lucid

I’m in this alleyway that’s apparently beside my house. There’s brick walls on each side, a couple arches, and a fire escape that’s further up. Three women in Victorian dresses run past me and start climbing up the wall, Assassin’s Creed style. I’m mildly impressed they can be so limber in such restrictive clothing. Under one of the archways, I see a metal ceiling fan, which has been partially covered with strange glow-in-the-dark paper. It actually looks kinda neat, so I grab some paper and tape off of the ground and start finishing the job.

I wake up for a quick WBTB (gotta be quick, anyway, since my job requires me to get up fairly early, so I need all the sleep I can get). I’m now in my college auditorium, where there’s some celebrity singer performing a concert. I’m standing backstage, and I catch a glimpse of the drummer - it’s one of my friends from high school. I’m pretty happy for him - he was one of the best drummers I’d ever seen in high school, and I’m glad he’s doing okay.

I’m now back in my dorm, apparently some time after the concert. I walk from room to room with my laptop, trying to find the best WiFi reception. As I go through the hallway, i notice some girls I know from high school walking through. Weird, this isn’t a co-ed dorm. Oh, I’m dreaming! As I realize this, the hallway transforms into the hallway leading to my bedroom in my house. I rub my hands together, convincing myself this is a very stable lucid dream. I run into my bedroom and try to lift myself off the ground through sheer willpower, but I can’t do it. Huh, I guess not having a quality lucid in forever has really messed with my control. I decide that maybe it has something to do with the low ceiling in my house. I spot my window over my bed, so I take a running start and dive through. The scene switches to slow motion, as I watch the glass shatter around me, with me twisting in mid-air just above the overhang of the first-floor. It’s a pretty neat effect, kinda like an action movie, but everything goes back to normal speed as I roll out onto the overhang. I stand up and find I’m completely unharmed. Guess that counts for Gain Invulnerability. I try once more to fly, this time starting with a jump, but I start to float back down to the ground. I kick my legs in mid-air like a Yoshi, which causes me to stop falling and slowly start floating upwards. It’s not graceful by any means, but it works. As I get slightly higher, I notice the sky isn’t really a sky - it’s more like clouds painted onto a transparent ceiling with nothing but blue behind it. The ceiling is really low, and I bump my head into it, causing me to black out.

I wake up in a strange bed and sit upright. Everything around me looks strangely textured, like I’m in a low-quality 3D animated movie. That can’t be right… I plug my nose to RC, and find that I’m still dreaming. There’s a hole in the middle of the floor, so I drop through it and find myself in a huge cafeteria, where people are eating, but no one seems to notice me. Alright, let’s start knocking out some more tasks. I first go for some telekinesis. I jump up on one of the tables and spot some unaccompanied plates beside me. I reach out my hand and manage to make some of them float. I turn another direction and lift a couple more plates and pieces of food in another part of the room. Having built up my confidence, I turn towards the center of the room, where most of the people are, and stretch out my hand. Suddenly a ton of stuff starts floating - plates, food, forks, knives, glasses, and even a trash can. Everyone starts looking around, wondering what’s going on, while I quietly sneak away, giggling to myself.

I spot a glass door leading to the outside, so I try to knock out my 3rd 3-step task. I blink and do a quick nod with my head, and I’m suddenly on the other side of the door. Outside looks like New York in Tom Clancy’s The Division - there’s snow on the ground, and a ton of large, heavy objects in the street to hide behind. Some guy sees me and quickly points a gun at my head. Luckily, I know I’m dreaming. “That won’t do you any good.” He stops, contemplates for a bit, and then puts the gun down. Instead, he hands me a business card for a special lucid dreamer order of the Assassins. He then darts off and climbs the building next to us, chased soon after by a couple firemen with ladders. At this point I lose lucidity, and the dream turns into a weird movie, where I’m being played by some guy that’s a mix between Matt Damon and Adam Sandler.

2 NLDs - 2
1st DILD - 10
RC/Stabilization - 1
Invulnerability - 5
Flying - 5
1st Step - 5

2nd DILD - 5
RC/Stabilization - 1
Mass Telekinesis - 10
2nd Step - 10
Teleport - 10
3rd Step - 15
Interact with a DC - 2

WBTB - 2

Night 3 Total - 83 pts
Competition Total - 102 pts

Alright, so my new job means I have to wake up super early every day, meaning I haven’t really been too great at lucidity lately. I’ve just kinda forgotten to even practice since I’ve been pretty stressed. I’m hoping to get it back up once I’m more adjusted to it and not incredibly stressed, but until then, I pretty much just have to do it on the weekends.

I’m in this conference room with Dan and Arin from Game Grumps. They’re having a very serious conversation with me about something, I think about being hired as an intern.

I’m in the living room of my house, and on the coffee table is a small makeup tin full of what I can only assume is cocaine. Next to the container is a long straw with a ton of curves and a random bulge in the middle. It kinda looks like one of those crazy straws for children, but apparently I’m supposed to use this to snort the coke. My dad walks in and seems confused by what I’m doing, but he obviously doesn’t care. I take a pinch of it and hold it under the end of the straw, while I stick the other end in my nose and inhale. I instantly feel super light, almost like I’m floating, even though I’m sitting completely still. The effect quickly wears off, however, so I for some reason decide to just stick the straw straight in the container and snort up all of it. My dad at this point has realized what I’m doing, but instead of getting mad, he seems incredibly curious, like he wants to try it himself. The dream switches before I find out what happens.

I’m in the main hallway of my old high school. There’s some locker decoration contest between the classes going on. The lockers stretch up super high, almost 30 feet up. I kinda wonder how people get to the top lockers. The freshman section of the hall has a ton of super high-tech decorations on their lockers, like huge LCD screens, laser light shows, motion detectors and holograms. I end up heading to lunch and meet up with one of my friends. Somehow the conversation gets on the topic of Asia, and I make some kind of unintentionally racist comment, which makes these three Asians sitting next to us glare at me. I suddenly regret saying it, and try to pass it off as okay because me and my friend are the minority in this situation, which means we’re allowed to make racist comments, or something like that... *facepalm*

I finally got up for my WBTB (first one I’ve been able to do in a long time with work and everything). I’m in this public park, where it’s almost night time. I know I’m dreaming already, and I remember that I’ve wanted to fight someone for some time now, so I go out searching for someone to fight. I walk through this dugout next to this very large baseball field. The first person I make eye contact with is a guy standing on the pitcher’s mound. He looks like a bodybuilder, someone that could easily kick my butt, so I decide it’s probably not a good idea to pick him for my first dream fight. So instead I go to centerfield, where there’s a red-headed woman that looks pretty friendly. I introduce myself, and she tells me her name is Donnie. I don’t even remember what I say to get the fight started, but she agrees fairly easily. At this point, everyone hears that we’re about to fight, so they create a huge circle around us to watch. We each go to our corners, where some random guys are giving advice and psyching me up for the fight. I’m not sure if it helps or not, but I feel incredibly relaxed, much more than I would be if I was in that situation in real life.

Someone from the middle of the circle shouts “Fight!”, and I turn around to face my opponent. Instead, I’m amazed to see that she’s transformed into a ten-foot-tall giant monster. She has a long, white body with claws for hands and a skull for a head. I kind of stare in shock and awe for a while, wondering how I’m gonna take her down. In desperation, I jump up and punch the monster in the crotch. She winces in pain and staggers backward. “Ha! You probably shouldn’t have transformed into a male giant freaky monster.” She transforms back into her normal form, at which point I take a running start and shove her backwards. She stumbles backwards into a brick wall and falls. I notice a large dumpster sitting next to her, so I use telekinesis to pick it up, lift it over her head, and drop it on top of her with a satisfying thud. I jump on top of the dumpster in victory, but I look down to see a three-inch-tall Donnie running out from under the dumpster. I’m about to pounce on top of her, but a sudden explosion from under the dumpster sends me flying into the air. I land on my face several feet away.

