International Oneironaut Shared Dreaming Journal

Nephanim's Dreams

Rocking Chair Realm and Untoasting a Sandwich

I experienced a bizarre, abstract realm inside a rocking chair. Infinite space was available in this realm, but because of the way it was composed, energy couldn’t solidify into matter here. As such, I was just a floating lump of dream energy bumping into other lumps of dream energy. I was incredibly confused.

The dream jumped. I was at Subway with my mom and Autumn. We had to order dinner for everyone, but since my mom had no idea what anyone wanted, that meant it was up to me and Autumn to figure it out. Autumn went to the bathroom before we started our order. The guy making our sandwiches kept getting the bread wrong for one of our sandwiches, so I knew I was in for an awesome Subway experience… Then he toasted a sandwich without asking if we wanted it that way. He didn’t even ask what kind of cheese to put on it before he threw it in there. When I brought this problem to his attention, he was surprisingly casual about the mistake. He just kept working on the next sandwich. When he was done putting meat on that one, he untoasted the first sandwich – presumably with his mind. I was a little shocked, but I went with it.

One of the sandwiches I ordered looked disgusting. It featured three scoops of chocolate ice cream on bread with herbs and cheese, an assortment of vegetables, and extra oil and vinegar. I understood that I was ordering this sandwich for the guy who was making it. I’m not sure he was aware of it, either.

My recall of this dream is fairly fuzzy since my alarm woke me up in a merciless fashion. It doesn’t help that I lay in bed for fifteen minutes half-dreaming about typing up a post about it. At the end of this miniature dream, I snapped awake and realized I’d forgotten the most important part of the dream – but then I joked to myself that I probably hadn’t written anything out for it. Of course, I hadn’t left the bed.

Spilling Gray Matter

Autumn and I devised an elaborate plan to get away with murder. We lived in a small town on the outskirts of a kingdom. Every now and then, the king’s soldiers would come to the door just to check up on us. It was assumed that criminals would draw attention to themselves during these innocent meetings at the front door. Little did the king know his soldiers made their visits on a strict schedule that Autumn and I had already worked out! Our house was pretty big with three stories of above-ground space and a sizable basement beneath it. We designed our plans for murder around the architecture of our basement. Basically, the stairs made a full loop around the perimeter of the basement on their way down, and the basement floor was made of steel instead of concrete or other common materials. I suggested that I could throw someone over the railing in such a way that their head shattered on the steel floor and spilled their gray matter. Autumn agreed that it would work. I don’t know why she agreed to this, but we chose Keith as our target.

When he came to our house, we lured him into the basement. We had just spoken with the local soldiers for our usual checkup, so I knew we would be free of them for the maximum amount of time. Autumn went to the bottom of the stairs. When she was in position to prevent Keith from running back up to me, I grabbed him around the waist, flipped him upside down, and threw him over the railing. As expected, he hit his head on the floor, but the force wasn’t nearly as powerful as I planned – or rather, his skull was more resilient than I thought it would be. I grabbed him with telekinesis and raised him a few feet off the ground only to slam him down again. Each time, I heard a cracking sound like the shell of an egg caving in. Autumn seemed to think he was already dead, but I was determined to spill the guy’s brains. I wanted to see what it would be like. I cracked his skull harder and harder until bits of cranial fluid began oozing out. There was no blood, mind you, just a clear fluid that kept the brain hydrated.

“Awesome, hear come the brainy bits,” I laughed. I did it again, and his whole brain flopped out. I dropped the lifeless body and levitated the brain high enough to inspect it from the stairs. The skull had done an impressive job of protecting it. Although Keith’s bodily vessel was now useless, his brain was basically intact. I wondered if I could communicate with it…

Someone knocked at the front door. Rushing to action, I sealed Keith’s brain away in another dimension and waved Autumn up the stairs. We had to play it cool with the soldiers, otherwise we’d never get away. Even after I made Keith’s corpse and the cranial fluid disappear, I knew the soldiers would find traces of his existence. They would know that he disappeared here. If we wanted our freedom, we couldn’t allow them to search the house! I led the way to the door and calmly opened it. To my surprise, they were doing another checkup even though we had one just the previous day. I asked them about it, and the soldiers said that they were worried for our safety and wanted to give us extra attention. I said I was glad the king cared so much about his subjects. At any rate, I was relieved when the soldiers tapped the butts of their spears in farewell. Autumn and I gathered our belongings and exited through the back door.

