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I was at rangebank, on the the basketball court with some people I knew. I saw a group of people leaving the school, heading towards the car park. As they walked passed, I was making a noise *Hurrrrrrr*. It was directed at them. They didn't like it, and proceeded to do the same thing towards me. They now started throwing things over the fence, towards us. One of the DC's threw a tub of hair wax towards me. I recognised the brand of hair wax, it was dominate (A brand I've used in the passed), expect it was yellow.

I picked it up and said ''you're not getting this back''. They jumped and fence and were hostile towards us. They were not happy on how we treated them and wanted the hair product back. I told them to settle down, and that I would give the product back. The DC that threw the item, looked very familiar and very tall. I asked him if he was one of three names. I only remember one of them, it was Edward I. He responded saying, no he's none of them.

I was now at a random house. I was in the bedroom and could hear someone getting angry and sounded like they were blaming me on not giving them a bed. I opened the door and someone dragging a mattress down the hallway, while the DC that threw the wax earlier, was next to him. I told him in a calm voice, ''What do you need?''. To my surprise he only wanted a pillow.

False Awakening Fail.
I was sitting at my computer, staring at the desktop. It looked very convincing, as I had the same wallpaper. I become a little confused, knowing that I could see the monitor through my sleeping mask. I figured that I probably had them on my head, and not covering my eyes, which was correct. I now put them, and to my surprise, I could see the monitor still, as clear as day. I looked away, back and forth. Nothing changed. Everything went black, and I figured I had turned the computer off. I convinced myself that the monitor was bright enough to be seen through my mask. *Face palm* Can't believe I didn't RC.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #149: Chicken Fight

I'm working as a consigliere and fixer for a 20-year-old Filipino billionaire. He's a natural genius, a derivatives trader that controls a global financial/oil and gas empire. He relies on me and a talented, resourceful woman named Rachel as his on-the-ground "problem solvers".

I'm in a dark room watching a movie projection on a wall. The presentation is talking about some aspect of derivatives trading. I get some kind of message or phone call with a new assignment, and I hurry out of the room. There's somebody that I need to apprehend and speak to that's a spectator at a nearby cockfight. I know that both my boss and Rachel are counting on me to handle this and I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to get it done right.

It's night, and I take a set of metal stairs down to a dusty street, hanging a right into an alleyway. I see a metal door to my right and hear some faint crowd noise -- that's where the cockfight is being held. I detect movement to my left and I sense that a huge man is lunging toward me to tackle me. I twist my body around and throw a right-handed haymaker that catches the man right in the mouth, stopping him short. I knee him underneath the short ribs and he staggers back. Something tips me off that this is a dream and I become lucid.

The man comes stalking back toward me, as fat and muscular as a bear. I'm struggling with what to do next. I have a strong urge to get right to lucid goals but I'm trying to process in my mind what will become of my boss and Rachel if I fail this task. I slowly retreat from my assailant, not ready to act until I'm sure that I'm not letting down real people who depend on me.

I finally convince myself that Rachel and my boss are just dream characters. My attacker is about four feet away when I wind up and hit him with a two-handed force push that sends him flying violently back, where he lands in a heap. His body has gouged a nearly foot-deep furrow in the dusty ground and, more surprisingly, has turned into a huge roasted chicken!



I walk onward as calmly as I can. I hear a few DCs chattering in surprise behind me but I try to put it out of my mind. They don't care. They're just looking.

Walking between two compact cars and onto an empty paved road, I look up at the sky. The stars are out tonight and I can see far more of them out here than I can with all of the city lights that are near my home IWL. I jump up, getting a good fifty feet into the air. I'm on the edge of a much larger city, one where I'm sure that I can find the means to accomplish my Task of the Month and Task of the Year goals.

I hit a second jump, this one slightly higher than the first, but start to sink down again. No, now I'm flying. I imagine myself catching an updraft the way a hawk would catch a thermal. I shoot upward, high above the city. The sky becomes thick and bright with stars and I know that I can go anywhere that I want. I decide that the Colosseum is just a little ways off in a darkened portion of the city. I begin flying that direction when I suddenly feel Wife's hand slam into my pillow in waking life. She rolls over a couple more times. I try to go in for DEILD but I'm a bit too adrenalized to make it back under.

Asia Task of the Year! (Vandalize the Great Wall of China and battle the authorities with kung-fu.) This was the second of two lucids from last night and the level of vividness in this one was incredible. It was literally more vivid than waking life, which is such a difficult experience to describe or recapture. Pretty amazing stuff.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #137: The Great Wall of China

I have a false awakening in my childhood home, wandering into the dining room to find that my parents are hosting a breakfast. Wife is walking beside me, my folks and brother-in-law "Muppet" are seated at the table, along with Mom and Dad and a few other strangers standing around nearby. As I approach the table, I realize that I am not wearing a shirt and feel embarrassed. Then I see myself in the mirror and I look really in-shape. Now I feel better. Still seems a little inappropriate but I sit down, hoping nobody will make a big deal out of anything.

I'm waiting for the food to arrive when something tips me off that this might all be a dream. I nose pinch and breathe in and out 2-3 times. I announce to everyone that I'm having a lucid dream, get up from the table, and phase through the window to the street outside. I hear Mom and Dad telling me to wait, that I'll miss the breakfast, asking me whether I'm sure that I'm dreaming. But yeah, after phasing through the window, pretty sure.

I take a moment to make the scene as vivid as possible, looking over all of the detail that I see around me, the sound of my voice, the way that the morning air feels (chill and humid.) Thick, spiral-shaped clouds hang in the street, totally immobile and so thick that you can't see through them. When I touch them they literally feel like cotton balls pushed together and just floating in mid-air.

I walk down the street for a while, checking out my hands for inconsistencies. They look completely lifelike, with the one exception being that I can't extend my left ring finger. Every time I try, it resists me and just winds up bending again. The street is still foggy but it's a more natural-looking fog now. The other strange thing is that every tree on the street is decorated with dozens of dreamcatchers that sway in a gentle breeze. The vividness is stunning.

At the end of the street is a house with a huge wall safe mounted above its front door. The safe keeps blowing apart in an explosion, reforming, and then blowing apart again, over and over. I pass by my college friend "Bear" as I turn the corner and then come to a roughly ten-foot stone wall that blocks me from going any further. I try to fly over it but end up just doing a weak jump and having to scramble over like this was waking life. From there I enter a mall area where I announce to the passerby that "I'm having a lucid dream." Some of them look at me with some interest, but nobody verbally responds. I find an exit and imagine that the Great Wall of China is right outisde.

