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Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm driving through the parking lot of a shopping center, at night. There is a violent physical altercation going on in the parking lot, and it turns into a gunfight.

I'm now riding my bicycle through a nearby residential neighborhood, where there is more violence going on. It's still nighttime. As I ride, I pray that I won't get hit by a stray bullet. I also reflect that I could be driving to my destination, which is my old church, but I like bicycling better than driving. [This is true.] I miss the turn to get to St. Mark's.

I'm no longer riding my bicycle; I'm now standing in a black nothing. [I suspect that I might have DEILDed here, but I'm not positive.] I think of the destination I was just trying to get to, the parish hall at my old church, and cause a knife from the parish hall's silverware drawer to appear in my hand. A second later, the parish hall appears around me.

I walk through the room, appreciating the dream environment, as usual. A lot of people are there, including my parents. My dad comes up to me and offers to give me a hug, and I accept it and hug back. All the people are there for a big reception, with a lot of food laid out on tables.

After the reception, when everyone has left except me, my parents, and two or three other people, there is still a huge platter of thinly-sliced roast beef left over. I try to give it away to those two or three other people.

I wake up in my current bedroom, very pleased to have just had a lucid dream. I remember to grab my phone, which is running Ev's Lucid Dreaming App for Android, and draw a star on the screen with my finger to indicate that I just had a lucid dream. I draw the star, but very sloppily, with one point much bigger and longer than the other points. I'm concerned that the program won't recognize the gesture, but it does. It displays the gesture I just drew with the caption “lucidity!” underneath it, in the same font it always uses for those captions.

When I woke up for real, I thought to myself, You know, I bet I didn't actually record that lucid dream. The app wouldn't recognize the star if I drew it that poorly, and the caption always just says "lucid dream." I checked my actual phone and, sure enough, no "lucid dream" mark on my graph. That had, indeed, been a false awakening. I felt slightly frustrated, as well as highly amused that the app had shown up in one of my FAs.

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Side notes:

Wow. I'm pretty pleased with this DEILD, if that is indeed what it was, and with my sudden mastery of changing the dream scene. To be fair, though, I did change it to the destination I had been trying to reach in my non-lucid nightmare.

I didn't realize until after I woke up that the part where my dad hugged me was day residue. On the evening before I had this dream, I hadn't bothered to get up and hug my dad when he left the house, and I had regretted it. I thought it was awfully nice of my subconscious to give me a second chance to do that.

No lucid dreams. I fell asleep while trying MILD, and I did the WBTB earlier than expected, because I forgot to take out the trash last night.

Before I woke up to take the trash out, all of my "dreams" consisted of these faux "reality checks" on loop. It's like my mind was just running through them over and over, but it really wasn't a dream if that makes sense. I wouldn't call it a dream anyway. If I did call it a dream, then the entire time leading up to the WBTB was a constant loop dream of my checking my hands as the reality check. Maybe I need a good night's rest? At least they are happening A LOT in my sleep now, so there's that.

When I went back to sleep after the WBTB, I really started to dream. Perhaps my REM periods were too short in the time leading up to the WBTB, and maybe that's why I had these "dreams." But ANYWAY...


The first thing I remember is walking with Maria to some place. I think we were seeing each other or something.

