lucid

Ritual: Last night I experimented for the first time with kava kava root (Piper methysticum). I had read many anecdotal reports that it instigated vivid dreams and perhaps even lucidity, so I thought it was worth trying out. I ordered some dried powdered root from an online herb and spice supplier that I trust. I don't have any doubts about the freshness and quality, as the package confirms that it was packed earlier this month and sourced from Vanuatu. I had read many reports of people complaining about the taste, describing it as "muddy," so I was surprised when I opened the package and encountered the most extraordinary and delightful fragrance. The plant is related to pepper, so it made sense that the scent would be peppery, but there was also something delicately floral about it and even a hint of wintergreen.

I had abstained from alcohol all day, since the two should not be consumed together, and my plan was to drink the kava before bed. I had a late dinner, ending at 11pm, so my plan was to give myself two hours to digest, then start drinking the kava at 1am and go to bed a few hours afterward (unless it made me too sleepy before that, which seemed like a distinct possibility). I don't like cold drinks late at night, but I read that you could warm kava gently without destroying its properties, so I adapted a recipe for "Mexican Hot Cocokavachocolate," blending two tablespoons of powdered kava kava (half what the recipe calls for, as I didn't want to overdo it my first time), two tablespoons of cocoa powder, agave syrup, a spoonful of cinnamon, and a generous pinch of cayenne with about two cups of almond milk (I skipped the vanilla extract suggested by the recipe because I didn't want to use even a tiny amount of alcohol). I blended this until it was frothy and then separated it into two mugs, putting one in the fridge—I planned to start with a minimal dose, and work up from there if it felt warranted. The other mug I heated briefly in the microwave, just enough to warm it, and then topped it with a dusting of grated Himalayan salt and freshly made whipped cream.

Okay, I'll admit I have a slightly weird palate (for instance, I *love* the taste of wormwood), but this was one of the most delicious dessert drinks I have ever tried in my life! It was so much better than regular hot chocolate; the spices and kava gave it exceptional depth of flavor and an unusual aftertaste. I didn't even need to strain it: I don't know if my powder was ground unusually finely or if the almond milk held it in suspension better than plain water, but it only added body, not grit, to the concoction.

I'm glad that I had done enough research to anticipate the curiously numbing, analgesic sensation that spread from my mouth all the down my esophagus, because that's the kind of thing that would really worry you if you didn't know it was supposed to happen! I sipped the kava very slowly over the next hour or so, to make sure my stomach didn't have any problems with this new experience. Everything was fine, and the onset of bodily relaxation came quickly, though my mind remained clear. After the first mug I felt like it would be fine to drink the second one I had reserved, so I slowly consumed that too. Despite the heavy feeling in my body, it never did make me drowsy, so I played SWTOR until 3:30am and then read DV and some LD books to prep for bed, retiring at 4:30am. I should note that I never felt any trace of euphoria, either, an effect that some had noted. That didn't bother me, though: my only interest was in enhancing my dreams.

Unfortunately, in that respect, the kava kava was a total bust. It was no different from any ordinary night of crappy dreaming: I was vaguely aware of dreaming most of the night, but my recall was terrible and what details I could specify were mostly mundane day residue. There was no sense of complex overarching plots, just lots of little random scenarios. Lots of people have written that kava helped them sleep more deeply and wake refreshed, but I didn't experience that either: I woke three times in the first several hours of sleep, which is typical, except that I felt much groggier than usual during those brief wakeful periods. At 9:00am I woke up and felt so unpleasantly lethargic, mentally as well as phsyically, and the dreaming had been so disappointing, that I decided to try to clear my head with an ample dose of piracetam. That stuff is amazing: to preserve its efficacy I save it for special occasions, but it always works really well to clear up any "brain fog."

Within fifteen minutes I was feeling complete mental clarity, so I decided to turn it into a proper WBTB. I added some L-theanine, alpha-GPC and bacopa and returned to bed using WILD technique. My focus was still subpar and I couldn't count effectively, so I initially fell into non-lucid sleep, but gradually became more aware of the dream as it progressed. There was no "aha" moment of lucidity, but I was definitely lucid by the end.

In conclusion, the kava kava didn't seem to improve my dreaming in the slightest, but at least it didn't suppress it either. If anything helped me get lucid, I believe it was the piracetam and other supplements I took at WBTB, because those I've had success with many times before. My recall was poor for most of the night, and even after waking up from the LD only the last scene was initially clear; recollection of the earlier incidents revived only after I started tracing back the course of events.

DILD, "Creating a Cat": I was hanging out with a friend, JM, and her young son. [DR: yesterday I had seen a picture of this kid that she had posted on Facebook.] The little boy was telling us a story about a butterfly who took care of him in the place he used to be. It sounded like he was talking about before he was born, and this reminded me of a book I had learned about last night, about a project to compile and investigate accounts of young children who claim to have memories of past lives. [DR: Jim B. Tucker, Return to Life, 2015.] After I mentioned the book to my friend, she told me about the time she took her son to an island off the coast of Wales (the named started with a 'T', something like "Tirnagal" or "Tiriagal") and he had started talking about how he used to live there. As she describes this, suddenly we both turn and stare as we hear the boy start speaking another language with the somber intonations of an adult. I have no idea what Welsh sounds like, but what the boy is saying definitely has the structures of a formal language—it is not just childish babble. The experience is so uncanny that I feel the hairs on my arms rise. Before I leave, I say to my friend, "The only thing I regret about not having a kid is the way it can sometimes provide unexpected insights into the human experience." [DR: This comment might also have been inspired by something I was reading last night, on p.163 of The Ego Tunnel, by Thomas Metzinger (2009), where he describes a toddler who falls and looks to his mother for social cues about how to emotionally react.]

I leave my friend's apartment and go outside. Now I'm on a beach. This is one of my most distinctive and common dream signs, despite the fact that I have little interest in beaches in WL and rarely visit them. I think it is related to the tide, a phenomenon that has always unsettled me. Despite the frequency and distinctiveness of this dream sign, for some reason it is one that I always have trouble recognizing as such. On this occasion I already have some degree of dream-awareness, but I lack awareness of that awareness, the metacognition that is characteristic of true lucidity.

As I'm walking along the beach, the sand looks soft and warm and comfortable, and I can't resist the temptation to lie down in it. Initially I am lying on my stomach, but then I roll onto my back, and feel as cozy as a kid making snow angels. I pause to reflect, why do you never hear of kids making sand angels? My comfort is soon disturbed by rippling in the sand... I notice that the whole beach is now billowing and subsiding, the dunes rolling like great waves. "Is it supposed to do that?" I vaguely wonder, and then a particularly large dune threatens to bury me, forcing me back on my feet to keep my balance. Though not quite lucid at this point, I have instinctive awareness of my mastery and control in this environment: I find it easy to "surf" these sand waves as they roll by underfoot. But they are getting even bigger, and I have the impression that the water is now rising rapidly as well, so I decide to find higher ground.