With my help, we were able to walk across a lake behind our house. Our destination was another small town in the forest not far from our home. We would stay there for a night, then continue on our way once the soldiers discovered our house empty. As I walked across the surface of the calm lake, however, I glanced back at the town and spotted soldiers heading toward our house again. The way the town was arranged on the waterfront, ours was the only one with its back to the lake. Because of this, I was able to watch the soldiers march until they disappeared behind the shape of our home. Although it was possible they were just visiting the people across the street, I knew better. They suspected murder and came back to interrogate us.

“Change of plans,” I told Autumn. “We need to run as far from here as we possibly can.” As we entered the forest, I got the impression that this had happened before…

After waking, I realized why I felt this way. The impression of events following this dream was exactly the same as the “pursuit of wolves” part at the end of another dream I posted here earlier this year. This dream basically acted as the prequel to that one’s chase. (For convenience, the relevant portion of said dream is in italics below.)

The dream jumped. Somehow, Nicole and I were in a forest late at night… We met up with a third person to escape town. Some kind of new law had been passed that put us in a legal gray area, and we didn’t want to risk the king’s wrath. Our rendezvous point was a swing set in a small park. We saw police approaching and decided to wait. If we started running, they would just chase us into the woods to see what we were up to. The police cars passed by, and we slipped into the woods. At some point, we became maned wolves like Lyra. The guy we met up with was replaced by Lyra during the transition. We ran through the dark forest, passing dilapidated homes with doors breaking off their hinges, shattered windows, and sagging walls. We knew we were being pursued, and the men after us were catching up. Nicole came up with a plan for a diversion. I would transform back into a human, tell our pursuers I had located a couple of wolves, and then… Well, she didn’t give me the rest of the plan. I met with the policemen following us. They were carrying flashlights, so they were clearly prepared for a thorough search of the woods. I explained things as Nicole asked me to and led them over to where Nicole was hiding. At that point, I realized this wasn’t a well thought out plan. The police were just going to catch us. We might’ve gotten away if we had been more careful. Nicole stumbled out of a wooden box she had tried to hide in. Lyra remained in the shadows, but I could see her eyes.

“Well, well, well…” one cop snickered. “What have we here?” He pulled out a gun, but one of the other cops gave him a signal to stand down.

“Don’t damage the fur,” he said. “We can sell it for profit when it dies.” Nicole and Lyra broke into a sprint directly into the woods. The cops scattered to follow them. Since they had let me out of sight, I transformed into a wolf and bounded after Nicole and Lyra. We met up on a rabbit trail snaking its way through the forest. I didn’t know if the cops would bother with the trail, but either way, they were close behind us. We tried to hide in the basement of an abandoned house near a lake, but the cops followed our tracks and found us there. I issued a brief change of plans in a whisper to Nicole and Lyra.

“They’ll take us somewhere with a bunch of dogs,” I said. “They want to skin us for our furs. We’ll change into humans once we get there and find a way to break out. Let them catch you.” We had no chance, otherwise. If they had to kill us, they would do it for the safety of the public. I purposely backed into a corner where they would be able to catch me. Then I realized what they were going to feed us in captivity… Dog food at best, but probably gruel. I gagged. I didn’t want to eat gruel. One of the three cops picked a block of wood off the ground and chucked it at me. I evaded it easily, but I wished I hadn’t. He upgraded to a spoon. I let it hit me in the side. “Please don’t…” I begged. I knew he couldn’t understand me. He pulled out a fork and threw that. Alarmed, I dodged it. I didn’t want to get stabbed by eating utensils. Of course, he moved up to a butter knife next. Then a real knife. Then three knives. One of the other cops was an expert marksman, and he could throw the blades much faster than I could dodge them. He demonstrated by nearly lopping off my leg.

“Watching ‘em cower is always so fun,” he said to his buddies. I couldn’t see what happened to Nicole and Lyra. The room was too dark. One of the flashlights illuminated the marksman and my corner, but that was it. The cop pulled out another blade and held it up.

“Please don’t…” I repeated. He flung it right where my ear would’ve been, but I moved to the left to avoid it. It singed the fur on my ear. I whimpered quietly. He pulled out another blade. This time, I tried to dodge right, but I had that blasted knife in the wall where I wanted my head to go. The knife pinned my ear to the wall. I howled, reaching a paw up toward my ear as if to remove the knife… But I knew I couldn’t – not like this. I whimpered again and again.

