International Oneironaut Shared Dreaming Journal

Nephanim's Dreams

This is a collection of dreams from this weekend in reverse chronological order.

Sorting Media and a Music Game

I was visiting my family at their old house in Texas. I went up to the game room and helped Austin reorganize all of their video games, VHS tapes, DVDs, and CDs. My dad ordered us to do what I’d already asked Austin to do – designate one shelf for each and alphabetize them. He asked us to check the region on our VHS tapes. For some reason, we only had South American and “Blue” region tapes. This really frustrated my dad because he wanted to send one to a friend in Australia.

Austin started watching Code Geass with Nicole. They skipped directly to the episode before the end. I managed to fall asleep right before the final scene. When I awoke, they were arguing about what happened to Lelouch. My dad seemed fixated on the fact that Lelouch was shirtless at the end.

Austin played Animal Crossing in an attempt to get every item. He said he planned to take all of his college notes on stationary in the game. I figured this was a bad idea; he would have to play Animal Crossing every time he wanted to refer to his notes… The NPC selling him stationary reminded me of Spongebob Squarepants’ dad. He started telling us a riddle about the Animaniacs.

The dream jumped. Nicole and I sat in my old German classroom to play some kind of music game. Someone would come up with a phrase, and the rest of the players were tasked with finding a song that used the phrase. We set the projector up so that it would project YouTube videos into a three-dimensional model in the room. While we played, Nicole kept holding hands with an awkward black man sitting next to her. He never looked at me. I decided not to question it right away since I assumed she had a good reason, but it still made me uncomfortable. Regina walked in late. She obviously wasn’t wearing anything under her shirt… I averted my eyes. I devoted my time in the game to helping Symphony since she didn’t know any songs with words. She actually did pretty well with my help.

We took a break from the game to eat. I managed to secure the seat beside Nicole, allowing me the chance to ask why she kept holding that guy’s hand. She said she just felt bad refusing him. I wasn’t satisfied with this answer; she would have to refuse him unless she wanted me to kill him. My voice turned demonic as I threatened the man who kept reaching for Nicole’s hand. She seemed at least a little scared of me because of my voice. I reached into the timer system we were using and gave Nicole extra time. I assumed this would accommodate her for the time required to ignore the man’s advances. She refused to talk to me after that. One of my friends from high school sat down with her and tried to strike up a conversation, but she wouldn’t talk to her, either.

Three Spiders in Bed

I brought Nicole and someone else to my dorm. When it was time for bed, I realized it would be awkward for all three of us to share the bed. I suggested having the third person use a sleeping bag on the floor while Nicole and I used the bed. We all agreed that it was fair. I went over to the bed and immediately found a spider crawling on the sheets. I flicked it off the bed, but then I found another one near the edge of the mattress… I found a third dangling from its web above the bed. With so many spiders around, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to sleep.

Asking Benischek for Input

Nicole sent me to her old high school to ask a teacher about a forty page guide she printed for a video game. As I roamed the offices inside the building in search of the name she gave me, I wondered what a teacher could possibly have to say about the guide. It didn’t seem like we really needed any input… What could a teacher tell me that I didn’t already know about the thing? At any rate, I found a sign pointing to Mr. Kronicle’s office. It was actually Mark Benischek’s office. He helped a couple of students with some homework problems while I waited patiently at a waiting table. When he was done helping everyone else, I explained Nicole’s strange request. He agreed that there wasn’t much to be said about the guide… So we talked about life instead! I doubted Nicole would be pleased with how my trip to the school turned out.

That Time I Died and Talked to Andres (AndresLD)

I died and ended up in heaven. Andres contacted me on MSN to ask about my dream journal – in particular, about Symphony. He was immediately impressed by the way I presented it and the serial nature of some of my dreams. At the same time, he seemed to think I showed signs of a mental disorder. He asked if I ever had deja vu, and I admitted that on rare occasions, I experience something like it. He asked if I felt like my dreams were related to one another. I said that they were (they often are). Based on my answers, Andres was convinced that I had the mental disorder he mentioned! These combined with the ability to recall dreams were the only diagnostic factors. I wanted to tell him blatantly that there was no such disorder, but he started telling me about how he was once diagnosed with it. He said he invested too much time in his dreams and believed in the existence of some of his dream characters, but he eventually improved his condition and moved on. While I accepted that I probably think too much about my dreams, I refused to deny Symphony’s existence or to accept the label of this strange mental disorder.