I exit the mall and find myself in front of a six-foot tall replica of the Great Wall of China. Now we're getting somewhere! I walk a little further down a covered walkway and see a sign that reads "Joy's Toys" and under that "Great Wall". DCs are walking into a brick building near the sign that looks like a gift shop. I decide that this is a souvenir shop that's located right by the Great Wall, meaning that the real thing is... right behind me.



I turn around and there it is! It's much taller, easily 50 feet, imposing, and really ancient-looking. I vault over a random pile of building materials to get closer. There's a small crowd of DCs gathered near the base watching as three terra cotta warriors perform some kind of odd, stilted dance performance. The terra cotta warriors take no notice of me but I figure they'll be the ones coming after me when I vandalize the Great Wall for Task of the Year.

Advancing right to the wall, I haul back and punch it once, hoping that this will break a piece off. Nothing much happens. I grab at the wall with my fingers and manage to break a tiny piece off, but this doesn't feel like the serious vandalism I was going for. I decide to go with my premeditated plan of tagging up the Great Wall with spray paint. I summon an aerosol can into my hand and start spraying out some letters:

"DV 4 LIFE"

The paint runs and blurs a lot and generally looks like a mess, but I'm still incredibly pleased. Okay, the final piece of this dream is to defend myself against the authorities with kung-fu. I turn around, expecting an enemy... and find myself face to face with a pale, doughy guy in his 40s. He's wearing glasses and is dressed in brown slacks and a rather tight white cardigan that emphasizes his belly and spindly arms.

"So you're 'the authorities'?" I ask, trying to lead him to say yes.

"Certainly," he says curtly in a British accent. He stares proudly back at me.

Immediately I try to do some "kung-fu" on him. I do this atrocious little low kick that clips the side of his left knee. Then I throw another little kick that misses entirely. This time I scream something like, "A-GOCK!!" to make it seem more like I'm doing kung-fu. It comes out really shrieky but the effect is kung-fuey. My opponent does an awkward little hopping kick that misses by a mile. We both kick at the same time and kind of clash feet. We keep throwing these terrible little kicks at each other and I keep shrieking "A-GOCK!!" Finally my awful little kicks get the better of his awful little kicks and he seems to lose interest, and after a moment wanders away entirely.

I take another self-congratulatory look back at the Great Wall and then let myself wake up before I forget anything.

This was the first of two LDs from last night. My primary goal was to focus on vividness and I really think it helped. Great vividness on this one!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #136: Neon

I'm walking along a road at night, going over a (mostly) false memory that I just had a shared dream with my son "E". I wonder whether I'm dreaming right now, too, and with a nose pinch reality check, I confirm that I am.

Immediately I remember my goal of trying to make the dream as vivid as possible before doing anything else. To my left is a strange, 20-foot high stack of flattened stones sandwiching layers of damp newspaper over and over. I run my fingers over the stone and the paper, noting the detail and the way that my hands look as they pass over them. As I listen, I hear the sound of people talking and celebrating, and I think it's coming from just over the other side of this stack.

By now the dream feels really vivid and I begin to climb the stack of rocks. To climb, I squelch my fingers into the soft layers of damp newspaper between the stones and work my way up. My body feels light, so the climb is natural and easy. I climb up to the top, stand on the top of the stack, and look out on a lively scene. It's like an old west town that's just drenched in neon lights. DCs dressed in western wear are walking happily back and forth between wooden buildings covered with neon signs. A young couple shares a laugh, and she leans her head against his shoulder as they walk across the dusty street to what looks like a bar.

The scene is so vivid that I become overwhelmed. I've got this huge grin and I feel like I'm crying with emotion. I wonder whether it's possible to cry in a dream, and laugh a little at the thought.

I jump down to the ground and walk slowly through the dusty street, enjoying the sight of the DCs passing by around me. At the end of the street is a building without any neon lights. It looks like a schoolhouse and I walk up to the door before turning around to look back toward the stack of stone. Behind the stack I see hills lining the horizon. The shape and height remind me of the Hollywood Hills. Dozens of green signs float over the hills, each with the name of a town or city and the city's population painted on it. I try to remember some of the names but it feels like they're changing. I let it go and turn back to the schoolhouse.

I'm in a classroom now that's filled with other parents watching their kids play. There's a fascinating array of toys like train sets that encircle the room, some kind of clunky robot that walks around, and lots of other cool stuff. I see my son "E" playing here as well, kind of jumping around watching the train go.

I glance back up at the other parents, then back down at the room -- and the kids and toys have vanished! Everyone is milling around and talking about what a great time the kids had. I tell them something to indicate that I'm dreaming and walk back out through the door.

The neon wild west town is gone now, and I step directly out onto a street that's busy with pedestrian traffic. Across the street I see an Olympic swimming pool built into what looks like a big basketball court. I think that I'll use it for the "Great Barrier Reef" Task of the Year.

I start toward the street. Two young women are talking as they walk past me. I notice that one of them is really cute, mid-20s, dark hair, and very short (maybe 5 feet tall!) I have an impulse to kiss her and as soon as I think this, she turns toward me, smiling. Her friend walk off without her, oblivious and now treating her like a stranger. At first I think this is cool but then I think better of spending my time kissing DCs. Need to focus!

I will the DC to stop crushing on me but something goes wrong with the dream control... and now she seems to actually hate me.

She bares her teeth angrily and walks toward me, her hands clenched into fists. I can tell that she clearly intends to kick my ass. I want no part of any of this and try to scurry across the street but she jogs after me, still looking like she wants to flatten me. I hurry away and kind of wave her off, saying, "Just leave me alone!" Then I turn completely away and ignore her, hoping that she'll disappear on her own. I make it across the street without being mauled, but as I'm getting close to the pool, the dream ends.

This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night, and my first serious Great Barrier Reef attempt.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #130: The Turtle

I'm swimming in a shallow cove with my 4-year-old son "E". I tell him that he's helping me practice for a planned dream about the Great Barrier Reef and he seems excited to help. We come across a cave just under the waterline, swim into it, and emerge in a cavern where all these other kids are hanging around. I wonder whether all these kids are helping their moms and dads prepare for a Great Barrier Reef dream. This feels strange to me and I become lucid.

