Nazrax

Shooting from cover
I'm playing an FPS, but I'm actually in it. In front of me is a long hallway with a humanoid robot sentry at the end. I need to try to take him down before I continue. Between my spot and his there's no cover at all; where I am there's poor cover, but at least it's something. Taking aim, I start to fire, and I see my shots streaking down the hallway. Moments later, he starts to return fire. I'm easily able to move back and forth to dodge his shots, and I'm glad to see he doesn't seem to be dodging mine. In fact, as I move, he's unable to immediately start firing at my new position; instead, it's almost as if he can only rotate slowly as the line of tracers slowly comes towards me. After a few moments, another robot appears next to the first. Dodging two streams is certainly harder but not impossible, and I continue to fire. Now I start getting hit (though not hurt; my armor absorbs the shots). I'm confused until I realize there's a third stream coming from the enemy area, and that it's coming from some kind of turret above the robots. It's less powerful than they are, but its shots are very fast and much harder to dodge; it's also able to track much faster than the humanoid bots. I'm slowly moving to the right to stay ahead of the sweep of gunfire, but I'm worried since I haven't seen a gap I can make use of to slide back to the left, and I'm almost to a spot where I can't move any more. I realize my dog's old cage is to my right and I dive in. I'm hoping they'll have trouble targeting me in here and maybe reset where they're firing at so I can get a few more good shots in.

I've clearly been playing too much Epoch recently. It's a "cover shooter" that plays out almost exactly like this.


Underground complex
I'm in some kind of underground complex. In most of the rooms, you can't even tell it's underground, though the lack of windows may be a strong hint. One room I walk through has a suspended walkway going up and down and back and forth, looking rather fun. Stairs up to it are on one side of the room; at the other end it goes through into another room. I'd like to follow it, but there are a bunch of kids playing on it and I don't feel like trying to get past them. Somehow I'm able to see part of the next room and decide to go there. Now I'm in another room trying to find the room I saw earlier. I can't get wall lengths to line up right in my head, and I can't find that room. Now I'm back in the walkway room, up on the walkway, looking over a railing. I try to take a good mental snapshot of what I'm seeing. Now I'm back in the other room. After a moment of searching, I find the balcony I was looking down from, and that's enough to orient me so that I can find a hallway leading to the room I wanted.

Now I'm in a medium-sized room, probably about fifteen by fifteen feet. I'm in one corner rifling through a built-in cabinet. I find some haphazard piles of books along with some movies. A late thirties woman is there leading a group of kids through exercises. They're all dressed in fairly tight fitting black shirts and pants. Looking at the kids, I realize they're all special needs. Once the class ends, I get into conversation with her and find out that she's a special needs trainer of some, focusing on ??? (workouts?) instead of more traditional therapy. She tells me she got into it because her own daughter has special needs, and that this method seems to work well. Now she's asking the kids if they want to watch a movie. After a resounding chorus of "Yes!", she goes to the cabinet and pulls out the very videos I was looking at. I'm glad I left them where they were and didn't take anything. She offers them to the kids. Against one wall I see a tall rolling cart holding a TV (CRT) and DVD player.

Now I'm driving into the complex's parking deck with my family. I want to show my wife something. The deck isn't finished yet; it's obviously still under construction, though it's usable. Now we're parked and trying to find the way inside. We see a handful of workers come out of a tunnel. Now we're trying to enter the tunnel, but we find it's not yet ready for use. Backtracking, we find a better-looking tunnel and follow it. We run into the job foreman and start talking to him. He makes excuses but my wife will hear none of them. She marches to the "employees only" (though the wording is different) door. There's a sign instructing visitors to enter a code on a keypad, but she ignores it, instead pushing on the door. At that moment someone inside opens it, so she's able to go right in. The foreman isn't happy but doesn't force her out. The door is remarkably wide.


Exploding experiment
I'm walking with an older man through his house. We enter a room at the end of the house full of strange equipment. He's an inventor, and this is his workshop. He walks to a counter on the side of the room, picks up a small slip of paper, and reads it. It's a report of one of his experiments. He says something about ??? fifteen. Somehow he realizes another test is in progress, and he panics. He rushes to a 1-inch red pipe on the wall and turns the cut-off valve; then to be really sure he gives it a strong yank and breaks it in two. For a moment he looks relieved, then something behind us bursts into flame. We have to get out of here. Now we're racing through the house, burning goopy black stuff following us. Somehow I know it's slightly intelligent and rather malicious. We reach the living room and the man does something to cause a large hole in the floor to appear - some kind of escape tunnel in case something went wrong. All the humans in the room jump in. Other small creatures are around, but they're not real, so they don't need to escape.

Now we're outside the house having come out of the escape tunnel, standing next to a car in a driveway. We watch the whole house go up in a giant fireball.

Now I'm walking down the road with my family. We've decided to go to the nearby public school, find an empty classroom, and read for a while. We see a few school buses on the road and wonder if we're too early or too late, if maybe all the rooms will be in use. As we're walking along I have to keep ducking under (or moving) bush branches. At one point, my wife and I somehow end up walking along holding each other up, more for fun that because we need to.


Voicemail and plumbing
I'm in a fairly small, bare, carpeted room. I'm on the phone fighting with the new voice mail system at work. The old one was great; numbers for everything ("Please press one for ..."), favorites, etc. Sending a voicemail was as easy as pressing the key to send voice mail, followed by the "favorites" key, followed by the number of the favorite I was sending to (assuming it was someone I often send voicemail to). Three key presses which could be entered one right after another, nice and quickly. The new system uses voice recognition, expects you to wait for the full prompt, and doesn't have favorites. It expects you slowly to speak the whole phone number you're sending to. I try using the keypad anyway, and it works for the phone number but not for the menus. I try to think what the best place is to report my intense dissatisfaction with this change.


Now I'm in the nearby bathroom. It's pretty dark, even though I've turned the light on. I realize that, though I've flipped the switch, the light is still off. Looking around, I see that the toilet has been unbolted and moved, and I assume someone must have turned off the breaker to avoid problems with the toilet. I realize there's a bad drip coming from the ceiling. Now I'm elsewhere in the house talking to my wife. She's not surprised when I mention the drip, saying it's been like that ever since we moved in, but it was such a small leak that it only occasionally got a bit of bread in the bath water. I explain that it may have always been there, but it used to be so gradual I never noticed it; but now it's dripping every couple of seconds, and it'll destroy the ceiling if we don't stop it. We're in the dining room, and I can see through the windows that it's raining. Maybe that's why the leak is worse now than usual.


Short dreams
I'm with my wife in a hotel room. We're on some sort of long trip (we've been away from home for weeks), and we're both tired. She's laying down on her bed and I'm moving around doing something. Suddenly, I get really really tired and I mention it to her, noticing that she also seems to have lost all energy. I realize her sister is doing something to drain energy from us and I mention it, but my wife just thinks it's the long trip. Some comments are made about the kids.

I'm on back roads somewhere, waiting at a stop sign at a T intersection, getting ready to turn left. Now I've turned left and am approaching another intersection. This one also has a stop sign; but the intersection is big enough that there's a left turn lane as well as a go straight lane. There's already a car here waiting its turn to go straight, with another behind it half in the straight lane and half in the left turn lane. I can only assume he decided at the last minute to turn left, though I'm not sure why he can't just pull all the way forward and out of the straight lane. I wait behind both of them in the go-straight lane.


Fragment
Something about church and changing pants in the bathroom. The church building is huge.