Lucid Time!

I remember I was teaching at my second elementary school. (IRL, I went to two elementary schools. One was from first and second grade, and another was from third grade onward.) I remember I was an assistant teacher for a class of first graders in the first room down the main hall, and my Taekwondo master was supposed to be my assistant.

I don't remember exactly what happened but I needed to get something from the art room. In the dream the art room was where the gymnasium was IWL, just down the hall from the first grade classroom. I went to leave and my Taekwondo master asked where I was going. I told him I needed to get something and if he could just watch the class for a minute. For some reason he started crying because he thought I was quitting being a teacher and leaving him with the kids. I just ignored him and figured he'd perk up as soon as I came back.

(I guess this was trying to reference my waking life work at the Taekwondo studio in some way.)

I went down the hall to the art room. It was very dark in there because they were doing electrical work. The art teacher said she had been expecting me and while she didn't have [whatever it was I needed], she did have an extra shipment of markers she wanted me to have. So she filled up my backpack with them and told me to take them back to the class. She also gave me an AV cart with some video tapes from the school library.

I came vaugley remember coming back to the classroom with an AV cart and told the kids that we were going to watch Kung Fu Panda as part of our unit on chinese culture. I said something about how it was directed by a Chinese woman and was supposedly at least somewhat accurate.

...

The movie was nothing like any of the Kung Fu Panda movies that I remember. It didn't center around Po but rather another bear, a brown bear who also knew kung fu and had shown up from another land. I remember he encountered Po in the woods (who was wearing a cape and straw hat) and the two started fighting.

It was one intense fight too, they were kicking one another through trees and stuff. A thunderstorm started as their fighting moved into a field. They both began employing these energy attacks, kind of like a hudoken that would shoot these little homing energy balls at one another, and making magical shields. I feel like Po projected golden energy and the brown bear projected blue energy.

Eventually they ended up breaking through the ground and winding up in some kind of spirit realm. (I think it started off looking like the spirit realm from the third kung fu panda movie.) But eventually the fight faded out to something else.

...

Some narrator character explained that my dreams have two layers. One layer of dreams is based in reality, while the other layer is based in a sort of spirit realm. The difference between the layers is that one of them uses locations from reality and simply overlays them in different ways to create a slightly different dream experience. The other is a fantasy, where it can be any location. This was the lower layer.

The lower layer is further subdivided into four sections. Mountian, Plains, Forest and Sea/Islands, with a city in a center and each of the four sections spreading out in a 90 degree slice from a central city. We approach the central city. I remember there was a huge spire, it looked like an oil refinery, but had to be over a mile tall. The entire thing was covered in pipes, tanks, girder structures and smoke stacks. There was a transition zone at the cloud layer, and at the very top of the spire was a small compact city skyline of glittering modern glass skyscrapers.

Next to that main city were some huge docks. I remember there were these flying tanker ships. They were sections of huge spherical tanks held together by steel trusses. Four tanks, then a control tower, then four more tanks and a cluster of engines. On the bottom were two glowing blue energy conduits that presumably kept the things aloft.

The world looked fairly sapped of color, everything was yellow, brown and toxic green. Even the top part of the city.

I remember I realized I was flying at this point. I turned away from the city and flew around it. I remember seeing a cluster of volcanoes. But the volcanoes were capped by these oil-rig structures, and the lava was being channeled down the sides into collection areas. I landed atop a cooling tower. (It looked like one of those huge cement towers you see on nuclear plants) I was standing on the edge looking down at the lower levels of the city, where it looked like a shanty/slum.

Someone said something to me about it still being Halloween at the train station. (I feel like it was Marcus.) I looked down at the train station and saw people loading giant pumpkins, three to a car onto flatbed cars of a train. I remember the pumpkins were really bright orange and stood out against the other colors of the dream world. I flew down into what I presume was supposed to be a park of some kind. I remember the ground was paved with rusty metal and crumbling concrete and there were areas of dead trees and grass.