Donnie walks over and stands right next to me for a bit, before taking off in a full sprint. Apparently, this fight has now turned into a race. I’m okay with this, since I’m a much better runner than I am a fighter. I take off into a super-speed sprint and easily catch up with her, at which point she starts running faster to match my pace. We both keep running faster and faster, until I finally just lift my feet until I’m flying at the same speed. Without my legs restricting me, I easily speed past her, at which point the dream starts to destabilize.

I’m now crawling through some kind of ventilation system. It’s very tight, and I’m starting to get quite a bit claustrophobic. I still remember that I’m racing, so I try to find my way out, but it’s quite a maze through the vents. I hear a noise coming from around the corner, and I know that it’s Donnie. I try to sneak up on her and ambush her, but as I reach my hand out to move forward, she jumps out and bites down on my fingers. I use my thumb to grab her jaw and shake it around, trying to maybe get in a few hits against the walls while I try breaking my hand free from her grasp. This continues for a while. “Alright, this has gone on long enough. Listen, there’s no way we can get any good quality hits in such a small space. You wanna just call a truce until we can find our way out of here?”
“...Yeah, that’s probably best.”

She lets go of my hand, which thankfully doesn’t seem to hurt too bad. We crawl through the vents looking for an exit, while we just talk about something that I don’t remember. After several minutes of searching, we finally find a path to an exit and jump out. We’re in a maintenance room of a huge water park, and right beneath us is a huge rushing water slide. At this point, I think we’re both too tired to fight. Donnie jumps into the slide, and I follow right behind. The whole ride feels incredibly refreshing. The slide finally pours out into a huge pool area, the size of like 4 football fields. In the middle is a huge jungle gym area with climbing ropes, water cannons, and a ton of fun-looking stuff. We both just stick around here for a while until I wake up.

Tonight was one of those nights where very little made sense at all. But I got some lucids, so meh.

I’m in this super creepy place, with dark hallways and catacombs everywhere. It looks a bit like a level from Dark Souls. Surprisingly, despite the terrifying atmosphere, the whole dream is kinda light-hearted. Which is good, because some weird stuff starts happening. At one point I pass by some guy that looks like Fat Albert, with the red sweater and everything. He walks down the hallway, followed by another Fat Albert. They both reach the end of the hallway before turning back, and I can see that both of their eyes are bleeding. I turn down the other path and end up in this restaurant, which has the same creepy atmosphere as everything else. At one of the booths in the back corner, there’s a corpse hanging from a noose. I’m finally a little creeped out by this, so I turn around, but I eventually come back, only to find that now the corpse is gone, and instead there’s a creepy looking guy in a cowboy hat sitting in a chair right under the noose. I start to approach him, but he stands up and looks at me - it’s actually my good friend Jake from college. He explains that they’re advertising an upcoming Halloween event at the school, so the Student Activities department have decorated the entire building for it. He begins to explain the event, but I suddenly get something in my eye, so I can’t look at him while he’s talking.

I’m now at the church I went to while at college, and it’s the Sunday after graduation. A ton of people are congratulating me on graduating. Our old music pastor is back, and the whole church is surprisingly packed, so I end up sitting in one of the only seats left, next to this elderly couple. There’s some intro video played on the screen, and all I remember was that it was produced by “Dragonball Z Media”, meaning it was probably a bit bizarre that it was played in church. The band gets up, and the music pastor announces that I’ll be playing with them one last time. I’m a little worried, since I didn’t practice with them at all. I get on stage, sit down at the piano, and take a look over the setlist, which consists of odd music choices from bands like “UTrue” and “Carly Rae Apocalypse”. I’m thankfully interrupted by my alarm, as (ironically) this dream is probably more confusing and worrisome than the last.

Didn’t take nearly as long of a WBTB this time as I did last time - only about 30 minutes. I’m in a really run-down McDonald’s, and after waiting in line behind this girl that I know, I go to the counter and order a Gatorade and a bag of M&M’s. The guy hands me my Gatorade, and I sit down at an empty table. Some super fat guy sits right next to me and starts telling me about his day. He’s talking to me like I know him, though I have absolutely no clue who he is, and I don’t want to be rude and tell him to leave. Luckily, I remember that I didn’t get my M&M’s, so I walk up to the counter and show them my receipt. The employee (who looks like some nerdy guy, probably 17 or 18) asks if I can buy him a bag too. At first I laugh, because I think he’s joking, but he stares at me like he’s serious. “Um, we’ll see…” He reaches under the counter, pulls out 4 packages of M&M’s and places them on the counter, then returns to staring at me. “I just ordered one, thanks,” I say as I take the top bag and walk away.

I’m on the set of a Parks and Recreation/The Office crossover movie. Filming has wrapped up for the day, and the actors that play Jim Halpert and Ann Perkins come with me to record voice-overs for some cartoon version of the movie. We enter the recording studio, a fairly large room with those 80’s wood/laminate walls on all sides. There’s a door to the bathroom, which strangely locks from the outside. I turn the lock to go inside, but I manage to break the lock, as well as the section of wall next to the door. I enter anyway, but now I can tell there’s a gaping hole from the outside, meaning everyone can see me do my business. I realize I don’t have to go that bad, so I go back out the door, which breaks the wall even more. Now almost the entire wall separating the bathroom is down to just studs. And now there’s quite a draft. A surprisingly powerful draft. So powerful, in fact, that it starts blowing me away. I grab onto the doorframe to secure myself, but I realize that this seems familiar and become lucid. I let go of the frame and let the wind carry me high up in the sky, where I continue to fly on my own. I’m incredibly high, and I admire the city skyline in the distance. The wind is still blowing, however, and I get rolled upside down a few times, but unlike previous flying lucids, it doesn’t cause me to wake up. In fact, I have a surprising amount of control of my flight, other than the rolling.

I start flying over a large drag racing strip just in time to witness one of the cars slam into a wall and flip over a few times. I should probably check to see if they’re okay. I make a fairly slow descent, as I watch the paramedics arrive on the scene. Fortunately, as soon as I land, the guy gets out of the car unscathed. He shouts like he’s excited to be alive. So excited, in fact, that he exclaims he wants to, uh… do things with these three women standing by the track. I decide to leave him to it, and turn around to walk off, only to walk right into a bush. It actually kinda hurts a bit, but I think to myself that it’s a good way to stabilize the dream. Of course, as soon as I say that, I immediately wake up. I journal this new dream and go back to sleep.

Once again, it’s the Sunday after graduation, and apparently there’s a second commencement service following the first one on Saturday. It’s not required, and it’s much less formal - lots of people were wearing t-shirts and jeans. A couple guys were even dressed up like Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty, with the American flag bandana on their heads and glued-on beards. I’m in the main auditorium when I get a text from my parents that they’re outside. I head out, and for some reason end up helping the custodians carry out a huge trash bag on my way out. It unfortunately splits open when I get outside, spilling a ton of water all over the place, but at least it’s outside. I go back inside with my parents, and I see a ton of people in their graduation regalia filing into the auditorium super fast. I jump in line and ask what’s going on - the commencement doesn’t start for another hour or so. They explain to me that somehow everyone in the auditorium got put under some spell, and we have to break them from their trance.

The graduates line up in a huge circle around the outside edge of the auditorium. They start singing this incredibly fast choir song, but I have no idea how it goes, so I just lip sync for a while. I lean to the person next to me and whisper, “I don’t know this song at all.”
“Doesn’t matter, just have fun with it.”
I look over and realize who I’m talking to - it’s Vi. Holy crap, I’m dreaming? Of course, I’m dreaming! I become lucid, though I’m still not 100% thinking clearly, as I still want to break everyone free from the spell. I walk towards center stage and start improvising a solo, which is pretty much just “O Come O Come Emmanuel” in fake Italian. In the interest of putting on a show, I start flying upwards while still singing. The song starts to get more intense, eventually turning into a hard rock/gospel song, and I start flying around the whole auditorium as close to the seats as possible. The whole thing has a weird Elite Beat Agents feel to it. I finish with a sick impromptu guitar solo, and the crowd applauds before I wake up.

I added a box fan to my room, since my room gets hecka hot at night, and my ceiling fan is apparently broken. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner - it makes the room like 20 degrees cooler, and it works really well as a WILD anchor.