At the edge of the beach I find a stairwell leading up into a building. Getting into it takes some creative climbing, as there are various panels of transparent plexiglass serving as barriers, but I manage to circumvent them and get inside. The stairs emerge into the center of a dim, semi-industrial space, with narrow walkways on all four sides surrounding the wide pit formed by the stairwell in the middle of the room. No sooner have I gotten my bearings than a round hatch covering the end of a large pipe poking through the wall opens, and a humanoid creature crawls out. It is gollum-like, with huge bulging eyes. I don't want to be spotted, so I hold still and focus on being invisible. I feel a moment of relief as the creature initially descends the stairs, but it comes back promptly joined by a second person, a male human. As they approach the spot where I'm standing, I retreat into a corner to avoid them: even if they can't see me, they might blunder into me by accident if I'm not careful. On the bright side, having to strategize in this tense situation is improving my lucid awareness.

I reflect that my "invisibility" is just a mind trick: I am willing the DCs not to see me, and from their lack of reaction I assume it is working, but I can still see my own body plainly. This bothers me—at this point I'm a fairly experienced dreamer, so shouldn't I be able to dispense with a body? I've had no dearth of NLDs where I'm just a disembodied perspective, so surely I should be able to accomplish the same thing in my LDs. I decide to try to eliminate my dream body.

My body does obediently disappear from my field of vision, but the trouble is I still *feel* like I'm in a human body, with two legs, two arms, and two eyes located frontally in my head. If I have really transcended the body, I should no longer feel like I am mapped onto a human being. I conclude that I should begin subverting the pattern, and my first attempt is to try to shift my visual apparatus to floor level. This seems like it should be a fairly easy, basic task, but I find that I have trouble with it, maybe because I get caught up in questions like, well, if I'm not seeing out of physical eyes, then shouldn't my vision be even more radically different—unconstrained by frontality, for instance?

Meanwhile the man and gollum-like creature disappear into a side door, still apparently oblivious to my presence. I retrace my steps to the top of the stairs and examine the hatch that the latter had crawled out of. I consider going in there to explore, but decide that from the look of the creature and the size of the hatch, it will probably just be a cramped and uncomfortable network of tunnels. Instead I decide to follow the two through the side door.

I find myself in a large, open exhibition space with various vendors and booths. I pause for a moment to wonder why spaces like this are so common in my dreams. I don't know if this was a product of false memory or else better access to dream memory than I have in waking life, because at the time I was under the impression that I encountered such rooms on a regular basis; now that I'm awake I don't feel like they're especially common. At first I was just wandering around with no specific purpose, when it occurred to me that I shouldn't waste this opportunity to work on some tasks. There are a ton of things on my docket, but nothing especially pressing, so I thought over a few possibilities and decided to work on my Ars Magica forms and techniques—the other day I printed out the whole list of combinations and decided I should make it a long-term goal to try out all of them eventually.

I recalled that "creo animál" was the first one on my list that I had not tried, so I started intoning, "Creo animál!" I lengthened the syllables in a resonant voice, putting emphasis on the first syllable of "creo" and the last syllable of "animál." I repeated the invocation a few times in this manner, staring at an empty patch of floor. I didn't have a clear idea in mind of what kind of animal I wanted to create, but I thought I could leave that open for the dream to surprise me. However, nothing was happening. I thought perhaps I needed some raw materials, so I telekinetically lifted a nearby booth (hoping this wouldn't be too much inconvenience to the vendor) and pulled it into the space where I was working, then focused on compacting its form and shape into something suitable to my purpose. It folded itself up obediently until it was much smaller. However, I felt like I needed to impose a pattern on it since the dream wasn't responding with anything, so I arbitrarily chose the form of a cat. People started gathering around to watch the show as the booth finished its transformation, and now there was a short-haired black and white cat sitting stiffly on the floor. [In retrospect, the technique was closer to "muto" than "creo," since I adapted existing material rather than conjuring it from thin air.]

The newly-created cat was not moving, and did not seem capable of movement; it was like an empty shell of a cat, a living doll. This made sense, since I had created the body but not endowed it with sentience: I concluded that this would require a separate effect. Luckily this concurred with another task I needed to work on. "Creo mentem," I said, directing my words at the cat, and this time the effect resolved quickly: now the cat seemed to be capable of moving and perceiving its environment.

I wondered if "mentem" alone was sufficient: wouldn't that create something with the bland mental workings of a robot? Wouldn't I need to add "imáginem" to endow it with emotions and imagination, the "spark of life"? I wasn't sure, but I thought I'd better throw that in for good measure, so I intoned "Creo imáginem," focusing on giving the creature the capacity for emotions and inner life. Immediately I had doubts about whether this was wise. I don't know if my doubts were caused by the cat's behavior or if the cat's behavior was conditioned by my doubts, but whichever it was, the creature did not look pleased. It was lashing its tail in the way cats do when they're annoyed, and its face was contorted into a savage snarl. I wondered if throwing in "imáginem" had been overkill—emotions are not always pleasant, after all, and a creature so unexpectedly brought into existence might well be feeling upset and disoriented. Plus, I didn't even know if "imáginem," was necessary for a complete being; perhaps sentience was sufficiently specified by "mentem." [Consulting the Ars Magica rulebook now, I see that I misremembered the scope of of the Form: "imáginem" deals with sensations and illusions, not emotions and imagination. Though actually that makes the whole Form seem superfluous to the dreamstate, where there is no obvious difference between creating a thing and creating an illusion of that thing.]

I knelt down to have a closer look at my creation, and felt even more disturbed. There was something awful and abject about its face, a wound or rot-like distortion of its jaw that left the teeth clearly visible through its cheek. [DR: I realize this might also be day residue, because recently I was reading articles about the so-called "zombie cat" which came with graphic pictures of a similarly disfigured animal.] I decided that I should try to understand what this cat was experiencing, so I said, "Intéllego animál." I felt impressions of fear and rage coming from the poor creature, and guiltily realized that I must have screwed up somehow. It made it even worse that it was a cat, a kind of animal for which I feel a great love and sympathy.



With a sweeping gesture I willed all the effects I had invoked to disperse, effectively uncreating the cat. I didn't have a clear visual sense of the result (did the body simply disappear or did the vendor's booth revert to its former shape? I'm not sure), but at least I felt that the spell had ended. I looked up at the spectators who had been watching the whole event and sheepishly apologized: "It didn't want to be a cat. I'm sorry. It just didn't work out."

One woman spoke up in reply. Her words were uttered very calmly and slowly, emphasizing each of the adjectives, and I felt like she was subtly criticizing my actions: "People want to be fair, and dominating, and controlling, and diverting."