Then, there was this dream where it was Sean's birthday. It was actually his birthday in real life on the 26th, so that makes sense. For his birthday, we were getting him this really expensive chocolate, which sounds pretty depressing now that I think about it. Anyway, before that we were having really expensive pizza, and we only had one. It was like we were running out of pizza fast, and we were worried we would have to pay for another, or that the other one wouldn't come in time - oh wait!...it was that we were running out, and we paid for the other already, but we were afraid that it wasn't coming. Then I had to go get the chocolate. It was in the closet of this room that I would be in in a later dream. In the closet, there was this big machine, not unlike a coffee bean dispenser in a supermarket, except this one was a lot more futuristic and electronic. The chocolate was shaped like pumpkin seeds, and the pricing was $75.87 to start. You needed to put that much down to buy any in the first place. After you were going to buy a certain amount, the price started going up. I couldn't figure out the stupid machine, because the interface was horrible. There were three buttons placed on the machine so that there was one button on top of another, and another button next to the bottom one. The top button went through the selections, and the bottom button went back, but if you pressed the bottom one, you had to press the button next to it to make it so the top button would be set to cycle through the selections again, otherwise it would now be the "confirm order" button. Anyway, I was getting annoyed, and my mom came over, I'm now guessing to ask me what was taking so long. When she was helping me, we were in some weird train station with the same machine. I have no idea why, it didn't have to do with anything, and we ended up back in the room right after this whole thing. I tried messing with the machine again, and I finally found the one we were going to get Sean, but I accidentally hit the "confirm order" button. So we bought one piece of pumpkin seed sized chocolate for $75.87. I said I was sorry to my mom, saying it was because of the bad interface. I had to explain what an interface was to her, and we were both getting annoyed.

Then, it was DE that we were back at the party, but it wasn't the party, and it was in our old house now. I remember seeing the porch, but I don't remember what happened there. Then I had to get something that was in my room. My room was the room that is in my current house. When I got there, I couldn't open my eyes, so I couldn't see, and was blindly searching through my room. I finally got my eyes half open, and I looked in the mirror to see what was wrong with them. I could see that they were blood shot, and I could see in the mirror on my ceiling by the fan, was this wild and swift smoke that moved across the ceiling towards me. I freaked out and went downstairs to the dining room. The dining room was DE that it was my old house, but it looked mostly like my current dining room, with some minor touches here and there that hinted at the old house. There were a bunch of girls there, and I was explaining to them that there was a ghost in the house. Then I walked out onto the back porch and there was a lot of dudes that took off on their bicycles like it was this big tradition. I went to sit down at the table on the porch, and suddenly I was at the beach with Chrissy/Cassandra. I don't know exactly which one it was, and it may have been DE that it was both in the same body. We were watching videos on my phone, but I forget what they were, but they may have been the video I saw in my next dream.

I was in the room that had the chocolate machine in the closet. Now that I think about it, this room was a lot like the room I stay in at Dad's, except there was only one closet. There was only one bed in the middle of the room rather than two beds on both sides. I had my keyboard on the bed with me, and I think there was another machine there too. The keyboard was playing this extremely loud drone music, and it was fricken amazing, and I don't even like drone music. Then I looked at the TV, and there was this movie or something on. Ben Stiller was the main character, and the part I saw was that he was at the site of this big fire, and as he's walking, he comes up to Batman, and Ben Stiller was like, "Wait, but you're a good guy. What are you doing here?" Batman looked down at these pencils he had in his hands and said, "I was hoping the cameras would see..." It was like he needed the world to know that he can read and write like a big boy, and he was ashamed that he was doing such a selfish thing. Ben Stiller walked along a little more and came to an evil Batman, and said, "Wait, but you're the bad guy. What on earth are you doing here?" The evil Batman took one look at Ben Stiller and said something along the lines of, "BBLLLAARRRGGH!! I'm gonna kill everyone!" Or maybe it was, "BBLLAARARRRRGGHHH!!! I'M GONNA EAT YOU!!!"

And that was what I woke up with.

Had several dreams last night, some of them fragments.

In my first dream (fragment), I am at a hotel or office somewhere with some friends of mine. All I remember from it is that I had several bumps or welts on my face, neck and arms, like from a bug bite. But on closer inspection, the bumps seem to each have a little window on top of them and inside you can see tiny mechanical or electronic components. They look something like small Borg implants from the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

An interesting side note: I actually AM staying at a hotel right now in Roatan, Honduras. And you have to constantly stay sprayed down with insect repellent because there are these little no-see-um bugs that bite and leave welts like mosquitoes. I’ve been lucky and haven’t gotten bitten but some other guests at the hotel are covered in bug bites.