Anyway, I took an extended hour-long WBTB last night, mainly because I was incredibly thirsty and spent a ton of time just drinking water. I had a bit of trouble falling back asleep though, so I just paid attention to the whirring of my fan. After a while, I notice that the sound of it has changed to what sounds like an incredibly epic orchestral song. I actually think it’s some music playing on my phone at first, and I’m tempted to roll over and turn it off. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m close to a WILD, so I just wait it out. Next, I begin to see HI of this long highway stretching out in front of me, and I feel like I’m running/flying down the road at an incredible speed. I still feel like I’m laying in bed, but at the same time I feel an incredible rush like I’m actually moving. I maintain focus on the road, until I finally transition fully.

I’m in my parents’ bedroom somehow. I’m kinda tired of all my lucids taking place inside, so I decide to run towards the master bathroom window and jump outside. I’m now flying over my backyard, but in the middle is a really tall tree with berries on it. I fly up to the branches and see a ton of berries that look like purple grapes, though a small percentage of them are colored silver and gold. I grab one of each color to try them out. I pop a normal purple one in my mouth - it tastes like a grape, but not quite as sweet. I eat a silver one, and suddenly I start flying higher and higher uncontrollably. I get too high and the dream starts to destabilize before I can eat the gold berry.

I remain still and DEILD, this time into my normal bedroom. Again, I jump out the second story window, onto the roof of the porch. This time I stop and take a minute to stabilize the dream before I start. I repeat to myself one of my old mantras that was pretty effective for prolonging the dream. “This will be a long, stable, lucid dream.” I repeat this over and over, while rubbing my hands together and doing a few RCs. Eventually the dream feels stable enough. Finally, now I can enjoy my nice luci-

The scene immediately cuts to black, and I wake up. Seriously?... I manage to stay still and DEILD again. I’m in an entirely different scene, being led down this dark alley at night. I think to myself that it looks like one scene from Rick and Morty (I’ve never seen the show, just the occasional gifs that show up on imgur every now and then). I have handcuffs on my wrists, a set of shackles on my ankles connected by a chain, and am being followed by a guard down the alley, who warns me not to say a word, or else he’ll taze me. He leads me towards a building, where another guard is guarding an entrance fenced off by huge metal bars. The second guard opens the gate, and then opens the main entrance door. I’m led into what looks like a huge food court mixed with a Costco. There’s people everywhere, I’ve never seen a Costco quite that busy.

I’m seated at a table, where the guard removes my handcuffs and walks off. Two friends, Ryan and Kelly, from my graduating class are at the other side of the table, and they start talking to me about something I don’t remember. Somehow the subject of the guards is brought up, so I explain the situation to them. I don’t remember why I’ve been arrested, but basically if I try to break the chain at my ankles, an alarm will go off, and tons of guards will storm the area and take me down. Still, I remember at this point that this is a dream, so it might be worth trying to escape, just for the heck of it. The scenario kind of plays out in my head, where I jump and slide over a few product displays in the middle of the aisles while I’m being chased.

I’m broken from this visualization by a third friend, Sarah, who says that one of her professors is trying to hunt her down. She hands me an earpiece and tells me to warn her if I see him. I stick in my earpiece, and get up and walk around (as much as I can with the shackles still on my ankles, of course. I walk over to the deli counter and spot the professor on the other side. I turn to walk away, when I spot him again, this time off in the distance heading down one of the aisles. I look around and see 2 or 3 more clones of the professor walking throughout the store. I get on the earpiece and warn Sarah of the situation, and assure her I’ll try to do my best to hold them off. I prepare to cause a diversion, but I soon wake up.

I miss my DEILD window, so I get up and type out these lucids on my phone. I go back to sleep and have a non-lucid. I’m at some baseball field with my mom, and for some reason we’re trying to track down some person (really specific, I know…). We split up and search separately, but after a few minutes I haven’t found anything. I turn to look at the field, where I see my mom running on to the field towards the pitcher, followed closely behind by security. She’s about to be tackled, so I run out onto the field to save her, telling security that she’s with me. Apparently that makes them stop (dunno what position of power I had that does that though…). One of the security guards is this really angry old black lady, who keeps yelling at me and threatening me. I start threatening her back, until I realize that she’s the person we were looking for. She seems to notice this, and she starts running away, so I give chase. She’s surprisingly fast, so she gets a sizeable lead at first. She runs through several gated areas, and quickly shuts the gates behind her. I don’t even take the time to open them, instead I just lower my shoulder and break them open as I run through them, like I have super strength. I finally catch up to the woman and tackle her to the ground.

I kneel on top of her and hold her shoulders down to the ground, so she has to maintain eye contact. “Tell me what I need to know.”
“You’re not ready.”
“I’m almost 12, I need to know.” Um, excuse me? I’m almost 22…
“I can’t…”
“I need to know about the birds and the bees!” What the heck am I saying?

Just then, there’s a white flash, and I’m back in the food court/Costco. I’m standing at the end of the aisle, while my two little sisters are continuing the dialogue from the previous scene (I don’t actually have any sisters, but apparently it all makes sense because I’m a character in a sitcom or something…). I guess it was just a daydream. Eventually, the conversation ends, so the sisters hug, and the older sister walks over to me. “Go well?”
“As well as it could have, when I got blindsided like that.”
“Well, you won’t believe the daydream I just had.” I begin to tell her as my voice trails off, the camera pans up, and the credits start rolling on the sitcom. There’s that stereotypical audience applause as the screen fades to black.

“And that’s how we end the episode,” I say to her.
“Too cheesy. Not to mention way too meta.” There’s cheesy sitcom audience laughter, and the credits roll again as I wake up for real.

I’m driving to church, when I somehow take a wrong turn and end up at the church’s “old location” - apparently they moved and got replaced by a different church. This new church has a huge banner saying “Golf Church”, and the service is actually being held in the parking lot. I try to turn around, but the pastor and the congregation start heading over to my car and surround it. I definitely get a cult-like vibe coming from their actions, but I get out of the car anyway. The pastor shakes my hand and takes me over to the side of the parking lot, where some people are teeing up to play golf.

I end up having a DEILD of sorts (I’m still not entirely sure if it was a FA or not, but meh, a lucid is a lucid). I’m supposedly in my dorm room, even though the layout is all wrong. I’m in the top bunk, so I jump over the railing and float down to the ground. For some reason, I’m still in competition mode, and try to think of what to do to score the most points. There’s a dresser blocking the door out, but still try to pull the doorknob to open it (my arm kind of stretches to reach the doorknob, a bit like Mr. Fantastic). I yank on the doorknob, and the door hits the dresser, causing it to start to fall over on me. I make myself phase through it as it falls, and so I’m unhurt as it hits the ground.

I head out the door and end up in this back alley, where there’s a ton of construction going on. I try to fly, but it doesn’t work, and for some reason I remember that there’s a special hat I have to wear in order to fly. I see it on top of a traffic cone nearby, but there’s a construction worker standing near it, and I don’t want him to see me steal it. I walk up and start a conversation, hoping to distract him.

“Um, you’re the guy in charge, right? There’s a guy over there that did something that you should probably check out.” I point behind him to a guy standing by a door over 100 yards away.
“Oh? What did he do?” he says, obviously seeming a bit skeptical.
“Oh, you know, he was working without a hard hat. That’s against the rules, I’m pretty sure.” At this point, I’m positive my BS is showing. “You should probably go over there and yell at him for it.”
“Really? Because I’ve been with him all day, and he definitely had his hat on. Come to think of it, where’s your hat at?”
“Um, you know, it’s… uh… Aw, frick it, I’m lucid, I don’t need this.” I grab the hat off the traffic cone, throw it on my head, and fly away before he can even react.

