outline what it is he's offering me.
He tells me it will pay 2 million dollars.
Anna is very rich and money is no reason to leave her.
He explains that I will have a leading role in this.
Anna is my leading lady, I will be fine with just her.
He tells me there is a new research project opening up across the country, where all of the bright young minds in the nation are gathered together, living under one roof. And this is where I am to go.
It couldn't hurt to see what he's talking about. It sounds boring, and it might impress her. I agree to go see this place.

When we get there, it is basically everything I was not expecting. The first thing we see as we enter a classic old ratty residence is a room full of kids my age, all hanging out and playing music, exchanging scientific ideas. The ultimate creative session. Something I've never had. We walk further down the hallway and see art on the walls from the students. Very cool, I think. Then, at the end of the hall, I hear a familiar voice. And the voice pops its head around the doorframe. It's Anna. Anna M, from my actual life. The prettiest girl I know. She smiles, excited, and pulls me into the room.

"Check it out!"
"You're living here too?" I ask. I look around the room and Jessica is here too. And I can see other girls bags.
"Yep! And we're all rooming together. We're the film kids of this operation, and we're going to make a documentary about the amazing things that will happen here. And you've been chosen to direct it. We're your crew!" She gives me a big smile.

She hasn't seen Anna Kendrick yet. She's being very warm with me. I think to myself, how could this possibly get any better. A room of beautiful girls who will work under me, a whole community of the best of my generation. Against one girl. Then, as if god wanted to rub it further in my face, I look outside. Mustangs. Scooby vans. VW campers. It's the fucking 70's. This fucking town, for some reason, is still the 70's. That is why everything is so old here, the clothes so cool and the dorms so old school.
I look back at Anna Kendrick, who's in the room now, giving me this look like "Am I still worth it?" Her soul is being crushed. I am at such an extreme level of elation that I say the worst thing I've ever said to somebody.

"You know Anna when he came to the school to see me, I thought to myself, 'How could he possibly offer me something that would make me want to leave you?' Well, It's the 70s out there." I climbed out the window, jumped down to the road, and started checking out the cars. I want to start talking all about them with her, but before I even looked in the window I knew I'd made a huge mistake. I turned back and just started running.

I ran all the way back to my dorm, which I thought was across the country. I sprint down the hallways, around the corner and slam into the wall next to my door. I listen carefully and I can hear bags being packed. I open the door slowly, and she's right there. Immediately she starts to cry. I rush towards her, her hands coming up and her head shaking, thinking I would try a romantic kiss or something. Instead, I just hug her, hold her tighter than anyone in my life and just tell her how much I love her. How much I miss her and need her in my life. As we embrace, both crying, she says "I knew you would choose me over that shitty place." She breaks off and smiles, looking me deep in the eyes. Deep in my soul. She wants to kiss me. But this moment is empty. The moment she said that I knew in my heart of hearts that I could not choose her over what would certainly be the best time of my life. Her face starts to melt. I enter a powerful internal dialogue.

"She is convinced. She thinks my reality aligns with hers. I am drowning her, pissing on her soul. Pissing in her face."
As I say this, I see myself drag her unconscious body to the bathroom, drop her limp head in the toilet bowl and begin peeing on her face. This is the most fucked up, disrespectful thing I've ever done. And I'm not even in control.

"She is somewhere on the scale between love and devotion, and I have just come back, only to mix her a most powerful poison dart. Surely, this will kill her."
I slam the lid on her neck. Crush of bones.

I snap out of this freakish nightmare. I am still holding her. I can feel her heartbeat.
"Of course, Anna. Now I'm very tired. Let's go to bed."

#504 - DILD - 3:20AM

V is at my house. He's afraid of something. He mentions something about holding a lot of drugs. I ask about a certain purchase but he becomes more agitated and says he can't sell or get rid of the drugs because they will get him. I let the subject go.

