International Oneironaut Shared Dreaming Journal

Nephanim's Dreams

Atrocities of the Organization

Nicole and I were staying with my parents in Texas. Austin was sick, but my parents couldn’t take him to the hospital because the health care infrastructure had been taken over by a group calling themselves (simply enough) the Organization. My mom did her best to take care of him, and his situation seemed stable. We assumed he would be able to wait a few weeks for a military action to sort out this mess with the Organization. As the days wore on, the news reported that the Organization’s reach was spreading. They captured residential lots for use as barracks and weapon storage. What they didn’t capture, they ransacked. All of the food, water, and valuables were stolen from countless homes in the vicinity of the hospitals. It was a terrorist attack on a level the country had never seen. We decided to build a secret basement beneath our home. Although building codes prohibited the construction of basements in Houston, the area beneath our house was suited to that, so we didn’t have to worry about any serious health issues – at least, that’s what my dad thought. I wasn’t so sure. He finished digging it out in two days, and we moved a good portion of our food down there. We left enough food upstairs that the Organization would just take it and ignore the possibility of people hiding under the kitchen tiles. It wasn’t long before the Organization made their rounds… We could only get the news by radio now, and many of the standard broadcast stations had been knocked out, so much of what we listened to came from other people like us living in secret in their own homes. The airports were under the Organization’s control now. Everything seemed to be getting worse, and Austin’s condition wasn’t getting any better.

A few days after the Organization stopped running in and out of our house, my dad and I went outside to check out the area. It was spooky how normal everything looked. The streets were empty, of course, but the houses all looked fine on the outside. We went door to door trying to find anyone who had hidden themselves properly. We found a couple of corpses, but I tried not to dwell on it. I didn’t know any of these people, anyway… We found one family that did the same thing as us. Their basement area was a little larger, so they invited us to come stay with them. My dad wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but we agreed to attend a party. When we got back, we told the rest of the family all about it. We went back to the larger hideout the next evening to try to enjoy ourselves for the first time in a while. Unfortunately, a passing truck under the control of the Organization stopped in front of the house. The driver picked up the music playing in the basement from his vehicle. Before we knew this had happened, the driver called a couple of loading trucks to the scene. They infiltrated the house, broke up the party, and captured everyone as prisoners.

We were loaded one by one onto the trucks with our mouths gagged and our wrists bound. I thought it was dumb of them to leave our ankles untied, but when they closed the back of my truck and locked the door, I realized there wasn’t much we could do to escape. I had to sit in pitch black darkness for the whole ride. I wasn’t even sure where we were going… After the first few turns, I was lost. Maybe in Illinois, I could’ve followed the trail better, but I wasn’t familiar with this area. I knew Nicole wasn’t on the same truck as me… It didn’t seem like they were shipping women anywhere different from the men, so I was relieved at least by that much. I had even less of an idea where she had been sent, though. The truck stopped at another house, and they loaded some more people onto the truck. It was becoming crowded in the cargo area, but they didn’t care. We were just merchandise to them. I supposed we would probably end up doing slave labor for the rest of our lives.

By the time we reached the next stop, I realized the knot binding my wrists was loose enough to wriggle out of. I freed myself and cautiously undid the knots binding the men on my left and right. We left our gags in so the Organization wouldn’t notice we had untied our wrists. It worked like a charm. We could undo the knots just as well in pure darkness as in blinding light, so it didn’t matter that we had to work on them en route. We had most of the prisoners free by the third stop – and that was way more people than they were ready to deal with. We had to leave some of them bound, but we were able to rush the soldiers in charge of the loading process and take their guns from them. Only a few people died. Someone else killed the driver of the truck. We were the only truck on this street, so there was no one else to challenge us. Everyone scattered, and so began my long journey across the country.

I found out they had taken me over the border into Oklahoma. I figured it would be fastest to make my way back to my parents’ house from there. I didn’t have a car, and besides, the roads were dangerous with the Organization about. It seemed they were no longer content with just taking supplies. They needed an army of slaves for something. I didn’t intend to trust my fate to chance again. I walked from Oklahoma back to Houston, sneaking into restaurants when necessary to supply myself with water and food. I kept away from the major roads when I could and made short work of crossing them when I couldn’t. I don’t know how long it took me, but I made it back to my parents’ house. I was a little disappointed to find that I was the only one who made it back… None of my family members were in the same truck as me, so I hadn’t been able to free any of them. I didn’t check the other house to see if those people had made it back. Their hideout had been compromised. Although ours was empty, at least I figured it was secure. I stayed there for about a week to give Nicole time to find me. When she didn’t show up, I put a backpack of supplies together and took to the wilderness again. This time, I headed for Illinois.

