The Fourth Factor

I’m reading through profiles posted on a website. For one, I read, “My story does not begin or end and has no need to stop at these David’s bones.”

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I’m going to a gym or similar. Everybody there is trying to work out some cryptic puzzle. The phrase “traveling in the tail of a sound” is a hint.

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I’m attending a class in a floating city where all the buildings and such look like clouds – almost certainly as a person other than myself. It’s a group of a dozen or so students led by a teacher. There’s a nocturnal atmosphere. Up until this point, I’ve been behind the rest of the class, but something has clicked for me since the last time we met. All of us are supposed to race to find a certain ship (airship, really, although it wasn’t described that way). I start out strong and have a lead from the beginning, and I actually make it there first. (This part is sort of video game-ish.) We do a couple more rounds after that; I take even more efficient routes, having a better idea of the city’s layout, and again make it there first. The third time, which works a little differently, I make it to the ship so far ahead that I actually have time to untie it and bring it around to where the others are still struggling to get past a certain obstacle.

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The next dream from that night is explicitly video game-like rather than implicitly. The dream involves the party going down to the underworld to rescue a comrade. This is a fairly routine occurrence, although enough of a bother to where it’s still better to avoid having to do it. This is the first time it’s happened in this game, so we get a special introduction to Fancrow, who is putting in a special appearance as lord of the dead. Fancrow is an older man, short, Caucasian, with white hair and a beard, wearing a blue uniform trimmed in yellow – just how he looked in the previous game. There are a number of little references to his role in that game, where he was a side character: there, you have to win a duel against him to get [handwriting illegible]. I’ve been given to understand that he just lets the dead person go the first time, and also the first time it happens after a solstice passes (which is yet another little reference). But nothing is happening. In addition to the action playing out, there are a number of interface elements visible, including one with a grayed-out sword. That means that we haven’t yet recruited the party member who would be really helpful in this situation.

It’s also possible for the deceased themselves to trigger their own release, and the dream then cuts to the PoV of the person we’re here for, who’s in the process of doing just that. She jumps onto a flying vehicle, which instantly plummets since it’s set to the gravity of the lower realms. As it goes down, a bad smell becomes more and more prominent – associated with the place itself.

The dream cuts back to the scene with Fancrow, where something is happening. He’s being hit with small objects in advance of the party member breaking through. Things are looking good now, but I’m still angry at Fancrow for taking my friend away, so I take advantage of his distraction to punch him. But he isn’t taken off guard. He just mirrors my action and grins. I know that now I’m going to be the next one to end up down here.

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To help RD, I go to a place that looks like an abandoned mall to complete some kind of puzzle that involves getting the air to flow into a certain place up high, which is necessary to accomplish something. There’s no place I can stand to get it there directly, so I have to use the extremely larger flowers growing high up on vines there to redirect it. This is a timed puzzle, but I manage to complete it quickly, mentally directing the air along the right path. RD is happy about this. We are part of a small group, and because of this, she will be able to provide the space for us to do something later on. Possibly related, although for reasons that are now unclear, later on, I'm running through mental projections of rat experiments, one after another, changing the conditions as certain aspects become clear so I can get another step closer to figuring out what I want to know. I do tens of thousands of them, although each one only seems to take instants to run start to finish. It seems as if all of this is necessary since I'm trying to actually figure out the causation of something rather than just navigating outcomes.

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I have, in connection with (dream-)siblings, made something that had gotten very popular. I'm getting invitations from people all over the world wanting me to have adventures with them. I could travel anywhere in an instant, but that somehow makes it seem less interesting. And what I really want to do is just to get back to the newest musical project I'm working on.

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I'm with a group of people in a small city, chasing after someone. We split into groups to surround them. Something will end when we catch this person, and I want it to be over really badly. I experience the landscape of the dream as having harmonic connotations – in the area where I am, specifically, ones indicating tension. There’s no audible music playing, just a sense of information being perceptible as part of my experience of the dream.

(July, mostly)