memorable

As far as I can tell, this dream didn't actually go lucid. Recently, I've been telling myself over and over that "I will fly when I dream!" - it seems my subconscious finally picked up on it, even if I wasn't lucid at the time. As for the candy? Maybe I was reliving my completion of the basic TOTM?

I'm in a wooded area with a group of people doing outdoor activities. From a clearing with the remains of a campfire, I've been walking certain paths over and over. The proper path goes to the left, nearly hits the road, turns right, and runs generally parallel to the road, snaking back and forth without ever getting too far from the road. In the clearing, I realize that if I walk straight ahead through a few feet of trees and underbrush, I'll come out on a second path which has a much broader sweep, with a swampy area to the right, eventually hitting the first path right as they cross the road. I like the second path much better and decide to use it.

Now I'm crossing the road. I don't pay attention and get hit by a car. Now I'm walking down a hallway towards a window. I step through the open window and over a small flower garden, coming out in the clearing. I see someone else from my group taking my cut through the trees to the second path and decide that I'm going to take the main path and try to beat him. I start to jog along the path.

When it meets the road and turns to the right, it goes down a long, moderate incline before it starts to snake. As I pass the top of the incline, I leap into the air, hold my arms straight in front of me (Superman style), and glide down the hill. Looking to my right through the trees, I can see the other guy. We're at around the same place, and I still want to beat him. As I glide down the hill, I quickly pick up speed. At the bottom, I "pull up" and am really pleased when I gain some good altitude - probably about ten feet. I don't want to loose too much speed and stall out, so I angle myself just slightly towards the ground and keep going. Ahead of me, the path kinks to the right and back to the left, going around* a tree limb at a bad height, but I fly right over it. As I'm flying I try both Superman arms-in-front as well as pretending my arms are wings and holding them to the side. They both work equally well.

Now I'm at the road crossing. I'm a bit nervous about crossing the road flying, just in case something goes wrong, but I've got enough speed and altitude that I'm confident I'll make it. I get across with no problem. Past the road, the path becomes wider and grassy and forks. I can go either straight ahead and then right, or I can turn immediately right. Somehow I know that ahead-and-right will be fairly flat while immediate-right will be downhill, so I turn right. It's even wider here, probably twenty or thirty feet, straight and smooth (it'd make a great ski run). I go down it faster and faster, picking up more and more speed.

At the bottom I "pull up" and shoot way into the air, higher than the trees, high enough to see both paths clearly, high enough to see the wooded areas as just a big blob of dark green and the paths as blobs of light green. I have a brief thought that I shouldn't be cheating like this, but I don't care. I fly a little high in the air until I see a brown patch that's a building at the end of the trails. I start to descend towards it. It rapidly becomes bigger, though it only becomes slightly more detailed - it looks like a falling-to-earth effect from an old SNES game. As I get closer, I see a brown boxy shape with square child icons moving around inside it, representing the building and the locations of the people inside it.

Now I'm in the house,* in a smallish room. A bunch of kids are moving in and out of the room, trick-or-treating. I know I have to get some of their candy, but I know it'll be easy: all I have to do is put out a container with at least one empty slot, and the next kid to come by will fill it (they have very basic behaviors coded). I put out some kind of flat partitioned container and take a lemon Starburst from one of the corner spots. I end up focusing on the Star Burst and ignoring the rest of the candy. Now I'm chewing the Starburst and holding the empty wrapper, playing with it.

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.

October 13, 2013

A side-note
A lucid dream
A dreamsign

These dreams came after insomnia kept me awake from 1:30 to 4:30. Before going back to bed, I listened to the dreaming self-hypnosis files I made for myself.

Drugs at a wedding
I'm at a wedding with my wife. We're walking around "back stage." Lots of people are moving around, getting ready. We pass the photographer's area and see at least half a dozen giant camera lenses - they're inches wide and at least a couple of feet long. I think ruefully back to the few weddings we shot with our "cheap" DSLR.

Now I'm standing above the seats. The place looks like a concert hall, with the seats in a semicircle around the stage. The floor is incredibly sloped, going down at at least a 45 degree angle. There are countless rows, so the stage is far, far below me. The curtains are still drawn. My wife is sitting on the top row, which is still a good 10 feet below me. Her chair is all by itself, with a table and lamp next to it. I realize she'd expected that I would sit with my friends while she stayed in the back to feed the baby. Now I'm next to her, seeing if there are any seats nearby we can move to and sit together.