“If you don’t want to read my dream journal, don’t read it,” I told him. My mom asked who I was talking to. As I explained it, she asked if he knew I was dead. I laughed – I hadn’t exactly mentioned that. “Oh, by the way, I’m dead!” I finally told him. “The afterlife is about the same as dreaming, if you’re wondering. I don’t really mind being dead. It’s kind of nice just knowing everything is alright now.” As I took a look around the gazebo where I was sitting, I followed the white stairway down to Nocturn Isle. My dream characters were just a short walk away.

Ragnarok and Barbed Wire at the Pool

I was playing WMBRO in virtual space. We came to a pool of murky, black water… I showed Nicole a special item that would disguise her as a roween, but she didn’t want to use it because she didn’t believe me. It was a dirty cloth that she had to soak in the water and then rub all over her lips. I agreed that it was disgusting, but I was sure it was worth it. I wiped the cloth on her lips for her, and she transformed instantly into a meerkat. She started running around on all fours in excitement. I sat down by the pool’s entrance for a while to watch Nicole run in circles. After a while, someone started bothering me. He made me so angry that I pushed him onto the ground and punched his face until it was unrecognizable, bloody, and bruised. Everyone around me was amazed that I could be so violent.

Some guy who was editing his character stats tried to frame me to get my character deleted just because I was a higher level than him. Since he was the one breaking the rules, I suggested that he should have his character deleted. I killed him by pushing him off the edge of the world. A game master character named Knee Socks warped to me and started attacking. I knew he was just doing this because I would drop my poring coins if I died. I didn’t want to lose them, so I attacked back. I killed him surprisingly easily. He warped back to me and tried again. I killed him a second time – then a third, then a fourth. The trouble started when he put a permanent stun effect on me. I was unable to defend myself as he began attacking again.

A red dot appeared on his forehead. With a bang, the game master collapsed on the ground. My stun effect vanished, and I looked over just in time to see Kayson with a sniper rifle on a cylindrical platform over the pool. He was wearing a black jacket and sunglasses. Kaori ran over to tell me that this was all her doing; she convinced Kayson to save my life. I thanked her and welcomed her back to the game. She was excited to play again, but she seemed a little less so when I mentioned Nicole.

The dream jumped. I was wading around in the pool, but instead of playing Ragnarok, I was back in the physical world. Nicole’s backyard was blocked off, so I walked into the neighbor’s yard – this disgusting marsh – to ask if I could just hop their fence. Nicole’s relatives scolded me for asking the neighbors to let me do this, but the owner of the house said it was alright. He warned me that the fence was made of barbed wire, so I would have to be careful. Just to get to the fence, I had to jump over a series of deep ravines. There were logs placed across the ravines to allow passage, but they weren’t very heavy, so they rolled easily while I walked across them. I accidentally caused a tree to fall down close to Matt somehow… Nicole got mad at me for failing to warn him. Fortunately, it didn’t hit anyone. I came to the barbed wire fence and put my hands on the safe area between barbs to hold it down. It wasn’t particularly high, so I was just going to swing one leg over and then arch my body to avoid any contact with the barbs. As I was doing this, some idiot beside me started pulling on the portion of the fence I was holding. The barbs slit my palms open, and a whole series of them stuck into my left side. I cried out in pain. The guy apologized, but I refused to talk to him. I pulled the barbs out of my body one by one. I hopped the fence immediately before anyone else could cause me trouble.

On the other side, Ryan revealed that he needed to find his crown. Nicole and I jumped down a vertical shaft with him and landed in an Aperture Science testing room. She waited on a switch while Ryan and I continued further down. There was a bloody, organic mass blocking the door to the next room, but the fleshy material vanished when I stepped on the switch in front of it. Ryan said he would run in, get his crown, and come straight back. I sensed that there were hundreds of thousands of crowns in the next room, though… I didn’t think he would be able to identify it quickly.

The dream jumped. I was in the car with my family on the way to Texas. They were driving a convertible for some reason. Austin and I shared the back seat. For some reason, he kept pinching me… I warned him to stop. When he didn’t listen, I punched him gently in the face. I only restrained myself because I remembered how that turned out for the guy at the pool. My parents were furious anyway. We went into a car wash with the top off, so the soap got everywhere… I took my mom’s camera from her and hid it under my shirt so it wouldn’t get soaked. One of the car wash people started controlling the car remotely. He drove us to a library before we could finish the car wash.