Traveling during the summer was rough, so I was grateful when things began to cool down. It meant that I had taken a long time to cross the country, but I hadn’t been counting the days, anyway. I was too worried about what might’ve happened to Nicole and my family to think about something as abstract as time. Eventually, I made it to the edge of Chicago. A big storm blew in from the west, and the whole area quickly flooded. I jumped on the back of an Organization truck when the driver wasn’t looking and rode it into the suburbs so I wouldn’t have to spend so much time in the pouring rain. It pulled off into someone’s backyard, so I took the chance to hop off the truck and continue on foot. As I passed a house, I saw a television on inside. I wondered how long it had been playing… There didn’t seem to be anyone in the room. The TV played an episode of the Fairly Oddparents in which Timmy Turner gained the power of invisibility. He tried to save a girl on a motorcycle from the Organization, but he was unable to do anything. They threw her on a train and took her away. I couldn’t help noticing I was in a similar situation…

I had to wade through three feet of water to get across Nicole’s street. Her house was empty. Her garage was empty. All of the canned food was gone, and it basically looked like no one had been there in ages. I noticed that Cleo was also gone… I figured she had decided to fend for herself if she was still alive. Since there was nothing for me to find in Chicago, I decided I might as well go back home and prepare the house for my family’s return – if they ever returned. The trip back took even longer than the trip there; I had lost much of my motivation. The winter months weren’t so bad since I made it far enough south to avoid most of the snow. The new year arrived, then spring, then summer, and I finally made it back to my parents’ house. When I went inside, my heart sank. There were people everywhere. I immediately assumed they were with the Organization and threw up my hands in surrender. It wasn’t worth fighting anymore, I decided. If they were going to kill me, whatever… I didn’t want to live in fear like this anymore. Then my eyes narrowed. Nomad was with them. Nomad wouldn’t join the Organization. I noticed many of them had weapons strapped to their bodies. Some of them – including Nomad – had war paint on their faces. These were rebels preparing to stand up to the Organization. They laughed at my surrender and pointed me to my mom and sister. I was shocked by how similar Chelsea looked to my mom. It had been a year since I saw them, and Chelsea changed quite a bit. I hugged each of them several times. By this point, I was already in tears. Just finding one of them would’ve been enough to make the past year of running worth it.

I headed straight for the secret room, hoping to find my dad and Austin. My mom grabbed my hand before I could reveal the entrance. She hadn’t told the rebels about it yet, and in case one of them really was working with the Organization, she didn’t want them to know. She said she didn’t know if my dad was awake right now, but he would come talk to me soon. I sat down with them in the kitchen to wait. My mom explained that she and Chelsea had been separated from my dad and Austin early on, but they were reunited at the start of winter when they made it back to the house. She spared few details of their experiences… The Organization was trying to construct something to control the minds of the human race, but the details of this weren’t exactly clear. I made a mental note to ask Nomad about this later. Within half an hour or so, my dad walked into the room. He had a pistol on each side and wore a bulletproof vest. I felt small compared to him. It was obvious he’d been through a lot in the past year. I hugged him several times, too.

Immediately, I asked him about Austin. I hadn’t seen him in the building anywhere. I assumed he had just been in the basement or something. My dad put a hand on my back and led me outside. Because of his silence, I already knew what had happened. The tears started flowing. He took me to a little garden beside the house. The plants were artificial, and they had words written on their leaves. There was a little piano in the back for some reason with certain keys marked. It was a memorial for Austin. I knelt in front of it, wondering what I should do. Praying didn’t seem right, but what else was I supposed to do in this situation? My dad read the memorial leaf by leaf, but I couldn’t understand any of it. The whole thing seemed ridiculous, like he would tell me at any moment that Austin was actually just sleeping in the basement. That was just a hopeless wish, however.

“How long has it been…?” I asked, covering my eyes.