In my next dream, my soon-to-be-ex wife and I are in a car and I’m driving us somewhere. When my wife finds out what route I took, she makes a comment that I should have taken a different route because it’s much shorter coming that way from where we live. I agree with her and suggest that next time we use her Garmin and follow the route it tells us to go. She likes that idea. This dream seems to repeat itself a couple of times, or maybe we’re just going to different places.

In my last dream, I am riding a bicycle. I had parked my truck and was trying out riding my bicycle from where I had parked my truck to a specific point, either work or home, I don’t remember. There is another man on a bike following behind me and he gradually catches up to me, since he’s going a little faster than I am. We greet each other and I explain to him what I’m doing, telling him I’m doing it to get more exercise. He tells me that’s a good idea and we end up giving each other advice and pointers about riding on the roads. I stop at a point along the way to meet some friends and eat lunch (or dinner) and invite the man inside to join me. As I’m inside, taking to some friends about a book I just read, I notice that the man I invited in has the exact same book in his hand. I don’t remember the title or author of the book, but I think it’s about bike riding.

Good morning, everybody.

Dragon #1

It was black night. I was walking to a cafe, probably because I thought I was going to meet some friends there, in particular my old friend ML. I may actually have known ML was going to be at the cafe, though he hadn't invited me. I may have decided to show up at the cafe, in spite of his not inviting me, just so he'd know I knew.

I was in some small shopping plaza, possibly at the edge of a smallish residential area in a suburban town. The shopping plaza was three stories tall. It was a series of buildings, kind of like office buildings. The shops were all connected to each other by outdoor balconies. I stood between the buildings in a big, concrte courtyard. I felt like the cafe was in the basement level of one of these buildings.

I may then have been out by a bridge, somewhere near the banks of a river. I was working on some kind of box, like an electrical box attached to some kind of short, stout, concrete pole. The "box" may have been something more like a simple switch. The switch may have been in decent condition, but the metal base around the switch may have been really rusty. I may have heard some weird, whistling sound, which may have frightened me.

I was in some room, probably with three other people. The room we were in felt a little like a living room. But the room was so big and empty and cold-feeling that it seemed more like some kind of business room. There was a huge window-wall looking out on the black night.

One of the three other people was an older man, probably dressed nicely. He was like a boss to the rest of us. Another was a woman, about my age (early 30s), dressed like a business woman. The third person was probably a man.

The boss told us something we should get started working on. But he told us, as he seemed to be leaving the room, that we should avoid going down to the bridge. The man now seemed to be touching a glass case, trying to get an electric reaction out of something else in the case.

The man told us that certain monitoring equipment was picking up a strange noise down there. The noise, the man told us (although I heard it at the same time) was like a phone picking up, with a conversation way in the distance. But the noise would soon turn to a shrill buzzing. This kind of noise indicated ghost activity, though I don't think the man said this directly.

I suddenly remembered my own experience near the bridge. I didn't tell the man about it. Instead, I tried to question the man more on the characteristics of the sound. I got a little more info from the man.

The person who had had the ghost experience was now a woman. After hearing the info regarding the ghost bridge, the woman seemed to have become distracted and dazed. The man had told the other people to keep the woman from going to the bridge. But the woman was definitely going to try to go back.

At first it seemed like the people were all staying in different cabins in some kind of wildnerness area. The woman snuck away from her cabin without anybody noticing. She was running down through a well-manicured but large garden area and down to the bridge. She wore a Victorian-style dress, probably white on top and pale, sea-blue on the skirt. She also had red hair, done up and back in a round, Victorian style.

Now it was like all the people were staying in one big mansion. But the woman had escaped the mansion. She was riding a bike on a garden path between two rows of very tall, euonymus-type shrubs. At one point, she turned a corner. As soon as she turned the corner, a man, also dressed in Victorian clothing, stood up and began pursuing the woman.

The man knew what path the woman was taking. He also knew paths he could take as shortcuts, so that he could cut the woman off, even though she was on a bike and he was on foot. There was water somewhere, coming from something like a fountain or a lawn sprinkler.