3/28 - WILD-style entry but memory gap before entry. Nudge vibrations. Sound I decide will be shower and dream girl inside. Roll out of bed and despite poor visuals I interact with dream girl sexually. First G use, 4mg + 250mg C (commit to use it no more than once a week). #301

3/29 - DILD notice I am shirtless at a party in a library and realize I am dreaming. Float around vaulted ceilings above crowd. #302

3/31 vivid apple juice dreams! DILD in which I use my time stopping stop watch and have a sexual interaction.#303

4/1 FA caught DILD. Suspect sound of alarm being turned off is not waking life. Hall too dark - should mean this is a dream. See a sign on bottom half of home office door with moving visuals and know for sure I am dreaming. Phase outside and end up back inside later and stabilize by licking and touching wall. I decide I will find Girl Friday in the house and do under some blankets in a bedroom. Interact sexually! 304

4/2 Day practices: This really could be a dream!
I reach for a cat that fades away…aha DILD. Flying among interesting clouds as far as I can see. 305

DILD Hose being pulled…by who? See no one and head to front door…it's ajar…break in? I bet I'm dreaming. Float RC, yes! Ends trying to stabilize rubbing the ground. 306

DEILD Although I feel myself back in bed, I get the idea to imagine that I can still feel the ground I was rubbing and I can. Eye clench vibrations. Lots more ground rubbing. Eventually get classroom scene with cute blonde nearby and sexual interaction. 307

4/5 DILD guard messing with me and I use dream actions to attack him in a van. Lower level lucid. 308

DILD I go into my familiar hall bathroom but the toilet is gone..aha! Sexual interaction with Girl Friday and her mother. 2nd ever G experiment. Same 4mg/250mg G+C dosage. 309

4/9 DILD guy pops out and I think whoop him like in a dream…I am dreaming! I attack him with multiple combinations and the move on to dream goal peg 1. 310

4/10 DILD narrow stairs and black lady coming down them. Start to move aside and then realize I can just float over her…ah yes I am dreaming. Float up to next level and low head space and mostly crawl through interesting halls and rooms. Some interesting toys remind me of one of my favorite lucid dreams. Attempt dream goal peg 1. 311

4/12 After some trouble getting to sleep and memory gap I have a WILD style entry. Dream started in bedroom and continued in house and bedroom with some involved stabilization on street. Completed dream goal peg 1 (subconscious question..should I..? Answer: "If you want to." Dream felt like 10 minutes. 3rd G experiment same dose 4mg+250mg. 312

4/18 vibrations and WILD style. Sexy woman in short skirt. 313

4/19 WILD style entry and maybe held onto consciousness throughout - remember thinking it is taking a while to get to sleep. Vibrations, ethereal experience, no visuals but feel I'm in my dream body. I remember my previous embrace of Girl Friday in a non-lucid, the warm hug and I start to feel her again. I rub my hands up and down her back to bring us both firmly into the same space. We have a very sensual, sexual interaction. Eventually vibrations and a fade back to bed. 314

After some minutes of patience, which is unusual for my DEILDs, normally feeling that if it doesn't happen in a matter of seconds that it won't...so perhaps more WILD than DEILD. Involved some eye clenches to nudge the vibrations…guessing some waking eyes and some dreaming eyes doing the clenches. The rest here: http://www.dreamviews.com/tasks-mont...ml#post2156310 315

Similar set of playing with vibrations and then backing off trying to let the vibrations ride on their own. So many voices. After a while I find myself at a busy conference. Rest at the same link above, TOTM. This was my 4th experiment with G + C and the first at a dosage of 8mg and 500mg. 316

4/24 DILD running down this beautiful wide set of stairs I am easily able to jump down to the next flight and 2 flights on the next jump fully realizing that I am dreaming. Joyfully float down to a huge open lobby area. Later FA where I am telling someone about the dream. 317

4/26 I seem to go in and out of lucidity for a good length of dreams with many sexual interactions and experiences. 2nd time with upped dose G + C 8mg and 500mg. 318

#433 - DILD - 5:18AM

I am traveling with a group of people. An old pastor from a very long time ago was leading us. He kept saying something about getting to Atlantic City. My wife's cousin is talking about winning a lot of cash at the casino and wanted to go his own way and meet up with us later. I interrupt, "Atlantic City? Is that in Georgia?" The pastor said it's actually in another galaxy. I get excited about this idea.

The next thing I recall is I need to change my clothes. My wife is in the room with me and as I grab a pair of jeans she tells me this is all a dream. I pause feeling unsure about it, but noticing how wavy and blurry my jeans look. She goes on, "Yeah. You should totally try changing your clothes in a dream. It would make a cool task." I look up and see myself in a mirror on a dresser and my face is highly distorted. Ok I believe her. Wow, that really cool my wife told I was dreaming! I decide I may as well try her lucid task suggestion and slowly and meticulously put my jeans on. I think about cheating with dream control, but I really want to get this. I pull my shirt off and put on a new one with some difficulty but manage to get it done.

I follow my wife around checking out the dream environment and talking to people for what feel like a very long time. However, nothing super interesting happens here and I forget most of it.

I see my plant manager at some point and decide to show off some dream control to him. I tell him I can levitate, but he gives me an uncharacteristically animated look of disgust when I cant do it. I see some dice on a wire rack next to us. I say, "OK then watch me juggle." I get the same look when my dice float of in various directions not matching my hand movements. I try again, "OK FINE. TK!" There are some boxes of cereal now in the wire rack. With great effort I get them to fall over. Just then, I hear a loud siren and my wife yelling at me, "It's time to go!" Startled and without thinking, I turn around and run toward her.

We are outside now with other people, my wife is standing to my right. I am told we are about to board the space ship, but as I look at the sky I see a very bright and colorful sunset behind large fluffy clouds. I look at in it awe and the clouds fade away reveling a wormhole. I see now that It's not a sunset at all but the light emanating from the anomaly itself. My wife is saying something about entering it to Atlantic City, but I don't pay her attention. I am way to transfixed by the beauty of the thing in the sky. I ask myself why I don't just fly in there right now as I begin to levitate. I put my hands in front of me expecting to fly, but I can't move. Instead I focus on being close and I teleport to the wormhole up close. I sort of get the image of look at a digital picture up close and can almost see pixelation. I ignore this and fall in head first.