Now we see a group of her old friends a few rows beneath us. They see us, too, and are waving at us to come down to them. Now we're with her friends. They're in a roughly circular area that's clear of chairs. I don't know any of them, so I'm staying at the edge of the clearing, near the chairs. I want to sit down, but even though this area doesn't have many people sitting in it, they're sitting in such a way that no three adjacent seats are empty: if I'm going to sit, I'm going to have to sit next to someone. I finally resign myself to it and sit by a stranger.

Now my wife is gone - I don't know where to - and her friends are acting very strange, very loopy. They're trying to give me something that will make me feel really good. I don't know what's going on, but I want no part of it, so I start to walk away. A girl from the group comes running around in front of me and tries to slap something on me. I don't know what she's doing, but I'm sure it's nothing good, so I dodge. I think she missed me, but then I notice there's a small sticker on my nose. With horror, I realize it must be some kind of drug patch. I try to peel it off, but it's too late. I feel the drug start to take effect, and the world slips away.

Now I'm on a pool deck. I feel very strange, and I'm not myself. I think I'm a mouse, though I'm really just very small. A tiny dog is nearby. The deck furniture towers around us. We swim out into the pool and make it to a small floating platform, which we climb onto. I manage to tie the platform to the dog, then we both jump back in and swim back to the pool deck, with the dog dragging the platform behind itself.

Now I'm in a dusty town. Something is wrong, though I'm not sure what. I see the town sheriff and deputy go up to a large door with two keyholes. They each take a key, insert it into a keyhole, and turn at the same time. Somehow, I know that they were given these keys by a stranger, and that by unlocking this door they've corrupted themselves and unleashed destruction on the town. Now I'm running from something in the town.

Now I'm running down a wide hallway when giant yellow squash, a.k.a. Squashers, come bounding in from the other direction. I hope they didn't see me and try to get out of their way, but one veers off towards me. As it's pushing me towards the back wall, I wonder what it's like to be killed in a dream. That stray thought gets me lucid.

Candy and flying
Now I'm in a small room, the size of a small closet. It's kind of like a little tiny cubicle, since it's not actually closed on all four sides. At this point, as is usual for my lucid dreams, I'm still following the dream's plot. I decide to make the room bigger, so I point at one of the unconnected edges, then move my finger, and the edge of the wall follows my finger, growing longer. I make a similar gesture and push the wall back.

Then I remember that I have 2 goals I want to accomplish (flying and one of the basic tasks of the month, eating candy) and I should be doing those instead. I decide to tackle eating candy first. I start to think about how best to summon some candy. I remember that most of my attempts at direct dream manipulation in the past have failed, so that's out. Believing that something exists behind me, then turning and finding it, has always had a great apeal to me; unfortunately, it's also always failed in the past. Then, I remember reading that ordering DCs to change the dream tends to be very reliable, so I decide to try it. I walk through the gap in the wall into a living room. A few women are sitting around on overstuffed chairs, some with ottomans, some without. I walk up to the nearest one. She's in a tan chair next to a small round side-table with a lamp, with her feet resting on an ottoman. She's wearing an intense blue, maybe a purple. I tell her to give me candy.

She looks up at me, and I see that she's a friendly middle-aged woman. She gives me a motherly smile, grabs her purse, and starts to look through it. It's packed full of odds and ends, but nothing looks like candy. She looks up at me, then points to a long, narrow, zippered bag (also a violent blue) on the ottoman. It's already open, and it's packed to overflowing with all sorts of candy. I pick it up and look through it. I remember that in the waking world I'd been planning to try to eat some chocolate, so I look for a chocolate bar. I manage to find a "Fun Size Snickers" bar near the top of the bag, so I take it. I tear off the wrapper and look at it. It looks just like a tiny square chocolate bar, with smooth brown sides and a wavy top. I take a bite through the middle; it tastes like chocolate. I look at the section I bit through and see that it looks like a Three Musketeers bar, but with a thin ribbon of dark chocolate running through the middle. It actually tastes about as it looks.

One goal finished, one to go. I leave the house through a sliding glass door. I find I'm at the top of a grassy hill. In front of me, the hill leads down to the ocean. I can see the waves lapping against a rocky shoreline with just a bit of sandy beach. Off to my right are a few trees. To my left, the grassy hill just goes down with nothing in the way. I turn to the left and start to run down the hill, then jump up and spread my arms like wings, holding them straight out to my sides. At the height of my jump, I'm three or four feet off the ground, but I quickly come back down and stabalize in a glide just a foot or two above the ground. It's not quite the flight I'd hoped for, but I'm still moving quickly through the air.

I'm half pleased, half disappointed. Gliding in the air was neat, but I'd really wanted to *fly*. Now I'm back at the top of the hill. I get another running start, jump, spread my arms, and start flapping. I have a clear picture of the roofline of the house - I believe I managed to hang in the air for a few seconds this time before coming back down. This time, I'm gliding so low that tall pieces of grass are hitting me in the face.