There's either a scene change or a memory gap at this point, because my next memory is of walking by myself through the grounds of a university. I pass two men who stare silently at me as I walk by. They're both in their late 20s and look almost like identical twins, except that one is dressed in a suit while the other wears glasses and a flannel shirt. I think that there's something I need to ask them, but I can't remember what it is. (I think I'd meant to ask them the meaning of life for Task of the Month.)

Nearby is a plaza with a tall stone column at each of its four corners. Perhaps a dozen DCs are walking around this plaza, looking happy but aimless. I exchange a glance with one tough-looking DC as I walk across the plaza, and something about him just rubs me the wrong way. I take a half-hearted swing at him, as if I'm trying to slap him upside the head. He ducks out of the way, and immediately I wonder why I would do something like that.

The DC moves aggressively toward me and I move to dissolve this problem that I've caused. I hold up my right hand to the DC and walk casually away, saying, "It's cool." The tension abates and he walks away. Whew.

I remember my intention to get to the Great Barrier Reef. I hulk-jump high above the Earth, knowing that I'll see water nearby. Sure enough, there's a sparkling blue ocean to my right. As I descend, I notice a cute DC standing in the water, waving at me as she watches me come back down to Earth. As I near the water, I realize that she's Wife!

Before I can say anything, I plunge into the water. This is one of only a handful of times that I've been underwater in an LD, and I'm pleased to see that I can breathe normally. I try my voice, and it's perfectly clear: "[Wife]! Can you hear me?" There's no reply and I don't see any sign of her. Okay, focus. I need to ride a sea turtle, find a great white shark, and bite it. Without dying. The task feels really intimidating to me but I start searching.

I swim in random directions for a while until I finally catch sight of a turtle. The turtle has no interest in my company, though, and speeds away from me underwater. I don't have any plan as to how I'm going to catch him, so I just try to swim faster. He kites me along like this for quite a while until I have a false awakening in some kind of hospital.

Wife and I are here trying to improve our dreaming abilities. I'm astounded but pleased that she's interested in dream work now. She tells me that she's trying to hit her REM cycles by setting alarms that correspond with the take-off times for airplanes. Skyler White (from Breaking Bad) walks into our room and starts speaking to Wife in a husky, almost male voice. She's apparently a researcher at this hospital. This all seems strange to me and I briefly become lucid before the dream ends.

An insane chain of eight DILDs, DEILDs and false awakenings from this morning. Completely crazy! I apologize for the length, but it was a ton of dreaming. I gave the dreams headings to hopefully make the breaks clear. What a ride!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #129: Map of the World

Choline
I'm standing in the kitchen with Wife as she holds our two-year-old son "R" in her arms. She asks me when I was planning to take my choline bitartrate. When I tell her that I've already taken it, R starts to wail pathetically.

"How could you take your choline without letting him watch?" she says, annoyed at my apparent thoughtlessness. "You know that he loves that!"

I'm stammering out some excuse when it occurs to me that this has to be a dream. My vision goes a bit crazy and I go more or less blind. I fumble my way around the kitchen, feeling my way from the countertop to the breakfast table and sit down heavily in a chair.

"Are you okay?" asks Wife. I really think that I'm dreaming but I feel uneasy enough that I nose pinch and blow through. Suddenly, my vision is dominated by a huge still-frame close-up of my own unshaven face shouting something. Other than that, I'm still blind. "Are you okay?" she asks, more insistently this time.

Highlander
I have a false awakening back in bed, still suspicious that I'm dreaming. Wife snuggles closer to me and I hit the nose pinch, blowing right through again.

Wife rolls on top of me and sits up. I feel excited about where things seem to be going but rather than doing anything amorous she starts saying strange stuff about the Highlander series of movies: "Did you know that Michael let us borrow Highlander I through XV? I didn't even know there were fifteen. He and [female name] love those movies."

The Full Xanous
Another false awakening back in bed, and I roll out immediately. My vision is very blurry and the whole dream scene feels wobbly to me. I think that I need to get myself anchored in and I remember my intention to try the technique of "making out with the dream scene", suggested (jokingly) by DarkMatters and put into practice by Xanous. I'd promised to try to test this so I could talk about it on a future podcast.

I move around to Wife's side of the bed. I briefly that I can test this method by just making out with Wife instead, but I realize that I'm just telling myself that as an excuse to get frisky with her. Instead I attack the corner of the mattress, totally making out with it. The sheets feel like t-shirt material against my tongue. After a moment, all sensation disappears, and I'm awake, my mouth kind of moving around. (In waking life, I believe. Pretty embarrassing. )

22:48
I DEILD into a bedroom scene and roll out. The computer monitor on the nearby desk is on, which it rarely is. The computer is showing the old Windows XP "Bliss" background with the grassy hill. The computer's clock reads "22:48".

I want to get out of the house, so I try to dive through the window. It feels oddly gummy, though, and I wind up with my torso stuck through the window. On the other side I just see blackness. I decide to back out, imagine a new scene, and try again. I'm about to make another run at it when I sort of fall back into...

Amazon
A false awakening where I'm lounging on a window seat in a sunlit room. A group of three women are standing nearby, laughing and chatting over stories about their kids. I nose pinch reality check (blowing through) and get up from the couch. As I stand up to my full height, I notice that one of the women is really tall (probably about six feet even) and very fit. As I walk nearby, she turns to look at me -- long brown hair, probably mid-30s, and very good-looking.

She starts walking toward me and it occurs to me that if I don't get away, the dream's probably ending in this room. As she joins me by the window, my quick internal deliberation ends in a verdict of "worth it". After about 20 seconds of making out, I wake up.

The King of the Colosseum
I quickly DEILD into a scene where I'm standing in my bedroom. It's very dark, so I let the void overtake me and start rubbing my hands together. I get onto my hands and knees and feel the floor, imagining sand between my fingers, thinking that the Colosseum is all around me. After a while, I can see the sand, and then the stone walls of a huge chamber. It's not the Colosseum I see, though, but more like a huge throne room with no ceiling. It's close, but just not quite right.

At the other end of the room, a cartoon king sits on his throne. He's a slimy-looking Jafar lookalike dressed in flowing red robes, and I think that he'll make the perfect opponent for Europe Task of the Year (the Colosseum battle.) As soon as I decide this, he lunges from his throne and charges toward me, a scimitar in his hand.

As he closes the distance, I decide to summon NewArtemis to help with the fight. "Jafar" is moving too fast, though, and he's practically on top of me before I can even start the summoning. Not even close, I'm on my own. I try to swing a sword at him, but in spite of my expectations, my hand is empty. My movement seems to surprise him, though, and as he stands there unsure of how to react, I grab his hair with my left hand and strike him hard on the side of the neck with the edge of my right hand.