For some reason we lay down to sleep on the floor and he's way too close to for my liking. I feel like all of this is very odd and I almost start wondering if I am dreaming, but I hear an alarm clock. I get up and have some confusion about the time and stress that we need to hurry because we will be late for work. Some random woman gets up from the other side of V and gives me a friendly, but timid smile. I wonder who she is, but become distracted again when my mother approaches me, wearing a Starbuck's apron. She looks thinner and way younger. Something still feels off, but I don't have time to think it through.

She gets in close and says, "You know, your brother is a douche-bag." This is way out of character for her and I feel confusion. All I can say is, "Yeah".
I don't say it but I think, "we're all douche;bags; It runs in the family, mom."
She turns away to a table with customers. I look around and see that I am in some diner or, apparently, coffee shop. My brother's wife is behind a counter and looks annoyed. I figure she must have heard what my mom said. Then, I see my brother taking a tray of coffees to a table of waiting customers across the room. I ask my mom why they are working here. She say's my brother has (something) illness.
I ask, "So, he just moved and started working here? Why!?"
Mom replies something, but I don't quite hear her. I am still trying comprehend the idea of my brother and his wife quitting their careers, moving halfway across the U.S., and taking up working at Starbucks over some mysterious illness to even listen to an explanation.

Ok I have got to be dreaming. I do a nose plug as I turn to look back at my mom and blow clean through. YES! As I take my hand from my nose, I feel something like a cat rubbing the back of my right leg. I look, but there is no cat. In fact my foot is wedged right in V's naked crotch! I look up at him and we are in some bathroom. Luckily, V is clothed in a very thick layer of soap bubbles. We share a moment of him squeezing my foot into his crotch with his thighs while flexing both arms, smiling at me. I shout, "WHOA! OK NOW! THIS IS TOO MUCH! I AM OUT OF HERE!" Being lucid I know I can just walk right out of this situation and not look back and that's exactly what I did.

As I enter the next room, I remember that I have been wanting to do some LD swordplay. The room is full of junk and I rummage around a bit, but my search is fruitless. I decide to blind summon a sword from around a large cardboard box, but only pull out a rubber bicycle grip. I decide to search the walls and something with a gold handle catches my eye; a sword. Nope, too swords. As I get close I notice they are way too tiny for me to have any fun. So, I decide to fake it. I take a sword, slap it on my left side, and draw it out with expectation of a full sized sword. Nope. It looks more like a letter opener than a sword. Out of ideas, I wonder into another room, but the dream quickly fades away.

Had another lucid dream this morning. My sense of touch shifted into the dream world before sight did. I knew I was in a dream when I could feel my way out of my bed as if it were an out-of-body experience. Seriously, in the beginning stage of the dream, I could feel my body start to shift. As I was standing next to my bed in total darkness, I tried to visualize to get some sight going. Got it working. Of course, like most of my previous WILDs, they start with me exiting my bedroom, down the hallway, through the hallway and out the front door into the street. The sky was overcast. I think I tried reading the stove clock before leaving. Naturally, it was blurry and distorted in the dream world.


Found Naomi, the dream character. Sadly, I don't have any better dream tasks to do other than search for this particular dream character over and over again. Why? I lack stability and dream control so I try to reach for low hanging fruit.

The mindfulness tweak I did was simply visualize the space outside of my head as if I was looking through my eyelids while also snapping my awareness to the present moment. I am trying to figure why I can only WILD after a 20-30 minute WBTB using mindfulness and not directly after waking up in the middle of the night as part of a DEILD. They were vivid non-lucid dreams, though.

Remember seeing strands of color. Then after some time it was like I was remembering being at a party when I was younger. I think it was a wedding party for a family member. I might have been lucid in a second dream. I'm excited to keep paying attention to my hypnogogic imagery and lucid dream. I was really motivated to lucid dream last night also.

Heck yeah. Did a mindfulness meditation and got a short lucid dream. Woke up and tried to get back into the dream. Had vivid non-lucid dreams afterwards about playing bass guitar and hanging out at a mansion with Drake. Saw some old friends as we rode buses around the city. Tried to work on my car. Was also hanging out with some co-workers.