I drift silently in a void and hope that I'm not actually waking up. I feel myself weightless and slowly flipping end over end in a fetal position. I enjoy the feeling and stay frosty like it's just another OBE episode. I keep thinking of when Cooper entered the black-hole in Interstellar, hoping for a similar experience. I really hadn't thought of a destination and now I just rely on my subC to bring me out anyplace I can. I get a brief visual of some man looking down. I don't notice now, but later I'll realize it was Cooper himself. The visual returns in flashes alternating to dark void. I focus on seeing intensely and quickly find myself laying on a floor next to a crying baby. Cooper is there tending to another identical baby. I just want the baby to quiet down so I can think and find a bottle. The baby doesn't want the bottle at first so I try it myself. The milk tastes good. My father instincts kick in and I cuddle the baby close to me and try the bottle once more. The baby seems content now. I wake up.

1. I had just walked inside of a theater and was looking around to see what movies were playing. The inside of this theater was almost all a deep maroon color. The walls were this color as well as the floors and curtains(which I have no idea why there were curtains here). I was with my family and my dad had told us earlier that certain theaters were already showing the new Avengers movie. Like I said, I was walking around to see if this theater had it.
This movie theater was split into different sections. One section was the main area with all the food and condiments and seats, and all of the other sections where for the showing of a certain movie. I walked through the main area and into one of these movie showing areas. As I walked into this random area, I see a huge line that wraps around and almost goes out into the main area(I know, there are alot of areas). I walk to the back of the line and as I do so I look at a sign at the front of the line to see what movie is playing. The sign does not have the Avengers on it, so I get out of the line and leave. As I am about to walk out of this showing area, I encounter a tall middle aged man wearing a yellow shirt, blue jeans, a hat, and glasses.
"You were looking for the Avengers too weren't you?" he asks. "Yeah, but they don't have it" I reply. "Say, aren't you also a lucid dreamer?" he asks. "Yeah I am, I've been looking around and constantly checking to see which reality I'm in for a while now" I tell him. He smiles and there is a brief pause between us. "Wait a second, I'm in a dream right now! Nice!" I say and then I immediately walk away from him and start to do my own thing. Now I am fully lucid. Suddenly though, my vision seems to have diminished and now I am half blind as though I had forgotten to put my glasses on. I don't stop and think how to fix it. Instead I start trying to do other things without fixing it, and this doesn't work very well.
Once I realize that I'm not going to be able to do much without fixing my vision, I stop and believe that my eyesight will correct itself automatically. "My eyesight will correct itself" I repeat to myself many times. But it does not work because I do not truly believe that it will. My belief is weak and therefore my vision stays the same. I give up(wow, never again will I give up on something so simple) and I start thinking of things to do. The first thing that comes to my mind is to create a portal and walk through it in the hope that where ever it takes me, I will be able to see clearly again. I start willing a portal to appear in front of me. Suddenly a blue portal with a silver rim starts to manifest. I can see it forming, but at the same time I can't. Like with my vision, I give up thinking I can't do it(Never going to give up again). The next thing that comes to my mind is a girl.
I put my focus on this girl and call out her name. Nothing happens and I knew that nothing would happen because I didn't truly believe in myself once again. Suddenly I get transported into my room and everything becomes super crystal clear that I think that I have awoken into waking life, but I haven't and I am still inside the dream. I look around my room and see that my bed sheets are exactly what they look like in waking life. I start to check everything else in my room when suddenly something wakes me up for real.

W.I.L.D. Attempt #4 ~ Since 4 Days Ago, When I Started Lucid Dreaming Again
T.O.T.Y. (Task of the Year) God Of Wine & Extra Adventure Dream
~ Dream #1 ~
100% Lucidity

Approximate Real Life Time: A few minutes

Approximate Dream Time: A few days

Backstory:
At this point in time, I have already woken up many times. In waking life, my physical body was so hungry I had to quit the first dream, and do the God of Wine ToTY quickly.
I live high up in an apartment building.

Story:
I wake up from my bed, and as usual my brain doesn't start any dreams during REM Antonia, lazy brain. I knew it was a lucid dream, so I jumped out of my 2-story bunk bed to the carpet from the second story of my bunk. I looked outside my window. I saw the bright, warm sun glowing in my eyes. It was surrounded by a blue, clear sky with few, tiny clouds. I melted ( went through ) through the window. I floated for a few seconds, and opened a portal into a swampy forest. I looked at the great, dark green wilderness around me, and the low depth of water on the floor of the forest. All I wanted was to have a great adventure, and journey across many lands in one world. While I was thinking about that, I slashed by a sword through my arm. I noticed a dark figure in front of me, and as I started to grab my long sword out of a scabbard, and raised in front of me. I wanted to keep going on this adventure, but I am really hungry in real life, so I decided to save my progress in this dream, and do one of the ToTY Tasks. I opened up a white menu out of nowhere, and I pressed "Save progress" with a saving disk next to it. I closed my eyes. [View the continued version of this dream here.]

Dream Shift.

I opened my eyes, and I saw Dionysus in front of me across a long, wooden table covered with a white cloth. Many people were around us watching us. Dionysus, the wine god, challenge me to a drinking contest. I chuckled, and I agreed. I decided to cheat, because it wasn't specified whether we were allowed to cheat or not. I took my first glass and drank it. I cheated by putting a portal in my mouth, so I didn't technically drink it. However after many drinks, I started to feel drunk and dizzy. I didn't how that was possible. I could see Dionysus also as drunk as me. I thought, "What kind of wine is this?" It was a contest made by a Greek God, so he probably setup anti-cheating measures. I decided to keep going on. As I drank more and more, I started to feel dizzier and dizzier. I blacked out, but I keep going even when I was blacked out. I had to beat him. When I finally regained conscious, I saw Dionysus smiling at me. I didn't know whether I won or lost. I still very lightheaded. Dionysus says that I won, but I was still drinking. Our contest lasted a few days, and during the late night, there would be the most audience watching, and the fewest in the morning. When I woke up, it was early morning, and Dionysus says I won him by a few hours, and laughed because I drank 304 more cups after I had legally won already. When he woke from his black-out, he was watching me drink more and more. We both agreed that I had won, and that he is willing to challenge me again. I forced myself to wake up.

Dream End.

I woke up, and went to the kitchen to get a drink and something to eat. I took out orange juice and poured it in my glass. I swore that if it tasted like wine, I would hate myself for doing that challenge first. Luckily, it tasted fine, and I continued with my daily routine.

Remember to comment your thoughts (if you want to)!

Video Games

I was inside a room with my brother's friend watching me play what was suppose to be
a Wii U game I think. But instead of using the remote I was controlling the character with my body. I was on
rainbow road running and jumping trying not to fall as I collected the rings. The game made me think it was a mix
of Mario kart and sonic. Than after that the game and room changed. I was now playing a game where i was a cave man and had to collect clothes and meat until i arrived at the end of the game.There were obstacles in the game too so it
was kind of difficult. Than my cousin came and asked me if she could play. I told her no and she asked again so i had
to tell her no many times till she stopped.