Motorcycle seat
I'm outside with Andrew, looking at his small motorcycle. He's trying to fix it, but he needs to go get something. He asks me to hold the bike while he steps away. Now I'm holding the bike, but I don't know why. Don't motorcycles have kickstands? I look down and see not one but two: one on the front-right, and one in the normal place at the back-left. Both kickstands are already down, so I gently let go of the bike to see what'll happen. The bike starts rolling forward, pushing the front-right kickstand back. The rear-left one is holding. I stop the bike and try to reposition it so that it'll stay up on its own.

Now Andrew is back out with another man, someone who looks at home on a motorcycle. There's something wrong with his seat. It's a piece of leather with a plaid pattern inserted into a square wood frame. During the cut, they removed the sealant keeping it watertight and pulled it up from the frame, away from the glue that held it down. They've fixed whatever the problem was and have re-glued it, but now they're worried about how to reseal it. They keep talking about using tape, but none of us likes that idea, since it wouldn't work very well, not to mention looking very tacky. I suggest using more of that same acrylic sealant that was used on it originally, but they shoot that idea down. They're fixated on trying different kinds of tape. I'm still convinced the clear sealant is the way to go, but I suggest they should call the motorcycle company and see if they can order some of the original compound. They consider the idea for a moment, then realize that it's a holiday so the company won't be open, and later in the week is an important company event, so they'll be too busy to talk to people about fixing broken seats.

October 8, 2013

Interstate lake and hotel telekenisis
I'm southbound on the Interstate with my family, approaching our exit, and I'm surprised at how light traffic is. On the exit ramp, traffic finally grinds to a halt.

Now we're still on the off-ramp, except it's for foot traffic, not for cars. It's a long, wide line of people. We're standing on the ramp looking over the railing at the lake beyond. At a distance a ways in front of us, a short, wide waterfall is dumping water into the lake. There's some kind of outlet to our right going under the Interstate. It's a beautiful clear day, and the water is very reflective. Most of the lake is smooth, except for near the waterfall and the outlet. The whole scene is incredibly beautiful.

Eventually, we realize the line in front of us has moved quite a ways, and there's a big gap that's opened. We leave the
lake and hurry to catch up so we don't inconvenience the people behind us. As we walk, I think about how we used to have 2 interstate 109's, that they were always congested, and how much better things have been since they combined them into a single wide road.

We walk up hill, turn corners, climb stairs, etc, until we finally come out in a small house. All our shoes are wet. My kids scatter and take off their shoes; I go after them to collect the shoes and make sure they don't get lost. I'm supposed to be meeting with someone, so I apologize that I need to get the shoes, and I'll be with him in a minute. He understands.

Now I'm talking with one of my church elders, except that in the dream he's my boss. He's explaining that they debated
about whether or not I needed a pager, and finally decided that they'd just give me an old one that someone else wasn't using any more. There's a buzzing/ringing coming from deep inside my backpack, and I know it's my new pager. I can picture it: an oblong ball, shaped to fit in the hand, with a large silver toggle switch and a launch button with a red cover. When I find it and pull it out, it doesn't look like that at all. The size and shape are about right, but instead of switches and buttons, it has various fold-down panels. I open the one on the front-top and find some sliding pieces. When two of the pieces are slid together, it's activated; but if the third is slid in place, the first two can't make contact. It's some kind of security measure to make sure it doesn't get activated by accident.

When I look up from fiddling with the pager, I find myself in a gigantic hotel. I'm not aware of the ceiling or the far walls. A golden statue is mounted high up on the wall near me. As I look at it, it starts to glow. After a moment, the eyes start to glow red. and I realize I've left it for too long. I make a tapping gesture towards it and knock it off the wall. Down the hall, a fat freestanding pillar falls over. I make a kind of lifting gesture towards it, and it goes flying back into the wall, shattering. This is fun!

Now I'm at the end of the hallway, in a lounge area (still too big to comprehend). There are sofas, tables, and chairs scattered around, with people milling. A woman walks past near me carrying a mug of coffee. I make a kind of two-handed pinching gesture, bringing my hands together, and her coffee (just the liquid) streams out of her mug and forms a sloshing ball in front of my hands. I bring my hands further apart, and the ball grows until it's bigger than a basket ball; then I make another gesture and launch it a woman sitting on a couch, getting her all wet (thankfully it wasn't hot).