RANT

I think I had a semi-lucid when I realized that no, this bitch didn't really just snap brand my brand-new music CD in half. But that is not the point. The point is I am another step closer to mastering lucid dream induction.

I have a seriously had habit of honing in a technique that yields consistent results but then due to excitement, I try to hard to make that technique work again and it doesn't. My number one principle of lucid dreaming is this:

You can not 'brute force' your way into a lucid dream. It doesn't matter if you say a mantra 10,000 times in one day or if you listen to the loudest binaural audio before sleep. Lucid dreaming - at least WILD - is a delicate craft that must be approached with a delicate mindset.

Last night, I dead set on having a DEILD. Long story short, it didn't work out the way I planned. I missed two attempts to get lucid which led to me frantically scouring the internet for tutorials on how to MILD. BAD. So I went back to dream journal and carefully reviewed what worked the first time:

MINDFULNESS.

It was that simple. Mindfulness is simply, and gently, being in the present moment. Watching the now; watching the breath. So that's what I did, I sat in meditation for 30 minutes. JUST RELAX and MEDITATE.

Then I went back to bed for a morning nap. The focus? RELAX AND STAY PRESENT. THATS IT. There is no trying for anything. There is no watching for anything. Let go of the desperate need to lucid dream and just relax and be present. Mind wandering? Bring it back to presence. After a while those distracting thoughts were actually Hypnagogia in both the visual form and the auditory form. I knew that much but I did not know how to transition them into a lucid dream. From here on out, I need to work on catching myself to notice I am entering a dream without the disturbing the hypnagogia.

I had a vivid non-lucid dream nevertheless.

I awoke in a room with three doors(I have been having WILD's and DEILD's all night, cause I have woken up at least 5 times tonight and have successfully chained together dreams! it was AWESOME. This is the fifth dream.), One huge, like a blast door, the other two were normal. The Blast door had a window on it so I could see out, and it lead to a beach. The two normal doors had windows too, but I couldn't see anything beyond the one to the left, and the right door lead to what looked like an excision concert. Naturally I tried that door immediately lol. But it was locked, and something was preventing me from using powers, immediately making me think it was a shared dream or my dream entity that's been giving me issues. I see no way to open the big door so I try the one on the left and it's open. As it opens it turns into my elementary school cafeteria and I recognize several people from highschool. One moreso, my Ex. I go to investigate her, look at her and decide it's nothing, and fly towards a door behind me to leave. Then she STOPS me mid-air. I've now realized this is most likely a shared dream and I have been pulled into her dream, would explain why I couldn't do certain things. Only thing is, Whoever this was wasn't my Ex. She just used a mirror to change her appearance to LOOK like my ex, but she didn't know how to ACT like my Ex. And unfortunately for this woman I pay attention to women I like... Especially this one. Her mouth gaped as I turned around, and she began walking away. I could tell from her exasperated look and the way she walked it was not who she wanted me to believe it was. Then she fucked up and gave me attitude, a very specific attitude. This woman was not my Ex at all, but someone I've missed for a long time. She sat at a different table in the lunchroom and I sat a few seats down, watching her. She spoke of a few words that only I will know, and then from a sitting position began to pinch the table into an upside down U until it snapped in front of us. She flew off and I followed... And so did DC's. She changes her appearance... She's wearing a black dress now, and it solidifies who I thought it was cause this woman appeared to me before in that same dress... But she wouldn't make eye contact with me now, nor let me see her face. I turn around to close doors behind us to stop the DC's, then I turn around and she's using a door as a teleport and shuts it behind me. As I reach the door and try to follow, I wake up.