I have another questionably-real DEILD, but the transition feels awesome, like my body is slowly lifting off of the bed and my hearing turns into like a weird tunnel hearing, like the focus shifted from external sounds to internal sounds. I continue to float off the bed, until I can manage to roll over and set my feet on the floor. I end up having some conversation with my roommate for a while, until I have an FA. I’m back in my bed, excited that I just had a pretty cool lucid. I get up and walk over to the whiteboard by my desk, where I am apparently keeping track of all my lucids this year. I realize that this is a terrible system, especially since my roommate would ask me about it, but then I realize that I’m still dreaming. My roommate walks in at about this time, and I’m about to tell him something I already told him in my previous conversation, but then it hits me. “Wait, I’m lucid. What am I doing standing around talking to you?” I start to fly upwards again, but this time I wake up for real.

Only one dream I remember from last night. I'm at my house watching some NFL with a black friend of mine (though I've never seen them before in real life). Apparently we're good enough friends that we can make black jokes with each other. He made one about how black people's lips take up half of their faces (does it mean I'm racist if he's the one who started it?).

After church and lunch, I came back for a nap.

I have another Splinter Cell-inspired dream (I just recently got into that series, and I love it a lot, so it's snuck into my dreams quite a bit). I'm in a huge warehouse, where there's this game going on kinda like the Hunger Games, where you have to kill off all your competitors in order to win. I'm not actually in the competition - I've been hired as a "Motivator". Because there are so many competitors and the map is so large, the Motivators hunt down some of the lone competitors and kill them off, "motivating" them to form partnerships to stay safe, leading to more potential teammate backstabbing and more entertaining television. So I have to use all my sneaky-stealthy moves to sneak up on people to take them out.

My alarm goes off, and since I really don't want to get up, I fall back asleep. I'm in my dorm room, but a bunch of friends from high school are there. In addition to the main door in my room that leads to the main hall, there's a second screen door on the other side that leads to a back yard with a shed, it actually reminds me of my aunt's house in Alabama. Still though, it strikes me odd that there's a back yard out there - after all, we are on the third floor. I plug my nose and find that I'm dreaming. I for some reason at this moment realize I'm naked, but I know it's a dream, so I'm not as disturbed by it. I walk out into my hall, where there's a bunch of guys standing in a circle. They seem to be unphased by my nakedness (even though one of them is naked as well). I just ignore them and walk down to the other end of the hall.

I am somehow teleported back to my room, so I walk back out onto the hall, but I'm teleported back again. Fine, I'll just do it myself. I decide to teleport myself outside of the building. There's a white flash, and next thing I know I'm at my old high school on the football bleachers. The only thing is that I'm like 2 inches tall. I consider it kinda weird, but I easily make myself return to normal size, thankfully before the ants nearby on the bleachers can notice my small size and run towards me. Apparently on the football field is some kind of military training grounds. One of the generals walks over to me and asks if I want to join the airborne division. Before I can ask why, he injects me with some kind of serum. Suddenly, four pairs of purple, feathery wings grow out of my back. They start flapping out of control, and two other soldiers have to hold me down to keep me from flying away. The wings finally calm down, and the soldiers help me to my feet. The general gives me a bit of a rundown on how they work - apparently the wings weight too much by themselves for me to get much lift, so I have to concentrate on making them weightless before I can get off the ground. I kinda ignore what he says at first, and instead just take off. However, the wings feel incredibly unbalanced on my back, and making 4 pairs of them synchronize is quite a challenge, so I end up faceplanting a few feet away.

The general gives me the same lecture, but I interrupt him. "With all due respect, general, I think it'd be a lot easier with just one set of these wings." I put focus onto my back, and several of the wings fall away, leaving one set of fairly huge white wings on my back. I take off again. This time I get about 15 feet off the ground, but then the weight of the wings starts to kick in, and I slowly descend back to the ground (this time without crash landing). I try a few more times before I finally take the general's advice. I focus on the wings themselves, making them turn nearly transparent like glass, with a yellowish-white glow around where they were. I get off the ground with a bit of a shaky start, but once I get the hang of it I take off with much greater speed. It feels incredible - even better than any other time I've flown in a lucid. I also have a ton of control over it, so I keep sending myself higher and higher. I fly over this huge forest and admire the detail of the ground and trees beneath me. I fly in between two trees and decide to do a barrel roll, but once I get upside down I black out.

I'm now in an elementary school, in an army uniform. I'm not lucid, though I definitely recall still having my wings at this point. The general walks in, and everyone goes to attention, so I do the same. Behind the general are a few small kids that look like they're in about 3rd grade. The teacher comes in behind them, and once everyone is in the room, she starts presenting some awards to the kids. Apparently these kids just won the state spelling bee, and this was their award ceremony (why it was in front of a ton of soldiers is beyond me though). The only name I remember was this one girl whose name was "Auburn Auburn", and I remember thinking how terrible their parents had to be to do that to their child. I woke up soon after this.

3 NLDs - 2 pts
1 DILD - 10 pts
RC - 1 pt
Teleport - 10 pts
Unspecified (size change) - 5 pts
Partial Transformation (wings) - 5 pts
Flying - 5 pts
Night 14 Total - 38 pts

I'm at my house, where there's some competition thing going on, apparently for some reality show. There's a different event going on in each room of the house, and I stop for a bit at each to watch. One was a weird diving competition in a swimming pool full of soup.

At one point, I realize that I'm going to be late for church. I step outside, but the wind suddenly picks up, and I'm being blown sideways while holding on to the doorframe. I work my way across the side of the house, but the wind continually hits harder and harder. I don't know when it happened, but suddenly I look down and realize that my house is flying through the sky. I'm now holding on for dear life.

Just then, it hits me not only how weird this situation is, but also how vivid everything looks. This makes me realize that I'm dreaming. Relieved, I let go of the house and start freefalling. It feels exhilarating, but I think of the TOTM of laying on a cloud, so I try to slow down my decent. It doesn't work, however, and I continue falling.

I splash down hard into this huge purple ocean, but I'm completely unscathed. I have a nice view of the stars above me, and under the water just at the horizon is what looks like a black hole. It kinda sticks about above the water level, but because of the gravity, the water bulges out quite a ways to fully cover it. I look at the sky and see several other small water planets with their own black holes. They kinda look like different levels from Super Mario Galaxy. I decide to try swimming into the black hole to see what happens, but I end up being woken up by my alarm.

DILD - 10 pts
Invulnerabilty - 5 pts
Night 12 Total - 15 pts

I love the lucid competitions. Why, you ask? Well, after long lucid dry spells like the one I've had for the past 3 weeks, I become so motivated to post a good score that I pull off nights like this. Even though I didn't score a ton of points since I didn't really accomplish a ton of tasks, I still feel pretty great since I had some quality recall and length of lucids.

I have some fragment about a game where you have to run from zombies. I apparently don't like it, so I leave a bad review of it on the app store.

I woke up for my WBTB, which went longer than expected since my stomach was killing me (late night Taco Bell), but once I did lie back down, I actively tried to WILD, which is the first time I've done that in a long time. And it worked incredibly well, actually.

I'm still in my dorm room, still in bed. Except it's not my bed, it's just a random lofted bed in the middle of the room. I use my right hand to plug my nose, and I'm definitely dreaming. I try to get up, but my torso and left arm are stuck to the bed. I can kick my legs, but I can't move my upper body. Instead of fighting to get out of bed, I imagine myself being pulled downward and make myself phase through the bottom of my bed. This works a little too well, and I end up stuck in the floor. Still, at least I can stand up now, and I click back to above ground somehow. I still can't move my arm though, but I decide this is a good time to try my hand (pun intended) at my robot arm goal. I grab my left arm with my right and attempt to pull my arm off. But suddenly, the dream destabilizes and I wake up.

I manage to lie still and DEILD back into the dream. I'm standing in my dorm room again, but this time I'm completely naked. I'm okay with this though, since I am in my room, after all. I stabilize much better this time, and everything seems much clearer. I decide to walk down the hall anyway. I pass by one room where a friend and his recently-engaged fiancée are making out with the door wide open. I poke my head in and say, “Seriously guys? I know you're engaged and all, but that's disgusting.” I walk by a few more rooms before going into the bathroom. Oh yeah, let's try the arm thing again. I try once again to pull my arm off, but again I wake up. This time, however, it's from my roommate's alarm going off, so I unintentionally move and ruin my chance for a DEILD.

