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Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #105: The Souvenir

I'm walking along the sidewalk of a street near the neighborhood where I grew up, contemplating a job opportunity. I've been offered a job as muscle in a mobster casino. The pay is less than what I'm making now but it's all "tax free", if you know what I mean. I feel like this is a strange thing to be thinking about, and when I also notice that gravity feels a bit different, I become lucid.

It's early morning and the sky hasn't hit full daylight yet. I decide to head for my childhood home, making my way quickly along the street by jumping along in 30-foot segments. I take a right, proceed for a bit, then a left, all along familiar roads. I know that my old home is just the next block over, so I fly over a couple of houses and land on the next street over.

My childhood home is here but it's different. It looks almost dilapidated and the windows are all dark. The parts of the house that were brick are all siding now. I prepare to go inside but then I stop myself. What am I looking for in there? I can't think of any reason to go inside.

I try to remember what I wanted out of this dream. I remember that I'm trying to meet Art at the Alamo. Then I remember how NyxCC teleported by turning a model of a scene into a true, immersive dream scene. I decide that I'll try conjuring a model of the Alamo and then attempt to teleport into it.

Reaching my hand behind my back, I imagine that there's a model of the Alamo sitting in it. But my mental image of what a "model of the Alamo" would look like is very vague and keeps changing. First it's a small ceramic, then it's a larger, hollow tin thing with no bottom and sharp edges, then it's tiny and solid stone. I check my hand but see nothing but an insubstantial outline that evaporates the moment that I look at it.

Okay, no good. Hand behind the back again, and this time I envision a ceramic souvenir, rough and unfinished on the bottom. I feel it taking shape but as I'm trying to focus, a strong wind picks up and tickles my hands and forearm. The souvenir disappears from my hand before I can look at it.

Frustrated, I gaze up at the sky. It's growing darker, like a storm's approaching. I think that this could be a fun time to try flying, but the dream ends before I get up into the air again.

Another swing and a miss at meeting Art at the Alamo. But the good news is that I managed to remember (and execute) Basic Task of the Month!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #104: Reservations

I have a false awakening at home and stumble out of bed. I'm disappointed and slightly grouchy that I failed to achieve a lucid dream. Feeling unmotivated, I wander aimlessly through the house, contemplating how late for work I probably am. I think that it's Friday, though, and I'm looking forward to ordering pizza with the guys at the office and shooting the breeze for a while. (Nope, today's Wednesday!)

I wind up in the exercise room but the power rack and dip station are completely missing. It's halfway converted into an office and I see the guts of a half-built computer on the floor. I kneel down to work on it, seeing that the RAM is missing and that the box is full of dust like it's been sitting there for years. I finally grasp how dreamlike this all is and become lucid.

I rub my hands together and assemble my goals. Two come to me fairly quickly: 1) meet NewArtemis at the Alamo 2) go water-skiing. (Oops, Advanced Task of the Month is actually parasailing.) I move into the master bedroom where I see Wife standing nearby as my two young children E and R run around the room. I announce that I'm having a lucid dream, eliciting an "Okay!" from Wife. I phase through the external wall of our house. I'm on the 2nd story, so I drift down to the driveway below, lightly brushing the branches of our oak tree with my fingers as I pass.

It's a bright morning outside and I'm preparing to fly off for the Alamo when I hear the voice of my son E behind me. "Daddy, wait! Daaaaaaddy!" I think that it's probably smartest to ignore him but I can't help looking back. Somehow he's followed me outside and I see him standing about fifteen feet away, looking so small. He looks at me with enormous, pleading eyes and says, "Daddy, can I go with you?"

I start feeling all melty-hearted and I know that resistance is futile. It'd probably be amusing to see E and NewArtemis' DCs interact anyway. "Sure, buddy," I say, scooping him up and placing him on my shoulders. I hop up into the air and we fly together over the neighborhood, heading vaguely northwest. The city's different in this direction, and we pass a park and a block of tall buildings. I decide that the Alamo is in the next block and I tell E this to cement it further in my mind. "Uh-huh!" he enthusiastically agrees.