Now I'm in another room, large yet comprehendable, with another statue. I'm doing something to it. I know that this is all part of an experimental gesture-based game on a new system Nintendo is going to be releasing soon. I wonder why Nintendo forbade developers from making games with any sort of violence, but then I realize that violence is always the easy option, and that this restriction forces developers to really be creative and use the system to its fullest potential. After the fun I had in the hotel, I'm glad they made the decision they did.

Nuts at Brusters
I'm at Brusters' with my wife and the kids. It's not a normal Brusters' - it's a large sit-down restaurant with dark
furnishings and low lights. You still have to go up to the cash register in the middle of the restaurant to place your order.
It's our turn to order. The cashier is a late 20s woman. While Bethany figures out what she's going to order, I get out my
cash to see if I have enough. I have a lot of trouble counting it, but I finally figure out that I have 3 5s and a handful of 1s. I also manage to find my Brusters' punchcard.

When I look back up, I realize my wife only ordered a small cup full of chopped nuts and is busy covering the nuts with chocolate syrup from the complementary syrup pump near the register. When I express my confusion, she says she wanted to save money by getting a topping to spruce up the ice cream we had at home. As we're leaving the restaurant, we run into the cashier, now wearing a jacket and heading the other way. It looks like we were her last customers for her shift.

Now we're outside the restaurant, walking on a sidewalk to the parking lot. I'm in the rear, making sure the kids all stay
with us. There are a lot of people out here and it's hard to keep them all in sight.


The Robinsons' house
I'm watching a live-action Meet The Robinsons (never seen it). They're moving into a large rental house. This is their first time seeing the house, so they're touring it. I'm watching Mr Robinson as he explores the finished basement, which is pretty much one huge rec area. Everything is painted white. With the stairs a ways behind him, he opens a door on his right. Looking through it, we can see a sitting area with the garage past it. I'm confused: we're in the basement, so how is there a garage? I don't think any more about it.

Now I'm there with a friend of mine. Turning back towards the stairs, we see a gigantic TV mounted on the wall, near the ceiling. It's turned on, showing something I can't remember. One of us notices a projector on the ceiling, and we Ooo and Ahhh and turn it on. It's actually very disappointing: the picture it projects isn't any larger than the TV, it's dimmer, and it's actually badly calibrated so that the picture is crooked and overlaps the TV.

The son is being pampered by a group of girls. His sister is hanging up-side-down from a hole in the
ceiling, watching him. He sees her; she gets embarassed and hits a button on her harness, reeling her back up into the ceiling, back to her bed, which is half out over a hole in the floor that's a good 10 feet long and runs the width of the room. There are a couple of other beds, also half over the hole.

Now the father is standing on the other side of the hole, away from the beds. He has a good friend with him, a black man. The father tells his friend that the friend's favorite show (some kind of home improvement show) is coming on soon, and that he needs to talk to his daughter - it's her birthday.

Now I'm watching another son. He and another boy are up on a second story platform. They're wearing headgear like what Stark wears in Iron Man 3. They're going to be boxing, but they won't be physically doing anything. Instead, down below, a couple of other boys (also wearing headgear) are going to be doing the boxing, controlled by the boys up above. But, to ensure no one gets hurt, they won't actually touch each other: instead, the pain will be simulated by the headgear. An adult is with them to make sure that there are no accidents.



Wizards' Tower
This dream is something about a group of wizards in a large tower. Some of them are in a very tall round room. They're on the floor; a couple of stories up, a bridge crosses the room, and enemy wizards standing on the bridge are slinging spells down at them.

July 14, 2013

A Changing Household
This dream starts in third person. I think I'm watching a movie. I have a passing thought that it's probably The Mummy. Leonardo Di Caprio, Penelope Cruz, and a couple other people tumble into a large sandy pit. The sand is bright white; a few small plants are scattered around. I think it's amusing that in movies, the top-billed actor always stays nice and clean, while everyone else gets dirty. Sure enough, when they all get up, LDC is pristine, with nicely combed hair, while PC is all muddy and has hair everywhere. She's grumbling about how if she'd been the top billed actor, then she'd be all pristine and he'd be a mess.

Now he's gone. The rest of them think he's abandoned them. Now I'm looking at him. He's just gone though a kind of tunnel to another part of the pit to look around. Looking up, he sees a waterfall and realizes it's going to fill the pit. Now I'm looking at the other group of people as LDC comes rushing back through the tunnel shouting at them to climb for their lives. His footsteps fill with water as he runs.

Now they're at the top of the pit. The waterfall is visible to the right in the distance. They're wet and exhausted. A woman meets them and invites them into her home to dry off and clean up. She's standing next to a blocky wooden pillar of some kind. I have the feeling it was a grandfather clock.

