LiveInTheDream's DJ v2.5

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Finally I went lucid again!

Again my watch alarm did not work for me, but it turned out not to matter. Actually, if it had gone off, I probably would have ended up not going lucid. You'll see why here in a minute.

Dream 1: I found myself in an incredible city. Everything looked very historical, even though it was all clean and kept-up as new. As I walked around, I saw an old-fashioned ice cream parlour and decided to go in and check it out. Now, I had ice cream shortly before going to bed, so I expect that had something to do with it . Inside, I saw one of my friends, a girl I had flown around in a previous dream. Of course, I bought her some ice cream and we sat down outside to eat it and chat. Shortly after our ice cream was gone, a taxi pulled up just a few yards away from us and let a small family in. "Come on!" My friend said, heading for the taxi. "I don't think there will be room for us." I commented, following anyway. As I got closer, I noticed the license plate on the taxi was "I C U", a clear reference to Avatar. As it turned out, there really was no room left for us, but that didn't even phase my friend. She just sat on the back of the car and waited for me to do likewise; it was as if she did this on a regular basis. It turned out to be pretty nice, though, riding around that city on the back of a taxi. We had a clear view unobstructed by a roof and doors, and we could hop off at any place we wanted to. Even though I remember several details about the places we stopped at, it's hard to sort them out in order, since we went so many different places. Suffice it to say that much...'we went many different places.' I bought her a few things and we had a lot of fun. Towards the end of the day, I could keep my mouth shut no longer, and though I don't remember what exactly I said, it was something to the effect of 'I love you'. I was afraid she would leave me then, but she only smiled to one side of her mouth and led me off somewhere. I was glad that she reacted well, but I didn't get to see where she was leading me off to, because soon after I woke up.

As soon as I was awake enough to make any conscious thoughts, I thought back through that dream to make sure I remembered it and then checked my watch. It was shortly after 4:00. My watch alarm was set for 3:50, and it hadn't gone off at all. Good thing...if it had, it would have interrupted that dream!

Well, I decided to try for DEILD then, and it wasn't long before I succeeded.

Dream 2: I was back at that historical city, but on the outer edge of it now, on a beach. The city was shortly to my left, and the ocean to my right. In the distance, I saw my friend was still there. I guess she was going to lead me to the beach. But then it hit me: "Wait a second...this is a dream!" Almost immediately after I realized this, my friend saw me and called out my name as she ran in my direction. When we met, we threw our arms around each other . Remembering the time I had flown her around before, I decided to do so again...only for some strange reason, I just couldn't fly! I kept trying, but of course now I was...well, trying, not expecting, so I wasn't going anywhere. Rather than continue to fight it, then, I considered another option and decided it would work ok. With a thought, I caused the ground beneath us to rise up and push us higher and higher towards the sky, continually building up beneath our feet. Before long we reached the clouds, which it turned out we could scoop up into our hands. They were cold and wet, though. Figuring we were high enough, I stopped the upward advance of the ground. "I've got an idea." I said to my friend. "Hold on to my hand." She did so, and then after a count to three, we jumped off the top of the pillar I had made out of the ground and we dove down into the ocean, falling hundreds of miles until landing comfortably in the water. I noticed I could breath under the water, which was pretty cool, but even so I went back up to the beach because that's where the girl was going. As I made it onto the beach, I looked down and was amazed at how realistic the sand was. Because I was wet it clung to me in millions of little grains just like in real life. But anyway, when I reached her, I pulled a couple towels out of thin air and handed her one. "How'd you do that?" she asked. "Oh, that's my little secret." Now that I think about it, I find it funny that making the ground rise up didn't phase her, but pulling towels out of thin air did . After that we just sat on the sand close together and watched the sun set. The colors were incredible...it was almost better than a real beach sunset, honestly. After a while of doing that, I woke up.

It was still early enough for me to stay in bed a while, so I tried very hard to DEILD again and re-enter the dream, but to no avail. Oh well. At least I finally had a lucid dream again! Life was getting kinda boring without 'em

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I did a tiny bit better last night...came close to being decently lucid again! In other words, I was lucid, but I got it through WILD at the very beginning of the night, and it only lasted for about 1 second...I knew I was in a dream and I saw a tiny bit of my surroundings, but there was hardly time to do anything before the dream ended...so note to self: don't bother WILDing at the beginning of the night anymore

I did have a decent non-lucid dream later on, though. Again it was split in half by my WBTB alarm which I somehow disabled very quickly and re-entered the same dream...I'm gonna have to get a different alarm

I was a 'secret soldier'...not a spy, really, but a scout. I think the idea was for soldiers to be common people for part of every day so as to bridge the relational gap between soldier and civilian. At any rate, I was placed in this one town that I forgot the name of, given a small, furnished house and some money, and took orders to live there from early morning to early evening. I had to use some of that time to sleep, since I reported back to the Colonel at night and kept up with my real job.

Since building relationships was the point of my mission, on the first day I was on this strange kind of occupation I went to an outdoor restaurant for breakfast. The air was fresh and the food was good. I had intended to strike up conversations with people, but it turned out I was so early that no one else was there. I chatted a tiny bit with the waitress (who I discovered also owned the place and cooked the food), but ended up simply enjoying the solitude; the only sound being that of birds. When I left, the woman told me about the following day's special and asked me to come back in typical business manner. "Maybe I will." I said with all honesty. After that I went to look around town and meet up with other people...but the place was deserted of any walkers. Cars drove by, but obviously they were of no assistance to me. I ended up just going back to my given house and checking all of it out. I'm not sure what happened for the rest of the day...I think I went to sleep for a while.

Eventually it was night time, and I headed to the secret army headquarters, where the Colonel and other scout-soldiers like myself were waiting. We each reported on our day, and I wasn't surprised to hear the others have similar stories to my own. When that was done, the Colonel gave us a long talk about how we'd totally missed the point and needed to do much better the next day. "There is a military agenda here." He said. "The point is not to expose ourselves, but to build up trust with those that we can so that we'll have the trust of the people on our side when we finally do come out in the open. All it takes is for each of you to build up one or two meaningful relationships...we want quality here, not just quantity."

The next morning I did return to that restaurant, and again it was too early for anyone else to be there. The colonel's words echoing in my mind, I decided to try and have a conversation with the woman who ran the place. I can't remember her name, but in case you were wondering, she was definitely not the Maria that keeps popping up as of late. I'll just call her W. "No one else is here...do you have anything you need to do right now?" I asked. "Oh, not really." W replied. "Why?" "Just wondering. I'm new to the place and all, so I just thought it would be nice to have some company, if there's any to have." "Oh! Of course." W said, picking up a cup of coffee and sitting down at my table. "Is there something around town, someplace you need to go, I can help you find?" I thought a moment. "Honestly...nothing that I can think of." "You have a job in town?" She asked. "Well that's...complicated, and honestly I'm not supposed to talk about that." Obviously, things moved slowly at first, but eventually we got to talking pretty normally and pleasantly, and even discovered we had a lot of common interests.

Next thing I know, it's the night again, and I'm heading to the secret headquarters. This time the Colonel was a bit more pleased with how we'd done; just about everyone had properly focused on having one or two meaningful conversations than just trying to talk to whomever was available. Then the Colonel informed us of our real objective: to locate a spy hidden somewhere in that very town. We had been informed that they were trying to lay low and just live a normal life, and it was up to us to do the same in order to discover the spy and bring them to justice. Nobody questioned who the spy was from or what their goals were.

The next couple days went by uneventfully (and incompletely, actually...the dream sort of zipped through time) until after a few days I went to the restaurant again as usual and W came to me and said she was in trouble. She looked very scared and made it sound like she was going to die or something if I didn't help. When I asked what was going on, she said, "It's not safe here. How do I get to your house?" "My house? Why, W?" "Because I think even my own is bugged." I gave her directions and drew the route on a map, and then W told me when she planned to drop by. "I'll be there." I promised.

When she arrived at my place a few hours later, she closed all the windows and made sure no one would be able to find her in there. "What's going on? Aren't you going to tell me?" She turned and looked at me very serious. "There's something I must show you." W said. "I trust you...but you have to trust me." "I do." W nodded after a moment and then held out her arm. With her other hand, she rubbed very hard into her skin, which wiped away to reveal blue skin beneath. "I am a Na'vi." She said. "Soldiers are here in secret to capture me. They want to study me and interrogate me until they find a weak spot they can use to kill my people. I fled here and put on a disguise, but they've tracked me down, and now I need your help to escape." "Alright." I said, not mentioning that I was a soldier. "But I can't be found out, either, you know. You have a plan?" She ignored that question. "I have trusted you. Now it is time for you to trust me." With that, she grabbed my arm, rubbed, and revealed blue skin on me, too.