“What’s the ruckus all about?” the officer’s superior asked from the darkness.

“Oh, nothin’,” the marksman assured him. “It thinks I got its ear.”

“Did you?”

“No, ‘course not. Don’t wanna stain the fur with blood, do I?” When I woke up, I was clutching my ear and trembling.

Oma and the uPass

I was on Chelsea’s college campus with Oma. They announced that uPass pickup had begun over an intercom. I understood that students at her school had to pay the uPass fee on-site rather than as part of their tuition. Reflecting on this, I decided I preferred including it with the tuition because it meant I wouldn’t have to buy it with money I’d spend on food otherwise. Oma wanted a uPass for herself, but when I told her it was only for college students, she lost all her motivation.

Engaging Details for Stability and Old Dog Stroke

The dream began in my German classroom at my old high school. Bauske was giving instructions for an exam mostly in English, but the important parts were written on the board in English. One of the students in the back raised her hand and complained that she couldn’t understand the German instructions. I laughed under my breath. That was the point, wasn’t it? At any rate, the instructions required us to read an old paper we submitted and critique it in German. I wasn’t totally sure how to proceed with mine… Bauske had someone read hers out loud, but that made it difficult for me to read mine because of all the noise. As I sat down with it and started skimming, I saw comments from Bauske written in the margin. The words spiraled inward to an incredibly small font. I got up and went to the bathroom down the hall.

The dream jumped. I was washing my hands on my way out. Some guy and I joked about a show I’d never seen… Something about two guys showering together and how it led to a divorce. Anyway, the paper towel dispenser was basically built into the sink, and I accidentally got mine wet. Fortunately, the trash can was also built into the sink; there was a place for soaked materials. On my way back to the classroom, I began to wonder if there was any point in doing Bauske’s test. Something about the whole thing felt pointless. When I walked back into the classroom, it was obviously different. The seats were arranged in a U shape with some at higher elevations than others, sort of like a band classroom. I only briefly sat down before I threw aside my paper.

“That’s what it was,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m dreaming.” Obviously, I wasn’t going to waste any time doing an exam in my dream. No one bothered me when I stood up and started walking around again. I decided to take some advice I saw on a dreaming forum and focus on details in the dream to stabilize it. I saw some pill bottles on a girl’s desk and started reading the fine print. I didn’t have any trouble doing this, but it got old fast… I decided to study the details in the girl’s face instead. She had a lot of freckles and wore her blond hair in a ponytail. I remember thinking she was familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to her face. In retrospect, she looked sort of like Ray. After studying her freckles for a moment, I circled around and prodded the back of her head. Again, no one reacted. They were absorbed in their exams. I glanced left and right, paused, then stuck my face in her hair and took a sniff. It was a convenient way of engaging my sense of smell. There wasn’t much to the smell of her shampoo, though. Even with all this, I was gradually losing the dream. I remembered someone mentioning taking bites out of trees… Come to think of it, licking the wall in that one lucid dream helped me before. The girl’s back was exposed just above the shoulder blades. I bent over and started licking her skin. It tasted kind of strange, though, like she might’ve put something on it…

The imagery faded, and I wondered in the back of my mind if I had just woken up licking Autumn’s back. I couldn’t remember what she was wearing. I lost my lucidity in the void.

When the dream imagery returned, I was outside the school in the parking lot. I watched a guy in some kind of reverse plow truck (the plow was in the back) speed across the parking lot. He hit the speed bumps so hard that he skipped every other one! When he pulled into a parking space, he went right over the curb and into the grass. To my amazement, instead of correcting his parking, he kept driving until he rammed into the side of a replica of Autumn’s pool. He popped the truck into reverse and almost ran over two people walking down the sidewalk. He rammed into the back of a dump truck next, and the dump truck seemed to pop out of gear… It rolled backward and almost hit another person.

“What are you doing?!” I shouted, waving at the truck driver. “You’re gonna get someone killed!” He had his windows rolled down, but he wasn’t paying any attention. Dirt and trash spilled out of the back of the dump truck.

The dream jumped. I was at some kind of party with Autumn. As I walked in, I saw an old man with a cane tottering past me. A woman working busily in the kitchen seemed familiar, and she greeted me with a wave. I still couldn’t name a single person here with the exception of Autumn. She disappeared into the laundry room for no apparent reason, and I continued into the empty living room area. I just wanted to wait alone until Autumn came back. As I sat on the floor of the living room, I began wondering how I got to this party.