I do fall back asleep and end up in my dorm room again, this time nonlucid. This annoying guy on my dorm walks in and starts talking trash about something I don't remember. I turn to get something from the mini-fridge, and he sneaks up behind me, about to pull my pants down. I swing around and whomp him on the side of his head and start cussing him out. I wasn't really that mad about the pantsing, it was more of a built up aggression based on all the annoying, stupid stuff he's done on the hall.

I’m now in a class that is for some reason taking place in the engineering department lobby. All the students are on couches looking quite comfortable, though I know if I lay out like that, I'll fall asleep and the teacher will yell at me. I instead decide to pull out my phone, but it starts playing music really loud. I try to turn down the volume, but it doesn't work. I'm getting annoyed looks from everyone, so I run out of the room with my phone.

I'm in some video game that I can only describe as a mix between The Matrix and Men in Black. It has an interesting game mechanic where you use fuel to fly around a huge city. You complete quests to gain more fuel, but you also need to have above a certain amount of fuel to access different areas and more quests. So the more you fly around, the more areas that close off because you don't have the minimum amount of fuel. I had recruited several NPCs to fight with me. We were raiding this security room that was guarded by a single girl. But as soon as we attacked her, a ton more security guards showed up and overwhelmed us. As my character was dying, I woke up.

I managed to stay still again and DEILD back into the dream. I “respawn” back close to where I died, but all of my party is gone. The girl is still there, but I really don't feel like fighting her. She’s kinda pretty actually, and in retrospect, she reminded me a lot of Vi. She notices me looking at her. “Do you wanna try again?”
“Nah, not really feeling it anymore.”
“Oh, okay.”
We just spend a while talking, and she takes me into a room with a ton of puppies. I play with them for a while before heading somewhere else. The girl decides to tag along.

We pass by a guy with a quest for us to complete, which apparently involves collecting coins and bringing them back to him. I remember landing a coin on its edge was a lucid goal (it actually wasn't mine, but it was someone else's). I bet him his entire collection of coins that he can’t flip a coin and land it on its edge. He pulls out a penny and tries a few times, but can't make it work. He then hands me the penny, so I flip it into the air. It bounces off of the guy’s head, off of his beer bottle on the table, rolls off the table and spins for what feels like an eternity on the floor. I use a strange mix of telekinesis and sheer willpower to make the coin stay on its edge as it slows to a stop. He growls at me, but finally hands me a huge bottle of coins. I walk off with my prize before I wake up.

WBTB - 2 pts
First WILD - 10 pts
RC/Stabilization - 1 pt
Fully phase through big solid object - 10 pts
Lucid chain - 2 pts
Second WILD - 5 pts
Interact with a DC - 2 pts
Telekinesis/Unspecified Dream Control (stopping the penny) - 5 pts
1 Fragment - 0.5 pts
3 NLDs - 3 pts

Night 1 Total - 40.5 pts
Competition Total - 38.5 pts

Alright, I'm back now. Last couple lucids have not really been worth writing down, but last night I had a good one with a TOTM thrown in, so I figured I should write/type it.

I start out with a kinda weird nonlucid. All I remember was one part where I was with a bunch of guys in a Jeep flying through space. And somehow that didn't seem weird at all to me…

I woke up for a bit, and did sort of a lazy WBTB. I'm in a car with my parents, driving home for spring break. I look at my phone and see that the date is March 13. Weird, I don't remember March 3-12. In fact, why are my parents driving me home for spring break anyway? I usually drive myself. I ask my mom if I'm dreaming, and she says no. I plug my nose to double check, and I can breathe through it, so I become lucid. I decide to ask again, “Am I dreaming?”
“Of course not, honey!”
Wrong answer. I manage to phase out of the car and fly behind it for a bit. It's a purple minivan, not even my parents’ car. I pick it up by the back bumper and lift it off the ground. I swing it around and finally launch it off into the distance.



I stop to take a look around. I'm in this strange little Western town just off the highway that looks more like a speed trap than a city. I remember the advanced task to call out for your dream guide, and I think it'll be easy, since I already know what I'm looking for. Still, since I'm a bit of a completionist, I say “I am ready for my dream guide.” Nothing happens, so this time I shout it into the sky.

Just then, these two short men with cowboy hats walk out of this nearby saloon. They both kinda look like Yosemite Sam, but I notice that they have 3 rows of teeth. I'm kind of freaked out by this, and I hope to myself that they aren't actually my dream guides somehow. They ignore me though, and continue walking to my right. I turn around and thankfully see Vi’s familiar face. She motions me to follow her, so I do.

We walk into this building that looks like an arcade of sorts and head into a back room, where there's a small group of people already gathered and seated in a circle. Apparently this is a conference with other lucid dreamers and their dream guides. After Vi and I sit down, we start some kind of group discussion. Two more people walk in shortly after, and one of the members jokes about them being late. Another guy in the group jokes back, “It can hardly be considered late when half of us don't even exist in time and space.”

We go around the circle and introduce ourselves. I don't really pay attention, since I'm kind of amazed at how vivid and clear everything is, like I'm actually in the room. I start getting lost in the vividness, and actually start to destabilize. I try to hold on, but then the two people next to be grab onto my arms to help me stay grounded in the dream. It works, as the dream restabilizes and returns to the same vividness it had earlier. The meeting continues as normal, as if there was nothing weird about one of its members almost blinking out of existence.

The meeting doesn't take very long, so we soon head out into the arcade. The place is packed with people, but luckily no one is using the games themselves. I head over to this shooting gallery, and a guy hands me this airsoft rifle. I take aim at a target that's incredibly far away - I can hardly even see what I'm aiming for. I try to stabilize the gun, but I can't. I take two wild shots and somehow hit the target both times. I'm about to take a third shot, but the dream destabilizes.

I'm at home, getting ready to go to a concert. I suddenly get a call that the lead singer of the band has gone missing, and I have to take his place.

Night 3 didn't have much to report, but I think Night 4 made up for it.

I’m in this super fancy hotel, standing near one of the balconies overlooking the lobby. Suspended from the ceiling is a ton of panes of glass in a bunch of different angles, like some piece of modern art. I’m apparently a secret agent, on a Mission Impossible-type stealth mission, and our target is two floors directly above us. The stairs and elevators are heavily guarded, and the only way up is to climb the glass chandelier-thing up to the balcony above. I suit up, while my partner, this brown-haired woman in a business suit (it may have been Vi, in retrospect) keeps watch for guards. I equip these super-grip gloves like in MI: Ghost Protocol, and these gravity shoes that attract to the nearest surface, so I can transfer my body weight to the surface I’m gripped onto and sit in a Spiderman-like pose. I grab onto the first pane of glass, and then spin around so my feet are now on the next pane. I hang upside-down and watch my partner walk off, nervously talking into her headset microphone.

I maneuver my way around and through the glass panes, stopping every once in awhile to look around and determine which way is up. After a good amount of twisting and turning, and a bit of disorientation, I’m finally one jump away from the balcony, but then a lady on the floor spots me climbing and starts screaming. I am kinda stuck in an awkward position, so I can’t stop her, but suddenly my partner sneaks up behind her and pistol-whips her unconscious. She looks up at me, shrugs her shoulders, and helps me down.

I switch into my own business suit, and the two of us walk into the complex undercover. We make it to a large security door, where my partner scans her fake fingerprint to let us in. I look around and notice the different security systems. Motion detector above the door, laser grid to the side (powered down for now), and several cameras pointing in several different directions. All have the same logo on them - GL, a security organization that is a known front for one of our rival organizations. When our target finds out they’ve been broken into, GL will recognize our faces immediately from the tapes and set up a counterattack. The fingerprint is finally accepted, and we walk through the door.

We find ourselves in a back courtyard, fenced in by huge concrete walls, 40 feet high and about 10 feet thick. Our mark is standing next to a huge fountain with his henchmen and waves us in, so we walk towards him. There’s a very short conversation before there’s a loud explosion, accompanied with one of the exterior walls collapsing. The smoke and fog cover the fountain area, and me and my partner both run off to the outside of the smoke screen. There’s a huge hole in the wall, and through it crawls Tails the Fox from the Sonic games. He runs over to us shouting.