His head pops cleanly off in my left hand. There's no gore involved, and the injury doesn't seem to slow him down much. The head spouts a series of angry curses at me before suddenly changing into the head of penguin. This shocks me into...

Map of the World
Another false awakening in my bedroom. I decide to get out of the house the direct way this time, running out of the master bedroom, vaulting over the baby gates as I move down the stairs (both gates higher than in waking life), and phasing through the back door into the yard. It's early morning now, and the pool has overflowed into the now-swampy back yard. Random objects like boxes and beach balls float in its waters. Floodlights are strung up in the trees all around me, shining brightly down on the yard.

I marvel at these changes before hopping over the fence. Rather than the neighbor's yard, I find myself in a construction site near a pile of steel girders. I try to fly, but I can't seem to get off of the ground. I walk for a while, moving past a cage composed of chainlink fencing where they're holding some kind of Little League practice. As I pass by, the kids and parents keep trying to talk to me about baseball, but I ignore them, trying to stay focused on the Colosseum.

As I walk further on, I somehow end up on a ledge on the side of a building, high above the city, with nowhere to go. I try to fly again, and this time it's easy. I shoot upward to an incredible height, moving all the way past the clouds, higher and higher until I can see the world laid out under me like a map. Some of the continents are even labeled in flowing calligraphy. I pick a spot below me, deciding it's the Colosseum, and fly downward. I'm shocked, though, when I land after flying only a few feet downward. Now I'm standing on an enormous stone floating through space. The "world" has disappeared entirely, and I'm walking on a painted mural of the Earth.

With nowhere to go, I suddenly remember the success that bemistaken just had with closing her eyes and mentally teleporting. I close my eyes, imagining the Colosseum. Without meaning to, I think of the possibility that I'll wake up when I open my eyes. I'm really worried about this, and I start hurrying. This flows into...

Commercial Break
A false awakening in what looks like an office kitchen. It's the early morning and Wife is here with me eating a bowl of cereal and watching a small, staticky television set. On it, two Russian men are arguing about photo editing software.

"Sorry if I woke you," she says. "I knew you'd want to see this!"

"I wish you'd let me sleep," I whine. "I was having a lucid dream."

"Oh really?" she says. "It sounded like something erotic was happening."

I think of saying something like "I only made out a little with a six-foot-tall woman" but this doesn't seem like much of a defense. So I just say, "Well, that's embarrassing."

"Ew," she says, wrinkling her nose and going back to her television program. I finally nose pinch, realizing that the teleport didn't wake me up at all! All of this was expectation. I get excited thinking about this, and the dream falls apart, finally ending this crazy chain of dreams...

Very well-meaning but flawed attempt at the North America Task of the Year. (The King Kong one!)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #128: Donkey Kong Junior

I falsely believe that I have a young niece named Emily that's arriving by plane. I'm waiting with Dad in the airport for her and all of the passengers have gotten out with no sign of Emily at all. I'm becoming fretful. Dad isn't very worried and is loudly telling me stories about how thoroughly the new cereal he is eating "cleaned out his colon". I'm very embarrassed by how loudly he's talking and decide I'd rather go look for Emily.

It's like the old days when you could meet someone at the gate, and I'm allowed to stroll right through the jetway and onto the plane. I walk up and down the rows of seats, but there's no sign of her. But when I double back I find her waiting by a bend in the jetway. She's about 11 or 12, short, blonde, a little pale. I realize that I have never seen her before in my life and become lucid.

There's one of those little doors that leads out to the runway, and I walk through it and start flying toward a city that I see on the horizon. Night either falls quickly or I suffer some kind of memory gap here, because I land at a parking lot in a cluster of buildings. There's some sort of party going on with loud music bleeding out into the parking lot. There are a lot of people milling around in the parking lot itself, and some of them start following me.

I spot my friend "RF" as part of the nearby group and I tell him to "check this out" as I approach one of the parked cars. I decide that the car is as light as an inflatable balloon, lift it, and turn it over on its side.

RF looks stunned and asks me how I did that. I tell him that you just pretend something is the way that you want and you usually find that it is. I become sort of boastful and start showing off. "Look at this car. If I decide that it tastes like cake, it will." I take a huge bite out of one of the tires and it's pretty good! Tastes like a fairly decent birthday cake. Several other people in the crowd join in, taking bites out of the car here and there. I spot my high school friend "Alf" in the crowd, and he makes some remark about how cool this is. Pretty soon, a huge crowd of DCs has surrounded the car and started to devour it. It's cool to watch them consume the car but also vaguely disturbing. Reminds me a bit of a Walking Dead zombie feed.

RF and I walk away from the car along the sidewalk, reaching a building with the mural of a skyscraper painted on it. I suddenly remember the North America "Empire State Building" Task of the Year. The mural doesn't look quite like the Empire State Building, but I decide that I'm going to start climbing it and then turn it into the Empire State Building as I go. I tell RF this is for "Task of the Year" and he says "Go for it." I latch myself to the mural like Spider-Man and start climbing up the wall. It feels really forced at first, but the more I get into it, the more it feels like I'm scaling the side of a tall building.

And now here I am, clinging to the side of the Empire State Building, the wind pulling at my clothes and body. I'm trying to remember what the Task of the Year even involves. (I'm supposed to transform into King Kong, climb to the top, and fight with the military.) I feel a little frustrated with my memory, so I decide that I want to get inside and think about what I'm supposed to be doing. I either enter an open window or phase through a closed one, winding up in a small, quiet marble elevator lobby.

There's an elevator waiting here, and I step inside. It only goes up to "9", and I wince that this is not nearly high enough for the Empire State Building. I press "9", assuming that there will be a new bank of elevators I can take at that point which will bring me all the way up. The elevator begins its ascent and I pace nervously, worrying that I'm buying too much into the mechanics of the dream. I can't remember whether I'm supposed to be ascending normally, climbing the building, or what, so I just go with it.

The elevator doors open on "9" and I step out into a lobby that looks much like the previous one. There's a bulky, square-jawed maintenance man in overalls here. "Hey!" he shouts. "You're not supposed to be here!" With that, he winds up like a baseball pitcher and throws a large crescent wrench right at my head. It clonks straight into my forehead and drops into my right hand. My forehead tingles a bit, but there's no serious pain.