That’s right, I thought, I was lucid dreaming before. Hey, I’m still in the dream! I looked around the plain room. There was nothing but a sofa in here! Strange… I stood and walked back out. Instead of finding myself in the kitchen full of old relatives I didn’t know, I ended up on a city street. I found myself in the body of an old man who had just suffered a stroke. Curious, I observed as he dropped to all fours and started barking like a dog. Instead of taking him to a hospital, a couple of police officers decided to take him on as their police dog. I chuckled at the obvious influence of Wilfred on my dreams.

“He just had a stroke, you know,” I told the cop driving their patrol car telepathically. He kind of looked over at the old man for a second, then did a double take.

“Holy crud!” he exclaimed. “That’s not a dog, dude! He’s having a stroke!” I couldn’t believe they really thought he was a dog.

Cyber Ghost of Aperture Laboratories

I was at some kind of museum with Autumn and Alex. Autumn’s mom worked there, so our admission was free. She complained that Autumn smelled like smoke.

“I know, I’m trying to do something about the smell,” she replied. At any rate, we went to a room that was anime-themed. They had all kinds of amazing figurines. A rich man came through with his daughter and talked with us about how much she loved anime. When she threw a temper tantrum, he pointed at an expensive figurine on display and said he would buy it for her. I couldn’t believe he would spend money on a whim like that; it was obvious that he was more wealthy than I could imagine. Autumn and I sat on a couch with his daughter while he took an important phone call. The little girl had a number of figurines, but she wasn’t really paying attention to them anymore. When she got up, Autumn stuffed some of them in the sofa.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Stealing them,” she said. “I’ve already got six.” I took a peek at the figurines stuffed in the corner of the couch. They didn’t look like any characters I knew.

The dream jumped. I found myself in Aperture’s testing facility. The walls around me were in constant flux, rising and falling like dominoes. The path changed every time the walls shifted. If I didn’t keep moving, I would be crushed by opposing walls, so I kept my eyes peeled for a safe path. I had to walk in circles for a few minutes as the path began to spiral inward. A long, narrow hallway opened up. It felt like a trap, but I decided to go for it anyway. I ran down the hall and dove into a room at the end at the last second. The wall behind me closed up. When I sat up on the floor of the room, I saw that I was in some kind of hotel room. I scrambled to my feet and made my way to the phone on the counter immediately. I picked up and waited for a dial tone. Nothing.

“Great, it’s dead,” I sighed.

“Hello?” a man on the other end replied. “This is the service desk.”

“Whoa, it’s not dead! Hey! Listen, I need you to find out what room I’m calling from and send someone up here to help immediately!”

“You in some kind of trouble?”

“Yeah, there’s a crazy robot after me… Have you ever heard of Aperture Science?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“I’ll explain later. What’s important is that you get someone up here immediately. I don’t know how much time I have. She’s going to cut the line for sure.”

“Whatever, kid.”

“I know this probably sounds like a prank call or something, but I’m deadly serious. Please, listen to me!” The room shook as something beneath it shifted. All the power in the room was instantly cut off. I yelled into the phone, but of course, there was no reply. I decided to roam the hotel room. At least I didn’t have to worry about the walls crushing me anymore… The layout was similar to my parents’ second house in Texas, although some of the rooms were clearly modified. I wondered how GLaDOS knew to use it as a model. When I walked into a room that had been added beside the kitchen (replacing some garage space), a TV in that room turned on. The screen glowed bright red. A discomforting, high-pitched whine and the sound of a crackling radio went off in the background. I found a bow and a quiver full of arrows on a table, so I grabbed those and readied myself.

A blue figure appeared in the air, its eyes beady and sinister. I understood that it was some kind of ghost, but it had been created by the internet. His form was tall and slender, but I couldn’t make out any specific details. Everything surrounding him became blurry. Even though it was a ghost, my first instinct was to start shooting arrows. I kept shooting even when it was obvious that they went right through him. The ghost started throwing ghostly teacups and silverware at me. I did my best to dodge. My arrows went right through these, too, so there was nothing I could do. I eventually traded the bow for a ghostly frying pan the enemy threw at me. Holding it didn’t harm me, and I was able to destroy the spirit projectiles with it. I supposed I would be able to harm the ghost himself, too. He sat down on a dresser in the room and started groaning while holding his head. I took this chance to throw the frying pan like a boomerang, striking him in the side of the head. The frying pan came spinning back to me.