“Since November,” he replied. “We couldn’t get him the help he needed. The winter was too much for him, even here.” I could hardly breathe. My only brother was dead, and I never got to say goodbye. I knew how my dad felt about his brother’s death. Was this normal, I wondered? My thoughts raced out of control. I wondered if I would ever see Austin again… Probably not, I decided. There was nothing left of him. I knelt there for several minutes in grief before I could even move. I knew the Organization could come by at any moment, though, and if they saw us here, they would want to search the house. For the sake of everyone inside, I sucked up my tears and went back inside. I sat down on a bench in the basement to be alone while I tried to grasp everything that had happened. All the time lost, all the families torn apart… It was all because of the Organization. My immediate family gathered in the basement to try to cheer me up.

“When I saw Josh was here, I thought he was going to tell me he brought Nicole and two kids,” my dad joked. Clearly, this didn’t help much.

“I haven’t seen Nicole since the party,” I choked. It took me a few times to get this out. I went through my whole trip in summary, stopping whenever the horror of Austin’s death or the year without Nicole gripped me. When I finished telling the story, everyone seemed to agree that I should try going back to Chicago and finding Phil. He might be doing secret work for someone in the city, my dad suggested. I couldn’t imagine anyone having a stable job with the country in its current state, but it seemed remotely possible that he could be working in secret. In that case, he might have a place for Nicole and her family to hide. Knowing Nicole had to turn up somewhere, I agreed to give their idea a try. They probably wouldn’t see me again… I could come back and find all of them dead. We went outside for some reason and sat in the backyard. The sun was already setting, so it was too late for me to leave. I would have to stay for the night. After I finished talking to my family, I turned back to the house. A number of the rebels were staring at me. As Apheri appeared at my side, I put my hand on her black hilt.

“The Organization will pay,” I whispered.

That's Not Dandruff

Nicole was scratching my back in bed for some reason. She stopped and stared at me.

“It’s like you have dandruff all over your back…” I twisted my head around to see, and there were white, moldy-looking patches all over my back.

“That’s not dandruff,” I explained. I didn’t really try to figure out what it was.

Playing Cards before the Show

I went to see a musical at a theater with Nicole, Phil, and my dad. We brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but our dads bought some pizza, too. They were really disappointed with the pizza; it was expensive, but it wasn’t that great. They only got one pepperoni for every three slices of pizza. We also brought a deck of cards and Monopoly to entertain ourselves before the performance. I told Nicole I didn’t really feel like playing Monopoly, so we stuck with the cards instead. Our dads didn’t want to play with us.

Brothers in the Trunchbull House

I was one of two brothers living with Agatha Trunchbull, the principal from Matilda. My younger brother wasn’t aware of my existence because she kept me locked up in the attic. Trunchbull had a sister from Alabama who drove a crummy car. She spoke her mind, no matter how rude she came across, and her voice carried a thick Southern accent. My younger brother went to a restaurant with her, but he managed to sneak out. He accidentally broke a small lawn mower in someone’s front yard while playing with it. The person chased him down the street. He brought the lawn mower back to the restaurant, pretending he found it on the side of the road with the trash. When Trunchbull’s sister saw it, she was so excited that she danced out of the restaurant and had him put it in the car right away. She seemed to think it was a large lawn mower, but it was smaller than the kid presenting it. They put some wooden planks in the back of the car, too. They weren’t even, so she said the kid would have to run over them with the car. She almost hit a fence turning the car around.

That night, my brother and I both left the house without the other’s knowledge. Amazingly, we both went to the same video rental store. I talked the owner into letting us rent a couple of movies for free. It seemed like he and I were close friends. I told him to scan green writing on my hand, and it actually brought up a movie: the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Although he admitted the current state of the economy was pretty poor, he let us borrow that one for free, too. Outside, I walked with my brother down the street. I told him about how I liked to spend weeks at a time living in secret rooms at the local school. I promised I would take him someday if he didn’t tell Trunchbull. We both went back to the house.

The next day, Trunchbull took both of us to a restaurant. She was going to eat steak, of course, but we would have something a little less appetizing. We didn’t make it that far. Everyone asked for a glass of water when the only waiter (also the owner) came to our table. This guy had a habit of splashing water on my younger brother every time he came here, mostly because Trunchbull tolerated it. This time, when he splashed water on my brother, I took my cup of water and splashed some on him. The waiter was mortified. Trunchbull tried to grab my throat, but that didn’t stop me from splashing him again. He splashed me once, but I still had some water left in my cup. I emptied the rest on his head. It seemed perfect; since water was free, he would have to refill my cup if I asked. The other kid laughed hysterically over this, but Trunchbull was furious. They left early, and I ended up sitting by myself outside the building. It started raining… I watched a couple of little girls running in puddles together and wished I had an umbrella like them. I missed Nicole.