I was at my computer at work and working on several projects at once, multi-tasking as usual, feeling quite overwhelmed when two co workers said it's Naked Friday! I look up and they are standing there naked. I felt my face turn red, and said I am not doing that. Then I saw a few other people walk past my door and only saw flesh. At this point something strange happened. I split in two. Lucid me was floating above and to the right corner of my desk while I am still sitting at my desk. I felt I was just becoming lucid but it felt like the other me had been fully. We had a telepathic conversation where this was a healing moment and it was up to me to take advantage of it. Not the LUCID brave me, but me me lol. This is a dream, have fun, be free. Lucid me was looking at me thinking how overly shy to a point of insipidity (which I had to google when I woke up). Very accurate!! I looked out my door and everyone was going about their business naked. I stripped down and ran out my door, jogging around the offices with my hands in the air "come on everyone let's go follow me", I ran around the circle of offices collecting naked people and we ran out of our area into unfamiliar area where the directors and managers were. None of them were naked but they were cheering us on and a few joined in, we ran past a grouping of glass windows and I actually saw a reflection of all of us running past so real. I thought reflections were not supposed to look real, and I was thinking hmmm maybe because I wasn't staring at it and it was just a quick glimpse? My mind is always asking questions lol. Anyway we kept running around and it was very liberating.
(I fully understand this dream and it has a lot of significance in several ways) I am taking something important from this as well :-). I LOVE LOVE LOVE my dreams!!!!

i listened to the latest episode of "lucid dream or bust" (feb 28) where the host recounts how she used michael raduga's "phase" techniques to basically DEILD in a slightly specialized way- with his technique, instead of passively entering back into a dream or doing one technique over and over again, you cycle through a handful of techniques back to back, only for a few seconds each. ie inducing the sensation of spinning, visualizing hypnagogic imagery, imagining yourself back in that last dream, inducing feelings of other physical movements. you then cycle back to the beginning until you either succeed or fail. the difference is that you give yourself more than one shot at success per night (with cycles, you might get something like 20 attempts) and, for newbies especially, you increase your chances of figuring out what works for you, and faster.

so this morning i tried this technique. after i turned off my alarm and went straight back into my previous sleeping position, i induced the feeling of my arm moving without trying to move my WL arm. almost immediately i felt my arm raise but in a very distinctly different way than i am used to in WL. it felt floaty. also, every time i did this (i had more than one alarm clock on), as my consciousness connected more closely with my dream body, i heard a quiet chatter of people talking- the levels were in sync. so i think that my brain was straddling the dream world (where my arms were moving and people were talking) and the waking world. the chatter kind of got me spooked about sleep paralysis (i know the fear is mostly illogical but my subconscious is more susceptible to that fear!) so i kind of chickened out of launching into it fully.

i will try again tomorrow and remind myself i don't have to be afraid

Had two lucid dreams this morning. After today, I am taking my lucid dreaming technique to the next level. What I have changed over the last couple of weeks is that I am meditating 30 minutes before bed as outlined in Tipharot's video. I am also meditating for 30 minutes during my WBTB period in the early morning. However, I have been noticing the connection between the minds eye - the faculty used for visualization - and lucid dreaming in general. I was fortunate enough to wake up 2 hours earlier than I would have normally liked to for my WBTB session. I immediately went back to sleep. Whilst doing so, I Visualized that I was standing in my kitchen. The visualization pulled me in after about a minute and I began my lucid dream. Found the dream character, Naomi, and went on an adventure with her. I found her through sure expectation that she would be where I was going. In other words, when I am lucid, I am still visualizing.

I woke up later at my normal time for the actual WBTB. I meditated for 20 minutes when lie back down. This time around, I visualized that I was standing my bedroom beside my bed. This was a bit tricky because it's hard to visualize yourself in another orientation when lying down to sleep. Can't just visualize sight, must visualize touch and body orientation. I had trouble falling asleep which meant I was trying too hard so I relaxed a little. When I felt relaxed enough so I could feel myself falling asleep, I went back to the visualization of me standing in my bedroom with my eyes opened. It was working because, I started feeling hypnagogia that was pulling me in to the dream world. The feeling of being immersed into the visualization is a sure sign that it is working.

I knew I was in a dream when I could feel my dream body get out of bed yet still sort of feel my real body. Therefore, I was moving my legs around with my eyes closed trying to feel my way out of my bed room. Once again, Visualization is key. Eventually, the visuals will come together once you expect them.

1. HH of a very large upc barcode that was very vivid, I stared at it as it slowly slipped off out of my vision to the left.