After that, it was really weird. I split into two people, one a Na'vi form of me, and one a soldier form of me. It was suddenly night, and the solider me told the Colonel about what happened, while the Na'vi me helped W escape the town. It was a very close call, but the Na'vi me escaped with W after the soldier me finally did the right thing and distracted the other soldiers.

That last part was so strange. Not only was I two people at once, but they were diametrically opposed to each other, even though in the end I was in control over both.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I'm not sure what happened last night. I woke up a couple times, thought about my dreams, and silenced any thoughts about anything else...and yet I still couldn't remember for the life of me what it was I dreamed about! After giving it a lot of thought, I was able to recall two scenes. In neither one was I lucid, or even present! I was just spectating...honestly, I think in this case it was the dream that was unclear and not my recall, hence my lack of a body for all but a few seconds.


First thing I knew, I was looking at a crowd of people that I know IRL sitting on the ground. All of a sudden, one of them, a girl, stood up and said loud for all to hear: "Kyle, you and I are going to start dating." The dream 'camera' wooshed over all of their heads until Kyle was the focus. He didn't look shocked...very slightly surprised, perhaps. All that he said in reply was: "ok." As the dream began to fade, I got this sense that I knew that they really did start dating, and seriously, even though I didn't actually see it happen.

My WBTB alarm went off then, but I didn't stay awake very long...it would have been a DEILD if only I had gone lucid. My alarm has to have two buttons pressed at the same time in order to turn off, which I usually can't do until I'm fully awake, and thus it is quite effective for WBTB, but somehow I disabled it quite quickly and re-entered the same dream.

I was fading in and out of a dream body; as far as everyone around me was concerned, I wasn't there at all. I saw a TV turned on to a game show. The girl from before was playing it, and won. Then they brought out the prize...covered by a cylinder wireframe with a curtain strung all around it. When the cart it was on stopped moving, Kyle burst out of it in a shiny blue graduation gown

That's all I remember...I think maybe I'm in an LDing dry spell

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Ok, it's a bit late in the day for me now, but hopefully I can still remember everything decently.

Last night I made dream recall my focus. I figured, if I go lucid, great, if I don't, at least I'll be able to remember my dreams.

I ended up recalling 3, all of them non-lucid, but one of them very close.

Dream 1: I was not on Pandora, but I had an Avatar that I had designed for personal use. I had my computer moved to right next to my bed, where a very techy-looking device (presumably a brain-wave scanner or something like that) was attached at the head of the bed and connected to my PC. I turned on the computer, (see, electronics CAN work in dreams!) and opened up a program on the desktop. The interface was pretty basic, but it had very complex readouts all over it; frequencies and temperatures and a bunch of other measurements for me, my Avatar, and the computer hardware. I guess all of it had to be in equally working order, or else none of it would work, so it makes sense that all three things would need to be checked and logged. After confirming that everything was set up and ready, I clicked a few buttons to start the Avatar devices up and then laid down on the bed. As I listened to the machines begin to whir and chirp, my vision went blurry, and soon I was in a different room lit by a single, small lamp built right into the ceiling above me, making just about everything except me and the bed I was on look very dark and shadowy. Once things were fully clear and I was confident that the transition had been complete and successful, I sat up and looked down at myself. My skin was blue with exotic stripes of slightly darker blue all over it, I was several feet taller, I had a tail, and certain parts of my body glowed in the dark. A nearby mirror quickly confirmed that I was really in an Avatar! The bioluminescence thing really is cool, too! Well, as I had expected, I was in a trailer that was tilted about 30 degrees, with the open door on the side down into the ground, so that nothing could possibly get inside and harm the Avatar when I was away. Only inside the Avatar could I possibly be strong enough to lift the trailer while standing on the ground so as to let myself out. Once outside, I briefly took in my surroundings. It looked to be very early morning, as there was no hint of sunlight--rising or setting--anywhere. On the side of the trailer was a gun built for someone my size. I picked it up and started walking through the tall grass and the woods until I woke up.

Dream 2: I found myself at my house, and all was normal...except there was this girl there that kept insisting she was my girlfriend. I completely ignored the comment the first time, but after five or six times of her approaching me and saying that, as well as telling me of past times we'd supposedly spent together, it started to get my attention. I mentally started comparing what I knew to be true with what I was seeing. This girl was telling me about things I didn't remember happening at all...so I began to think about what I remembered. On the one hand, I remembered not having her as a girlfriend, and something told me I didn't remember doing the things with her that she said we had done. On the other hand, I remembered her name (Maria), and I distinctly remembered having done something with her before...in a dream. We were on the Maid of the Mist so that I could accomplish the task of the month. The wheels started turning, and I slowly began to think: "If all this is true, and I only remember her from a dream, then maybe I'm in a dream now?" It wasn't a realization, it was another question...a question I always follow up with a pinch-the-nose reality check. I was just about to do it, when I heard an explosion from the lower level of the house. I ran down the stairs to find the microwave exploding and with the door gone, microwaving the entire room as well as the people in it. Maria was running away just in the nick of time, but I could see a blast of flames was about to come around the corner, so I tackled her also just in the nick of time and got us both out of harm's way. Everything was instantly calm then (other than Maria, who was crying and shaking with fear), so I went into the kitchen to see the damage. All the walls and floor and ceiling were burnt gray like a radioactivity bomb had gone off. Colored puddles were on the floor in the place where people used to be. No one else had survived. I took Maria outside and tried to calm her down as I woke up.

Now I for one find that interesting. I don't know anyone IRL named Maria, and yet this person has come up twice now. She has always acted differently than other DC's, and the nose pinch RC caused her to realize that she was in a dream the last time we met up. She had memories of me in that previous dream that I remember of us together, but also in others that I do not remember ever having. Have I stumbled across a real person in shared dreaming without even trying?? If only I could go lucid again and ask her for an email address or something solid that could confirm that...oh well.

Dream 3: I was in my Avatar again, lying in the bed in the trailer. A big lightning bug flew up to me and started telling me to wake up. At first I told it to leave me alone, but it insisted that I had an important mission, so finally I got up and paid attention. I can't remember what the mission was, but I apparently agreed with it that it was important. I got out of the trailer, grabbed the gun from the side, and ran off into the woods. It gets a little unclear after that...I had a gunfight with a bunch of people, the big firefly alerting me of their locations. After everyone was taken care of, I just went back to the trailer and climbed in and went to sleep like nothing had happened Then I woke up.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Oooh, we've got new smilies!

Oh yeah, and last night was a great LDing night for me, too! Two LD's, both of them accomplishing the lucid task of the month (basic and advanced)!

Dream 1: I was walking around in my backyard at night when I looked up and saw the sun in the sky. "What? The sun at night? That doesn't make any sense...this must be a dream!" I pinched my nose and breathed in just fine, solidifying my assumption. "Cool! Well, let's see, I've got three things I've been wanting to do...oh well, the sun's right there, so I guess I'll go with the basic task of the month first." I looked at the sun and flew up to it. The dark sky looked a bit more fitting once I got into space. Well, I circled around it a couple times until I found a place that looked like a good entry spot, and then flew right inside. Surprisingly, it didn't feel very bright. I mean, it looked like someone had photoshopped the sun to lose half of its saturation, so even though it was bright, it was...not. But whatever, it was the sun, and surprisingly, I did have a shadow this time! Probably just because I was looking for it, though. I didn't get much more time to think about it, though, because I woke up pretty quickly after that.

I was awake for about fifteen minutes then; I had intended to WILD but I was pretty tired so I broke it off soon after SP hit and decided I would DILD again instead.