After waiting three hours, I stood up and walked around the perimeter. The owner was sweeping the dining area inside, so I knew he would close up shop soon. I could come back in an hour and sneak in. I started to head down the street toward the school, but then I heard a familiar voice call my name. I turned and found my brother standing at the other end of the vacant lot next to the restaurant. He asked if I started the forest fire. Of course, I had no idea what he was on about until I saw it for myself. A distant forest was ablaze. I could just barely make out the sound of the fire trucks’ sirens. I assured him I had nothing to do with it; I was just sitting by the restaurant the whole time.

We stopped at the entrance of a sewage tunnel. It would connect to the school eventually, I explained. My brother cut a drape at the front to get in even though I kept telling him there was another way in. I didn’t want to cause obvious damage… That would attract the police. When we went inside, I showed him the steel grate separating the two halves of the tunnel. We wouldn’t be able to walk side by side on the same half of the tunnel, but he preferred to stand behind me anyway. As we went further in, it became very dark. My brother started getting scared. I took out a match and lit it. Up ahead, I saw three rats standing on a dead animal’s carcass. My brother screamed, which prompted the rats to run toward us. I considered that this was probably a bad sign… Under normal circumstances, the rats would’ve run away from us. I clenched my fist and punched the rat in front when it reached us.

The scene rapidly changed. I found myself sitting in Enchain’s study.

“All gone,” I said. I was glad I didn’t get bitten by rabid rats. I looked at the white curtains drawn over the window. A small amount of light filtered in through them, illuminating the bookcases built into the walls.

Gravity Error and Synthetic

I was playing WMRBO. I guess there was some kind of misunderstanding between me, Nicole, and Gravity Error. We were no longer mentioned on their guild page as members. Viral had decided not to associate with us at all, and I got the impression that we were in some kind of legal trouble… When he found out we were playing again, however, he was desperate to recruit us. By the time I heard from him, we had already joined another guild called Synthetic. Everyone in this guild had a really long, bizarre name. One person was named Quil Quil Qiuo Ferret (with the fourth word changing depending on the character), while another was named Krhysanarralanka. I made a new character for myself and picked a class called “Enchanter” because I’d never heard of it before. When I got some skill points, I was excited to check out my skills until I realized they were just ninja skills… I wondered why the name for the ninja job was wrong.

I decided to look for a certain lower headgear. It was a robotic attachment for the jaw or something, and I understood that it would enable me to fire dream energy from my mouth. The mob database told me I could get it from a vocal. I headed straight for the rocker field. Since I was already south of Prontera, it didn’t take long. I wandered the field until I found and killed the vocal. It didn’t drop this time. I saw that I had a second client open; I was also logged into Nicole’s character. Viral had been messaging her for a while… He kept begging us to come back to Gravity Error. I switched back to my character and told him plainly that we weren’t interested.

Possibility Control and Chemistry with Ragnarok

It was the start of the fall semester, and I had a whole new class schedule to learn. My new IPRO was heavily based on programming. When I arrived, Professor Winans asked everyone what we thought of having a final exam at the end of the semester. Obviously, everyone was opposed to the idea. There’s enough going on in an IPRO without exams… Even though we all said no, she still decided to give us one. It would be a huge programming assignment. She left the room for a bit, and I buried my face in the surface of my desk. Sooraj tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I’d seen Ana Popa. I said I hadn’t and that I didn’t think she was in this IPRO. As it turns out, she was. She shouted at us from the other side of the classroom.

“Before I leave the country, we need to go see Death Valley!” she demanded. I groaned. It was hot enough here, but it would be even worse there. I hoped she could wait until winter.

The dream jumped. My next class was from the humanities department. The course title was so vague that I couldn’t understand why I signed up for it in the first place… It was called “Sandal/Buckle my shoe.” I kept checking the room assignment and the class time so I wouldn’t forget it. I sat down on a sofa outside the Idea Shop and started texting my mom. I wanted to tell her about my new IPRO. I realized halfway through the message that I was already half an hour late for my class! I grabbed my backpack and jumped off the sofa. As I hurried toward the door, I realized I’d forgotten where the classroom was again. I knew the room number, but I didn’t know which building to go to. I checked my schedule on my phone again. It was in Keating.