After that my younger brother came in and my older brother switched the game to what was supposed to be a new super smash bros melee game. I was excited because my younger brother came in and was going to play. I hugged him than chose my character which was a big male jaguar/wolf that could walk. My younger brother chose the character 114 Parakeets. I was surprised and asked him if he chose the 104(Even though it read 114) Parakeets character because he was playing with me. Than i laughed and said how weird it would be if there was actually 104 parakeets flying around in the game.(The 114 Parakeets character was just a guy with a shirt saying 114 Parakeets, not lots of birds flying around)

After that we started fighting on a plane that seemed like star fox's ship, flying in a clear sky. I used the Jaguar/Wolf character I had to pick up my opponents pressing down and B.(We had game cube remotes in hand playing the melee game) Than I was going to throw them off. The Jaguar/Wolf began talking about how it was eager to throw them down and laugh in their faces. My brother's friend and my older brother began screaming telling me not to throw them down. I didn't know how to release them down hard so i tried tossing them but they were able to jump back on the ship. I told them it was cause i didn't know ho to do it than woke up.

Another Dimension

I was inside a room with a little boy and his sister. The boy was misbehaving so the sister tried correcting him but he didn't want to listen. There was also a little girl that came into the scene and she wasn't listening either. Her dad came and made her listen. After that I don't really recall what happened. I think I left and started thinking about dreams and an old childhood friend who I will call H.

The dream began to change and I ended up finding H, my brothers, dad and tall, cool looking anime boys that had purple, light blue, black, red and yellow hair.They were supposedly rich and from another dimension that was a secret. I thought they might have entered from another dimension into the dream world and was excited to meet them.

I started talking to the guy with red hair and he seemed interested in me so i decided i would do my best to make him my bf. I sang a song with him, ate food with him which i thought was Japanese curry and rice and played with him riding on his back. But when i went to another room to talk to H or my younger brother and went back to the room he was gone. I asked the other guys where he might have gone but than decided to go look for him on my own.

I left the place and started walking around what seemed like a beautiful mansion where rich people lived. I start to think where the rest of my family might be inside this huge place and go into the bathroom. I stay there because i start to notice that what I'm wearing is a bit too short. I walk back outside and can hear my cousin and brother's friend talking in a certain room. Than i race down the stairs and end up running into a man who thinks of me as a circus slave/Prostitute. He wants me to go on stage. I tell him no and that i could do what i want in my dream state. I run trying to escape the group of people he shouted to grab me.

I become even more aware after that and decide that when i get outside i would stop running. I end up inside a outside yard. Not much grass but mostly cement and fences around in the rectangular yard i'm in. There are other buildings around it and I find a character that makes me think of Jadegreen. We end up talking about something than I start to notice as I'm hovering in the air another character. I tell her she looks like a shorter version of Manei and overall feel like she is. I tell her to follow me as i'm flying and say "Achi, Achi, Achi! follow me!" without really thinking about it. I apologize to her for calling her that. It just came out. She doesn't seem to mind and I start to think about how maybe i called her that because i heard the word in japanese "Achi" when i watched a video talking about "kocchi" a long time ago.

Anyways I think about Dawn than suddenly a dog runs up to me. I hug the dog that is now licking my face and start to think what if Dawn is the dog. Manei and another person now look at me with a weird look on their faces. I tell the dog to stop licking me than think about looking for that anime character again. The scene ends up changing though and I'am now viewing a news report of a school building in japan that has caught on fire. There was a Japanese girl on the floor thinking of her best friend as she lay on the floor with her broken leg. After that I appeared near what was suppose to be the school but in the future when it was rebuilt. I noticed a girl character staring at me from the park.

A narrator figure announced that she was from the past and that she was madly in love with me. I was upset with that thought and started thinking what if Dawn was really a girl on the inside and wanted to be with me but in the form of a girl. It made me feel uncomfortable to think about that so i decided to fly far away from the dc. I flew through narrow places as the girl chased me telling me to wait and to come back. As I was flying the place was getting darker and it made me feel kind of scared but I decided I would be brave in this dream.I ended up flying into a huge car tunnel and saw a anime boy trying to turn away a large fish that was flying in the area. It was pretty cool to watch but I got the feeling that I wanted to go home and find Eye or the real Dawn.

I flew out the tunnel with home in mind and ended up downstairs. It was dark and I felt like really calling for Eye but decided not to. i ran up the stairs and looked at the window. There was little light outside. I opened the front door than saw a transparent thing in the small hall that had the stairs that led to the other neighbors place. I closed the door and decided not to go outside. I went into the middle of the living room and decided to pull Dawn into the dream through a floor portal. I concentrated on Dawn's energy and put both my arms through the floor. I felt something and i slowly got a signal of a red energy. I thought this was a bad thing because i didn't want Dawn to be a bad entity.

I let it go but than decided to just pull it out full force anyways. The person I pulled out was all red and i felt it was taking my energy so i let go of it. "Dawn, are you stealing my energy?" I asked. It transformed into a small baby and tried hugging me. I pushed it away and thought about where i went wrong in my way of thinking. I made a small prayer for my dream to be clean when i couldn't get the baby to go away. A small piece of the dream setting broke when i did that and the baby fell in and didn't move. As if it was dead. After that I appeared in a small kitchen where a lady asked her daughter if she wanted tuna fish for dinner. Than I woke up.

6:27 AM. 4/12/2015 April 12 Lucid
I became lucid in a bed that was in some kind of scientific laboratory. I knew I was dreaming so I kept saying I'm dreaming. I asked the dream what I needed to do and it replied with instructions at the upper right portion of my vision. There were about 4 tasks. I had already completed the first task by asking the dream what to do. In front of me a door opened and the dream announced, "Good job, now for the next step." I entered the next room which also looked like some kind of lab. There was a creepy looking man in the corner facing the wall and I instantly became scared. I looked at the wall behind me and kept repeating, "I'm Dreaming!" I woke up in the real world and looked over at my window. My vision was swirling and changing and becoming all distorted. After a few moments my vision stabilized and I sat up and performed a reality check to make sure I was actually awake.

4/3/2015 False Awakening April 3 Lucid
I was lying in my bed completely aware. I looked over at my sister's bedroom door which was open. All of the sudden some strange, big lady walked past her door. I was suddenly being pulled to the lady. It was terrifying.

4/2/2015 April 2 Lucid
I remember becoming lucid and seeing one of my old friends (Bryce). Standing in some corn feild that looked like the scene from The Wizard Of Oz where Dorothy meets the scarecrow. I woke up immediately after.

Before this I had a dream that my family was really rich and my dad was secretly a mad scientist. The dream ended with this car chase.

There was also something to do with me trying to hide a bunch of stuff inside an oven. This part of the dream repeated over and over.

...