Dream 2: I can't exactly remember everything that went on at first, but eventually I found myself watching football early in the morning and really enjoying it. Now there were a couple things about that scenario that made me question the reality of it. #1: I don't believe football is ever played early in the morning, and #2: I hate football, so I wouldn't know for sure in the first place, but I also wouldn't watch it and enjoy it . That much being thought through, I decided to reality check, which of course led me to becoming lucid! "Alright! Let's see...I got the basic task of the month down...let's go for the advanced now!" I turned and faced a wall and tried my usual teleportation method. "When I turn around, I'll be at Niagara Falls." I turned around and found the room to be mostly unchanged. I was definitely not at the falls. But something had changed, and that was the wall across from me. It now had a very large picture of Niagara Falls hanging on it, and a little table beneath it. "That'll work." I walked over and moved the table out of the way, then reached into the picture, first with my hand, then with my leg, then with the rest of me, and stepped through the picture into Niagara Falls! I found myself on a wooden walkway that circled around it, but I needed to get out onto the Maiden of the Mist in order to complete the advanced lucid task. Now I can't swim very well IRL, but I didn't let that even factor into it. I jumped into the water and began swimming out to the Maiden of the Mist, which was in the near distance. The water was amazing! It was so clear and clean and the temperature was perfect. Not to mention it, along with everything else, was so realistic I was just marveling at the sight of it all. Well, soon I made it to the ship and climbed up to the top deck. "Ok, so now I have to get married here to complete the lucid task...I wonder who I'm going to be married to?" I looked up ahead of me and got my answer. It wasn't hard to figure out, considering the whole thing was already set up, everybody was there, and she was the only one in a fancy white dress. "Woah, that works for me!" I thought when I saw her. I tried hard to remember her face, but of course that memory faded when I awoke. I do remember her name was Maria, though. I transformed my dripping wet clothes into a dry tux and then took my place in front of everyone, next to Maria. I couldn't believe it when the 'pastor' walked up, though...he was some kind of alien! "Well that's weird..." I thought. But it got weirder. A small, hovering alien that resembled a fish came up out of nowhere and tried to stop the wedding. "Oh buzz off." I said, hurling the thing away with telekinesis. The rest of the ceremony went on without interruption, and I gotta admit, the first alien dude wasn't so bad at his job after all. What was really fun was the reception, though. Everybody went below deck (does the Maiden of the Mist even have a lower deck?) where food and (non-alcoholic) drink and music and all our friends were waiting. Of course the food was amazing, and they only played my favorite songs, but nothing could beat the reactions of the dream characters. They all came up and told us congratulations, and I just smiled at each one and replied, "Pretty cool dream, huh?" Usually they just gave me a funny look and walked away, but there was one guy who didn't take it so well. He thought it was a joke at first. "Yeah, it can feel like a dream at first. It sinks in after the first couple days, though." He said. "No, no, I really mean this is a dream, I can pinch my nose and still breath in. Watch." It didn't convince him. He just stared at me. "Umm...yeah it's really a dream." I repeated. "THIS is NOT a DREAM!" He shouted before stomping off. "Woah...ok...then." After a moment of nobody saying anything to us, Maria slapped me on the arm. "You're making people upset!" She said. "Now c'mon, would this really be a dream?" "Yes." I replied. I took her hand and put it up to her nose, told her to pinch, and then try to breath in. "See." I said. A tear formed in her eye. "You're right, then...this is a dream!" It made her so sad I kind of wished I hadn't said anything, but at least someone else knew the truth. I went to go get us drinks in hopes of cheering her up a bit, but when I came back, she was gone. "That's weird." I thought out loud. Just then, a friend of mine walked by. "Hey, Mike. Mike!" I ran up to him as he headed to the restroom. "Have you seen my wife anywhere?" He motioned for me to follow him into the restroom. "Sorry," he said, "This is just the only place that I think we'll have some privacy." He went into a stall as he talked. I went into one myself just because it was awkward standing out there waiting, and to be honest I was kind of wondering what it would be like to pee in a lucid dream . "You know that little floating alien?" Mike asked. "Well, he's furious that the wedding went through. He kidnapped Maria. I tried to stop him, but...I can't fly." "Dangit, yes you can." I muttered under my breath. Mike was done then, so I decided to be done, too. I mean, in a lucid dream, you could keep going for forever! While we washed our hands, I asked, "So where'd he take her?" Mike didn't have a chance to answer. We heard the alien's voice outside the door. "Quick! Hide!" Mike said. I created a closet door in the wall next to me and climbed inside. The floating alien came in, checked himself in the mirror, and then left. "So do I need to hide because he's trying to kidnap me, too?" "Yep. I don't know where he took your wife, but I don't think you want to find out the hard way." "True. So how do we get out of here without me being caught, or you being caught helping me?" Mike smiled at that question. "Canoes." That made me smile, too. We climbed out the window and stood on the side of the ship. Suddenly we were at the top of Niagara falls. A couple canoes were tied to the boat, and we each took one and got in. "Now this is going to be awesome!" I shouted over the roar of the approaching falls. In another moment, we had completely gone over, and were canoeing down Niagara Falls! The canoes were smashed at the bottom, but of course we made it out ok.

After that we got to formulating a plan. Mike volunteered to get a bunch of his buddies together to help arrange transport to wherever the alien had taken Maria to, and I took Mike's laptop to go find out just where that was. I hacked into some security cameras until I found the alien's location. "Bingo." I said...which got the attention of a nearby security guard. "Hey, you there, what do you think you're doing!?" I sighed. "Sorry doc, I don't have time for this." I held my hands in front of me, concentrated, and made the guard disappear into thin air. So I took the sword left behind from the security guard (yeah...he had one ) and tried to sneak up onto the alien back aboard the ship. Of course since the whole wedding party was there, someone heard and saw me, so stealth failed. I swung at the alien, but missed, and he then pulled out a sword of his own and we had an epic duel. He was hard to hit, but weak, so before long, I had him on the floor, badly wounded, his weapon far out of his reach. "Alright! Alright!" He said, giving up. "Your wife is in the caves. North west. Only way in is by river." For some reason, everyone was shocked to hear the alien confess to a crime like that, but I left them to deal judgment however they wished. I flew around until I found Mike, who had a bunch of midgets with pointy gray beards and mustaches build a water craft. I couldn't fly through the caves because they were too low and treacherous, so I gladly accepted the vehicle from them. As I climbed in and took the strange controls, they wished me luck and cheered for my victory over the floating alien. I started the wooden craft off into the caves, having a little trouble driving at first, but never got a chance to find Maria. Pretty quickly after entering the caves, I woke up.

I didn't think I could have a dream that was more realistic than any previous one, but that one tops them all. The appearance and actions of water are very hard things to duplicate, yet it all looked perfect. Lighting was all totally realistic, too. If I hadn't repeatedly pinched my nose to maintain lucidity, I probably would have started to believe it was real myself.

But anyway, I completed both the basic and advanced lucid task of the month in one night!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Ok, well I'm not supposed to say too much about this, but I've been on a secret mission with LDing lately, but for some reason every time I try to do it, if I'm getting near lucidity I get kicked out of lucidity, and the dream always ends up a nightmare

Last night's nightmare was particularly memorable...I think if I get the chance I'll even turn it into a movie scene.

I was in my room, and at first, everything was normal. But then, I noticed something strange...there was a worm on the ground. Then I turned around. There were a few more. Turned and looked around again, more worms, and even bigger and thicker now! "Well that's weird...how are they getting in here?" I said. Then I felt a sharp pain in my leg. I pulled the leg on my pants up so I could see, but quickly wished I hadn't. About 5 of those huge, thick worms had bitten into me and were now entirely in my leg, eating away at it, visible through a top layer of skin. The other worms were coming near me now, too, and I was surrounded. I dashed for the door, but multiple worms got into me after that, all eating away at my legs and arms from the inside, not to mention the disgusting sight of having a worm bulging through your skin. I may be a guy, but I still screamed. The door slammed behind me, I ran for the nearest person and begged them to help me get the worms out. "You're going to live," they told me, "but there's only one way to get those worms out." "Well do it already! please!" They reached down and pinched one of the worms on my leg. It let out a little, sickening cry and then rushed up through my leg towards my head. It felt so weird and disgusting...but not nearly as much as what happened next. After the worm got up to my head, I started choking and gagging, and then I coughed really hard, and blood came out along with the worm. Then I looked down and saw how many more worms were all throughout my body. There were easily 30 left for me to cough up that way, and then I still had a whole room full of them to deal with! Or so I thought. I turned and looked and saw a million more of them flooding into the house from the outside. There was nothing left to do but run! So I ran for the closest windows and tried to smash it and get outside. But I couldn't. The worms were coming closer, getting into the room, devouring the person who had just helped me. I had only a few seconds left...

...and then I woke up. Man that one really freaked me out! All day long I've felt like I'm feeling those things getting into my legs and arms, even though I know they aren't there...it was just so creepy!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Well, maybe I don't have to get back to heavy reality checking after all! Last night I had a very clear lucid without MILD or WILD or even focusing on RCing throughout the day!

I woke up in the night, disappointed that I had not yet gone lucid in a dream. “Alright,” I said, “Anything other than me in my room with my eyes closed is a dream and I need to realize that and reality check!” I was determined. So I rolled over and instantly went back to sleep.


It seemed only a moment later that I found myself on a dreamy landscape of a farm. “This is something other than me in my bed...which makes it a dream!” I realized pretty quickly that I didn't have control over anything. “No! I am not going to have a weak lucid again!” With that, I forced my hand to move, sending tingles running through my arm as sensations entered, clumsily reached it up to my hose, pinched, and breathed in. That put me in control, but it also made the dream go black.