The dream jumped. I was waiting outside by a busy street for a ride to Keating. Someone was trying to make me late for class in order to disrupt the flow of possibility. I slammed my fist into the fabric of space-time to destroy their interference, and my ride arrived instantly. Unfortunately, the time traveler was persistent; he started meddling again as soon as I got in the car. The driver announced that he wouldn’t be able to take me there right away.

“Come on, man, I’m forty-five minutes late already! We have to go now!” I had to use Geass on him to prevent any further manipulation from the future. Once he was under my control, he didn’t protest anymore.

The dream jumped. I was the only one who enrolled in this bizarre sandal class. It was taught by the clone of Hubert J. Farnsworth. I protested immediately when I saw him. This kid definitely wasn’t qualified to teach anything at the undergraduate level – or any level, for that matter. I hoped there was just a mix-up in the schedules… I wanted to shout Feeny’s name and have him teach instead, but I supposed that was kind of pointless.

The dream jumped. I was walking in Fairfield with the TA I had for electricity and magnetism. She made me fill out a form about Ragnarok monsters and items. There were three different versions of the form, but since other people had already filled out the other two, she picked mine for me. The first question asked what my favorite blacksmith monster was. I wasn’t even sure how to answer that… I wrote Munak even though it didn’t make sense. There were also questions about which monsters drop certain items. I considered using RateMyServer on my phone to look up the answers, but I supposed that was cheating. This couldn’t possibly be for a grade, anyway.

The dream jumped. When we arrived in the lab, I discovered that everyone in my lab section played on WMBRO. I told them I was the highest level player. In order to pass me in the rankings, they all teamed up to kill me. I died twelve times and lost a level each time. My adjusted level put me at rank five on the control panel. It didn’t make any sense… Some of the people above me were only level fifty-seven. I showed this to Nicole, and she had nothing to say about it.

Standardized Test for Graduate School

I arrived at Willowbrook to take some kind of standardized test for graduate school. I walked in late, sat down in the front row, and finished the test in less than two minutes even though it was designed to take a couple of hours. Everyone was furious that I finished so quickly. Most of them knew me from various classes, so they remembered that I usually finish exams first or close to it. I was in a hurry to get out of the testing room before any of them could lynch me. Some people started playing music in the testing room… As rude as that was, the proctor didn’t do anything about it. I went out to the parking lot and called Nicole. I asked her to pick me up on her motorcycle. There were only a few cars in the lot, so I was able to roam freely. I waited at the end of the parking lot for Nicole.

Nicole is my Pizza

Limia and Marc were giving a special lecture on circuit analysis. They treated the class to pizza because the lecture was food-themed. After drawing a simple charging circuit with switched parallel branches, Limia labeled a couple of the elements in the parallel branches as “Yi.” She wrote it too small at first, so none of us could see it. Once it was large enough to be legible, she drew a cheeseburger off to the side.

“You can think of this burger as a capacitor,” she said. “The buns are the parallel plates, and the food between them is the insulating medium. It’s not a very good capacitor, but it has a capacitance that you can calculate.” She showed us a diagram in our textbook that had pictures of cheeseburgers with meatballs inside the buns. It looked really good. I found some pictures of spaghetti with meatballs, too.

“Meatballs are my favorite unhealthy food,” I said with a nod. Amar overheard and seemed to think I said that he wasn’t allowed to eat bacon. I tried to tell him again what I said, but I accidentally replaced meatballs with bacon, so I had to try a third time. He gave me a weird look and said that meatballs are actually very healthy. I wasn’t convinced. I grabbed another pizza slice and sank my teeth into it. As soon as I made contact, I heard Nicole yelp.

I awoke to find her trying to kiss me in bed. I had bitten her lip thinking it was my pizza…

Sunburn Fever Dreams

I had strange sunburn dreams in which I tried to quantify the pain each portion of my body was feeling due to the burns I got today while canoeing. I rated my forehead as a 2.5, my back as a 10.0, and several areas around 7.5. The total pain rating fluctuated as I paddled around in nothingness.