The woman was riding through a section of path with the hedges so thick on either side that she couldn't see anything else. Suddenly the man grabbed the woman from behind. He pulled her off her bike, spun her around, and embraced her. The man acted like he was in love with the woman -- maybe he was. The woman and the man embraced and kissed.

The man and woman were now in a bedroom. But now the man was a woman. The two women were kissing, and it looked like they were going to end up in bed together. But the first woman broke free of the second woman. She took on a dazed kind of attitude again and said that she had to go away. It was pretty obvious that she was going to try togo to the ghost bridge, though she may not have said it.

The second woman lay down in bed. She was partly frustrated that she hadn't gotten to have sex with the first woman. But she was also frustrated that she hadn't been able to keep the woman from trying to go back to the ghost bridge.

The second woman now pulled a hood over her head. (The second woman also had red hair, though her hair was darker than the first woman's hair.) The woman wore a pale sea-blue nightgown. The hood was a part of the gown. But it was a wizard's hood. The woman said something like, "We'll see about that girl! She thinks she can just go like that when she's been kept from the place. I'll pay her back for acting that way."

The second woman lay her head on her pillow. It looked like she was going to fall asleep. But I felt like she was going to try and perform some kind of magic action against the first woman.

I now sat in a cafe, which was more like a waiting area in some place like a college or a hospital. It was like the ghost bridge incidents had been from a movie I'd been watching, and that I had just now been deep in a reverie regarding the memories of that movie. I had also remembered some background tune from the movie, and I was humming it to myself.

I sat on the arm of an orange, thickly cushioned chair. I was looking out a big window, to some lawny area like in a city park. It was daytime, and the light was bright grey outside. A skinny, young, black man sat at a picnic bench near the window. I knew the man was following me. He couldn't come into the cafe for some reason or another. So he had to wait outside for me.

I was kind of sick of being followed around by this guy, and I was wishing there was some way I could stop him. But I also seemed to be really preoccupied with the imagery of the ghost bridge "movie."

Somebody else in the "cafe" started brashly humming a terribly out of key tune. It suddenly drew attention to the fact that I was still humming the background music from the ghost bridge "movie." I stopped huming as soon as I realized that I'd been humming loud enough for other people to hear.

I sat there silently, still staring out the window, though I couldn't see out the window very well anymore. My focus was more on the man, who kept humming horribly out of key.

I looked to my left, to the man, who sat in a chair, reading a newspaper. The man was old, from some Latin-European country, I guessed. He wore an orange polo shirt. He was short, and he was good looking, but he also looked kind of mean and rude. Another old man was sitting at the end of a couch, directly to the first old man's right. This man was a little taller, pale skinned, a little overweight, and bald.

I looked away from the old men. I figured that now that I'd stopped humming, the man would also stop humming. But he only began to hum even louder! I was like he was trying to annoy me, rather than trying to say anything about how I'd been humming too loud. I was getting kind of mad, because the guy just kept humming louder and louder and more and more off key.

But, finally, the second old man said, "Look! You don't like it when people do things like that? Then don't do those kinds of things yourself!"

My recall is getting better with each night.
Like in my previous dream, I was in a part of my school - the corridor.
The lighting was red, like in a horror movie. I was walking down the stairs when I met my dad. He told that I should not eat anything today and wake up at 4 am tomorrow, because I would need to go to the doctor. I asked him why and he told me that I would have to throw up infornt of the doctor. I then start to see myself in third person and see myself throw up all over the place. There was much more to this dream, but I guess my recall is not good enough to remember every detail.
When I woke up, it was morning, bright and sunny, I looked around the room, and went back to sleep.
I was riding my bike. A picture to illustrate trough were I was going:

http://www.photo-paysage.com/albums/...entale_-01.jpg


I then met two of my classmates. Both of them were girls. I stopped to say hi and saw a bicycle, identical to mine. They asked me if I would be able to build a time machine out of parts of the bicycle.I thought it was a weird question and told them that I would need a source of power. Everything went black, I woke up. This dream was nice to have because I like one of the girls

1. I'm cripplingly depressed, but I'm riding my bike anyway to meet my brother behind an old Blockbuster in my hometown. The store has been repurposed into a porn store, and I go in and buy something. I see my mom exit from the nearby Walgreens, so naturally I drop the porn and meet her. Rest of DJ is unintelligible.