Somehow I now have a wrench in both hands. I feel angry with the guy for attacking me. "You're an asshole!" I inform him and throw both wrenches at his stomach. They bounce off of his torso and he doubles over, glaring at me but not seriously hurt. I feel a little bad and have no interest in going to war with this guy, so I dash into another elevator, stab at a button without looking, "knowing" that it leads to the viewing platform.

Again I wait, and soon the elevator opens up to an open-air room that looks a bit like a bell tower. There's a guy in a lab coat here explaining some scientific breakthrough about lycanthropy and animal transformations in general. I run past him along a plank to a balcony. Now I want to transform into King Kong. I look to my left and there's another skyscraper, even taller than the "Empire State Building" that I'm standing on. On top of this other building stands the cheesiest-looking Godzilla-style lizard monster I've ever seen, and I can't help but chuckle. Looks like all the movie monsters are out and about today.



I start hopping about like a gorilla and imagine myself transforming into King Kong. In my craziness, I manage to leap off of the building. Rather than a fall, there's an odd transition and now I'm just running along a tree-lined street below, roaring like a gorilla and pounding my chest. The chest-pounding feels a little phony but the gorilla roars are amazing. My hands and arms look big and gorilla-like, but I'm not nearly large or hairy enough to be King Kong. I feel more like a big, strong, long-armed dude with a gorilla roar.

Some DCs rush up to attack me, but they're all just regular men in casual street clothes. I shove them away, remembering that I need to get attacked somehow and win, but I'm very confused as to the details. I take a few swats at these DCs and amusingly, they go flying off whenever I hit them. I know that something's off with all of this, though, and that I need to be a lot bigger, I need to be up on top of the building, and I think I need to fight something tougher. The details are really hazy, though, so I just lumber around for a while longer amusing myself until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #126: Mad Dog

I'm sitting in my childhood bedroom on my old bed. I look out the window and some thug-looking guy in a tank top is standing outside by a parked car, loafing around with a somewhat overweight girlfriend. As I'm trying to figure out what's going on, I unintentionally make eye contact with the guy and he starts mad dogging me. I quickly look away but out of my peripheral vision, I see him walking aggressively toward my room. Great, what's he want?

The guy reaches behind his back and draws a revolver from the waistband of his pants. I dive out of the room into the hallway as a gunshot blows through my window. I'm surprised by how soft the sound is. I think that it's so quiet that nobody might hear it. Will anyone even hear it and call the police? I duck into the bathroom, waiting there for a bit before baaaarely peeking my head around the corner to look out through the office window down the hall. But the guy is there, too, and fires immediately.

I scramble to the back of the house into my parents' bedroom, but I see the guy circling around to the back yard. I can't believe how hard he is to shake, and I realize that this is all a dream.

Relaxed now, I head back to the front of the house, walking through the hallways, through the den to the front door. I phase through the front door out into the street to find the car (and my assailant) gone. I'm trying to remember my goals but absolutely nothing is coming to me. I don't remember the Colosseum, I don't remember my intention to summon NewArtemis, nothing. I think that I'm supposed to be working on Advanced Task of the Month and that it has something to do with California. (Totally wrong.)

I decide to explore, hoping it'll come to me. I fly up into the air for a while, soaring over my old neighborhood. I fly over a creek at one point, but I don't get to explore very long before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #125: He Had It Coming

I'm working with Wife, Mom, and Dad on a project where we're trying to restore a 30-foot replica of the Great Pyramid. The pyramid's sitting right on the edge of a neighborhood street where a house would normally be. We work on the interior for a while but it feels stuffy in there, so Wife and I go outside to do some work on the exterior.

It's nice outside, so Wife and I stand there for a bit enjoying the sun and the cool breeze. We're standing on something that looks like a driveway and about fifteen feet to our left is an elegant wooden side table with Wife's purse sitting on it. As we're standing there, a pair of tall, brutish-looking teenage boys approaches us. One starts rifling through Wife's purse and the other surrounds us from the other side. I'm angry and fearful, running through our "fight or flight" options when I realize that it's all a dream.

The guy who had been looking through Wife's purse is gone now. But when I turn back, the other kid has Wife by the forearm and she's cowering in pain. I'm overcome with a killing rage, the kind of anger you (hopefully) only feel in dreams. I'm aware that the thug is just a DC, but I want to stop him and I want to hurt him.

I hurry toward him, shouting a bunch of angry threats (including lots of profanity), and kick him squarely in the balls. The strike is perfect -- bone of the lower shin right into the "target".

As I deliver the kick, I'm amazed to see that I'm wearing white high-top sneakers like I did back in middle school. The combination of noticing this weird detail and the satisfaction of hitting the hated DC softens my anger a little.

Rather than double over, the DC stands rigidly straight, his feet lifting a few inches off of the ground and coming back down. His body is completely stiff and his face is frozen statue-like in agony. I get a hold of my temper enough to realize that if I keep fighting with him I might turn him into a real opponent. I really just want him gone from my dream scene. I force-push him high into the air and his paralyzed body flies toward a distant set of hills, quickly fading from sight.

When I look back at Wife, she's standing nearby, unhurt but nervously looking around. The place feels unsafe and I want to leave. There's no way that I can leave her behind after what happened, though, so I scoop her up in my arms. "We're going to the Colosseum," I tell her, and try to start flying. I can get about 3 feet off of the ground but after that I feel like I can't move both of us. Even though she's pretty tiny IWL, her weight feels "real" while my dream body feels almost totally weightless. It seems to be getting in the way of flying.

"Am I too heavy?" she asks. I show remarkably good dream judgment by ignoring this question. I try flying a few more times, each time with the same result. I know that I should come up with some creative solution to this but it's not coming to me. I think about throwing her over my shoulder or imagining her floating like a balloon but before I can do any of this, the dream ends.

Finally broke that dry spell! This was a really fun one. Emotions got the best of me at the end, but it was great while it lasted.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #113: Woodrow the Giant

I'm in a first-person shooter video game where I'm entering an airport. One of the people I'm with slips some kind of blaster into my pocket as we're walking through airport security. Won't that set off the metal detectors? I think of all this as just a game, though, so I give it a try.

An alarm sounds, surprisingly soft but unmistakable. I keep walking, just in case they think it was someone else behind me. As I head into a broad, bustling concourse, I see a few security guys heading toward me from different directions. They're dressed in plain clothes, which makes them seem less official and more menacing. I change directions and they change with me. I know I'm caught. One guy has his hand on his right hip like he's ready to pull a gun, so I decide to be first. I pull the banana-shaped blaster out of my jacket pocket and start shooting. My first shot catches the guy right in the chest and he crumples to the floor.