Something to do with Asokah Tano (apologies if I butchered that spelling.) from the Star Wars TV series.

...

I was in my subdivision. I had this 'toy' rocket ship that could be controlled with this wand remote control. The rocket ship had three engines and wings on the sides along with a pointy nose-cone and a camera dome on top, sort of like a mini cockpit. I could control it by pressing a button and waving the wand around.

I was flying it around but I kept crashing it by accident. At one point, I tried to land it but the pointy nose cone went through someone's garage door and punched a little hole about an inch wide.

I decided it was best to put the thing away before the neighbors saw and got me in trouble so I carried it home. When I got to the front door I put it down and started asking where I got this thing. I said to myself something like:

"Wait a second, I know for a fact that I don't have this toy. So why am I playing with it like it is nothing? I should reality check."

I did a nose pinch RC. I became lucid. I then started hearing my friend S's voice asking if I was there. I asked him where he was. He said that he was on a skype call but had been away for awhile. I told him that I was in a lucid dream. He got really excited saying that I was talking to him through a Skype call in a lucid dream.

I walked inside my house, but I told myself that I would arrive somewhere else when I opened the door, I just saw the front room of my house. I ran a couple of circles around the interior of my house but everything still stayed the same.

I told S that I was going to try and dream spin. Normally I don't have a lot of luck with dream spinning, but it was worth a try here. I spun around in the front room of my house and everything went black. I just saw a mucky haze of reddish colors and heard some quiet sounds.

I found myself floating in the middle of a lake. S asked what I was seeing. I told him I saw some trees, houses and that I was in a lake. S then said that he was bored and was going to get going. I heard the Skype call sign out sound and he was gone. I remember being kind of happy that he was gone, now I could just concentrate on my lucid dream.

I propelled myself across the surface of the water and came up onto the shore of the lake. I looked around. Just a newly-built neighborhood. There was a dirt path leading into the woods and a bunch of trees had been cut to make room for the new houses. I remember looking at the log piles and seeing that the trunks had been cut into really short flat discs, only a few inches thick. I was wondering why the workers might have done this.

I decided I would fly. "Fire Jets On!" I'm going. I remember as I got above the trees. (They didn't have any leaves or anything. I think it was early spring.) I saw this big red sand dune with a few small rock towers on top. I then noticed that it looked like the sky was getting closer in the wrong kind of way.

"Is that a skybox?"

I hit the wall shoulder first ready for an impact.

"Yep, there's a skybox."

I landed on top of the red sand hill. I looked back and saw the other three walls of the skybox, containing the houses, the lake from before, the dirt road and the leafless forest.

I still wanted a way out of here. I remember seeing a blanket with a whole bunch of large quartz crystals laying out on it. I then figured that the next logical thing to do was to try and break the skybox. I picked up one of the largest crystals. It was about 3" wide and a foot long.

I had the inkling that it wouldn't work, and I was really just doing it as a joke. I held the crystal high in the air.

"By the power of this Crystal, I will destroy the evil Skybox. Excalibur!"

I heard a humming sound that grew louder and louder and then climaxed with a glass breaking sound and the sun/lights went out. (Oops, shorted out the lights.) But there was still light. I brought the crystal down and it was glowing in a bluish white color.

The glow slowly faded away from the crystal, but I tried to send more power to it and make it start glowing once more. I no longer felt like I was in the sky-box room, but rather my bedroom. I tried to turn on the lights but they seemed broken too.

I decided to see how bright I could make the crystal glow. I held it with both hands and tried to push as much power as I could into it. It started glowing really bright. Then, all of the sudden it went dark. I saw all of the little cracks and imperfections in the crystal had gone away.

Then the light came back to the crystal with this flame ignition sound effect. There was a little blue sun inside the crystal that didn't fade or die away. It stayed there. The light refracted out of the crystal like a prism into a rainbow of colors around the room.

"Disco Rave!"

I got bored with the dream or was simply pulled into my false awakening.

False awakening. I saw that my laptop was at the foot of my bed and Skype was open. I closed it up and went back to sleep hoping the dream could continue, but it did not.

I miss the wbtb alarm but end up thinking about lucidity and how nice it would be to have one just after pressing the final snooze.

In the neighborhood where I see a family friend talking about something, then someone calls another DC and we head back home. As I get out of the car I look around, my awareness goes up and I realize this is a dream. I can relate the place I am at to a previous dream (near where I was standing when examining the plates possibly after that) and wonder about my awareness then. After giving it some thought, I become convinced I had a lucid moment at some point in the dreams before. A nearby DC tells me it was indeed a lucid dream. That makes me feel even worse that I wasted a lucid moment and didn't do anything.

"If you have a lucid dream, then do a task rather than just lose lucidity" I think angrily to myself. Ok, time to do that right now. I remember the hole task and hastily put my hand in my pocket, trying to get hold of something. I feel a small round object and concentrate on the floor ahead as I throw it forward. This time (compared to couple of days ago) it produces a nicely sized somewhat transparent dark hole. I stare at it for a bit longer and then cautiously jump in. I end up on the ground laying on my side in shallow waters at approximately the same dream scene. The water has some strange properties - it's in partial existence and feels different. I get up and look around. The snooze wakes me up.

Before the first WBTB was a pretty dry and unclear semi-lucid. I recall something having to do with an evil dream character making spikes appear and killing my cats and family. I became partially lucid, to the point of not caring because I knew for one reason or another that what was happening was not a part of reality.

-WBTB-

The second dream was really long. I remember my friend S's comic characters being involved. (But I cant give names or tell what they did at the risk of spoiling his comic. Not that I remember much of it anyway.)

...

I was in a neighborhood with one of my college suite-mates. Someone started yelling that we should look at the sky because he saw a jet figher plane. I looked up and saw a small plane fly over followed by a whole squadron of big, slow moving green bombers.

Someobody was shouting that the United States was under attack by another country. The bomb bays on the planes opened and bombs started falling out. I said to my suite-mate that we should try to find a shelter or basement to hide in.

But before the bombs hit the ground they all began morphing into all of these different random things. One of the bombs turned into Santa's Sleigh. Another one turned into a Unicorn. I just remember a lot of colors, and all of the bombs-turned-random things shot off in random directions.

Somebody started getting really excited because they thought that it was the spiritual awakening where magic had returned to world, and all that they had foredcasted and all of the things that had appeared from the bombs were the changes in the world that they had brought about.

I did a nose-pinch reality check and became lucid. I told the dream character I was sorry, there wasn't some kind of spiritual awakening, but rather just my lucid dream. The dream character got really mad with me.

...

I was at a train station, but there was no train tracks. This little futuristic pod came along where the train tracks should have been. The door opened indicating I was supposed to get on. But when I tried to walk in closer the door closed partway and a force field projected through it.