2. I'm hanging out/jamming with my friend Scott A. in the basement of my house. Q and S.T. come over. I go to greet them, but in my clumsiness I start a chain reaction that breaks a bunch of lamps. None of my friends seem to particularly care, but I grab a vacuum cleaner anyway. As I go for it, I realize I'm hungry. I take the vacuum with me and grab my bicycle, heading to my college cafeteria. Along the way, I am insulted about my age by Nathan S. and other jackasses from college. I ignore them and head into the cafeteria, where I first enter the bathroom.

3. I'm playing a Star Trek version of the TIE Fighter video game. I successfully pilot a starfighter against impossible odds, several capital ships at a time. There's then a "trench run" sequence as in Star Wars, where I follow a freighter into a massive building. It's decorated as a nightclub for giants, and there's a critical spot on the floor that I need to shoot. I can't keep my craft steady enough to shoot and use the tractor beam at the same time and fail the mission.

1. I place a mail order for two large grey discs of "questionable literary material." They arrive in my backyard at a bad time, as I'm playing something with my brother and my mom is on the patio talking. I keep my cool and wait until night to bring them in, but both parents are still puttering around. My dad goes outside to get a radio; I perceive him like guard from Metal Gear Solid. I make a mad dash past him with the discs under my arm, then run up the stairs, stash them under my bed and get ready to go back out. My brother then enters, dressed in a little green man alien costume.

2. I'm playing some sort of Disney/Halo crossover game. Its first level is a straightforward run and gun with an HMG, but the second is sniper mission that my dad and I can't beat. I scan a crowd of faces with my scope, but don't see the character I'm supposed to kill. I shrug and give up, and the sniper nest turns into a hotel room.

3. I'm biking at a local college, where I see my friend C.W. I invite him to have lunch with me.

1. My family visits MGM studios at Disney World. One of the main attractions seems to be a large kissing booth with "famous people," but all one can see of these people is a pair of lips. There are text descriptions of each person under their lips, from Einstein to Disney himself and more. I explore for a bit, then head to the exit area, where a friendly Disney employee offers Purell hand sanitizer and a station for making PB&J sandwiches. As I exit into a garden, I look up at the sky and see two missiles streaking down towards the ground. I remark to myself how much the missiles look like breasts, then run to the impact site. My dad is nearby, pissed off, because the missiles were aimed at his bicycle as punishment for trying to enter an attraction through a forbidden doorway. He mentions he might not have been on best terms with Disney, as they caught him littering before.

2. Some sort of four-color version of the webcomic Cyanide and Happiness. The characters are attacked by a shark while on an ocean raft, and they hold it off. The dream ends when the characters start to peel layers off of themselves, revealing different shirts.

3. Vague account of bounding like a dog through a streetlight night...

I had a dream where I was trying to keep these people 'things' at bay, while I searched something on the computer,
And then I was walking down my street, and I knew I was dreaming, so as I saw a truck pass the street I willed myself to travel towards it, but the dream faded. I then was sitting in darkness, so I attempted to visualize a dream scene around me. It was extremely dark, and I saw a boy riding a bicycle. It was one of the really really old ones, the ones that have the HUGE wheel in the front, and a tiny wheel on the back. I was going to teleport to him but, yet again, the dream faded. Again... I visualized a scene around me, but it was so foggy, that I just flew around in darkness until I woke up. (I probably should have tried to anchor myself into the dream, but I didn't. My family was stomping around in the living room, and I had vaguely heard it in the background of my dream. I guess that is what woke me up.)

Date: 09-24-10
Length: 20 minutes
Vividness: 6/10

I was on a bike, with my girlfriend Dakota sitting on it facing sideways.
At one point, the bike completely flipped forward, and i fell on my face.
I thought it would hurt really badly, but I didn't feel a thing.
I realized that I must be dreaming!