It reappeared a moment later, and I was in a bed. Not my own, though, and my eyes were open, so I still knew it was a dream. I pinched my nose again to check, this time without any control struggle. I rolled over and prepared to get up, but I still didn't have control exactly right...with every movement, my body shapeshifted. I tried to stop it, but that didn't work out so well either. The dream went black again.

This time it reappeared in a room very similar to one in my real house, yet still different. Mostly it was black, and pulsating into clarity every once in a while. I rubbed my hands to try and clear things up, which succeeded, but then if I kept on rubbing, it would go black again. Eventually I remembered to try spinning, which (as usual) did nothing until the dream faded enough to make me lose my balance and fall on the ground. The sudden collision jerked everything back into crystal clarity. With one last nose pinch, I was fully lucid and it was fully clear. I looked around the room. It seemed I had only been teleporting with each fade, as outside the windows was the farm land, and certain things about the room suggested that it was part of a farm house. The most noticeable thing was that mice were running all over the place, but since I knew it was a dream I just ignored them. I approached a wall, looked straight at it so that I couldn't see anything behind me, and leaned against it, supported by my outstretched arms. Somehow that made me feel like I was able to work harder. “When I turn around,” I said aloud, “a girl will be waiting there, and she'll be really pretty, too.” I turned around, but no one was there. “Hold on a minute...” I thought out-loud as I looked for a mouse. It didn't take long to find one. I reached my hand out toward it and used telekinesis to morph the mouse into a girl. At first she was only a few feet tall, so I got closer and then used my thoughts to fix that. “Taller.” She got taller, but within a few moments she was way too tall. “Shorter.” She began to shrink again. This time, when she got to the right height, I said, “Stop.” And she did. Then I noticed her face wasn't very distinctive...very unclear. So I put my hands on her face and concentrated. By the time I pulled my hands back, her face was as clear as the rest of the dream. I snapped my fingers and she snapped into life.

The girl ended up being different than I had intended, but somehow the difference made her more attractive. She felt more real because of the difference; not like a robot that had no existence in and of itself.

“Where...where am I?” She asked.

“Anywhere you want to be.” I answered.

I then jumped up, and in one motion picked her up and flew through the wall to the world outside. Unfortunately, the world outside wasn't so clear, and in a moment things faded out one last time.


It's kind of funny. During the day I think I'm going to have to try really hard in my dreams to create things that way, but when it comes time for it, I have no trouble with it at all, and the time it takes to create what I want is lessening with each try

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Sorry there was no entry for yesterday. I hit one of those nights where I just don't remember anything whatsoever, and I was busy, so I didn't try too hard to get around to writing anything.

Last night I had a bit of an interesting experience. I haven't been doing my typical reality checking lately so as to experiment with a few other things and also come back later to a point when that same RC will work for me again. Well, never would I have guessed that youtube could be a lucid dream induction technique!

Yes, that's right. Youtube got me my LD last night! It didn't stay lucid for long or look very clear, but still, for something so odd, I'm amazed it worked at all.

So here's what the situation was: I had barely reality checked all day long, and it was getting close to bed time, so I was thinking about lucid dreaming and kind of regretting that I didn't RC very well. And I mean it was right before bed. I was on my computer browsing youtube when I heard this song in a video that I really liked. In the comments, someone said what the song's name and author were, so I looked up the music video. As most music videos are, it was weird as...well, something really weird. That, combined with my tired state and the interesting music, put me in an odd mental condition. Somehow I knew that that music video was going to appear in my dream, and I determined that when it did, I would know I was dreaming. Sure enough, when I got to sleep (after a failed WILD attempt), I was going about my day as normal when I opened a door and I found myself in the middle of that music video. "What was I supposed to remember when I saw this? Oh, that's right! That this is a dream!" I jumped out a nearby window and saw a sidewalk and a street below me. "That's gonna hurt...I guess I could fly. But that would be a bit too expected and boring for this situation, wouldn't it?" So when I hit the concrete, I simply caused it to bend like rubber and cushion all around me before springing back up from impact and launching me into the air . I did a flip and landed on my feet at the top of a building where a friend of mine (who also LD's from time to time) was standing. "You'll never believe this," I told him, "But I just used youtube to get lucid!" "Really? That's crazy! How?" I explained it to him, but unfortunately in the process of doing so I soon lost lucidity, and the dream went on to this weird blur of real people and fictional people and all of them behaving very differently from how they should.

I'm just about ready to return to putting serious effort in my days to lucid dreaming, but I do think it's fascinating how I've been able to continue short LD's with little things like YILD (youtube-induced lucid dream )

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I didn't do so well with RCing yesterday, so when it came time for bed I decided to try for a MILD. I'm not sure how long I did the mantra out loud, but it was longer than I've ever done one before, and I kept mentally doing it until I went to sleep. It partially worked.

I was in Pandora, and when I looked down at myself, I found myself to be in an Avatar. No, I wasn't a genuine Na'vi, just an Avatar. After that I went a little ways, enjoying my surroundings, just to be stopped by an RDA soldier (man, they sure look tiny from that height ) It was some time after that that I lost lucidity. The dream continued strong, though, basically playing out the story of the Avatar movie, just with different characters. Of course, I was in the position of Jake, but there were replacements for the other main characters as well. They each had different names and faces, but I can't remember them now. At some point, when I first entered the Na'vi Hometree, I regained lucidity for a short while; just long enough to use what little Na'vi language I know on them. They weren't too impressed to say the least. The Na'vi in Neytiri's place taught me how to pronounce those words better, though. I didn't learn any new ones, since I lost lucidity again very soon. Anyway, it was very different to see that story from Jake's perspective. Really made the emotional side to it that much stronger.

If you've seen Avatar, you'll know what I mean, and so I don't need to re-write it all for you here, and if you haven't seen Avatar, then go see it and you'll know what I dreamed.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Wow. I don't know what happened last night. All I remember as far as dreams go is 1) Winning an iPod shuffle from MacDonald's, and 2) Watching the Matrix, or at least it was supposed to be the Matrix, even though it was actually nothing at all like it. No lucids, no complete dream memory...and I remained still and calm when I woke up each time! Somehow I just really messed up with that one...oh well, I guess I'll just keep plugging away. Sooner or later a dry spell ends, right?

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I started to not feel good last night, so even though I tried to LD, I ended up just sleeping all night and not having any lucid dreams. I can only even remember one non-lucid to some degree.

There was some evil woman going around, for what reason I did not know why. But she was secretly following me, and eventually I figured it out. One day I caught her eying me when I was mowing in my backyard. I hid behind a big piece of cardboard that was suddenly there, and knew I had to escape.

Suddenly I was Eragon, so the plan of escape was obvious. I called for Saphira with my mind and this tiny dragon flew over the fence. "What?" I thought. "That doesn't make sense. How can Saphira be that small?" But as she got closer, she got bigger too, so that worked itself out ok and I was able to fly off, the wicked woman shouting curses at me as I fled.

We landed at a train station, I believe, and Saphira became small enough to fit inside. When I was in there, I saw a bunch of my friends, and they seemed to be waiting for me. Somehow they knew about the woman following me and that she wanted to take my dragon. "If this was a lucid dream," I said, "I'd just annihilate her." The first time, it was funny. Now, it's just annoying. Why do I keep talking about lucid dreaming in my dreams and not get that impulse to reality check?? Anyway, I was informed that we had been followed all the way to the train station, and that we had to leave by train as soon as possible. "Why not fly?" I asked. "Because that would be expected." Came the reply.

So we got on a train (which turned out to be a two-story hover train) and hoped we had made our escape well enough. The witch-woman had made it onto the train as well, though, and wasn't going to let us get away. Suddenly in third-person, I saw the witch release a robot drone and send it inside the hover train. The drone flew up around one of the passenger seats and picked Donald Duck as its victim. It sucked Donald up into its main body, so only his head was sticking out the front of the hovering drone. But apparently this totally possessed Donald and made him want to kill me, because I went back into first person and saw the drone coming. Saphira tried to breath fire on it, but apparently it was fireproof. Nothing else seemed to present itself as an option, so I grabbed it with telekinesis and sent it flying out the back door, totally breaking it down. "Woah, how did I do that!?" I didn't have time to figure it out. As the door was blasted open, we all saw the witch outside, being knocked off the back of the train. Everyone ran outside and just looked down at her as she hung on by her fingertips. Of course she begged for mercy and a second chance and promised not to ever do anything like that again if we let her go, but I wasn't convinced. I picked my foot up to step on her fingers and finish the fight, but because my friends were against that, I helped her up instead. But there was a button next to me that would open a door to the lower deck...a trap door in the floor right where the witch was standing. So I hit that button and watched her drop down, and then I closed the door, trapping her.

