non-lucid

D1 - There was a creature that did not need human comforts, it moved out of the house where it had been as a human. It now lived in a hollowed out tree, surviving on things left on the tree floor. It was very cold and dark but it did not care. It just existed. Children came to the tree and it did not mind or pay them attention.
It went to work and carried out its duties with minimal interaction with others their and was able to dupe them into thinking it was a human.
The creature reminded me of the groak from the moomins.


D2 - At college sitting outside with a group of others, a girl is tuning up her guitar. A string is broken. It is a steel length with barbs on it. I offer to fix it and use my powers to melt and then stretch it back to normal.

D3 - Taking my daughter (when little) to a cinema to see a film. The cinema is on two floors and is very stark, qrey concrete walls. I buy tickets only to find the picture is not on, as the projector is not working. People are occupying themselves by eating in an upstairs resteraunt or drawing on the large screen with is not in use.
Eventually the film is back on but it is not the right film, no one cares as it is a children's film and pretty much the same. But I know my daughter will care and try to get a refund. I cannot however find my receipt or remember if I did infact purchase a ticket.

D4 - Some of the college students from the earlier dream are having a car race, the car is multicoloured with slogans all over it, mostly green thougth. We are in last place with the other cars infront bunched up. I use my powers to fix the car in time to speed ahead and win at the last moment.
In the student bar after their is a guy who was on the other team. I am concerned he will pick a fight with our team leader, so I invite him to sit with me at a table, away from the others. I then will be able to use my powers on him if he tries anything.
I ask fi who is there if she will hold my hand, I use my powers and when we hold hands it does a glowy red thing.

[comments]
I feel I have been living a life with no joy. Fairly bleak like the groak.

Non-Dream Lucid Dream Non-Lucid Dream False Awakening

I have been reading up on LD for a while now and decided to ease myself into the process with some mild...well...MILD xD So I didn't expect to have a LD on my first night, but I did have a semi-vivid dream! Which is always a good thing!

Wednesday 6th/1/2016

Background Info: I went to bed at around 22:30 and fell asleep at around 23:15-30. Befire then, I was doing some MILD mantras along the lines of 'I am aware I am dreaming.' I wasn't on planning on doing a wake back to bed due to school the next day, so I just tried to ease myself into the process of preparing for a LD.

It was fairly mild outside. For some bizarre reason, I was in a scrap yard where cars go to meet their demise. The pace was small, with towering towers of rusty four-wheel drives and a pools of various litter. The are did not look pleasant and certainly didn't smell it either. In the distance, the sun was setting rather quickly, emitting a nice, orange glow which brought a sense of warmth to the scene. Not much was happening to be honest, and I had no clue why I was at this crap yard. Accompanying me for this dream was my own Mother, her partner Robbie and Robbie's 1 year old daughter, Marina, who resided in a pram next to her mum. In the corner of the scrap yard was some kind if shack where you could order pizza, specifically Dominoes. Being hungry and bored, we decided to order one for later.

(I don't actually recall the ordering process, but I remember the conclusion at the scrap yard.)

Me and mum had gone to order whilst Robbie waited with the pram. When me and my Mum returned, Robbie spotted a small Motofone amongst a pile of junk. She pulled it out and decided she'd keep it for some strnage reason. According to her, she'd always wanted one when she was younger. This didn't make sense considering they wasn't around when she was younger, but I just let that thought slip and clapped her for her lucky find.



Fast-forward a second or two and we were back at the at home. Now joining the cast of this dream was both my Grand-parents and my Autie. They all were in the lounge, watching something on TV. My mother was in the kitchen. Robbie had placed the motofone on the window sill and was now sat on the floor, entertaining Marina. Next thing I now, Mum was outside the living room window, getting something out of the car. When she came out of the car, she looked down the road to spot the pizza we ordered make its arrival. I could amazingly hear her through the window say;
"It's here!"
Before could all get up and head into the kitchen, the motofone began ringing. Robbie tried to answer it but she couldn't. She could not accept the call or decline it. It just would not stop ringing. So we took it in the kitchen when we left the lounge.

In the kitchen were three female strangers that I had never seen before. They were just standing in a group minding their own business. I distinctly remember one who had blonde hair and wore a leather jacket with a fur collar. But the other two's appearances I can't remember.