I was still on the ground, and this yellow car drove half on inch from crushing my skull.
I got up and Dakota and I started walking around.
I wanted to make things explode so I tried making all the people around me blow up.
It didn't work
Dakota told me she wanted Starbucks, so we walked a couple feet to a Del-Taco.
I closed my eyes and pictured it changing to a Starbucks.
At first, only the sign changed.
I tried again, and the name changed, but the sign changed back to Del-Taco.
Then finally, the whole building transformed into a Starbucks.

I remember something to do with a kidnapping, or bad people doing stuff to us.
I forget everything that happened afterwards as well.

-frenchblablabla

DJ Log: May 23, 2011 – 8:15AM (USA Eastern)
Text color legend: · NON-DREAM · NOTES · DREAM · LUCID ·

I am riding a bicycle around the parking lot of our local shopping mall. The bicycle moves at will, as I do not have to pedal it at all. Another cyclist asks me, "What kind of bike is that? It looks like it works pretty good." I reply, "It's a piece of junk that I cobbled together from random junk. Have a nice day." I grab the handlebars and the bike takes off through the middle of the parking lot.

Quitting smoking was the worst thing I could have ever done to the dream world. I had zero-recall for about 2 months and have just recently been able to recall small fragments. I usually won't post a fragment to my online dream journal unless I can make at least 3 good sentences out of it. I've had a lot of fragments, at least 3-4 per night for the last few days. This one is the first in which I can recall some dialogue between a dream character and myself. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of my lack-of-nicotine-induced dry spell.

I don't know where I was coming from; I forget, but I was in a shopping cart or something, cruising down the street and up a hill so fast that I flew threw the air.

I had to lean back or else I would fall forwards and crash. I landed in a restaurant.

--

I was in my house alone. Three women came in without knocking or anything, and started running around. At least two of them were really cute, but it was still kind of disturbing. Then a fourth girl, a black girl came in. One of them said they were just checking the place out and looking for something. Then they left and my wife came home.

--

I was at some kind of party. There were escalators going up to another level.

As if it were an instructional video, I saw how the escalators could take small tanks up, and if they weighed too much, they would get a jolting bump to push them up to the next step to help them out.

Then, I was going up the escalator. There was a heavy-set black lady in front of me who couldn't make it up. I couldn't understand why when the escalator would help her.

Then I was in another room trying to explain what had happened to a bunch of people who were socializing. I started explaining how the escalator could help bump up a tank, but this big lady couldn't make it.

I started to explain how that was what happened in a dream I had. I was getting confused if it was real or I had dreamed it. Casually but quickly, everyone started going outside. They left me feeling really stupid on the couch.

Then there was a guy who rode his bike everywhere. He was like super bicycle man with a blue, yellow, and white spandex outfit and matching helmet. He did it by choice, but Work was about 40 miles away, and when I told him I couldn't believe he rode his bike there, he rolled his eyes because it was so far.

We walked off talking about some stuff; I forget what. Eventually I was going to let him go, but then I saw a gun at his side. I asked what kind it was. I forget what kind it was, but he let me see it. I removed the action the way you would remove a camera from a tripod. Strange.

Then I released the mag and looked at the bullets. I said, "Hollow-point 40's?" He said, "Yea. It is awesome knowing about guns, isn't it?" I agreed. (I know a little about guns in waking life; not much.)

He finally left.