I immediately realize that this isn't a video game, but a dream. I remember goals: meet Art at the Alamo and Tasks of the Month. Since this is already a video game scenario, I think that it'll be easy to pull Art in. "[NewArtemis], I know you're right there behind me." No response. By now the other security guys have drawn their guns, although they oddly have not fired yet.

I shoot one more of them and he collapses to the ground. Still, nobody returns fire. "[NewArtemis], a little help!" A woman walking nearby turns around. She's wearing jeans and has dirty blonde hair, not at all the usual hair color for Art's DC, but it's definitely her!

"Hey there!" I say, thinking that it'll be fun to have her take care of the last of these security guys. But when I look for them, they're gone -- everyone is walking through the airport concourse like nothing has happened. I turn back to Art. "You dyed your hair...?" I half-comment, half-ask. (I sincerely doubt this.)

"Hey," she says, with a wry half-smile, ignoring the whole hair thing.

We hug and I say, "Okay, that's Basic. You feel like punching Woodrow Wilson?" (Advanced Task of the Month.)

She nods. "I'd love to punch that guy." (We have never discussed Woodrow Wilson, so I'm likely projecting here.)

I glance around for Wilson. "Let's do it," I say to Art, and then call out to the crowd: "Woodrow Wilson! I know you're here!" We walk along the concourse for perhaps twenty feet when I spot a huge man to our left. Somehow, even with everything around him brightly lit, he's hidden in shadow. The man is at least ten feet tall, probably closer to twelve, and he's flanked by two normal-sized men who don't look like they're doing anything in particular.

"Is that you, Woodrow Wilson?" As soon as I say this, the man's face is illuminated and it's definitely Wilson -- long, expressionless face, glasses, the whole bit. Weirdly, he's dressed in the style of a Catholic priest with a cassock and clerical collar. He strides toward us quickly and moves up very close to crowd me.

Wilson doesn't attack but just stands there towering over me, no expression on his face, his eyes unfocused. I've lost some emotional control and I'm starting to feel fearful. Art circles around on my right, grimacing a little, her hands balled into fists. She can help me, but I know that for Task I know that I need to hit the guy. I try to calm myself down while imagining myself leaping up and doing some kind of superman punch. I'm freaking out a little bit, though, and the dream falls apart.

The second of two LDs from the morning of 05/18/2013. This was a big, big dream, and this dream and I did not always get along. This was my first serious attempt at meeting NewArtemis for a dream sharing attempt.

I also got into a big fight with a powerful DC that escalated into a me against the world situation. I could have handled this a lot better. My self-control wasn't what it should be... but it was still kinda awesome.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #96: Clash at the Alamo

I'm Marty McFly from Back to the Future, driving my DeLorean on a set of rails that stand hundreds of feet over a bay. The DeLorean starts to shake as it picks up speed and before I can make a time jump, the rails end and the car goes plummeting toward the sparkling water.

I brace for impact and the DeLorean flies to pieces as it strikes the bay. Miraculously, I'm unharmed, and I thrash about for something to hold on to so that I can get my bearings and figure out what to do. One long, fin-like piece of metal from the car bobs to the surface and I grab onto it. The moment that I do, an unseen engine roars to life and takes off like a jet ski.

As I'm racing across the bay, I realize that this has to be a dream. After riding for a moment, I'm perhaps a hundred feet from shore. I leap off the impromptu "jet ski" and fly the remaining distance, landing in a stone plaza that stands at the water's edge.

I remember that I'm planning to meet NewArtemis at the Alamo for a shared dreaming experiment. I turn toward the water, raise my hands up in the air, and make an announcement to all of the DCs. Most of the passerby stop and turn to look at me. "The Alamo is right behind me! That's right -- Alamo right behind me!" I imagine it in detail, rebuilding my mental map, forgetting and scrubbing out the buildings that were there before and replacing it with my image of everything that I remember about the Alamo. I continue this until I can think of nothing of what's behind me except for this image of the Alamo.



I turn around, expecting to see the Alamo... and there it is! The stone's a little darker and the construction looks a little too new to be quite right, but it's more than close enough of a lookalike for me. I walk around past the front entrance to a courtyard. The geography is different in this dream from that of the real Alamo, and I come to a stone wall with a little alcove and a bench. There's a woman sitting on the bench and we look at each other immediately.

She gets up and approaches me right away. She doesn't look like NewArtemis' DC has in the past, but I'm not sure of anything yet. She speaks first: "I'm here to meet someone. How about you?"

"So am I," I say, studying her. She's roughly the same height as Art's DC but her skin is paler, her hair curlier, her build heavier, and her face is different -- broader, different nose, different shape... just different. "But you're not her, are you? I don't think you're [NewArtemis]."

She smiles noncommitally, but I continue. "That's okay," I continue. "Let's still do the passphrases and gestures." I speak my chosen word to the DC and perform my chosen gesture. She doesn't bother speaking a passphrase in return but she does perform a gesture. (These have been reported to a 3rd party who is not NewArtemis just in case she's able to guess them.)

"Well, I need to go!" the woman says. She walks out of the alcove and passes me. As she goes, she becomes a much older lady, blonde, mid-50s. She grows to an enormous height, probably close to 8 feet tall. She's wearing shorts and I see that her legs are covered with a crisscrossing patchwork of scars.

I contemplate following, but I'm distracted by a man who's sitting at the top of a stone wall nearby, staring at me with a malicious grin on his face. He's in his late 30s with close-cropped reddish-blonde hair. The guy keeps staring at me with that joyless grin and I know that he's looking for trouble with me. I want no part of it, so I turn and walk away.



He hops down from the wall and grips my right forearm with his right hand, twisting my arm around so that my hand is near my head. I try to pull my arm out of his grip but when I yank, it doesn't budge. He laughs, shaking his head as if he can't believe that I would bother trying to defy him. "You're never leaving here," he says. "I mean it. You are never leaving here." I yank my arm again but I feel as weak as a kitten.

I know I have to turn this around fast. I grab him by the back of the head with my left hand and begin to imagine my adversary as frail and lethargic. "You're so weak and tired," I tell him, trying to sound compassionate, even though I'm boiling with rage. "There's just no strength left in you at all." And I gently move to lay him down on a nearby table. I think of him as totally weak and barely able to move. His grip slips from my arm and he flops backward onto the table.