“You guys have to hide! They’re bringing the whole place down!”
“What? That wasn’t part of the plan!”
“Well it is now! Quick, the smoke’s almost clear, go hide!”
“No, we can’t blow our cover. I… I’m sorry about this.”
“Sorry? About wha-”

I land a hard right hook to Tails’ face that knocks him to the ground. I then pull out my pistol and point it at him. About this time, our mark and his henchmen run over to where we are. “We’ve been compromised, they know we’re here. We’ll have to move this rendezvous somewhere else. Suspect apprehended.”

I grab Tails by the wrist and pull him up, slapping my handcuffs on him before quietly whispering in his ear, “Don’t worry, buddy, I’ll get you out of here somehow…”

I’m now back in one of my engineering classes. My friends and I are talking, but I realize my phone’s almost dead. I grab my phone charger, but realize the wires are sticking out of the end of it. I’m trying not to electrocute myself with the ends of the wires, but one of my classmates sees this and purposely shoves the wires into my chest. It makes a very unpleasant tingling, but it’s not horribly painful. I politely laugh and tell him not to do that again, but he doesn’t listen. He grabs the wires from me and stabs them into me at different places on my body.

Spoiler for Dirty bit:

After several seconds of this, he eyes my crotch. “Don’t you dare.” I start kicking him, but two other classmates hold me down to the ground. He takes the wires and stabs them into my testicles, and I feel some intense pain and start having bad spasms. I shake so much that I wake up, heart pounding. My testees feel fine at least…

I now am driving in a car at a high speed down a highway, but I’m swerving a lot, no matter how hard I try to stay in control of the car. For the first time ever, I remember that driving is a dream sign of mine, and I become lucid. I start to slow down, but then I have an idea. The highway in front of me is incredibly straight, so I think it’ll make the perfect runway. I slam on the gas, and once I get up to speed, I pull back on the steering wheel, and the car leaves the ground. Sweeeeet. I maneuver the car around, enjoying the feeling of flying. I even roll down the windows and feel the wind blow through the car. I notice that the ground is covered by fog, and I decide to turn around, making sure that I have some visible ground so the dream doesn’t destabilize. The car’s still kinda hard to control though, and I actually start heading for some buildings. Just before I crash though, the buildings become slightly transparent, almost like holograms, and I phase right through them. I fly around like a crazy person for a bit, and watch as the scene around me keeps changing, at one point turning into a wireframe version of itself. I continue until I wake up.

No dreams from last night, since I only slept for like 4 hours. Did get a nap in, however.

I immediately WILD into the dream. I'm in the main building for classes at my college. My parents and brother are here, and we’re in a long hallway. My brother is walking somewhat ahead of me, and my parents are way behind me. I notice I’m just kind of floating down the hallway, which feels pretty cool. My dad shouts something for me to tell my brother, but I can’t hear him. Besides, I’m lucid, might as well do some things. I mainly just enjoy flying around a bit, while this random woman follows me around, asking if I want to join her in private. “Not until I get some tasks done first.” (*pats dream self on the head* Good boy)

I decide to start with the basic task - look up at the sky. I see this room off to the side that looks almost like a cockpit to a plane, with a huge control panel against the wall. The windows are huge, so I go in and look outside. The sky looks an incredible shade of blue, with several clouds that look almost copied-and-pasted across the sky - it reminds me of the wallpaper in Andy’s room in Toy Story. The horizon starts to turn orange - the sun is rising. However, I can’t shake this weird feeling that something hilarious is gonna happen. Sure enough, as the yellow circle rises up, inside is Michael Jackson dancing to Beat It, with all his backup dancers barely visible in the background. Immediately I can hear the music start up, and I find it funny. Before I even realize what’s happening, I’m dancing along with the music, doing pretty much all the choreography from the music video. (*smacks dream self on the back of the head* Dude, what the heck?)

As I do this one spin move, I realize that I should get back to doing stuff, so I instead continue to spin a bit to stabilize the dream. Unfortunately, it seems to have the opposite effect, and I wake up. I almost manage to DEILD back into it, but my roommate decided to watch YouTube videos on his big speakers, which jolted me awake when they fired up.

Kind of a fragment to start off. I am at a fancy Taco Bell, but I can't decide what I want off the menu, which makes the manager really angry for some reason.

Next, I'm at a band concert at my old high school, with my old band director leading the band. I'm in the audience with the rest of the students, who seem incredibly uninterested in the concert - they're even taking while the music is playing. Speaking of music, the band's sound is mainly done from an audio recording, and the actual band is just playing over it - the band version of “lip-syncing”. I give up on paying attention, and start a conversation with one of my friends next to me, at one point talking about DreamViews. The song finally ends, and the director says a few words. During this, there's some glitch in time, and I go back like 10 seconds, listening to him say the same words again. He even notices me do it, and after his words catch up to where he was, he laughs that I just had to experience it a second time.

I had a time slot to take a nap after my first class, so I did. I WILDed into my dorm room, and jump down from my bed. I try to plug my nose and do an RC - it kinda works, but my nose is really clogged with snot, almost like I’m sick. However, it’s good enough, so I continue. I try to think of one of the TotMs, but I can't quite remember. I figure one has something to do with a DC, so I expect my roommate to walk in the door. I open the door, and both roommates walk in and immediately jump in their beds. I for some reason decide to tell them I'm dreaming, but they don't seem interested. I try flying to convince them, but I can't quite stay up in the air, despite the assist from our rug in the middle of the room, which is acting like a trampoline. I end up bouncing until I wake up.

I end up DEILDing after what seems like a long time for a DEILD. I currently don't remember exactly where I am, but my boss is here, so I assume I am at work. I try to think of the tasks again, and for some reason remember that one of them is to eat a banana… So I go to the break room and get a banana, peel it, and eat it. Well that was easy. I wake up shortly after, upon which I wonder where I ever got the idea to eat a banana…

Lazy journaling strikes again, but this time it didn't claim quite as many point victims - just some earlier non-lucids. Mainly I just forgot some minor transitional details of the lucids I had. It's not my fault it's cold outside of my comfy blankets...

After my WBTB, I'm at my old high school, hanging with some friends. We're jumping around the flowerbeds for some reason, when I realize this seems fairly odd. I think immediately to RC by trying to fly, but I can't quite get it right at first. By now, my friends are all wondering what I'm doing, so I say I'm trying to make sure I'm dreaming. I keep jumping, and each time I get a little higher. I've notice by now that my friends are all trying to do the same thing, so I finally have the idea to flap my arms to maintain my height. It finally works, until I get high enough to prove to myself that I can fly, after which I fly off to somewhere else.

I woke up here, because I heard someone coming down the hall (my mom actually confirmed that she went in the bedroom next to mine, so it wasn't just an FA). I stayed up for a few minutes, before rolling back over and going to sleep. I had some definite WILD transitions, possibly some of the cleanest I've ever had. I'm now lying on the ground in this warehouse-like building, so I get up and try to remember what I wanted to do next. I recall my second step of my 3-step task is to teleport. I'm not great at teleporting, but I remember wanting to try it with a portal gun, which usually works in my dreams. I reach into my pocket and pull out the gun, even though it looks and feels more like a rolled-up umbrella. I point it at a brick wall near me and shoot, making the firing sound effect with my mouth. Nothing happens. I try two or three more times, but still nothing. I then tried my old method of drawing the portal on the wall, but even that did nothing. Well, gotta go with the golden rule of lucid dream control - fake it 'till you make it. I charge at the wall where I placed my portal and dive into it. There's a short second where I'm surrounded by blackness (the loading screen as I like to think of it), until the scene appears around me. I'm now at my old house. Well that went better than expected.

I remember my next task that I wanted to complete - summon KestrelKat from my team. I don't even remember what methods I try to use to summon her, but nothing works. Meanwhile, my dad walks in and asks me to help him with his medicine. He hands me his pill bottle, and I read the label:

Directions: Add one Kestrel and stir with warm water.