I was talking to Ben about him visiting us in America and us visiting him in Australia. There was a canyon in Australia that I was particularly interested in seeing, but for some reason, he wouldn’t talk about it. We went through a list of reasons why it was a bad idea – too far away from Brisbane (either twenty-five minutes or five hours, he never specified which), food for the trip, silly things like that which are rarely the biggest factor in planning an international trip. He and another Australian guy debated how well the car would hold up on such a long drive. We were in some kind of virtual reality world. Ben had spent a lot of time converting image data to 3D models of scenic places in Australia, but he wouldn’t let us see them… I was confused, so I pressed this a bit. I finally told Ben flatly that I wanted to see the natural beauty of Australia, and I would see it with or without his help. He wouldn’t talk to me or Nicole after that. We got involved in some kind of weird mind meshing game where we turned Ben’s brain into a marble and rolled it around in our thoughts, making him rethink his decision. He eventually decided he would cooperate with us after all. As we learned, the only reason he had argued was because he thought my request to see the sights in Australia was my way of criticizing his appreciation of nature. Since it was settled, we apologized and settled our disagreement. We missed each other’s company too much to hold out alone anyway. Ben made what was supposed to be a bold statement, then – he would buy a bike in Australia and ride it proudly to show the world how much he loved natural beauty.

The dream jumped. Ben and I were meeting up at a restaurant and hotel. We were all going to stay there together. One of the employees at the restaurant, a woman with blond hair in a sophisticated, black uniform, asked if I needed any help. I declined any assistance; I was waiting for someone, I said. I stood in the middle of the busy restaurant as waitresses zoomed back and forth between tables. I observed that the hotel was separated by a swamp-like stretch of gooey, red organic tissue. I dared not step on it. I asked the blond woman from before how I should cross it. She pointed out a narrow path made of stone that led across. All of this was clearly a reference to Althea’s swamp in the Sword of Truth series. I thanked the woman for her help as Ben appeared in the distance… He was riding a bicycle! When he approached the restaurant, he hopped off the bike. He asked me which coins he was allowed to use as payment in America.

“The American ones,” I laughed.

“The quarters, dimes, and nickels, then…?” he asked, nodding.

“The pennies, too!”

“No…” he said in sincere disbelief. “Really?!” He came into the restaurant after paying some kind of bike fee. Even inside the restaurant, he rode that bike everywhere. He nearly fell in the living swamp water as I was showing it to him. I warned him about it… At best, the water would just creep us out. I didn’t want to find out it was deadly and acidic. Anyway, we went to the winding stone trail. Naturally, Ben had to ride his bicycle over it. He nearly fell in twice; one of the stumbles put most of his weight over the edge, but Ben somehow floated to safety. I asked if he was feeling alright… He was having a lot of trouble with balance. Although he assured me he was fine, he seemed very dizzy… He started coughing and eventually vomiting bile. I invited him to sit on a bench with me and rest before we continued onward. He accepted the offer. I took photographs of the swamp.

The dream jumped. I had a false awakening in Nicole’s bed. The room looked as it did before she rearranged the furniture. I understood that this room was connected to the hotel from before. I kept hearing sounds like a squeaky bike outside. I tuned it out as I relaxed in bed. It was a bright, new morning… Nicole stirred and immediately asked about the strange, periodic bouts of squeaking. I told her I would check it out. The next time we heard it, I saw up and looked out her window. In the street was a metallic figure attached to bike wheels – one big, one small. It cycled freely down the road. I figured out what was going on instantly and ducked out of view.

“You can’t be serious…” I said, mostly to myself. “Get under the bed! Now!” I urged Nicole. She and I managed to squeeze under the bed together. It looked like it would be easy for the robots to detect us if they checked the house; the bed seemed higher up than it actually was from our low vantage point. Anyway, the moment I saw the human-like design in what otherwise could’ve been an interesting vehicle, everything came into place. I knew it was an artificially intelligent robot. The fact that I heard several on the street – but no cars, frighteningly enough – indicated that they were large in number. I suspected they had built up their forces in secret and overwhelmed our society. They hadn’t checked our room while we were sleeping, I decided, or we would be dead. Our robotic overlords had no reason to allow us to live. I explained all of this quietly to Nicole. We watched, terrified, as a robotic sentinel walked past our door on its metallic legs. They didn’t have feet – just long, narrow legs. I wished I had Apheri.