2. HH of a dog/coyote that was staring me down and started walking toward me stalking me, growling at me and I stood my ground and started communicating loving and calming thoughts to it telepathically, it made a much more loving facial expressions as it got closer, like it understood me, before it evaporated into blue smoke.

No dream recall at all. I only slept a little but it was a deep sleep ahhhh. I am usually an extremely light sleeper.

This would not normally meet the threshold of being an interesting or very memorable LD to put in my DJ online, but doing it since it is for the TOTY. The night I previously did this task (my previous DJ entry here) but didn't read the instructions closely enough was more interesting. I used to list every LD but I think I stopped that somewhere in the 300's…too lazy to double check.


Wed, 01 Mar 2017


MILD then SSILD falling asleep during my version of the combined cycles (very common now - to doze off during).

I'm trying to remember what I was doing when I realized I was dreaming . It seemed like a typical SSILD realization making me wonder if it involved a false awakening. I'm thinking back looking for the moment of realization and my initial thought which is still the strongest is that it had something to do with a dreamy transition which I was talking about earlier today. A transition from one scene to another or from one person to another that didn't make sense without the context of being in a dream.

What I do remember is realizing that I'm dreaming and I float up flying around a little bit thinking about looking for some of those girls that must have been part of the previous scene but then thinking how I wanted to get back to the car task of the year. I land and visuals have faded but I imagine and take the actions of opening a car door sitting down and turning the key and I'm apparently in a muscle car from the sound of the engine and I thought it would be fun to drive it around a little bit before doing the task. It obviously has a lot of power jolting around the dreamscape.

Anyway I pull over and consider taking the engine and tires off of this car but I decided to go to a neighboring car that looks like an 80's model 4 door Toyota sedan. I reach down ripping each tire off as the car sits on the ground as planned. I then open up the hood ripping out the engine and then ripping out a few miscellaneous parts around the edges. I get in the car and turn the ignition "knowing" the key is already there and get a smaller engine sound (did not summon an engine), nothing like the muscle car before. I drive around a little bit on a dark windy path. The whole dreamscape is dark with shadowy figures as I drive with light shining dimly like headlights on a dark road but it looked a little different than typical headlights. I believe I lose lucidity in a false awakening.

A dream forms and I find myself in a moving vehicle. I look around through the car window and can see that it is raining the sky has a greenish blue color. There's a driver and before I can look at them while saying I am dreaming. I wake up.

I am in a huge underwater amphitheater with my father. The amphitheater is a glass dome under several hundred feet of water. Along with me and my dad there are several groups of people sitting in the bleachers. We are all waiting for a show to begin. Mozart begins to play as prehistoric-looking sea creatures in mid-evolutionary stages begin to walk out from a side door. The Mozart music is original hypnogogic permutations from my subconscious of his German marches from the Opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail"

The creatures march to this music in the underwater amphitheater, and pause so we can pet them. Some of them look like gigantic mollusks. Others look like horseshoe crabs the size of dogs and huge, mutated crocodiles. They lumber across the aisles in perfect synch with the music. Among them is a big sawfish with legs. These are all prehistoric creatures. Sitting next to me with her arm around me is a sexy blonde woman. I have no idea who she is. She leans in very close and I can feel her breath against my ear. I am wondering who her boyfriend is, and also worried that my wife might see us. Meanwhile, the prehistoric creatures are crawling all around in front of us. I have to lift my legs to let them pass by. In the dream, I remember this as a strenuous exercise. My father is sleeping next to me. He is sprawled out across two chairs. He is wearing a shirt with back lettering, but the words keep shifting as I try to read what they spell. As I reach out to try to stop the letters from moving, he drowsily awakens and tells me to stop touching him. He actually says, "If you keep touching me, I'm gonna lay you out like I am." After he says this, three men in shorts come over to where we are sitting and try to wake him. They say, "Hello" to him at the same time, intentionally loud and obnoxious. He jolts awake. As they laugh, I assure my dad I had nothing to do with this prank. The Mozart, meanwhile, has gotten more pronounced and my attention is directed toward the gorgeous music. In a brief glimpse of lucidity, I realize this music is not real Mozart, but a figment of my imagination. I marvel at how beautiful and realistic my subconscious rendition of his operatic marches are.