I bust out laughing. The dream was basically making fun of me for not being able to summon KestrelKat. I lose control of the dream and go into a non-lucid.

I'm helping out at some drama and dance competition at my church. My pastor asks me to take some chairs inside that had been out in the parking lot, so I roll them inside. There's a ton of groups in each room practicing, and every time I try to pass through a doorway to the next room, someone stops me and tells me I can't go in there. I tell them that I'm just passing through, putting some chairs back in the sanctuary, so they let me through. After dropping them off, I get back to the main stairwell, where I see two of my friends dressed up for their skit - one is dressed as an older lady, and the other as her obnoxious teenage daughter. I wish them luck on the competition, before eventually waking up.

WBTB - 2 pts
First DILD - 10 pts
RC/Stabilization - 1 pt
Flying - 5 pts
First WILD - 10 pts
Teleport - 10 pts
2nd Step - 10 pts
1 NLD - 1 pt

Night 4 Total - 49 pts
Competition Total - 90.5 pts

First had a fragment about some weird British comedy show, like Monty Python. It involved these weird horses…

Spoiler for NSFW:

...made entirely of testicles…

...running through the streets, disrupting traffic.

I did a WBTB and then fell back asleep. I’m in my house and quickly realize I’m dreaming. I plug my nose to RC just to make sure, and then stabilize by rubbing my hands and (for some reason) licking my fingers. I get right to work on doing some tasks for the competition. I start with flying, of course, since that’s usually the easiest for me. I’m in the upstairs hallway and try to lift myself off the ground. It’s somewhat difficult for some reason, so I decide to move to my parents’ bedroom, where the ceilings are much higher, giving me more room to fly around. Sure enough, flying is a lot easier, and I stay in the air for quite a while.

There’s a bit of a gap in my memory, but I’m now downstairs on my porch. All the furniture is gone, it’s just the walls and the carpet. I decide to phase through the door, so I get a running start and push my way through. It feels like I’m going through a slab of jelly, but I do make it to the other side. I head back inside, but my mom stops to ask me what I’m doing. I don’t really know how to explain it to her, so I just shrug my shoulders and walk off.

I remembered a lot more of this lucid when I woke up afterwards, but I quickly fell back asleep and forgot a good portion of it. I feel like I did more tasks, but I can’t think of them at the moment, so I guess this’ll have to do.

1 Fragment - 0.5 pt
WBTB - 2 pts
DILD - 10 pts
RC/Stabilization - 1 pt
Fly + 1st-Step - 5+5 = 10 pts
Fully Phase through Solid Object - 10 pts
Interact w/ DC - 2 pts

Night 1 Total - 35.5 pts
Competition Total - 35.5 pts

After my WBTB, I WILD into my living room at home. I realize that I’m an idiot and didn’t pick anything to do for this lucid (maybe because I wasn’t entirely expecting another lucid so close to the last one). I try to think of anything that might be interesting to try out. I somehow recall a lot of people on the forum saying that meditating in a lucid is an awesome experience, but considering how I don’t meditate in real life (and when I try to, I get too distracted by my ADD thoughts), I’m not sure if I should try. But, no better options come to mind, so I figure, what the heck. I sit down in the classic meditation pose, and I actually start to levitate off the ground a bit. The sights and sounds around me seem to get much clearer. So far so good, I guess. Surely this’ll be easier than in waking life with all of its distractions.

In this case I was wrong. My dad walks in the room. (Story Time: Whenever I’m home on break from school, I’m basically full-time tech support for my parents. Apart from fixing computers/phones/TVs/cable boxes/etc., my dad will often interrupt whatever I’m doing about every 10 minutes to ask me some question about his phone/computer/Facebook. The answer is always something so simple that he could’ve Googled it himself, but he insists that I help him. As you’ll see, this habit of his has carried over into my dreams…) He sits down and immediately starts blabbing something about his phone acting up. I remind myself that this is a dream and try to ignore him, but it seems to make him louder. I finally get up and walk out of the room, but he follows me out, still talking about his phone. I run upstairs, go in my room, and lock the door. I can still hear him outside the door, now raising his voice to a shout. Ugh, this is ridiculous. I crack open the window, get a running start, and jump outside, flying off away from the house. Unfortunately, before I can get back to meditating, the dream destabilizes and I lose lucidity.

I’m now in this movie theater with a couple friends to see the latest Disney-Pixar movie. It’s supposedly an IMAX movie theater, even though it’s really just a really wide curved screen that stretches across the entire front of the room. The room is much larger than an actual movie theater, and it looks like it seats a few thousand people. Me and a couple friends are off to the left side, about 10 rows from the front. For some reason, though, the seats are angled off towards the left wall, so I only see a small portion of the left side of the screen until I turn my head really far to the right to see the rest of the picture.

We sit through the first few minutes of the movie, when the movie pauses. Some lady walks to the front of the theatre, and 3 more flat projector screens lower from the ceiling, showing a slide about some charity organization. I can somehow see her nametag from where I’m sitting, which says Hanna on it. She introduces herself as Hanna Montana. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m missing the last ‘h’. So no, I’m not a widely-adored pop superstar.” I turn to my friend next to me. “To be fair, neither is Miley Cyrus.” My joke made 3 rows around me start cracking up, and my friend even spit out his drink from laughing so hard.

We sit through the movie (which amazingly is only about 10 seconds long), and me and my friends kind of hang out in the theater for a few minutes afterwards. A police officer walks up to my friend Joel and tells him that he’s gonna have to come with him. I try standing up for him. “What seems to be the problem, officer?”
“Well, this hooligan was spotted last night causing a ruckus during a showing of Star Wars, and so he’s been banned from the building. Yet somehow, he managed to crawl his way back in here past our security.”
Joel walks out into the aisle, with the cop behind him. He gets to the top of the stairs, and suddenly makes a run for it. The cop quickly pulls out his taser and shoots him before he even gets out the door. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see Joel falling to the ground (because man, that would’ve been hilarious to see IRL).

After the movie, I head home, jump on my computer, and play some Minecraft. It’s a weird version of Minecraft in that it’s played from a top-down perspective, making it kinda hard to see what you’re actually building. I somehow discover a secret passageway that leads under this nearby lake, but when I travel down it, I get stopped by this massive scorpion. I’m now fighting it in first person, but I realize all my weapons are gone. The scorpion has pretty strong armor too, so it’s gonna be impossible to fight him in this state. Still, I give it my best shot. I run around him, dodging his tail strikes. He charges towards me, knocking me down, though I do manage to land a few punches on my way down. It doesn’t hurt, obviously, since it’s just a video game, though everything else about the experience feels pretty realistic. After a trading a few more blows, I’m down to one health, while the scorpion has barely taken a scratch. Oh well, it’s not like I had anything valuable in my inventory, guess I’ll just die then.

Suddenly, a glowing arrow shoots from the entrance of the passageway, one-hit killing the scorpion. I look in the direction the arrow came from, and see this guy with jet black hair and a leather jacket standing at the entrance, bow extended toward the monster. I go to thank my mysterious savior, but he just raises his nose at me. “Ha, how could you even come into a level 12 cave without any weapons? Maybe you should go back and do the tutorial levels, you noob!” The world around us fades out before there’s a bright flash of light.

Fair warning, the next part reads like a novel. It was a pretty long, detailed section of the dream. I don’t remember all the dialogue that occurred, but I do remember most of the emotional connotation of it, so I based the dialogue on that.

I’m now in this huge wooden cabin, getting out of this strange white capsule on a metal track. As I get up, I have a rush of false memories in my head that give me a context of what’s going on. I don’t really know how I know these facts, I just kinda suddenly know them. I’m somehow 50 years in the future - I have no clue how I got here, but I’m here. Much like in the book “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline, the world thrives entirely off of virtual reality. People basically live their entire lives in their personal VR capsule. The cabin I’m in is an “access point”, a place where people can bring their capsules and connect directly to the “hub”, the worldwide center of VR activity. The tracks on which my capsule was positioned were used to physically take users to the hub, and during the journey, the capsules would begin the boot-up process before finally being connected at their destination.