I don't remember what happened for a while after that, but when we reached our destination, the witch was able to get off the train and come after us again...as I expected she would. We were in some house when she tried to come to the door and get inside. Whoever was guarding the door didn't let her in, of course, and told her that she had her second chance, and she better leave before we changed our minds. Eventually she managed to get inside and somehow we killed her this time.

The dream went into third person again, this time showing the drone flying into a restaurant and releasing Donald Duck. Donald fell from pretty high up, but just bounced off of several things until he landed right in a chair. The robot drone flew down and landed in the other chair, paid for dinner, and tried to convinced Donald to help him avenge the witches death. Donald just got his finger stuck in a hole on the arm of his chair. The drone started getting frustrated with him, but I woke up too fast to see what happened.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Last night I half-intentionally didn't go lucid. I just needed a break after that last one. I didn't even try to remember my dreams in case they would be similar to the previous one and not something I would want to remember.

But at any rate, I'm feeling much better now and I'm ready to dive right back in!

Here's the one dream I do remember from last night:

Everyone was at a huge pool party. Friends, family...tons of people. And I don't just mean a huge party, I mean a huge pool, too. The pool was way bigger than the little one-story house next to it, complete with water slides and all kinds of other stuff.

After a while, everyone got out to eat some hamburgers. Eating in dreams is always enjoyable, since there are no health concerns whatsoever, not even for over-eating. I remember talking to a couple people over the meal about dreams. One of them posed a fun question. "Hey, what would you do right now if this turned out to be a dream?" We laughed at the idea, totally not believing it could be a dream. I had the impulse to do a reality check, but I decided I didn't want to know, in case I would accidentally repeat the previous night's dream. "Well I know what I would do," said another at the table. "I'd pick you up out of thin air and throw you into the pool headfirst!" Everyone laughed again. "And then it would probably end up being a shared dream." I said. "So he would feel you do that and give you a call the next day, all like 'what the heck was that about?'" And we kept going like that for a while before heading back out.

Weird thing was, when I went back out there, the pool was set alongside a river, and I was in Pandora. "Oh, cool!" I said, still not becoming lucid. I paid no attention to everyone else running inside, grabbing their things, and leaving as quickly as they could. I stopped one of my friends as he ran past, though. "Hey, c'mon!" I said. "Dude, are you NUTS!?" That of course had me puzzled, so I turned around to see what was making him leave the pool. I found my answer not in the water, but in the air. It was a Samson; a helicopter from Avatar. My friend ran away, but the wind from the propellers knocked me down before I could. A soldier riding on it jumped off, grabbed me, and somehow I was suddenly in an RDA uniform. He told me that I had to get a couple samples of plants for him, and then sent me off into the jungle on a Gator (the RDA's water craft). I found the samples and brought them back to find the soldiers shooting at viperwolves or something...I didn't get time to see for sure before I woke up.

Maybe tonight I can go back there and stay awhile...on the Na'vi side!


SIDENOTE: This is officially my 100th post on DV! :bravo:

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I just lived out three months of my life last night. It was the worst dream I have ever had in my entire life. If it were a movie, it would be rated R, or higher. By necessity, I have recorded foul language, but blocked out certain characters. Sorry it is so long, but it's hard to record three months at once and keep it short.

I was first aware of the dream when I became lucid. Oh, that I had not! I tried leaving the building I was in and going to Pandora, I tried using telekinesis, I tried doing everything, but even though I was lucid, I could do nothing. I was as limited in this dream as I am in real life. I couldn't even wake myself up. There were a couple others in the concrete and steel-piped room, but they simply watched me try to go through the wall as if it were expected of me as a newcomer. I shouted out in one final attempt, and only succeeded in hurting myself.

“No point in trying to escape.” An old man in the room said to me, slowly and depressed. “From this point on, all you can do is your best. The tests...will not be easy.”

I held up my hands, giving up. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

The old man sighed. “Then...there is no hope for you.”

Just then, I saw a light on the floor; a door was opened behind me. Guards came in, wearing gas masks and black army uniforms. The leader said, “Take that one” as he pointed at me. His voice was deep and forbidding; he didn't have to shout or emphasize his words because it was obvious from his voice alone that no one would dare challenge him.

I didn't react to them at first. I figured if they grabbed me, I could just phase through their arms. But when they grabbed me and I realized I couldn't do that, I panicked. I fought and kicked and punched, but nothing I did could get me out of their iron grasp. “Sedate him!” The guard on my right hissed. “What? Sedate? No, no, no, no!” I watched in horror as the lead guard came into view with a needle and slowly pressed it into me. Things started fading. All was black.

I woke up momentarily in my bed and RC'd it to be real, but I couldn't stay there for long. It was like something was pulling my mind back into the dream, and it was soon successful. When I was back in the dream, I was just waking up from the sedative. I RC'd again and found myself dreaming, but lucidity again did nothing for me. I was trapped. The dream was totally realistic. Even my vision wasn't perfect, and as in real life, if I closed my eyes, I saw little spots. I was really there in mind and spirit, and now body as well, in the greatest possible sense. I sat up, depressed.

“Welcome back.” I heard a voice say. When I looked up, I saw a middle-aged woman with curly red hair standing there. “I'm Dr. Grace Augustine.” She said.

“Doctor...so you're not being tested too?”

She smirked, and then began to work some computer machinery as she spoke.

“Oh, I'm being tested. We're all being tested, save the big man himself. Here.”

She gave me a cup of water, which I took gratefully.

“Who is the big man?” I asked after a swig.

Grace stopped for a moment before answering.

“That is a very dangerous question. Honestly, no one really knows the answer. No one's ever seen him, not anyone from this level. Some believe he's in disguise undergoing his own tests, but I know better. I may not have met him, but I've spoken with him, and believe me, he's not in this for a science experiment. There's something much deeper at hand. Anyway, for lack of a better title, people around here call him the G-Man.”

“What are these tests? What are they for?”

Dr. Augustine handed me a clipboard with papers on it detailing an organization called the “D.N.A.”

“The DNA is a human research organization of the government.” Grace explained as I skimmed the pages, disappointed that the text wasn't changing like it should in a dream. “It's to...study human behavior; put people in a series of varying living conditions and see how their environment affects them.”

“Well,” I explained, “I'm a Christian; I doubt they'll find my living circumstances to change me in the ways they expect.”

I could tell Dr. Augustine wasn't convinced.

“We'll see about that.” she said as she pulled a nearby lever.

A steel bulkhead door opened behind her.

“This way to your first room.”

I got up and followed her down several dark hallways. The walls and ceiling were made entirely out of pipes, and the floor of a paneled steel square, with metal grating lining the left and right sides. One of the pipes was leaking, spraying steam out into the air and giving the area a very creepy atmosphere. Finally we reached a door.

“And this,” said the doctor, opening the door. “Is your room.”

Inside was a small room that looked very much like a little house's living room. It was smaller than the average hotel room, carpeted bright red and walls left white (and peeling at some points). Basic appliances were there, such as a television and a refrigerator, but they were old, small, and very outdated in appearance. Three people were in there, one a guy a bit taller than me with blonde hair and a thin face, and two girls, one an equally taller red-head and the other a shorter brunette. All of them looked to be about my age. They had the TV going and honestly seemed to be enjoying themselves. Their presence definitely cheered the whole situation and made me think that maybe there was some positive aspect to all of this.

“Food will be brought to you once every day.” Dr. Augustine explained. “You must ration it out for yourselves and save each of the portions in the fridge.”

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

“How long do I have to be here?”

“One month.”

“A month!? You gotta be kiddin' me, you can barely walk around in this place!”

“You have a backyard. Just don't try to go beyond the fence. Now get in there, or I'm going to have trouble with the boss.”

“Alright, alright!”

I walked inside.

“One month.” Said Dr. Augustine as she closed the door behind her.
I just stood there for a moment, silent, not believing the situation I was in. I RC'd again and found myself to still be dreaming, or at least, not in my normal body. Honestly, I don't know where I was then. It was all too real. I took a couple steps inward, and the guy there turned and looked at me.

“Oh, hey! The new guy's here!”

The girls waved and said 'hi' as well. I just sat down on the floor next to the guy, since no chairs were around.

“So how long'a you been here?” I asked.

“Three months.” The guy said, with the girls nodding their agreement with the guessed time.

“Huh, what? I thought we were only supposed to be here one month?”