Miscellaneous fragments from the same night:

1. I am explaining to my son how vitamin C works in boosting the immune system. I explain that the vitamin builds a wall through which the microbes are unable to pass. In my dream mind, I see a bubble wall collapse on a bunch of marauding bacteria.

2. I am on vacation in Russia, returning to the bungalow I rented. I am somewhere down by the Black Sea I think, in a coastal resort area. As I enter the door to my place, I notice some people on the road watching me. The walkway from the road to my door is a short wooden bridge, resembling a boardwalk. When I get inside my bungalow I look at myself in a mirror. I look like a pathetic tourist: red hat, white American tennis shoes, preppy shorts and a Hawaiian-themed shirt. No wonder people are looking at me! I am suddenly very conscious I may soon be robbed. Dreamt 1/27/2017

I am going around in a large city built by the side of a bending river interviewing at various locations for jobs. The first place I go to interview at is a very large skyscraper, upwards of a hundred stories tall. The building is very interesting in that the original shape of the building was a sort of cone that got gradually steeper as it went up. But apparently after the building was built a new company bought it and built a frame around it in the shape of a hexagon. So there was like an outer tower and an inner tower when you went inside and the two were connected by interior catwalks and the lobby of the tower ran all the way up the inner wall to the hundredth floor.

I go to the interview and it seems like this company would like to hire me, but I'm not entirely sure I want to be hired by this company. Simply by observing the social interactions I can tell that this company has some problems with income distribution and that at this company the CEO and higher workers get paid a lot while the people on the bottom who are actually doing most of the work are getting paid peanuts. I don't think the company is deserving of my skills but want to think things over. I decide to explore another job opportunity.

In the industrial sector of the city is a woman who owns an abandoned warehouse and some of the surrounding area. I meet with her and begin talking about her business. What her business does is not entirely clear, but it seems to be a cross of a design and sculpture firm and a recycling and scrapping business. She has a friend who works in a scrapyard and breaks down automobiles and other scrap into usable materials, as well as another friend. (A gigantic cyborg rat) who takes apart computers and electronics, and remakes some of the components into art projects, while selling some valuable things like gold.

I have a sort of informal interview with her, telling her that I will return with a resume and such at a later time but just want to get a grasp on what her company exactly does. She avoids the question and instead brings me hot chocolate. "I'd love to work here, and she seems to really want to win me over, but I doubt she can afford to pay me well, if at all." Our interview is interrupted by an official looking person from the city coming in and saying that the business defaulted on a loan and will be closed down in a week if they cant make up the money.

I very vaguely remember the woman embarking on a new conceptual art project. Her cousin is Benedict Cumberbatch and she wants him to pose naked in a public place with a picture of Lapis Lazuli from Steven Universe over his crotch. But she wants me to draw the picture that will be used, if I can, she will hire me and her business will get back on its feet so she can pay me.

We are testing the piece in a vacant office. I draw several pictures in different styles and mediums until I get one that the woman seems to think will work. The last thing I remember was we were playing Fallout 4 and talking about the game.

-+-

I was with my dad in the front of my house. It was a clear summer day in the late afternoon. I looked up in the sky and saw that the moon had rings like Saturn. I recognized the dream sign and became lucid. I thought about how my dream dad usually doesn't like it when I get lucid so I decided to try and educate him about lucid dreaming.

"Hey, do you notice anything different about the moon?"

"No, the moon has always been like that, ever since the [vauge astronomical event] changed the solar system."

"No, the moon has never been like that." (More planets began to emerge from behind the moon, and the ringed moon begins to get larger.) "Because this is a dream; my dream. Everything I say and do is a product of my mind, even you."

He goes on to say that he doesn't believe me and insists that this is real.