I began thinking clearly and decided to summon Manei. I didn't need to say the command, she materialized in front of me as soon as I thought of her, along with a computer desk, computer and chair that she was sitting at. Apparently when that manifested her in, the computer was disconnected from its power source and she lost whatever she was working on. She threw her hands up in frustration at this fact. She turned and saw me.

Me: "I want you to come with me, I need to be with you alone, so we can talk."

Manei: "No."

Me: "Well then I'm going to look around the city myself. That part sure looks interesting... " (Looking towards a portion of the city lit up with neon.)

Manei: (Still staring at the computer) "No."

Me: "How about some dream reading. (The part of the city that is lit up with neon shrinks and ignores spatial relationships for a second, with the buildings becoming racks of books to read, then reverting to their original state.)"

I look at the cover of what I have taken from the rack. It looks like a manga, though it reads left to right like a regular book. I can't read what it is titled, but it looks like mostly vertical characters, like a mixture of upper and lowercase I's, J's and L's. There is a picture of an anime girl on the front with white hair and silvery blue eyes. She is covering herself with a white blanket. I open to a random page. The right hand page is some kind of advertisement. The page has a red background with black text and seems to be selling some kind of robots. The other side shows the character from the cover, naked, talking to another female character while sitting on a bed for three panels. The speech balloons were in the same weird vertical language.

Manei: "No, no reading, either!" she snatched the book from me and ripped it in half down the spine.
Me: "Well then, what do you want me to do? I'm lucid and it would be a shame to waste it."

Spoiler for Language (And not me swearing up a dream for once):

Manei: She laughs at me. (I feel like a couple of other DCs laughed too even though I didn't see anyone else.) "I want you to come over here and fuck me!"

Me: (Irritated by the laughing DCs) "Well, at least your direct about it."

The dream shifts to my living room. She begins to take her clothes off, and I can tell the dream is starting to lose clarity. I remember we were both wearing disgusting dirty heavy coats from the previous environment. I think I stopped after taking my shirt off and realized there was one bit of business I need to take care of first.

Me: Metatitakiatientes, (I rub my hands together.)
Manei: What are you doing?
Me: Stabilizing the dream before we start. You know how the dream will-
Manei: That's not the right command word.
Me: Yes it is, you're the one that taught it to me...
Manei: I have to go to the bathroom.
Me: Dream Guides don't have to go to the bathroom.

She walked out on me anyway. I feel like I used some trick to fast forward time to where she came back. The dream is still losing clarity at this point.

Me: Wait, you taught me the wrong command? Why? (No wonder that never seemed to work...)
She doesn't really say anything. Everything starts to go dark about here. I snap my fingers and make a small flame to keep things illuminated around us.

Me: Oh well, now it's your own fault we can't do what you want.
Manei: [Isn't the pursuit of selfish desire while ignoring the consequences what dreams are]
Me: [Not to me, not anymore, not in their entirety]
Manei: [Why do you even bother, just give in to me for once.]
Me: [You think I will just accept your mistakes you because of the physical nature of sexuality. I see beyond that. Marcus said it himself, your dream body is nothing more than a facade. It's who you really are that matters, and I will do no such favors for somebody who, on the inside doesn't deserve my affection, regardless of my own desires, or yours. This is exactly what I wanted to tell you about. Your role as a dream guide comes first, and you seem to have forgotten that.]
Manei: [So you're listening to Marcus more than me now?!]
Me: [It's the only logical thing to do, move to a more reliable person for consultation.]
Manei: [You're not very loyal, using an outside source like that to get information.]
Me: [You have to earn my loyalty back. Reliability ranks well above sexual desire.]
Manei: [I want to fix this.]
Me: [Me too.]

I was so intent on the discussion that I realized I could feel my body back in bed, and everything was black now. I thought I would just wake up.



-+-

I think there was a false awakening after this part that resulted in me waking up in my bedroom. I remember something was going on and I had to use my telescope to see it. I feel like there was much more. A 'Dream Computer Error' happened and I took a vacation in the tropics.

For some reason that whole final thought-discussion was undertoned with the idea that Manei was some kind of impostor. I don't know what the heck is going on here, but I feel like I'm about to learn something I don't want to know...