When we hit the next city block, though, I'm disappointed to find no sign of the Alamo. There's a river running east-west with a simple stone bridge crossing it and a walkway on either side. I shout down to the DCs milling around below: "The Alamo's supposed to be right here! Which way is it?"

A blonde lady walking with her daughter points westward toward the bridge. "It's that way, just past the bridge!" I thank her, land, and walk under the bridge with E still on my shoulders. We emerge to see the Alamo up ahead but there's some kind of enormous line out front. I feel the urge to get in line and patiently wait but remind myself that this is my dream and it is therefore okay to be a bit of a jerk. I stride to the front of the line where I find a restaurant host holding a clipboard. It's apparent to me that the Alamo has been converted to some sort of amazingly popular restaurant.

The host asks me whether I have reservations. "Of course," I say. "Check under [CanisLucidus]."

"Ah yes!" he responds. "Party of fifteen. Your table's almost ready."

Fifteen people? "[NewArtemis] is in our group, isn't that right?" But the host wanders off, saying that he'll "be right back."

I decide to give him a moment before prodding the dream plot onward. I remember Task of the Month (speak gibberish to a DC and see how they respond.) A sour-looking girl of about eight with brown hair and freckles is waiting nearby, sitting on a piece of luggage. "Ooooooga booga booga!" I exclaim.

She looks very annoyed. "Can we please just skip the whole 'Mess with DCs' show?" I hear her fine, but her response shocks me into just saying, "What?" She sighs dramatically and repeats herself: "I said can we skip the whole 'Mess with DCs' show? Have you seen how long this line is? I am not in the mood."

Amused, I turn away. Good enough for me. I want to keep things rolling, so I announce to the unseen host, "So my table's ready then, right?"

The host scurries back into view. "Sorry for the wait, sir. Mr. Graham was napping and needed to be woken up. Who schedules a lunch for a nap?" he says with a laugh, even though I haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about or who "Mr. Graham" is. "Right this way," says the host, and I follow, now holding E by the hand. We're moving through a wood-paneled hallway into the restaurant interior when the dream ends.

Dream recall from today's nap, haven't had intense entry into WILD like that before, haha, fits that i recently had talk in chat about not experiencing much vibrations.

I am in my bed, after a while everything starts shaking and i have dream feeling, i just go with it and shaking becomes even more intense, like an earthquake, so intense that it throws me into air and almost off the bed, making me open eyes. I take control of the situation and stop them. I am in my room, looks pretty close to my room in waking life. I go to balcony, rub hands and jump off, i feel wings and start the flight, i look around and notice that i can actually see base of my wings this time, i easily change color of them a few times, stopping at black. Then i fly near some building and about to go with summoning, but dream fades out and i wake up.

Looks like I need to go back to my "stop falling for false awakenings" and "stop missing dreamsigns" fundamentals. Still a fun dream, and got to try out a new teleport method (with mixed results.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #102: El Camino Real

I'm at a lucid dreaming camp with lots of people from my past. Throughout the day, we swim and boat in the lake, walk by the lakeside, and do various crafts. I tell everyone that "it's too late for me. I took galantamine and it didn't work. Let's get the rest of you lucid." I teach them about dreamsigns, awareness, and even supplements. I'm frustrated that I've failed to have a lucid dream but I figure maybe I'll feel better if some of the other camp participants can have a lucid.

This goes on for a really long time and eventually I run across Britney Spears eating a blueberry muffin in one of the hallways. She complains that her career is in a slump. I suggest that she would be a perfect spokesperson for blueberry muffin sales. She's thrilled with the idea. In celebration, she takes a staggeringly huge, very unladylike bite out of the muffin, paper and all. I feel incredibly savvy and very proud of myself.