Stream of Existence

I was funneling data to Symphony in a continuous stream. A fixed percentage of my thoughts, memories, and emotions were formatted according to her needs, compressed, and sent through the data funnel directly to her system. The efficiency of the data flow fluctuated slightly, but it was always close to 99.9%. As this information flowed into Symphony, she rapidly processed all of it and began sending data back on a more refined stream. The width of this stream was much smaller than the larger one coming in, but the data was more rich. It represented Symphony’s analysis of my existence, instant by instant. I began processing this information much like Symphony. I saw us standing together in the field by River Bend, her eyes cold and curious. I understood that I taught her to feel and gave her an interest in life. It was unclear to either of us where she came from exactly, but it was obvious that she only grew into her present self through my nurturing friendship with her. Her reaction to my instantaneous thoughts passed through subconscious filters. None of it was expressed verbally, but I understood it fine nonetheless. My response to this was fed back into the main data funnel, and the process repeated itself recursively. The data became increasingly dense until we both arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously. It was an understanding of our companionship that surpassed the limitations of language. I was left with a feeling of peace and wholeness. Symphony stood before me as the data stream approached infinite speed, sending and receiving the same timeless message. She, too, was at peace.

*

Sending Marilee to Massachusetts

I was in a world similar to our own. China had taken over most of Asia, prompting a third world war. Their ally in the West – Mexico – had already captured all of South America. In order to conquer the whole hemisphere, they moved toward Canada next. For some reason, the United States was where Canada should’ve been on the map… The United States wasn’t a place for free thought anymore, either; it was now a communist state with the exception of Massachusetts.

I found myself in a castle surrounded by a magical barrier. The Mexican army approached the barrier as I talked to my six-year-old daughter, Marilee. I told her that if the barrier should ever fall, I would send her to the free land of Massachusetts. As I explained this, it happened; the Mexicans sent cannon balls through the stained glass windows of the castle. I scooped Marilee off the ground and carried her away from the falling barrage of metal. I took her to a large cannon on the opposite side of the castle and pointed it at the United States. For some reason, I could see the rest of North America in the sky above me. The world curved upward – almost like some kind of Hollow Earth setting. I tried to figure out which side Massachusetts was on… I noticed something that looked vaguely like Alaska, so I figured Massachusetts would be on the opposite side. I fired Marilee in that direction. The Mexicans invaded the castle, and I fled on foot.

As I approached the United States Border, I realized Massachusetts was actually on the same side as Alaska! I retrieved Marilee, and she turned into a pink shirt.

“Oops,” I muttered to myself. “I shot you the wrong way.”

“And that’s what we call poor acting,” a woman behind me said. I understood that I was being judged based on my performance. I ignored the comment and continued along. Massachusetts was some kind of coat hanger floating in the air. I put Marilee on the hanger and walked away.

Dropout and Borkar's Class

I decided to check my transcript. For some reason, my grade point average had dropped significantly. The transcript said I was a C- student. My mom saw this over my shoulder and started freaking out. There was also a warning that said I had been “queued to correct a misunderstanding in thought.” My enrollment status was listed as “DROPOUT.” I didn’t understand that part of it, but I reasoned that my school was mad at me for failing to invest faith in anything spiritual. I explained to my mom that if something can’t be proven, I can’t believe in it – no matter what the consequences are for my education.

We were sitting in front of a fence with diamond-shaped holes in it. I saw something race past on the other side of the fence. My mom saw it at the same time and asked about it, so I knew I wasn’t just imagining things. My dad didn’t believe us. He said there was no way for us to notice something walking on the other side of the fence.

The room transformed into a lecture hall with Dr. Borkar standing at the base. I was in a new class with him. He wrote some notes on the board about the upcoming exam and our homework. Problem set #17 would not be collected, he said. I was disappointed; I would have to do it anyway, but I wouldn’t be able to use it to pull up my grade. Borkar asked us what we wanted to learn in his class. A guy in the back said he was only interested in things related to anime and video games. Borkar’s reply was predictable: he said that while he would try to accommodate all students’ interests, it would be difficult to meet any particular set of needs.