“No man, that was you!” he said as he put his arm on my shoulder. “You're the one we've been waiting for! The test setup isn't complete without a second male. Here, check the paper.”

He flipped through my clipboard until he came to a page on test 1.

“'This test must be conducted regardless all circumstances with two males and two females. The government reserves the right to keep an incomplete test's subjects in their environments until suitable additions have arrived'.” I read. “This is crazy! I didn't even sign up for this.”

“Nobody does.” The brunette said. “And yet...everyone does. Look at the last page.”

I did, and there was a signature on the dotted line. My signature. I couldn't believe it.

“I...I didn't do this!”

“Everyone who is born signs their signature there from simply being alive.” The guy explained.

“Great. So what are we supposed to do?”

“Didn't Grace tell you?” the redhead chimed in. “Live on rations for a month. It's not much, but we can definitely live on it.”

“Is there really no way out of this?”

To that, no one spoke for a long time. Finally, the brunette broke the silence.

“Only a few have tried. They wanted to climb over the fence. No one knows what happened to them, but they never came back, and the government will act like they never existed if you ask them about it.”

“Outstanding.”

“Well hey,” the guy suggested. “How about we play a game? You know, loosen the tension.”

“Sounds good to me.” The brunette agreed.

“What about you?” The redhead asked, looking at me. “You in?”

I sighed.

“Why not...nothing else to do.”

So we played a game of monopoly, and learned each others names. The blonde guy was Truman, the brunette was Mia, and the redhead was Danielle. I didn't know them, but I don't think I really needed to in order to understand that they had something. They had been living in semi-poverty for three months, and they were the happiest people I'd met in a long time.

The days went on after that. As Grace had said, food was brought in once every day, and we had to ration it out and save what we could in the fridge. Even though there was little, everyone simply learned to think of the other three before themselves. There was no selfishness in that little place, which I think was supposed to be part of the test. To prove one or another of us to be selfish and in the process despise the others. But it never came close to happening. Every day we read the Bible to each other and it was our greatest source of encouragement. We were about as much a family as could be.

Still, I came to feel something special for Mia. I didn't say anything about it to her. I didn't have to. Every time I went to bed I knew she'd be there the next day and that I'd spend every moment with her, so why complicate things? It wasn't like she didn't know. Once, Mia fell terribly sick, to the point of death. We were told that medicine would be exchanged for some of the daily rations, and I volunteered to give mine up so that Mia could get better, which she did. By this point, I was actually beginning to get beyond acceptance of my life and actually enjoy it this way. Every day was...was very pure. It was all about putting others first and living life to the best possible way for the sake of everyone else. I figured out that Truman had feelings for Danielle, and although it would have been very easy, nobody slept together. We kept to our own corners of the room at night and didn't cross any boundaries. It was a kind of life that I would have lived for a long time.

But a month is just a month. Eventually the day came when Dr. Augustine visited our door and told me to say goodbye to my friends. I was very glad at this point that I had said nothing to Mia; it would have made things even harder. I told her goodbye the same way I did the other two; with nothing more than a hug and a word. It was very painful to be torn away from them, but guards were there to assist if I didn't comply of my own free will.

When I was outside and the guards saw I wasn't fighting, they walked away for Dr. Augustine to handle me.

“Why do this?” I asked, frustrated. “Why pull me away from them?”

“Your test was for one month. Boss's orders. I don't make up the rules, kid.”

We walked a bit farther and no one spoke.

“You're going to have a break today.” Grace said. “Back in the room you started in.”

“Why? Why not get the tests over with?”

“I told you I don't make up the rules.”

I went back inside the concrete room and sat on the concrete bed. It was like a prison cell.

“Great. So I'm here. What now? Just sit and take a break?”

“No.”

And then something really weird happened. As Grace said,

“The boss wants to see you.”

My environment faded into total darkness, and Grace morphed into a guard, emitting a blue glow that was painful to look at. Her voice changed to that of the guard as well, giving an eerie feeling about me. Then the guard disintegrated and was taken up into the air. I screamed in fear and tried to run, but I found myself colliding with a wall in the darkness, falling down, knocked out.

Again I woke up for real, but was pulled back into the dream by a force other than me.[/COLOR

When I woke up in the dream, I was in the piped hallway. I took one small step and heard my foot echo all the way down the hallway and around the pitch black corner. Then I heard a gut-wrenching scream, and a dead man limped around the corner. This was no Half-life zombie; this guy was really dead and decaying, and walking towards me. I turned and ran into the darkness of the corner, found a stack of boxes over to the side, and tried to knock it over to block the way. I saw the dead man round the corner, keeping after me. The boxes were too heavy...but then, just in time, they fell, and with another sickening cry, the dead man admitted defeat. I heard him walk away, and then I was left alone, my heart pounding, sure that another of them was going to end up being right behind me, against the wall as well.

“Well, well, well.”

The voice startled me so bad that I thought there was a zombie behind me, but it turned out there wasn't.

“Who are you?” I called out.

“Who am I?” The voice replied, slow, quivering, and dry, sending chills up my spine. “The question is: who are you? That's why we're doing these tests. To discover you. Isn't that right?”

I got his point, but I didn't like it. I remained pinned to the wall, heart racing. The voice laughed wickedly.

“You see? Your eyes are blind. You speak of understanding, but you do not know what you are talking about.”

“What are you talking about?” I finally gathered the courage to say. “What was that last test for? Why did I have to be pulled away? I was living right, and I had the truth.”

“You are looking for truth, and right. But you do not know what you speak of. You may have passed the first test, but I wonder, was it you, or was it the others around you?”

“They were good people. They don't deserve to be imprisoned by you!”

“I didn't put them in prison. You did.”

“I would never do such a thing!”

“Oh,” the voice replied, undaunted. “You don't know what you would do. It's Murphy.”

“Murphy as in Murphy's laws?” I mumbled so quiet that no one could hear it.

“Yes...somehow your pathetic human was the only one to understand. It doesn't matter what you believe, or where you are. Sooner or later, you will give in. It's all...just...a matter...of...time.”

I especially hated the way he said that last part.

“Now, go. Your next test awaitssss.”

Suddenly, the dead man broke through the boxes and ran after me. My legs froze; I couldn't make myself run, I was so afraid. But then, a blue light shone around him, and as I fainted, I could see my environment reverting to the lab with Grace Augustine.

I briefly woke up in real life yet again, but yet again was pulled back asleep.

I awoke in the dream with the doctor waving a light over my eyes and saying my name, trying to get me to come to. When I finally did, I sat up on the concrete bed and RC'd. I tested to be dreaming.

“What the h*ll was that? Get me out of this right now!”

“I can't do that.” Grace said. “Come on. It's time for your next test.”

I was taken outside, which looked a lot like Pandora, honestly, save I wasn't in the midst of trees. The testing facility was all up on a plateau, overlooking a forest, with an active volcano in the far distance. The sky was red and orange from the sunrise. I was led through various gates that required the doctor's authentication, and eventually came to a tree.

“Here you go.” said the doctor. “Test number 2.”

“Huh! A tree? Are you kidding?”

“Nope. For the next month, you are to live here. There's shelter already built for you towards the top.”

“Who's in it?”

“No one. The point of this test is to see how you behave for a month when you are alone. Food rations will come out once a week...”

“What!? Once a week?”

“...but there are weapons in the tree house for you to hunt your own food.”

“Great.”

“Trust me, you'll want to learn how to fight well. You think all the animals are stuck on the ground? Think again. Now go on.”

I looked around me. There were guards at every possible exit and escape. The fences were of latticed barbed wire. It was comply or die.

“Listen...I'm not supposed to tell you this, but after this test you'll get to see Mia again.” Dr. Augustine told me. “One month. That's all you have to endure. Don't kill yourself now!”

I looked at the factory as if it were the embodiment of the G-Man and the voice I had just heard.

“Son of a bit**.”

But I climbed up the tree then—for Mia.

I don't know that I want to or even can go into details about that month. It was horrible. Weather was hot, water was scarce, and so was food. The weapons were all hand-made and very pitiful. I had to sharpen each blade and tweak each arrow for balance before even attempting to use them. Of course the initial rations of food were not good enough for the week, so I had to go hunting. That didn't go so well. I was wary of every creature at first, trying to fight without being hurt, but one strange creature ended that attempt by biting the back of my arm.

“Ow! S**t!”

I then beat down the animal and tore at it with all my might, taking out my anger, temporarily forgetting all about the meat. I pulled it by the tail back to my tree, leaving streaks of dark blood on the dirt and grass. By that time it was night, I was sore, tired, and too hungry to go on. I barely was able to climb back up the tree to sleep. I didn't RC...I didn't want to. I knew where I was, that dream or no dream I couldn't change anything about my situation. I thought about Mia, and cried. Thinking of her made me want to read the Bible, but I could not, because I didn't have one with me, and my mind was too dulled and emotional to recall any memorized verses.