From there, I have a false awakening: Wife and I are starting our day and she switches on the TV. (She never does this in the morning.)The music video for Madonna's "Like a Virgin" is playing on the TV. Her love interest is the guy who played the mummy in The Mummy movies. After the first verse, the TV switches to a 3d rendering of The Killers performing in front of the university Wife and I attended. "That's The Killers," she says. (She doesn't know what they look like.) We're sitting in a cafeteria now, watching people order food while I complain about how I failed to realize I was dreaming just a moment ago when it was so obvious. Some guy carrying a tray of food totally wipes out and gets spaghetti all over himself. Wife laughs when this happens, which seems cruel and out of character. (Big dreamsign. She thinks the part in Karate Kid where Daniel-San spills spaghetti on himself and everybody laughs is super mean.)

Now I'm staring out of a window in some kitchen, feeling sorry for myself that I didn't get lucid. I think that I could be dreaming right now, but everything is just too vivid. And yet... it finally dawns on me. I look over at Wife preparing food at the kitchen counter and it's so real that it almost costs me my lucidity. I decide that I'd better get moving.

The next room is a darkened dining room with an elegantly set table and an unlit candelabra. It's dark in the room and I decide that it would be best to leave the house, so I head for a wall and phase through it. There's no scene beyond the wall, and I wind up in the void.

I quickly rub my hands together and keep walking, thinking that I'll try a new teleport method out of the void, building on an idea that PennyRoyal had suggested. I place my fingers in front of my eyes and imagine them gently wiggling. Pretty soon my hands take shape in front of me and I begin to imagine a new scene behind them -- the Alamo, the arranged meeting spot with Art. Once I feel like the scene's ready, I move my hands aside and find myself in...

... Silicon Valley, walking along El Camino Real. There's even a roadsign marking out the intersection of "82" (El Camino Real) and "93" (unknown road.) It's a beautiful day, typical perfect weather for the South Bay. I jog up a residential street, and a lady power-walking with her dog gives me a friendly wave. I wave back. I know that I have tasks that I'm forgetting, but they refuse to come to mind.

Moving a bit further along the street, I pass my old friend Wang. I ask him how he's been and he says, "I can't talk right now. I've got to be careful not to catch a cold." When I accept this, he breaks into a laugh like he really pulled one over on me. "I'm just kidding!" he says. "I know that you're dreaming this!" He shouts across the street to a lady who's watering her lawn. "Do you know he's dreaming all of this?" I'm a little distracted by how hyper-realistic Wang looks. His lips move flawlessly with the words he's speaking. I wonder how it's possible for all of this to fit inside my head.

The woman is dark-haired, mid-40s, clad in sweat pants. "Oh, like that 'lucid dreaming'? I've always wanted to do that." I respond with a few encouraging words and jokingly say something along the lines of "better make sure that you're not dreaming right now, too." She and Wang laugh and I say, "You know what? Let me show you guys a couple of things." With that, I hope onto the trunk of a parked car and leap to to top of another parked car, intending from there to take off in flight. For some reason the flying doesn't happen, though, and I wind up hovering face-first a few inches off of the ground. Fortunately, this is still cool enough to impress.

"Guys," I tell them, "I'm going to try another teleport. It was good talking to you." They say goodbye, and I put my hands over my eyes again, trying once again to imagine the Alamo. I give it a little longer to incubate this time, waiting until I can "see" the structure fairly well in my mind. But when I remove my hands, I'm somewhere else near Palo Alto. I can see the Stanford Foothills. The vision out of my left eye looks odd, sort of like I have one messed up contact lens. I ignore it, take to the air, and fly just a bit before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #100: The World Is Yours

I'm flying high in the sky around what looks to be a computer-generated globe that's populated with little dots. I feel like I'm on a plane with Wife but I don't see a plane. It's just me and my floating perspective as we circle slowly and gracefully around this globe.

I tell Wife, "This is a music video for a Phil Collins' song called 'Julia' from 1980." (Not true.) The song immediately starts playing. In it, Collins sings of how this globe is "not CGI" and that the dots represent people around the world. He sings that the dot he remembers best ("the one I best recall") was one of him over the ocean, flying on a plane to be reunited with his beloved Julia.