"Look, anything is possible. In a dream you can go anywhere, and do anything. You see that planet up there? If I want to, I can fly to that planet." (Gesturing to one of the small planets that had emerged from behind the saturn planet.)

"You can do that in No Man's Sky."

"Shut up."

I decide to just leave him and show myself. I leap off expecting to fly there, but I begin to float back down and land on the roof of my house. I leap off again and try to engage my fire jets. I look over my shoulder and see them blowing out clouds of smoke and sparks. (I think they were even making sounds like a gasoline engine that wouldn't start.)

"You can't do it, see?" He yells.

"You're not in control of what I can and cannot do." I turn and focus on my destination. My fire jets properly activate with a loud crack and I shoot off out of the atmosphere and into space. The ringed moon is becoming a gas planet. As I got closer I tried to focus on the color. I wanted to see if I could control its color and make it be green, as there were no green gas planets in the solar system and wanted to see what my mind's interpretation of a green gas giant would be like. It turned into a green planet with some bluish bands and storms, and I thought "Close enough" without realizing that I was heading right at it. I tried to pull 'up' and fly over the planet's pole. I ended up glancing through the upper atmosphere for but a second flying through storms of swirling turquoise clouds before emerging on the other side and coming to a stop.

I looked around at the moon system of the gas planet. It had five major moons. I didn't take the time to look at all of them in detail; my eyes went straight to an earthlike moon (I think it was in the third or fourth orbit out) and flew straight at it. I was trying to focus on having spaceflight be steadier and not rocket me towards destinations so fast, but of course focusing on the negative schema only caused me to rocket forward once more, giving me only a second to slow down as I fell through the clouds and collide with the ocean of the planet.

After my crash I lost a great deal of lucidity and became semi lucid and stopped paying as much attention to the dream's plot. Somebody on the planet had found me and brought me to the planet's leader. The planet was populated by small, pale skinned, dwarf-like humans and their king/leader gave me a dinner of fried fish and potato planks, then sent me on a quest.

Marcus was there and he told me we needed a mode of transportation for the quest. He took me to a train yard and started pressing buttons on these steam engines and mechanical faces came out of the front of the boilers making them look like Thomas the tank engine characters. He got a silver steam engine and started driving it through these security gates while I held out a lance on the front of the train to break through them. The silver steam engine turned into a robotic velociraptor and started going the wrong way so we had to get off.

...

The dream somehow gave way to us venturing through a dangerous mountain pass. The area we were in looked like one of those east-asian landscape paintings with the very exaggerated mountains. It was during a clear and starry night, but the light from the massive gas planet in the sky made it as bright as twilight. I was venturing with Marcus, a huge stone golem monster, and one of the Thomas the Tank engine engines. (Okay... once again... very interesting choice of characters.) I wonder what it is with dreams making trios of utterly random characters.

Regardless navigating these mountains was difficult. There was a floating cobblestone path but some of the stones would give way and fall to the ground if you put too much weight on them and I was trying to help the rock monster get across. At one point he fell and I grabbed him with one arm, and I wondered how I was strong enough to hold him up.

We managed to get to the next mountain where we encountered another animated stone figure, this one even larger. It attacked us, punching Marcus with the force to break the stone temple floor below us, then ran out of power and returned to being a static statue. I tried to pull Marcus away but his arm came off. When I looked at where it had been, I just saw very high tech looking mechanical parts and somehow knew that it was some kind of automated drone and the real Marcus was somewhere else.

The sky turned red and all the stars and planets disappeared along with the other dream characters. The sky was full of thousands of jet black shooting stars. A giant six-armed woman appeared and claimed to be the hindu goddess Kali. She showed me a purple blanket with gold embroidery of leaves and flowers going around the outside. It was made of some kind of indestructible silk. She then wrapped it around my head and face, leaving only my eyes exposed, tied it so it would stay on, then walked into the haze and disappeared.

I was now back in my house, standing at the top of the stairs. I undid the knot in the blanket and examined it. I thought I had woken up and was just hallucinating that the purple blanket still existed. I lost the dream for real into another short false awakening that I don't recall.