The voice of the DC from earlier started talking and was apparently very mad with me for ruining everything for him and telling him that it was just my dream. He told me that I wasn't allowed onto the train until I had an imagination again.

-WBTB-

The third time I fell asleep didn't yield any dreams.

Non-lucid / Lucid / Awake

#1.
I'm walking down some stairs, talking about a friend of mine. I say she's very bossy and annoying and when I look behind me, I see she has heard everything.
A little while later, the same thing happens. I talk about the same friend, say she's annoying and then I find out she's walking in front of me and has heard everything.
She takes me outside to look at an almost empty parking lot. At first I think she's gonna talk to me about what I said about her, but surprisingly enough, she doesn't. I'm mad at her but I don't know why.

.#2
I'm in a big hall, crowded with people, when suddenly Justin Bieber approaches me. I stay cool (I'm not a fan but he is pretty famous and shit) when he talks to me. He says some perverted shit and I get angry. Then he tells me he wants to have sex with me and normally, in a dream, I would agree to have sex with him but I'm still angry and tell him to go fuck himself.

#3.
I wake up in my bed and instantly know it's a dream. My bed, however, is very warm and comfy and I just don't want to get out. I look at a mirror on my desk to see if I can summon something scary because I'm in the mood for some scary stuff but it doesn't happen.
I pull my blanket over my head and just enjoy being in my bed. Then I realize I'm wasting my time in a lucid dream so I jump through the window.
The detail outside is incredible! The streets look just so real and so does the sky. I'm amazed and decide to find Castiel (from the tv show Supernatural). I approach two boys to ask them where Castiel is, but they run away. Before I can run after them I wake up.

Ritual: WTB 12:45am, woke 6am and felt rested enough to do a solid WBTB and WILD attempt. Read LD books for an hour then returned to bed at 7am. I took bacopa, L-theanine, alpha-GPC, and even ventured to add a little galantamine to the mix, breaking open a Galantamind capsule and adding half the powder to my alpha-GPC solution. I lay on my back and counted, also deciding on my intended tasks: muto herbam and my lucid dare. For the hell of it I added in a short mantra on the off-counts: inspired by the DC's weird question last night ("Who is your mantra?") I was using the name of an intriguing DC from a prior dream. I started losing the count quickly and after picking it back up a few times, drifted off somewhere in the 30s. Eventually I woke back up, used the bathroom, and checked the time before lying down on my left side to sleep. It was 7:30am. Woke up at 8am with dream.

WILD: I quickly started to feel promising bodily sensations, able to move in ways I was sure weren't "real." At one point I felt my husband's face very close to mine, thought I could feel his breath against my face, and was afraid this distraction was going to wake me. Feeling a bit rude, I pushed him away. After that he got up and I hoped he had understood my reasons—recognized that I was in the middle of a dream attempt—and wasn't annoyed. Of course in retrospect, I'm sure that none of this actually happened; not only does the geography of the bed make it physically unlikely, but my husband was still fast asleep on his side of the bed when I woke up to write this report.

As soon as I felt I had full bodily control, I started trying to get out of bed. I threw caution to the winds because I've started to suspect that a lot of the barriers to transition are self-imposed. So I got out of bed as soon as I could manage it, and although I felt awkward at first, moving very herky-jerkily as I tried to walk out of the room—a bit like a marionette whose puppetmaster is still figuring out the right use of the strings—I soon got back into the feel of it.

I walked into the kitchen, where my attention was caught by what looked like a big wad of gauze or lace, about 18 inches in diamter. In shape it resembled those scrunchies you use in the shower, but it was much larger and made of lacy white gauze with silver sparkles. The texture was wonderfully detailed, more distinct than anything else in my field of vision, so I decided to pick it up and use it for my first experiment. The simpler of the tasks I had planned was to practice a bit with transformation and with plants, so I held the gauze in my hands and commanded, "Muto herbam," envisioning the form of a long-stemmed red rose.

The material was resistant at first, so I repeated the command a few times and intensified my will. Eventually it shrank compliantly into a red flower, but the blossom appeared to be that of a tulip, so I continued staring at it sternly until it manifested more layers of ruffled petals. I studied it to make sure it was a proper rose and not just an ambitious carnation, and when I was finally satisfied with its form, I lifted it to my nose to smell it. It actually did smell like a rose! This impressed me all the more because I so rarely have any olfactory impressions in my dreams. (Then again, I guess I don't spend much time sniffing things.)

I wondered if I should leave the house to perform my next task. I'm still working on my lucid dare, which requires me to find an camp of elves in the forest and join them in making music. My initial impulse was to leave my house and look for the forest, but that hasn't worked well before, so this time I thought I would to try a different approach and transform the environment around me rather than bodily leaving it. I looked around the room for another plant suitable for my experiment and was pleased to discover a spindly sapling with lots of thin twigs tipped with narrow yellow flowers growing in a pot. I went over to it and commanded "Rego herbam," commanding it to grow into a tall tree. Nothing happened at first, but eyeing its numerous twigs I had another idea for how to use it.

The sapling was slightly taller than I was, so I backed up against it and pulled its flexible branches around me to create the visual impression that I was surrounded by a thicket, once again commanding "Rego herbam." The trick worked! The twigs filling my field of vision became a real thicket in which I found myself hiding on a hillside, trying to remain unseen as I peered down at a large camp of about two dozen people occupying a cleared basin just below me. I hoped they were elves! But they didn't seem merry, and I didn't hear any music. They were dressed in muted earthtones and went about their business grimly.

I can't remember if I actually observed the camp being raided, but by some means I understood that this was a camp of rebels whose people were being oppressed and frequently captured and sold into slavery by the inhabitants of a nearby castle. I was aware that had several been taken away recently, and decided that the best way to ingratiate myself with the camp would be to rescue them. So I transported myself into the castle dungeon and began to search for the captives.

The first door I opened led to an empty room, though it definitely looked like a classic dungeon, with rough-hewn and filthy stone floor and walls. Returning to the corridor, I saw that there were lots of identical doors, and I didn't think I had time to try them all, so I let instinct guide me to another door across the hall. At first this seemed promising: there was very little light filtering in through the tiny windows high in the wall, and in the shadows I thought I saw four figures manacled to the walls around the room. As I walked in, planning to free them, I found that either my eyes had decieved me, or the dream had shifted: the manacles were there, but this room was just as empty as the last. It made me wonder if what I had seen were the ghosts of past prisoners.

As I went to leave the room, I was startled to discover that the door was now half-blocked by a chest-high mound of stone rubble. I started to climb over but it was too steep, and afterward the blockade looked even higher, taller than I was. If I didn't act soon I would be completely walled in! So I mustered my concentration and simply pushed through the pile of rocks. The stone felt very resistant and I had to use all my strength, but finally burst through into the hallway. I was surprised how exhausted I felt after this feat. Given that it was a dream, it shouldn't be any harder to move "rocks" than anything else, but I felt completely spent. While I paused to regain my strength, I heard people approaching from around a corner to my left. There was no time to get away, so I simply held very still in the doorway and concentrated on being invisible to them.