I ended up falling asleep that night with rain pouring through the leaky roof of the wooden tree house. About the only good thing about it was that it cleaned the wound on my arm.

The next day, I got out of the tree to find yesterday's kill completely devoured by other creatures.

“D*m* it!”

I spent the day hunting, and this time I got the meat from the kill right away, made a fire, and tried to cook it as best as possible. It tasted horrible; tough and dry, with no seasoning or spice to it at all. But it was food. I couldn't appreciate it, though. Not doing it for myself. There was no love in that; only hatred. Hatred for the G-Man, hatred for the pesky animals, hatred for my situation, even hatred for myself. By the end of that month, I was as much an animal as the beasts that I killed. My muscles were all huge and solid, my hair long and rough, and my mouth foul. I didn't pray, I didn't think about the Bible...all I thought about was Mia during the day, and the G-Man and the dead man during the night. Many times I was afraid that I had heard the cry of that demon in the night, when it would turn out to be a bird or some other creature.

It was only a month, but it seemed an eternity.

Finally the day came where I climbed back up into the tree house and found Dr. Augustine there. She was examining some pictures of Mia I had drawn on tree bark and hung on the walls.

“Excellent work.” She said.

I glared at her.

“I ought to kill you.”

“I don't. Make. The rules. Besides, you get to see Mia now, because I'm going to take you to her. You should be happy to see me again.”

“I'm happy just to see another living soul again! I've been here alone for far too long. I just wish it didn't have to be you or anyone associated with the d*m* DNA.”

“Tough luck. Come on, buddy.”

I was taken to a car with the DNA logo on the side, put in, and driven to what Grace said was my third and final test environment.

When we got there, I looked out the window to behold a huge mansion.

“And that is your new home.” said the doctor.

“You serious? It's fu**ing huge!”

“And this time, no rations.”

“What!? How am I supposed to live? There are no animals in this place!”

“No rations. You get ten million dollars to spend however you wish; on food, clothes, whatever.”

“You're kidding.”

She shook her head.

“Holy s**t!” I laughed. “Well this will be a breeze after living in the woods for so long.”

“Well good luck, then. Here's the key. The place is yours. After one month here, we're shipping you back home. Make the most of it.”

“Yeah, seriously!” I said, taking the key and dashing out the door.

When I got inside, the place was incredible; three stories high and hundreds of rooms on each floor. There was a fountain in the middle of the entrance area, and huge stair cases on both sides. Mia was there, and saw me come in from the top of one of the stair cases. She called out my name, and I called out hers, and we ran to meet each other.

“What happened to you!?” she asked. “You're filthy! And your clothes...they're all torn up!”

“They made me live out in a tree house for the past month! A d*m* tree house! Rations came only once a week; I had to hunt for the rest.”

“You poor thing! Come on, let's get you to the shower. There's clothes and everything you need up in the master bedroom.”

She led me upstairs and to the room she spoke of. It was an amazing place; the bed was big enough for someone 9 feet tall to comfortably fit in, and the accommodations in the bathroom were just as extravagant. Mia was just about to leave so I could get cleaned up, but I turned and put her hands in mine before she could.

“I'm afraid that if I let you go I'll never see you again.” I said.

She smiled.

“I'll wait right outside. Not a step farther away.”

“Thank you.”

It was great to get cleaned up after a month of filthiness. After a shower in the bathtub with jets and floor lamps, I trimmed my hair and shaved in front of a fifty-foot mirror. I never could get over the fact that was a multimillionaire and this was my new home for the next month. I didn't care, though. I knew how to live without money at all. It was Mia that I cared about.

When I went into the bedroom to get dressed, I noticed a PDA on the bed. It hadn't been there before. I picked out an outfit and tried to ignore the device...but somehow it grabbed my attention. I touched the screen, and it turned on. A man with a gnarled, wrinkled face wearing a suit appeared on the screen. He was hideous. I didn't even need to ask to know he was the G-Man.

“You son of a bit**! What do you want with me?”

“Careful. Don't forget who gave you all this, and Mia.” He said in his usual, slow and devious manner.

“Who the h*ll are you, really?”

He ignored me.

“I'm here to tell you about this device. This is what you will use this month to do everything.”

“Like what? Why would I use s**t that you and your half-a**ed guards sneaked into this place?”

“You will use it to make purchases.” He continued, undaunted.

The screen changed to illustrate what he was talking about.

“I have made hundreds of bookmarks for you. Web stores, magazines, everything is all right here for you at the touch of a button. There's even vast adult web content available at low prices.”

“I'm not interested in adult web content.”

“We shall see.”

And with that, he was gone. Mia knocked on the door.

“Is someone in there with you?”

I turned to look at the door.

“Oh. No! No, just talking to myself.”

When I looked back down at the device, the G-Man had made it automatically switch to one of those bookmarked adult web pages.

“D*m* it!”

I tapped the home button on the PDA and shoved it into my pocket. Then I opened the door for Mia.

There was something about the way she turned to look at me that made her stunningly beautiful in the red dress she was in.

“Mia...there's something I have—I need—to tell you.”

“You can tell me anything.”

“Mia...” I took her hands in mine again. “I love you.”

I saw a tear form in the corner of her eye, and then she threw her arms around me.

“I thought I'd never get the chance to hear you say it!”

Things went very well the rest of that day. Mia and I went exploring the huge house, uninterrupted by anyone else. Since many rooms were empty, we also did some shopping. Well, I did, anyway. I told Mia I would order things; I didn't show her just how. See, I couldn't delete the bookmarks on the device, and I didn't want Mia to find them and think that I had put them there. So a 70-inch plasma screen TV, a water slide for the backyard pool, paintings by famous artists, you name it, all came in without Mia ever knowing just how I was ordering.

It would have been a good month, except for the fact that Mia and I got so caught up in riches that we left behind the Bible and God and lived for ourselves. We couldn't leave our estate because guards would stop us, so marriage wasn't an option, and therefore, rather than make the right choices, we simply started sleeping together. But our love was quickly turning to selfishness, and so more and more those bookmarks became a temptation for me.

Eventually, I resisted no more. I thought Mia was on the other side of the mansion, so I pulled out the device and opened the first bookmark in the list. Not ten minutes later, Mia came back and found me there with the device. And yes, she did think I had put the bookmarks there. But that hardly mattered now; I had given into them, which was a far worse deed.

In the middle of our argument over the issue, blue lights shone from us both, and we were taken to the cement place I had first arrived at. Grace wasn't there, the G-Man wasn't there, but we could hear his voice.

“You claimed to love this woman, but look at what you did!” His spine-chilling voice shouted.

Then we were transported back to the first test room.

“Remember what you were? Look at yourself now!”

This time, only I had the blue light. Mia grabbed for me.

“Mia! Don't!”

She didn't have time. I was transported to the dark hallway with the pipes, and I was utterly alone, standing beneath the only light in the entire place. Behind me I heard the cry of the dead man again, but when he rounded the corner, I saw not just him, but an army of dead men behind him.

I swore and ran away. They advanced behind me, faster and faster. I took twists and turns down the hallway, but at one point I had three options. Back, left, or right. Behind me was darkness and dead men, so I turned left. To my horror, more dead men swarmed in on that side of me as well. I screamed and ran, the decaying, limping bodies crying out after me.

I began to realize as I ran that even the bright moments had been deception the past three months. It was all a trick, all a lie, and I had given into it all. I had been weak and easily decieved, I had become the very thing I hated, and now I was about to be destroyed by the very thing I feared most.

I was lucid, but I couldn't wake up, I couldn't fight, I couldn't flee. The worst fear I've ever had set in as I realized that as far as reality was concerned, this was real, and there was no escaping it.

There was one last corner for me to go around, but when I did, the army of dead men was already there. I was trapped this time. Quickly, I searched for more boxes, and found them, but knocking them over did no good. Hundreds of zombies were on both sides of me this time, and they were very strong. I held up the walls with my own hands and feet, but I knew I was only prolonging the inevitable. I couldn't hold them off forever, and there was nowhere else to go. They reached their decaying hands through holes in between boxes and clawed desperately at me in the darkness.

Cusses and swears came from my mouth, and then the G-Man joined in the racket with his wicked laughter.

“You wanted to find right and truth.” He said, still slowly, his voice still quivering, and chilling as ever. “Well, you found it. Or should I say...you found them.”

“What!? These are you. You!”

“No, these are you.”

I finally began to understand, but I didn't want to.