A wall in the living room opened up, and Austin stumbled through. It closed up behind him.

“Austin, you’re alive!” I exclaimed. I had to swing my body out of the way of a ghostly steak knife, but once I raised my frying pan, I knew I would be able to defend myself. “Check this out – there’s a ghost.” By the time he made it over to me, the ghost was gone. It left no trace of its existence except the ghostly frying pan in my hands. Austin gave me a weird look and walked off.

I don’t know how long I waited in that hotel room… There was no way for me to exit. I couldn’t call anyone on the phone, and Austin seemed to have disappeared. I tried talking to GLaDOS, but she didn’t respond. I even tried communicating with the ghost, but it wouldn’t respond, either. Puzzled, I took a seat at the kitchen table and waited. After a while, I heard the same noise that had accompanied the ghost’s appearance before. I knocked over my chair in the process of getting to my feet. Fortunately, it wasn’t manifesting right above my head… When I saw the red glow beyond the wall of the kitchen, I decided to go investigate. So armed with my frying pan, I ran straight to my parents’ bedroom. I found my mom with a noose around her neck. The ghost was preparing to kill her. I chucked my frying pan at it, and the ghost disappeared. I wasted no time in getting my mom out of the noose. She seemed bewildered and didn’t recall anything to do with a ghost or the events leading up to her near suicide.

Since I understood that the ghost was digital in its origins, I wondered if I could use something like an application on a cell phone to fight it. I downloaded a fantasy weapon application and selected the bow. I had to assume the bow was given to me for a reason. If GLaDOS wouldn’t speak to me, it was because this was a test – and that was her only hint. I had some difficulty setting the thing up… Firstly, it wanted me to select one of several bows, and by trial and error, I found out that only one of them would actually work. I guess there were quests I needed to complete in the application to use the other ones. Secondly, the application didn’t respond to the motion of firing an arrow. I found out I had to shake it back and forth instead. When I was confident that I could shoot my digital arrows at the ghost, I started patrolling the hotel room in search of it. My mom disappeared after the first walk around my prison.

The red light returned – this time, in Austin’s room. I headed in there and found a giant monitor. The pixels took the form of the ghost’s face, and he smiled at me. I still couldn’t really make out his features; although the resolution was fine, it was as though a blur had been put over his face. I opened fire. It was evident that my attacks weren’t doing any damage, though. I decided I should’ve stuck with the frying pan… In this form, however, that wouldn’t hurt him either. The walls began to move. The floor beneath me opened, and I fell into a dark pit.

Stuffed Animal Dungeon

I was playing on WMBRO with Autumn. There was a new dungeon with only one floor. It was full of living stuffed animals of various kinds… To clarify, there were thousands of them. Even Symphony had a great deal of trouble surviving in this dungeon. It was divided into five outer regions and an inner core. A special version of Dracula spawned here, and Autumn needed to defeat him for a quest item. I wanted it, too, but it was more important for her to get the item. Fighting Dracula with the stuffed animals all around us proved far too difficult, so I lured him to a safer area and fought him there. I had to use a Yggdrasil seed at one point. I was surprised that Autumn survived without any healing items. When I finally killed Dracula, I saw that I obtained the quest item she needed, but I didn’t get Symphony’s ballista. The quest item was some kind of necklace… I handed it over to Autumn.

Ping Pong Crane Game

I was in line for something… Surprisingly, I never found out what. The line began across the street from a stadium. As Autumn and I approached the street, a guy on a bike asked to go in front of us. I told him he could go, but then he didn’t… We waited almost until the light was about to change to cross. I had to run to the other side to avoid getting in the way of traffic. Anyway, we followed the slow-moving line down a winding road to the stadium. Once we were inside, I observed that there were arcade games set up along the way to keep people entertained. Most of them were fairly boring. The only one that caught my attention was a crane game that required you to grab a ping pong ball and drop it on a hanging prize. The balls were in constant motion, so catching them was difficult enough, but with the way the controls were set up, it was hard to drop the ball with any precision once you managed to get one. I got really lucky on my first try and won the prize. Unfortunately, the prize was just the manual for the crane game… Austin read it aloud while I tried to win one of the other two prizes. Autumn tried playing, too, but neither of us could win again. When we were done, Austin stepped up to the plate. He said that the next prize was a guide to defeating GLaDOS. It even included a remedy for neurotoxin poisoning. He wasn’t able to win it before I woke up, either.