There were three people in all. One person passed by without giving any sign of seeing me. Two others followed, walking together, and to my consternation they stopped at the door, right in front of me. Although they didn't seem to see me, something appeared to have caught their attention (the dislodged rocks?) because one of them pulled out a handheld device and started waving it in my direction as though scanning something. I wondered what would happen if they tried to walk through the doorway. I still seemed to be invisible, but would they be able to pass right through my body? Or would they bump into me? I decided not to risk it, and I was also a little worried that the scanner might detect my presence, so I reached out and grabbed one of the people with each hand. I willed them both to fall unconscious, and they slumped to the ground. The one to the left was a woman dressed in "business casual," while the guy to the right appeared to be a uniformed security guard. I immediately knelt down and hastily stripped the latter of all the tech I could find on his body: earpiece, cellphone, and a few other little widgets that I didn't recognize. I thought I heard another person coming down the hall, so I transformed into a bird and flew out one of the small barred windows high up on the walls.

The castle was on a gently sloping hillside, and I was now flying over a wide rural landscape. At the base of the hill was a wooded region, and far beyond that I could see the curve of the ocean shore. I figured I would still be able to find my way back to the camp, since I had just come from there, so I let memory or instinct guide me. Meanwhile I focused on making sure I was flying properly, since I haven't spent much time in bird form. I alternated between flapping my wings and holding them stiff and outstretched so that I could glide on the wind. I felt like a large bird of prey, and I was clutching the tech I had just stolen in my talons.

I flew over the forest until I saw a clearing below that looked familiar. Descending felt very realistic, because I was circling just like a raptor would, wide at first and then in a narrowing spiral until I landed. To get the attention of the people in the camp, I decided that I should not be an ordinary brown eagle, but a white eagle. Apparently this drew a little too much attention, because on the way down I discovered that someone was shooting arrows at me. I decided I could use this to make my entrance particularly impressive, so at the very moment that I touched the ground I not only turned back into a woman, I also grabbed an arrow that was about to hit me right out of the air.

Earlier I had not made sure whether or not the people in the camp actually were elves, and now that I look around at closer range, I see only round human ears. I approach a couple people who are talking authoritatively, like leaders of the group. One is a capable looking woman with short, dirty-blonde hair. I ask her if there are any elves in the camp, thinking to myself that if I do find some, I'll give them the tech I stole as a friendly gesture. No one can specifically point to any elves, so I ask, well, who was shooting at me? I figure that if there is an elf, it might well have been the one lobbing arrows. The woman points across the camp. Following her gesture, I notice a slight figure huddled on a bench, completely wrapped in a dark grey blanket.

I walk over and lean down in front of the figure, trying to gently tug the blanket aside to reveal its face. It seems shy, hiding its face under the blanket like this, but I soon discover the reason. As I begin to reveal its features, they are the last thing I would have expected. The head is made of molded transparent plastic, with a suggestion of human features on the outside and circuitboards within. It is an android!

The android has a high, almost childish voice, and evidently feels very bashful about its unusual appearance. It tries to prevent me from pulling back the blanket, protesting, "I look repulsive."

I completely disagree, and tell it so: "No you don't. You look amazing." It reluctantly lets me tease aside the blanket to reveal its whole head.

At this point a man walks up to us. He looks to be in his forties, balding, a bit stocky in build, and with rounded features, kind of resembling Rob Corddry. From his dress and demeanor, I immediately intuit that he is the creator of this android. I realize that he would be the ideal person to give the tech I stole from the castle guard.

"I have something for you," I say without preamble, and fill his hands with the little pile of objects.

He looks delighted. "This will be really useful."

We start chatting a bit about the android, and I ask if he knows where to find any elves. He's not aware of any in the camp, but I overhear a snippet of conversation from people standing nearby that I think might be relevant to my question; one of them mentions a place called "Junkyard Bay" and I resolve to check it out.

"What's your name?" I ask the inventor. I feel a bit silly always asking this of DCs, but I like to know.

"Dira," he says. That's how I assumed it was spelled, but from the pronunciation it could just as easily be "Deera." He asks mine, and I tell him.

Dira is looking at me like he finds me really familiar, but can't figure out where he knows me from. "We haven't spoken before this? No beer? No comfort?"

I am perplexed by his laconic queries until I realize that he's asking if he might have met me in a bar or a brothel. I might have been offended at the implications if I weren't so fascinated by his distinctive manner of speaking, so unlike my own speech patterns. How could a DC, a projection of my own mind, demonstrate linguistic traits so utterly unlike my own, to the point where it took me a moment to make sense of what he was saying? It was one of those moments that make me wonder if my reductionist assumptions are correct, but I'm not ready to go down the path of madness without better evidence than this.

I shake my head, since I'm pretty sure I've never met him in either dream or waking life. He asks my name another time, and I repeat it. I've been using my WL name, having forgotten my former resolution to use an alias with DCs.

Dira starts explaining something about the locals: "What's particularly important for the native Ukaran communities is the..." there was more, but it was complicated, and I was still trying to figure out what was going on.

"Ukaran?" I ask, to make sure I heard correctly.

"Yes, the Ukaran and the Utankaran."

I had the impression that he was implying that the Ukarans were the people in this camp, and I'd already seen the problems that they were facing—oppression and human trafficking on the part of the people in the castle. I wondered if the oppressors were the Utankarans. The similarity in their names suggested that they were closely related but (in the manner of such things) probably deeply opposed social groups.

I had gotten my hair done because it was New Year's Eve and I was going out with a friend. I walked into the ballroom and saw Betty White and my aunt, Laura (she's 86 and lives in another state) - she's been on my mind b/c I haven't seen her in a couple of years and I'm going to go this summer at the very latest - I went to Laura, hugged her and asked her what she was doing there. Then, I saw Mom, started to cry fairly hard as I was walking to her because I knew I was dreaming b/c I've been RCing with my parents and my sisters. I woke up before I got to her...and was so disappointed b/c I want to see my parents (who have both passed away in the last few years) in my LDs, I tried to lie still and go back into the dream but I moved and couldn't go back to sleep right away. All three ladies were in floor length gowns and all three looked very pretty. In WL, my mother died three Christmases (two days before) ago and she died from cancer and weighed 90 lbs. and was frail and in pain when she died so I have these horrible memories and I can't hardly remember all the good years - I totally enjoyed my parents. So, even if it was for just a short second, she looked beautiful and healthy and I'm grateful to have seen that.