Now I'm in her home. It's a standard entry-level subdivision home, somewhat on the cluttered side. I'm at the end of the central hallway. A bathroom is to my left, with a small room (probably meant to be a bedroom) to my right. My wife is coming out of the bathroom. I ask her where the clean clothes are, and she indicates they're in the room across the hall.
I go into the bathroom. It's more of a laundry room that happens to have a toilet and sink. Brightly colored stuff is around.

Now I'm in the room across the hall, holding the clothes. I've got a long sleeved shirt and some pants. I decide that since I'm dreaming, I'm going to change the shirt into a one-piece outfit. Now I'm wearing the shirt, but it still looks like a shirt. I try again. Now I'm wearing a maroon one-piece outfit. Unfortunately, it has a gaping fly with no way to close it. I try to will it closed, but nothing happens. I touch the bottom, not for the actual touch, but so that I can't see what I'm doing. I move my finger up, *knowing* that the part I can't see is in fact closed. Sure enough, as I move my finger up, I can see that the hole is closing. I get to the top and remove my finger. I can see a faint glowing line where the fly used to be; the line quickly disappears.

I decide that, as cool as this is, it's too much work - I'm used to wearing shirts, and if I don't keep concentrating, it'll turn back into a shirt. Unfortunately, I can't find the pants anywhere. I ask the teenaged son where they are; he says he'll go get them.

Now I'm wearing a shirt and pants. The rest of the family passes through the room. I know I'm supposed to follow
them, but I have a bad feeling about it. Instead, I look at the fish tank near the door. It's got a symbol on it that shows I can unlock a minor achievement with it, but I don't know how. As I'm looking at the fish tank, I notice a couple of fish swimming in the air near me, but I ignore them. One fish, green, swims straight towards the glass, straight at me, and opens its mouth. Even though it's a normal sized aquarium fish, I have this vision of a LONG green tunnel. At the far end is a large glowing object which starts to shoot forward. Right as it reaches the end of the tunnel (the mouth), it hits the aquarium glass, and the fish is thrown back, dazed.

Now I'm in the living room. The woman is doing something strange. Outside the window, I see a large board that starts to light up with symbols in different colors. As she describes what's going to light up, it does, as she's described - symbol and color. Then it starts to display the wrong colors. I know something is wrong, so I leave the living room.

Now I'm back in the aquarium/changing room. The teenage boy is there working on a math problem. Whatever it is, it's a trick question. I help him with it for a minute.

Now all the people who were in the living room are in the room with us. They have red skin, and they're attacking us. Whatever strange ritual she did with the board was clearly evil. They're throwing small bombs at us with lit rope fuses. I keep knocking them away from myself. They bounce into the corners and explode harmlessly. I realize that if I could hold onto one until the fuse was nearly gone, then throw it back, I could kill them; but I can't bring myself to do it.

There's a lull in the attack. A man is siting in a cushy rotating chair looking at something on a computer. I decide to go over and try to get him distracted by showing him some Simpsons. It turns out he's already so distracted with whatever he's doing that I can't distract him further.

Now I'm sitting in a similar chair. My left arm is on the armrest. A young woman with red skin)is next to the chair, laying her head on my arm, asleep. I can't move for fear of waking her.

I become aware of my heartbeat. It's actually fairly normal. I remember that if you want to summon something in a dream, you have to have a convincing reason why it'll work. I've been reading Way of Kings, and some of the characters have Shard Blades they can summon. It takes 10 heartbeats from when they start to summon it to when it appears in their hand. I hold my hand out, try to summon it, and count my heartbeats. At 10, I feel a tingle, but no blade appears. I try again; this time, after 10 heartbeats, nothing happens.

I know another way to summon things in dreams is to imagine them where you can't see them, then "find" them. I decide that there's always been a sword under my chair, and I just need to pull it out. Unfortunately, I can't move far enough to reach under to get it.

Somehow, in conjunction with the teen boy, I know that this transformation is temporary, and that if I just wait long enough they'll go back to normal. Up on the wall, I see a clock. It has too many hands, they're not straight, and they're moving too fast; but I know it's almost time.

Now everyone is back to normal. This includes the boy, kind of: he's really a girl, and now that everything is back to normal, "he" is female again. She's wearing a tight fitting purple latex top.

I can feel the dream start to fade. I try to take some action to stabalize it, but whatever it is I tried, it didn't work. The dream continues to fade.

A moment of transition comes: I'm present in the dream, remembering all that's happened, watching it fade; then I'm in bed, watching the dream fade, remembering scattered bits of dream memory, knowing that just a moment earlier I was there remembering it all.