"And small," I say, pressing on his head with one hand and his feet with the other. He begins to shrink. His hair has turned jet black now, and his eyes close. I squeeze him together, thinking of him as so tiny, and soon he shrinks to the size of a child, then to the size of a baby, then disappears into his clothes entirely. My self-control cracks and I ball up his clothes, throw the bundle on the ground, and give it a vicious stomp. I wonder for a moment whether I've gone too far and hope for a moment that the bundle was empty. I walk through a nearby archway, not sticking around to find out more.

I emerge in a cafeteria. A table of 6 or 7 teenagers immediately looks up from their meals at me. "It's him," one of them says, and they all get to their feet and come after me. I fly through a nearby doorway and emerge in a large, empty room with a skylight. I fly up to the skylight, intending to phase through it, but something seems to restrain me from getting high enough. I run through a doorway into a drugstore that dead-ends in a frosted glass window. I vault toward it, phasing through onto a street scene.

There are police everywhere on the street. I know that they're looking for me. There are strange little ball-shaped hoverbots scanning the streets with cameras, also trying to track me down. I sprint up to one and kick it against a nearby wall. With a pop, it breaks into two smoking, fizzling halves.

Everything seems to be happening too fast for me to control. I run down the street, looking for some way out of this fear. I want to buy time to calm down, so I phase through the door of a nearby house. Cops are turning the place over while the family, a husband and wife and their little girl of about 8 are glued to the TV. One cop notices me as I walk in, but I swoop in on him, grab him from behind, and choke him unconscious. The other two cops don't seem to notice any of this, and the little family stares obliviously into their TV sets.

I watch the TV for a moment. It's some sort of political propaganda which claims that the moral code of their "great society" is built upon a foundation of classic arcade games like Centipede, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. I'm torn -- on one hand, I find top-down, statist morality codes repugnant. On the other hand, I sure do love classic arcade games.

I phase out through the back of the house into the yard. The cops yell at me as I pass and I hear them calling for backup. The back yard is peaceful for a moment before the wail of what sounds like an air raid siren fills the air. I look up at the sky, feeling helpless, trying to find peace for a moment. But all I can think is They're coming for me. The dream ends...

In this dream I was a male member of a software development team. I remember I was a white man, tall and skinny and strong.

I don't know what our application was supposed to do, but there was an email component. The developer of the email component was I think a subcontractor of a different company, and the lead of our project wanted to exclude him as much as possible.

First scene was like a demo, and during the demo the email developer figured out how to make things visible in 3D and in color. the lead resented this even though these were crucial developments in our project but she did not like that this was him who figured it out.

Second scene, we are in our work area and our lead is telling the email developer that he cannot come to another meeting. I say to the lead, "You cannot exclude a member of the team and remain a member of the team, especially not after what he has done!" I bodily lift the team lead up. She is a petite woman. I sit her on a desk, and jab a finger in her chest to make the point. Then I suddenly get the insight, "Hey, I guess that means you are not a member of this team. Out!" And I point to the door behind me. She says, "You can't do that. I am the boss." And I say, "Yes, I can. And no, you are not. He is." I just know without looking that our boss who is her boss and everyone else's is in the doorway behind me. Will he support her or me? I wonder.

I never find out because I wake up instead.

Side note: Even though this dream was non-lucid it had this powerful moment of insight, where I felt empowered. this dram is inconsistent in that I say that one can't exclude a team member, but I exclude her.

I wish that I'd asked this character what he represented rather than falling back so readily to fight or flight! My emotional control wasn't great in this LD but at least I guided myself toward a Task of the Year goal.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #70: The Celebrity

I WILD into a wooded campground. There's a crowd of excited DCs nearby, all waiting to meet this one guy who seems to be some kind of celebrity. The "celebrity" is an uncharismatic, mid-40s, somewhat ugly guy with a dark mustache. In spite of this, all of the women in the crowd are swooning and the men are excitedly pushing past one another for a chance to shake his hand.

In between handshakes, the celebrity keeps doing these loud, visibly moist sneezes directly into his hand... just before using it to shake the hand of the next starstruck DC. I find the whole scene repulsive, so I decide to hurry past.

As I pass by the crowd, the celebrity turns to me and offers me a handshake. I think that I'm supposed to be honored, but I have no interest in touching his sneeze-hand. I politely pat his shoulder and turn to leave, refusing the handshake.

There's a murmur of surprise from the crowd, but I try to ignore them, thinking instead of the tasks that I have in mind. The celebrity charges toward me and thrusts his hand in my face, insistent that I pay my respects. No, thanks. I turn away again, but when I do, the celebrity disrespectfully slaps me on the butt! I'm unbelievably offended at being treated this way in my own dream. My first thought is to turn around and just wreck this dude.

I decide that escape's the better move, though, so I Hulk-jump away. Somehow the celebrity grabs onto my leg as I go, though, and ends up flying with me. We land in another part of the campground and again he wordlessly extends his sneeze-hand toward me for a handshake. I try another jump, but he keeps hanging on.

I'm really angry that he's interfering with my LD and I think of the Colosseum Task of the Year ('Have a "fight to the death" with a DC in the Colosseum.') Yes, I think that I've found just the DC for killing. "I'm taking you to the Colosseum," I tell him, and grab him by the throat. His expression never changes, but his neck, arms and torso start rapidly expanding as if he were packing on slabs of muscle right before my eyes. Within a few seconds, he's transformed into a hulking, dangerous-looking gladiator.

Still holding him by the throat, I jump again. The celebrity looks like he weighs about 260 now, but fortunately I can move him easily when I jump. I have a gladius in my hand, but I hold back on using it until the time is right. My enemy is wearing some kind of armor now, and he's no longer looking for a handshake. I give my gladius some practice swings and mutter some threats that I can no longer remember. The celebrity doesn't respond.

Now we crash down on a floor of sand. I think that this is it! I can see a low stone wall all around us but above that it's just darkness where the crowd should be. I will the scene to come into focus, but the darkness just descends heavier and heavier until the dream ends...

Lost Lucid Dreams and Fragments
I also had a number of longer lucid dreams last night that were mostly wiped from my memory! My guess is that these were very low-level lucids where I lost lucidity. I'm a bit distressed to know that I am capable of losing LDs like that. I'm pondering what I should do to address this.