“No, no, no, no!” I cried.

“Yeessss.” The G-Man hissed. “Every one of them is a work of yours; a tragedy. Weren't you a Christian? Then look around you.”

The armies of dead men began to cry louder and beat harder against the walls of boxes.

“You see? All there is...is tragedy. So much for Christianity.”

“This can't be right. This can't be true. This isn't. It isn't!” I tried to convince myself, and control the dream. It was no use. I was still pinned, growing weaker by the moment.

That speech seemed to crush everything about me; like the past three months had all been a sick game played just to prove to me that I would give into temptation if put in the wrong environments for enough time.

Suddenly the pressure against the boxes eased, and the zombies were gone...or so I thought.

A moment later, their faces came into view by the thousands, all behind one gnarled and twisted face of an old man that appeared right in front of me.

“Tragedy is all that is, and that is what makes it right. It's Murphy. It's all...just...a matter...of...time.”

With that, the G-Man snapped his fingers, and all was snuffed out in darkness. I wasn't in body then, but spectating, and I zoomed out and saw a briefcase being closed over my clipboard of papers. When it shut, the ten stars on the DNA symbol lit up.

“We have his DNA now. I just hope it was worth doing to the poor fellow.” A rather heavy government worker said as he picked it up.

The G-Man was sitting behind a desk, which I saw as things continued to zoom out.

“Trust me. All of it is in that DNA. Right and wrong, good and evil...it's all pointless and meaningless...a fabrication of fragile, disgusting humanity. With this DNA, we have the ability to decide for ourselves what is good, and what is evil.”

“You better be right.”


And then I woke up with a start. I might need to illustrate this a bit, since just reading it is not nearly as scary. I've never felt so scared, so betrayed, so deceived...I became a wicked, wicked person, not all that unlike who I really am, just less bridled. It's a very sobering story, especially since the G-Man's face and that line “It's Murphy. It's all...just...a matter...of...time” are not unfamiliar to me. I saw them both early on as a little kid. I called the G-Man “the gray man who stands next to my bed and brings dreams to me.” And he said that line more than once before.

If there's not something of the devil involved in all this, I don't know where it came from...

EDIT: A couple illustrations can be found here. I didn't spend too long on them, but the first one is pretty accurate, and the second one is exactly right.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I think my new reality check is working! The great thing is, I should be able to continue to do it every day, even on busy weekends, so hopefully a day without RCs won't have a chance to mess me up anymore!

As you may have guessed, that means I went lucid again last night. And I mean REALLY lucid this time. I've never had a clearer LD before. And even though I didn't remember to go to Pandora like I originally set out to do, it was pretty freaking awesome. I honestly didn't ever want to wake up from it

I'm not exactly sure how I went lucid. The first thing I remember was being lucid, so perhaps I realized I was dreaming from the very beginning. I was in the world of the Matrix, right down to the atmosphere being dark and having the sunglasses and black clothes on.

I found myself in a storage room at the basement level of some building. Currently nothing was happening, so I decided to take the time to really clear up the dream. I walked around and touched everything I saw, enjoying actually having the right sensation for each texture. But eventually I came across a rusted pipe in the wall that felt smooth. "That's not right..." I thought. So I concentrated on what rusty metal should feel like, and gradually the proper sensation came to me. When that was done I rubbed my hands. "I really want this to last a while. Heck, I hope I never wake up!" By now, the dream was as clear as real life...clearer, even. I could forget that I even had a body elsewhere and just live as if this was life. But then I stopped myself. "If I forget this is a dream, I won't be lucid anymore. So I still need to remember that...but how?" Then it hit me. I pinched my nose and breathed in without problem. "Now I know." I said to myself, aloud this time.

Now it was time to have some fun. Being the Matrix, I just had to try out a few moves. Flips, kicks...I could do it all. If it felt like I wasn't going to land right, I'd just suspend myself in the air for a half-second so that I could regain my footing. I intentionally didn't just fly, since that would eliminate all challenge and make things much less enjoyable.

Playtime was over pretty soon, though. Trinity walked up to me from behind a stack of boxes. I didn't think about it at the time, but it was incredible how realistic she was. Not cartoony at all like regular dreams make people. There was seriously no visual difference between seeing her in the dream and seeing her in the second movie. She was in the shiny biker outfit. "Someone's hacking the Matrix," she said. "We have to find him quick. He's causing all sorts of trouble, and who knows what he'll do if he's left to run rampant." We quickly found out. Viperwolves appeared all around us right then. Why this didn't remind me that I was intending to go to Pandora I don't know. Trinity held up her fists and got into a ready position, but I held up a hand in her direction and said, "Hold on, I got this." Then I reached out with my other hand and used telekinesis on the viperwolf nearest to me. It whined in pain as I held it suspended in air, slowly crushing it into a ball. When it gave in and stopped trying to fight, I threw it across the room and into a wooden rail. It smashed right through the wood, breaking the rail and killing the viperwolf. Trinity sharply turned her head towards me as I did the same towards her. We nodded to each other, and then she ran off to drive the viperwolves in my direction, and as they came, I promptly picked them up with a thought and smashed them onto the concrete floor, into the ceiling, or anything else that looked like it would do them damage. Most of the time I only tried to grab one at a time, but for a final, climactic blow, I picked up about five of them at once, crushed them, and then threw them off to the side.

After a few moments of waiting to see if any more would come, I suddenly was drawn out of myself and flown around outside like an invisible security camera. I was 'decoding the Matrix'. Soon, as I was pulled back into my dream body, I nearly fell down from the transition. Trinity saw it, and was worried. "What happened?" She asked, rushing over to me. "I...I saw the hacker." I regained my balance. "He's up three stories. Door to the fire escape. Go!"

We made it outside and looked at the fire escape, but pretty soon a problem became evident to us both. Trinity was the first to speak it out loud. "You say he's coming out that door?" I nodded. "He'll see us and turn around unless we get up there really quick." "You know what, Trinity? You're right." So I ran up to the wall and then began running right up the side of the building. I reached the top and then did a flip off of it, landing right on my feet outside the door, just as it began to open. Standing there was a bald man with a scruffy goatee, dirty clothes, and a gun. He took his shot and sent a bullet right through my gut, but I healed myself instantly, so there was hardly even any blood loss. So next the hacker tried to punch me, but with both attempts I reached up and deflected his blows. "I know jujitsu." I said, intentionally copying Neo's line. It was an all-out fight after that, going back inside the top floor of the building, but unfortunately, this is where my dream recall starts to fade. No doubt about it, I was still lucid, and the fight was long, intense, and incredible, just like you'd expect from a Matrix fight. I remember running off walls and doing some crazy awesome kicks, but of course it wasn't an immediate victory for me. I was hurt a couple times, and being such a vivid dream, it really did hurt. I believe it all ended when I grabbed the guy and flew him back outside, smashing down the door in the process, and then flying down into the ground and crushing him into the concrete. Soon after that, I woke up.

Honestly, I'm glad I didn't go to Pandora as I had planned to. It's probably not as exciting to read about, but it sure was an incredible experience going through it!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Well, that was a weird experience...last night, I mean.

The first dream I had, I went lucid. I didn't have time to do anything, though, because there was a man standing in front of me. "I am The Guardian, and The Guide." He said. I tried moving...and found myself unable to. "Listen to me, because this is very important: you will not be able to dream again tonight. If you follow my instruction, there is a chance you will, but you have to do everything perfectly." He then went on with his instruction, but being unable to move, I gradually lost lucidity and eventuallywoke up.

Weird, weird experience. Especially because...he was right! After that, I couldn't enter SP for long enough to dream. Whether I went into it intentionally or unintentionally, the SP would simply break after a few moments, and I could never hold on to any of the dreams that began to form . I couldn't even remember what the guy had told me to do in order to successfully dream. When it reached 6:00 or so, I managed to dream, but it was another dumb one, and not lucid.

I applied for a job at a cookie dough factory. I didn't get the job, but all of my would-be co-workers really wanted me to get it. This one odd girl especially wouldn't give up on me. She said it was just because I didn't know baking well enough, and that if I created an original recipe to sell to the company, they'd hire me in no time. With her minor assistance, then, I did just that (yep, right in the factory...no one told the manager I was there). It was late in the day by that point, so she told me that she'd keep the first batch of the new recipe in a safe place so I could show it to the manager the next day. That sounded fine to me, but when the next day came, I arrived at the factory to find everyone cheering on this odd girl for her new recipe...which was actually mine! "Oh, you gotta be kidding me!" I said to myself as I turned and left.

I don't think I'll ever understand how some of my dreams can be super-awesome and some can be super-stupid...like that one...