Speaking of capsules, mine wasn’t the best. I seem to recall getting one of the cheaper ones - it was enough to successfully connect to the hub, but it wasn’t meant for the incredibly realistic experiences boasted by VR companies. The screen in the eyepiece wasn’t that high of a resolution, and haptic feedback - the equipment that simulated a sense of touch - was pretty terrible. Everything you touched, from a hard granite countertop to the soft fur of a kitten, registered as the same stiff poke - there was no variance on how hard it poked you, you just knew you had touched something because you were poked. But I was fine with it, I couldn’t really afford much more than that.

And of course, my “mysterious savior” was Johnny Blade. Of course, that wasn’t his real name, but he had used that username to climb the e-sports ranks, so it was what everyone knew him as. Because of his gaming success, he had a ton of sponsorships from all the major e-sports advertising companies, and was on the cover of just about everything. He was a pretty big celebrity. Unfortunately, he was also a pretty big douchebag too. His hair color - which was reflected in all of his video game avatars - was an obnoxiously dyed shade of black that apparently made some sort of fashion statement. That, tied with his signature leather jacket, made him look like a mix between a 1950’s greaser and Biff Tannen from Back to the Future - with just about the same attitude. Lucky for me, he exited his game of Minecraft shortly after I left, and just so happened to exit to the same access point as me, conveniently on the track next to my capsule.

“Well, the least you could do is thank me. I saved your precious level 1 armor,” he sarcastically remarks. “We all know you must have spent a long time on acquiring it, so I didn’t want you to have wasted your life. Lord knows you don’t have much of life to waste.”
“Oh, rest assured, if I had half as many sponsors that you have kissing all over your disgusting feet, I could’ve just bought all the armor in the shop. And I guarantee I wouldn’t be half the snob you are about it, either.”
“Jealous, much? Maybe if you spent as much time practicing as you do whining, you might be able to make a name for yourself. Anyway, I don’t have time for this. Network interviews, photo shoots, you know how it is… Oh wait, no you don’t. Adios, peasant!”

Oh man, I want to slap him so bad. I don’t care if he has lawyers at his beck and call, someone needs to teach him a lesson. I walk back over to my capsule, ready to go back into the hub, when I spot Johnny’s capsule still on the track, unlocked and open. I hesitate for a moment before walking over to inspect it. As to be expected, his capsule was state-of-the-art. Stater-of-the-art than state-of-the-art, in fact, as his sponsors often gave him plenty of new equipment prototypes months before they hit the markets. Well, if someone needs to teach him a lesson, I think I just found my curriculum.

I size myself up - we have pretty similar builds, even though I’m about an inch shorter than him. I lay down in the body-shaped contours of the capsule. It’s a tad snug, but it’ll work. I sit up to press the launch button on the side of the track. I always thought that was kind of a design flaw - that you or someone else had to press the start button on the track outside the capsule before it would launch. I guess I never had that problem on my capsule, since the door closed pretty slowly on it anyway, giving me plenty of time to position myself correctly. Unfortunately, the capsule door shuts almost immediately once I press the button, shoving me into it in a weird, squatted position. My head didn’t even make it to the head portion of the machine.

This is bad. For one, I’m quickly feeling uncomfortable, as the cramped position I’m in is putting a ton of pressure on my arms and neck, so I don’t know how long I can stay stuck like this. Second, I can feel that the capsule has already launched down the track, meaning in a few seconds I will be connected to the hub. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but in my current position, I have no way to get to the controls to close the connection, return to the access point, and exit the capsule. Meaning I will most likely be stuck there a very long time, with no way to escape.

I manage to tilt my head upwards towards the head hole, and push upwards with my legs until I can kind of wiggle my way upwards. Thanks to the anatomy of the human body, and the human-body-conforming shape of the capsule, I can’t squeeze my head through the neck hole. I can barely look up through the hole and see the boot-up screen on the display. It’s fairly simple - a plain black screen with some green text in the top left corner, probably to show version info and all that. I also manage to see some kind of emergency-release latch in the neck area. Hoping that the latch will help enlarge the neck hole so I can slide my way up, I pull it. The capsule door flings open, and I’m quickly thrown out of the machine. I quickly realize what’s happening, and try to grab onto the door as I’m flying out. My hand just barely scrapes the edge of the door, but I ultimately miss and watch as the empty capsule continues rolling down the track out of view.

I take a moment to assess the gravity of the situation. Or rather, the lack of gravity, because I soon notice that I’m just floating, almost like I’m helplessly drifting through space. The track that the capsule was on simply fades away, and I’m left floating in a sea of black, with nothing around me. Until I notice up in the sky, off in the distance, floating green text. The boot-up screen? But, I’m not in the capsule. And even if I was, I shouldn’t be able to see this, I’d still be cramped in the bottom half with the display out of sight. Yet here I was, floating in a surreal sea of nothingness. I pondered this until a bright flash of light brought me back to my senses.

I’m now riding a motorcycle down this street in a suburban neighborhood. Behind me is a cop car with its lights on behind me. Oh great, they found out I stole Johnny’s capsule, and now they’re taking me in. I contemplate running, but I decide to play it cool, it could just be whatever game Johnny was playing last (besides Minecraft, I guess). It’s probably best to just wait it out and see what happens. I pull over to the side of the road, and the cop pulls up behind me. He exits the car and walks over to me.

“Johnny Blade?”
I stay silent. I don't want to say anything that might give me away.
“Your presence has been requested. Follow me.”

He gets back in his car and pulls ahead. I follow behind him for a bit, until we pull into a driveway in front of this red and white dojo, which seems somewhat out of place in a suburban town. The cop gets out and motions me towards the front door. I dismount my motorcycle and walk up the stairs of the porch, and slowly open the door.

The inside is a bit of a pig sty. The carpets are covered in cigarette burns and assorted stains, some of which look to be of questionable origin. I walk into a room to the right, where there’s a group of men wearing white suits and sunglasses. The leader of the group, who looks slightly like Mark Wahlberg with a beard, laughs and motions to his cohorts, who quickly point their weapons at me. “Well well well, Johnny Blade.” Why does everyone keep calling me that? “I haven’t seen or heard from you in years. Didn’t think you had the nerve to show your face around here.”

He stands up and walks slowly towards me. “Did you finally decide to hold up your end of the deal? Or did you already forget?”
Holy crap, what did Johnny get himself into? I have to keep up the charade, since everyone seems to think I’m the real Johnny Blade, just because I stole his VR capsule. But I have no clue what he’s talking about. I should probably play it safe, just say something non-threatening to disarm the situa-
“Well it was kind of hard to remember it in the first place, considering all the bull crap you were spewing last time I was here.”
Of course. Let me just piss of the first guy I meet here, with all his friends ready to blast holes in me with one innocent flick of a finger. I rest assured in the fact that I’m still in the VR capsule, so any “pain” will be nothing more than a few shocks or prods to my chest from the haptic feedback.
The guy laughs again, and motions to the guy next to him, who pulls his trigger, firing a paintball into my ear. Paint splatters all over the side of my face, and my ear starts ringing from the impact. I wince in pain - that actually did hurt quite a bit. “That was a warning shot. Kind of a warm up for my men. Rest assured the next bullet will be very much real.”

I reach up to wipe the paint off the side of my face, when a very scary thought crosses my mind. See, VR capsules, no matter how advanced, don’t have haptic feedback around the ears or face. This is both a safety measure (you don’t want people poking each others’ eyes out in VR) and a technical limitation of the equipment (there’s too much stuff like visual/audio/olfactory equipment and oxygen tubes in the way for there to be any haptic equipment there). Yet I definitely felt that paintball hit and splatter, I definitely feel the paint running down my face, and my ear is definitely ringing. There’s no way to simulate that. This has to be real.

But wait, what about Johnny Blade? They all called me Johnny Blade. I definitely don’t look like Johnny Blade; how could anyone make that mistake? Plus the whole boot-up screen. This couldn’t be real - I’m still in the machine. Aren’t I?... aren’t I? I am saved from answering this question, as I soon wake up.