Lost Lucid #1 - I'm flying high over a huge canyon near sundown, aware that I'm dreaming and holding a pile of dog poo in my bare hands. I am in a hurry to get somewhere.
Lost Lucid #2 - An old man is in my kitchen showing me how to make gold out of simple household ingredients (including mud.) I know that I'm dreaming, but I watch in fascination.

Also, one lucid fragment:

Lucid Fragment #1 - I'm looking at a DJ entry on DreamViews. It has a single comment with a very long first paragraph. I become lucid when I see that the comment is from "BadArtemis" rather than "NewArtemis". Quickly wake up.

This was the third of my LDs from early Christmas morning. This WILD was rather nightmarish, but in the end pretty amazing. Hands down, the most hostile DCs that I've encountered.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #50: The Gauntlet of Greed

The WILD drops me into a wood-paneled room. There's a door in front of me, and behind me is a frosted glass window through which sunlight illuminates the room. In the middle of the room is a huge, square pile of $100 bills. It has to be, at minimum, something like $30 million. Probably more.

Someone starts shouting and hammering on the door. I feel grasping and suspicious that it's someone who is after my money. They slip a note under the door that simply reads, "You're broke, bitch." I should find this funny, but instead I feel insulted, entitled and petty. Not in my LD, not when I'm sitting on this much cash. There's a chorus of angry voices outside of the door now and fists and feet are slamming into the door. It's about to rattle off the hinges.

I throw the door open and I'm stunned to see a broad hallway filled with literally hundreds of hostile dream characters. The enraged mob (all male) is armed to the teeth, aggressive and bristling with guns. Somebody punches me in the face just as a mobster aims a lupara-style sawed-off shotgun at me. The crowd howls, and I see AKs, handguns, machine pistols, and every other manner of gun pointing my way.

They open fire and I feel a spray of bullets trace across my body. Buckshot rakes the left side of my face. Everything is chaos as stray bullets rip into DCs, who fall to the floor and are trampled by the others as they run toward me. I know that nothing can hurt me but I'm still gripped with aggression, fear and nervous energy. A man in a trench coat is unlucky to get close and I punch him as hard as I can. He goes flying, crashes into the wall, and lies still.

The chaos is getting to be too much for me and I feel lucidity slipping. I hate that I'm fighting and the madness of the whole situation dawns on me. Am I even sure that this is my money? Do I really want to go to war with some unknown element of my subconscious over this worthless pile of dream cash? I decide to just walk forward, leave the money behind, and separate myself from the riot going on all around me.

DCs continue to run past, firing at me and occasionally striking me with fists and feet, but as more and more of them run into the room behind me, the hallway ahead clears out. I hear some kind of frantic melee going on in the money room but I ignore it. The few remaining DCs that run past now ignore me and as I continue forward through the hall, I soon find myself alone. I feel calm again, and the thought of the Pyramid refocuses me on my goals.

I pass a large window on my right that gives me a view into a busy newsroom. Reporters run excitedly from desk to desk but I don't investigate further. The exit is up ahead, and I find that it is the same set of automatic doors from the last dream. I again imagine that the Great Pyramid lies just beyond the door, but this time the dream fades just as I approach the doors.

A wild chain of false awakenings and DEILDs finally led me to a most interesting encounter with Wife's DC, who was even more irrepressible than usual. This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night's session with galantamine.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #46: The Blind Man, the Bully, and the Nerd

I'm in the kitchen with Wife. I'm talking to her but I'm almost completely blind. I'm embarrassed by my blindness, convinced that it's some side effect of the galantamine that I just took. Rather than seek medical attention, I try to slink up to bed so Wife won't know. Unfortunately, she keeps asking me to hand her things, and I flail around the kitchen knocking things over. "What's wrong with you?" she asks. I have a false awakening into...

...sitting on the floor of our living room as my 1-year-old son "R" runs around me. My vision is dim but I can see better than before. I'm still convinced that I'm suffering from some kind of bizarre galantamine side effect. R is sprinting around the room, pulling objects off of tables, knocking stuff over, and tossing various knickknacks into the recycling bin. I try to stop him, but he just laughs, squirting right through my arms when I try to grab him. He says, "This is so fun, Daddy!" and I briefly become lucid, remembering that he's way too young to speak like that.

I quickly wake up but keep my eyes shut and hold still for a DEILD... and I find myself lying in a bed in a room I don't know. I get up, ready to explore. A strange, gnome-like creature with a hooked nose hops off of the floor and gets in my face, waving his arms wildly about. He's about three feet tall, covered with warts, extremely agile, and very annoying. He brags to some unseen listener: "See? I can stop him from doing what he wants in this dream!"

I try to leave the room but the little gnome keeps hopping up in my face, cackling and poking at me. He jabs me in the eyeball and I get incredibly angry. I grab the gnome by the throat, push him to the floor and hold him there. He growls and kicks his legs, but he isn't able to move. Even though he's immobilized, I'm so out of control that I still punch him once, hard right under his left eye. I immediately feel terrible about this and release my grip, allowing him to scamper away.

I stand there brooding about this for a moment before the gnome walks back in. He no longer looks disgusting and infuriating, but just like a small little man. I tell him, "I'm sorry that I hit you. I didn't need to do that." He walks up to me, points at his blackened left eye and softly says, "Fix." I nod, touching his bruised skin, and the black eye immediately heals. "All right, hug it out," I say and I kneel down to hug the little dude. The dream fades...

I buckle down for another DEILD and in a few seconds I'm back in another bed room, although it's different from the last. I'm standing and Wife is here making the bed. "Hey!" I say. "This is a lucid dream. Quit making that bed and let's go play."

She keeps making the bed. "You can go do what you like, but this work still needs to get done."

I can't believe it. "But it's all a dream. You don't have to worry about whether beds get made. Come on, I've got lucid goals I want to work on."

She stops for a second, laughs, and looks at me, wrinkling up her nose a bit. "Lucid goals? What does that even mean? You better not be trying to arrange a threesome on the bed that I just spent all this time making!"

"Come on, get serious. You'll like this... I want to visit the Great Pyramid." Then I look at her, hold out my right hand and say, "You will come with me."

She laughs. "Oh my God, nerd! I can't believe you just tried to 'command' me. Is that the kind of stuff you do in these dreams of yours?"

I smile, amazed at how like herself she is and how much I'm enjoying her company. "I think I can do this, though," I say, and levitate her a few feet off of the ground. She looks amused.

I float her over to me and set her on the ground. When I try to kiss her she doesn't resist. I feel her fingers graze my left temple but then she turns to walk away. "I still need to make this bed," she says, as the dream fades.