I marched past the females, with the rest of the family in tow and approached the backdoor where my mum and the pizza delivery woman waited. Strangely, when I opened the door, the rest of my family who wer ebhind me, had all of a sudden beat me to outside. Odd. I now had the motofone in my hand, and it was still ringing. Because we ordered the pizza at the scrap yard, I assumed that Dominoes had something to do with the phone as it seemed they ran the scrapo yard. I showed the pizza delivery woman the phone but she did not seem one bit interested.

I then woke up! My mum was in my room telling me I'd be late for school and that my alarm needed to be louder to actually wake me up. I then realised that my alarm was ringing and it was the exact same sound as the motofone in my dream. Bloody deceitful alarm!

Earlier Ld frag: I shortly become lucid and recall the basic totm, start looking for a book. I think I find one with gibberish on it.

Other dreams and the above section is mostly forgotten.

Nld part: I get dragged into some sort of a drinking contest where people queue, leave a bottle, get points for it, then are served drinks, some pay for them, score more points. I order grapefruit white wine cocktail. It takes forever to get it but the bartender finally gives me my glass - with a little pink liquid at the bottom. It tastes like smoothie, not too bad but definitely not grapefruit and wine. I continue to the next stage of the contest up some stairs where I find myself in an elevator shaft by mistake. I try to get out of there.

A man requests my assistance lifting some of his contest goods. In another room - another guy leaves his PC above the toilet seat.

I'm outside now and everything suddenly comes into focus. It was as if I wasn't seeing where I was the moment before. But now I know - it's a dream. I look around thinking about it. On an unknown street, I try to determine my location. Never been here before. I look at the style of buildings trying to assess which country is this. Maybe the States. I begin to recall that I had another very brief lucid already with the totm. It's a bit blurry and I only recall looking for the book. Better not to go into too much thought right now.

Let's find another book and see what's written there. I walk down the street thinking about summoning a book. Despite my overall confidence of being able to summon almost anything, this feels like one of these dreams where the environment is different and as if the summon won't work. I walk down the street looking around and wondering whether to enter inside to look for a book but this seems like a bad time consuming idea. I see a pile of junk near one of the houses and decide to investigate it.

There are couple of books right on top. How convenient! The first one is a notebook, so I put it to the side. Then I grab three differently colored books with lavishly decorated hardcovers. I take the top one and examine it. What does the title say? Gibberish again. Would that count, I feel disappointed. I look again as the letters keep changing until they finally make actual words "The boredom of God". I browse through the pages which are filled with more gibberish words and think about this. Maybe god is bored because I can't get any information out of this book. Nevermind. I look up and try to memorize the title. Surely I will forget this any moment now so I decide to shout it out loud several times.

I keep shouting as I look around. I feel excited to have a lucid dream. I want to stay here longer, but as am about to shout again, the dream starts to thin out and I wake up.

Me and my boyfriend were staying in a room in someone's house. It had a couch and a litter box. My boyfriend gave me a bag of potatoes to eat. He started kissing me as I was lying on the couch. He had a black tattoo with black block letters on his shoulder that isn't there in real life.

I dreamt that i was outside of a theater function of Power Rangers or something similar. I was asked if i could come with her, probably my little sister, and i agreed. I told her that she had to pay attention to the small sized screens that the filming cameras had. Each camera had like 4 screens. Later i see S Foglino, and some of her friends like C Gonella and her sisters. I say hi to them, and apparently my little sister walks away in the park. Then a teacher of 4th grade comes and she asks us in general to get in order. I reply joking about it, like giving instructions as well and surprisingly they did as i said. Some teacher ask my name and i say it without fear of consequence and also joking that i was the only one of the family here. The teacher was Marescalchi and he laughs and a parent who was there laughs as well. I go to form and i see Martin. I take a chair off in front of him and i order him to form, then i stand behind him. In the blackboard there were things like how the acummulation of dirt with the pass of time stagnates or something like that.

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

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

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

(Explaining my dreams to someone IWL.)

Andraste
Divine Victoria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weird.

A few dreams I recall.

Monster from swamps

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

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

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

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

Guerilla Bunker

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

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

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

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

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

Falling crane, fish mutants

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

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

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

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

First lucid dream of the year!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that was it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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