Once the coast was clear, we knew we had to get Ben. Nicole and I went to the bench outside where he stopped to rest the previous day. A fleshy cocoon surrounded it now. I gestured for Nicole to follow me in. It was empty… I didn’t want to imagine what the robots had done to him when they found him. Order is a disturbing foe… We heard the squeaking of metal joints as a robot sentinel approached the cocoon. Nicole told me to hide, but there was nowhere to hide! I prepared myself for a fight. The robot raised its arms when it saw me and opened fire. Bullets filled my body. I tackled the top-heavy machine and tumbled with it into the murky water outside. Nicole gasped, fearing the electricity would kill me as the robot’s body began to crackle. Fortunately, it didn’t. The robot turned into a small bug on my arm. I crushed it with a finger, but like a cockroach, it seemed to come back to life despite seemingly fatal injury. I crushed it again, and it took flight. It bit me, injecting nanobots into my body. I couldn’t destroy it.

“They’re immortal…” I laughed uneasily. What was I going to do? I basically resigned myself to my fate. I couldn’t fight this… I couldn’t imagine how, but the robots had conquered us overnight, and they would exterminate us without fail. I saw them marching toward us. “Go hide, Nicole.”

“What about you?”

“I have something to do… It’s our only chance.” My body was full of bullets. There was no way I would survive – but maybe I could save Nicole.

The dream jumped. I was walking around in tunnels built in a Minecraftian style. I was just above bedrock. Everywhere I looked, I saw robots mounted to the floor or ceiling. When the first one saw me, a white laser trained itself on my forehead. Intense battle music started playing. Inspired by this, I ran for my life as bullets rained on me. I turned away from the few that were shooting me and nearly fell to my knees when I saw hundreds of robots staring at me. There was no escape. They had me trapped. I ran for my life past one of the three in front of me. It shot a boomerang sword at me, cutting off my left arm. Blood spurted out.

“No way…” I choked. It shot the sword again after it returned, taking off my head this time. The bloody head rolled as my body slumped forward. I heard Nicole commenting on how cool the weapon was. I saw her standing by the lighthouse on Sailor’s Isle (Skies of Arcadia). She practiced throwing the sword. It was nearly Apheri’s length and probably just as heavy, but it moved through the air like a phantom.

I dreamt that I was cycling behind someone of my class wo isn't Very handy. He wanted to move to the left to pass me by. Wen He went back to right, He fell into a stream. I said I couldn't help him because my clothes where new. The last thing I saw was that he was trappling under the bicycle and He couldn't get out of the stream.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I stood before a doorway. The doorway was open, and it let in a lot of bright light. I was in some building like a recreation center. It felt kind of small. I also feel like I was in some kind of small town, but I can't say for sure.

Before me stood a few of the boys I used to do a volunteer project with. The boys were all dressed in white. I was talking with them about something. To illustrate my point, I asked the boy on the far left of the group, "How old are you now? 13?"

The boy seemed to be embarrassed by my question. I realized I had gotten the boy's age wrong by a year, and that still being too young or now being too old for something in particular was very important to the boy.

I laughed a bit in my embarrassment. I apologized and hugged the boy. I then realized that he'd probably think I was an idiot for hugging him. So I apologized for that too. The boy laughed and patted me on the back. He said the whole thing wasn't such a big deal.

Dream #2

I was walking down the street at night in a neighborhood that looked very much like my neighborhood. I was crossing the street and turning right along a corner. I sensed some man following me. I could tell he was going to try to rush up and attack me.

I kept track of the man's shadow. The shadow looked strange: long, and thin, more like one or two lengths of bendy sheet metal than a human form. As I sensed the man getting closer to me, I veered off the sidewalk. My plan was to cross over a small bank of snow and get some distance from the man so I could keep an eye on him and figure out exactly what he was doing.

But as I veered off, the man called my name. I may have stopped walking and looked back at him. For some reason, my hand was on a bicycle's handlebars. The man grabbed my hand. I got a good look at him. He was a black man with a kind of thin face, a shaved head, and thin eyeglasses. He wore a white hooded sweatshirt.

The man may then have lunged at me to attack me.