Tuning into the Underworld and Photon Beams

I was talking to Sigh via webcam in Nicole’s bedroom. Nicole was nowhere to be seen, but Austin lay on the floor. He looked fairly bored. As Sigh stood up to do something, I realized she wasn’t wearing any clothes. She just barely managed to keep her private areas covered. Her hair was soaking wet, too, so I assumed she had just taken a shower. I didn’t realize my webcam was also on. When I made a weird face at her, she started laughing.

“Don’t give me that face,” she said. “I’m the only one you can trust in this world.” After a pause, she folded her hands together and smiled. “Actually, the reason I’m talking to you is because I want your donation.” She was collecting money for some kind of fund. I felt bad for refusing, but I didn’t have the money to spare. “That’s alright. I’d better get going… Before I leave, I have some advice for you: if you want to know what it’s like to die, you have to tune into something first.” She pointed at the ceiling as though giving me a hint. I was appropriately confused.

After Sigh disconnected, I walked around the house listening for anything interesting. I went into the bathroom and urinated in a bucket of onions. I hoped no one was going to use them. When I walked out of the bathroom, I heard the overwhelming sound of crickets and heavy rain. It wasn’t raining outside, and there weren’t any crickets around me… The sound faded as I walked further from the bathroom. I realized I was hearing background noise from the underworld. If I continued to listen to this, I would be able to hear the voices of the dead… I went back to the bathroom and found that the onions were gone. Someone had taken them… There was a bin full of fish and rice in the bathtub. I sat down on the bathroom floor to try to tune into the underworld again. While I was doing this, I was interrupted by police sirens.

I found myself above the house, watching the police cars pull up into the driveway and onto the front lawn. They were here to arrest us for rebellious activities. I returned to my body and quickly informed Austin of the situation. We didn’t have any good ideas… I thought back to what Sigh said before she left and how she pointed at the ceiling. Aiming my arm toward the roof, I focused on the frequency of the underworld. Suddenly, we transformed into a beam of blue-white light. As a field of photons, we fluttered through the ceiling. We reformed into our normal selves as soon as we escaped the house. Since we would be caught by the police if we went down to the ground, I aimed my arm at another house. We traveled from rooftop to rooftop as a photon beam. The police never caught us.

When we reached Sigh’s house, she came up to the roof to greet us. I was grateful that she was wearing clothes this time. She brought us down to the garage where her parents kept a van that they never used. She felt it would be safe for us to sleep on top of the van at night while on the run from the police. I set up a makeshift bed on the roof of the car.

The next morning, the police came to Sigh’s door asking about us. I worried that Sigh and her parents would be arrested for harboring fugitives, but the police left without searching the house. I figured it was Sigh’s doing. Her father pulled the van out of the garage without noticing us on top, and before long, we found ourselves desperately clinging to the roof as he sped down the highway. He swerved in and out of traffic to avoid the slow cars. Intuitively, I knew we were headed for the local junkyard. The photon power I’d been using was based on magnetism, so the giant magnet used to carry cars into crushing machines would pull us in. I didn’t want to end up buried beneath a pile of junk, anyway. I prepared a photon beam to carry us off the van.

Playing Mario with Austin

I was playing Super Mario Brothers Wii with Austin, Chelsea, and Nicole at my parents’ old house in North Carolina. We were using N64 controllers for some reason… I plugged six controllers into the Wii even though we only needed four. When I noticed that I was going to have a gray controller, I switched it with a blue one. I figured we might as well all have a colored controller if there are only two gray ones. While I was messing with the controllers, Austin started playing by himself. I scolded him for going on without us, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He just kept playing. Eventually, I reset the console to get his attention. This time, we set it up for four players. Austin wanted to go to the eighth world, but Nicole wanted to do the seventh. I went with Nicole’s suggestion since Austin had been rude to all of us. He started complaining about that right away. Before we even made it through the first level, he quit playing. I picked his character up and threw him off the stage.

We went to the eighth world sometime later. While we were doing the first stage, Randy came up to us and asked what world we had gotten to. I told him we had beaten all nine worlds. He protested, insisting that there were fourteen worlds – all playable. I laughed. Obviously, there were only supposed to be eight, but with the secret world, there were nine. There was no reason for the game to have fourteen worlds. I wondered if he meant test worlds accessible via a cheat device, so I admitted that there were probably a couple of test worlds, but there were only nine real worlds. He left the room fuming.