Nazrax

Side-note Third-person Dreamsign

The documentary
I see a couple of people on a mountain trail. The trail itself is has a good slope; on one side is a steep incline up, and on the other side is a dropoff. Up-hill is fairly barren, but the valley below them is very green. It's a man and woman; they're fairly plain, wearing generic exploring / hiking clothing. They're near some kind of broken-down building. My viewpoint is from uphill, looking downhill towards them.

Now, the view shifts to look down the trail, some theme music starts, and a guy rides up on a raptor. He looks very dapper, with slicked back hair and finer clothing. He's doing some kind of documentary of the area. Unfortunately, it's a mess of different territories, so the woman with him is there to manage the beurocracy and get them permission to go where they need to.
Initially, I think they're at a state park in the US, but then the guy on the raptor talks, and his accent is funny. I decide they're in Canada, just across the border.

At some point, I switch to watching them from behind a chainlink fence. From this viewpoint, the valley is again behind them.


Captain's Journal
A young man is staying with a well-to-do family. He's interested in starting a relationship with their daughter. In talking with the father, they decide that, even though the relationship is new, there's enough interest between the man and daughter that they should be courting.

Now he's downstairs, talking with another man. This man tells him that the father is an old captain and that his journal is hidden in a crack near the bed. The young man is very curious and decides to look for it.

Now I'm in a hallway with the young man. A single bookshelf is by the wall with a lot of books put on it in no particular order or arrangement. I pick up a book at random, open it to a random page, and start reading. It's something out of the Wheel of Time. In the scene I'm reading, Rand and Perrin are doing something around a camp fire. It's not a scene I'm familiar with.


Approved hardware
I'm lying on a bed, lost in thought. my wife is sitting on the bed, doing something. On her nightstand, a phone is in speakerphone mode, connected to a conference call at work. I become aware that someone just asked me a question, but I have no idea what it was. I try to answer vaguely, hoping to get an idea of what the conversation is about and what the question was; but the person asking sounds like they know I wasn't paying attention, and they're being careful not to clue me in. Eventually, I just ask for the question to be repeated.

Infra wants to know why I want to have a port opened on the Sonic firewall, since that's such an inflexible solution, and why I can't use one of the prebaked packages with connectivity built into it. Now I'm looking at a list of the available packages.

Now I'm looking at a list of recommended hardware. Each piece of hardware has an accompanying video showing the testing it went through. Now I'm looking at a video of someone testing a microphone. It's a traditional mic, silver, about an inch thick with a 2-inch ball on the end, with a cord coming out of the bottom. He's holding it up high in the air, an expression of excitement on his face, as he proclaims this is the best microphone EVER, and it's only 10 cents.

Now I'm watching them test headphones. Each pair of headphones they try has a pair of RCA connections at the end of the cable, which I think is odd. Now I'm watching them test amplifiers. They go through three or four of them, each looking exactly the same, each time doing the same thing. First, they turn it on, and a female computer voice announces the name of the amp. Next, on the left side, near the front, they plug in a small card with 3 RCA jacks (yellow, white, red) on the edge. Then, they hook speakers to the white and red jacks, leaving the yellow unplugged.

They're unhappy with each of the storebought ones, so the last one they try is homemade (though it looks identical to the others). According to the announcer, the name of this amp is "Shock Hazard." They're very pleased with it and declare it to be the winner.


Bee Powers
This one is kind of fuzzy, and the scene changes don't make a lot of sense, but I think I have it in the right order.

I'm in a living room watching a movie. The TV is a fairly large one mounted in the middle of a whole-wall entertainment center. My wife and I are standing behind a couple of plush recliners; someone else is sitting in one of them. The movie is about supernatural forces. Somehow, in conjunction with the movie, we find that my wife has been given the ability to read Bee Writing. She's holding a small piece of paper (about the size of a large Post-It note) covered in it. It reminds me of an Eastern writing system, something like Hiragana. At first, she's just staring at it, saying it doesn't look like anything; then she gets a funny expression and says she got a glimmer of meaning; then she says she can read it easily.

Now I'm in Publix at the checkout counter. It's more like the customer service area, since I'm behind a counter and the cashier (a young woman) and bagger (a young man) are standing in a clear space behind it. They're both turned away from me, doing something with the bags. On a nearby TV, I note that there's a commercial talking about the excellent customer service you always get at Publix, and it's showing a live feed of the employees completely ignoring me.
A manager walks over, tells me it'll just be another minute, and walks away.

The cashier turns around, tells me that I don't have to swipe my credit card yet if I don't want to, then turns back to the bags. I look down at the cash register and see it's showing me a prompt asking me if I want to preswipe my card to save time, YES/NO. I ignore it. While I've been waiting, a couple of other people have gotten in line behind me, and another guy has tried to go to the side, skipping line.

Now the line has turned somehow. It's going back and forth between guide rails, and I'm somewhere near the middle of the pack. I look at the line behind me and realize there's a guy near me that I haven't seen in years. We start talking. Now the line is moving, and we're making progress towards the cashier.

Now someone past the next turn makes a snide comment to me. As I turn to see who said it, someone else with me uses some kind of psionic power. Now I see who made the comment: it's an older woman with straggly salt-and-pepper hair. Due to the psionic attack, she's got a whole bunch of her hair in her mouth, and she can't get it out. She's making MMM MMM noises. Somehow, I know this is related to my wife mysteriously learning to read another language.

Now I'm in our bedroom. My wife is heading downstairs, closing a baby gate on the landing as she goes. I pick up and start to organize a box of cards, and I see that all the cards have Bee Writing on them. I realize there must have been some catalyst to cause my wife to learn to read it, and I intend to try to figure out what it is. I decide it must be either her new pajamas or her quilt. I don't really want to wear her pajamas, since that would look very silly, so I decide to try the quilt.

I curl up on the floor and cover myself with it. After just a few seconds, a very strange feeling washes over me. I take the quilt off and stand up, then grab a card from the box. I'm disappointed it's still completely unintelligible, but I keep looking at it. When I see it out of the corner of my eye, I get the feeling there's something there, but I can't make it out. Now I start to get the impression that some of the Bee words are overlaid / mixed with regular English words. Suddenly, the whole thing "snaps," and I see plain English words written on the card with no sign of Bee.

Now my wife's with me, and we're talking about it. I tell her the quilt was responsible, and that while I'm excited that I can read it now, I'm disappointed that I'm no longer consciously aware of the Bee, since that means I can't describe how to translate it.