As the song ends, I suddenly find myself falling downward out of the sky. I hope that this is a dream, I think, and of course it is.

I immediately halt my fall and find myself hovering over a huge, vivid cityscape -- highways, skyscrapers, cranes, bridges, traffic jams, all arrayed for me down below. I want to fly around and explore this city, but when I attempt to fly, I'm unable to move. For some reason, I feel totally confident that I'll come unstuck. Stop asking, I think.

I ignore what the dream is telling me and I imagine that I'm already flying Iron Man-style around the city. A second later, I'm flying effortlessly, cruising anywhere I like. I get briefly stuck a time or two, but I just ignore it, imagine that I'm succeeding, and immediately start flying again. Eventually, the little glitches stop.

I see a tower that I remember from waking life -- it's one that I pass during my commute. I fly up to the top and circle around it. I glide low over roadways and high above a cluster of skyscrapers, then descend back to one of the bridges that spans a piece of some unfamiliar bay.

My confidence is soaring, and I decide try some large-scale dream control. I put my hands out in front of me and then bring them apart like I'm performing the breaststroke. As I do, I rake cars off of the bridge in either direction and dozens of them go plummeting toward the water. I bring my hands back together and I watch as time rewinds and they return to the bridge, unharmed. I fly back toward the skyscrapers, select a pair of them, and then begin moving them up and down, one for my left hand and one for my right.

I look to my left and see an enormous fire ogre (a la "Orcs Must Die") stomping toward me down one of the city streets. He towers over most of the nearby buildings, at least 100 feet tall. I wonder whether maybe I'll be fighting him later. I feel no fear at all. I reflect for a moment about what it would be like to have this much control and confidence in every LD. Nothing could stop me. What sort of things would I do if I had years of this kind of power?

Leaving the fire ogre behind for now, I fly over my city for a while and just let my dreaming brain show me what it can do. I look out at the waters of the nearby bay and think about using all of this overflowing confidence for some Task of the Month parasailing, but the dream soon ends.

Dream recall from today's naps.

There was some character selection screen, i was fiddling with settings. There was some reptiloid character face selected and i was able to use points to make custom mask/helmet from tiny pieces in very detail. After some time figuring out stuff, suddenly i start having weird physical sensations, i want to touch something and dream fades from game screen to my room, with dad right in front of me. He's not moving, like a statue and has no eyeballs. I go to balcony and try to run through door. The door becomes elastic and bounces me back, dream destabilizes quickly. I shout some stabilization commands and destabilization instantly stops. Suddenly something grabs me from the back and starts flying back and forth, at first i am confused but then like 'why not' and i start passively controlling movement of it. Shortly we fly a bit too high and go straight through the ceiling... and we are back through the floor in the same room. Shortly dream destabilizes again and i wake up.

Dream 1(fragments):

I was at home, but most of the home was like underwater and i could breath underwater freely. The structure was pretty confusing too, like completely different and with alot of height changes and vertical passages. Also it used mostly red color.

Dream 2(fragments):

I was on some kind of a mission, at some point i was flying through dark elevator shaft and was searching for something at some indoor farm place. Then there was some kind of AI Machine, or something like that.

Dream 3:

I was at home and i was on PC, i was chatting with OmkAR and some other people about some Beyond Dreaming stuff, and apparently i had some books on that(I am not even into that IWL). While having discussion i was browsing some other forums, and there was some forum with black theme and it was about money, but there was almost none posts because newer forum was opened? Soon i was pretty tired and went to sleep.
I woke up and there were like four PCs in my room, and also there was some dude on my PC. I was confused at first but then i started thinking that it's someone from that site. He then started talking with someone over internet and shortly asked me if i am ok, i say yes and he says that means his job is done and he exits the room. Then two radio alarms start singing(I don't even use alarms IWL) and i turn them off. PC randomly shuts down.
I stop for a second and think what's going on and what was that all about, and then i realize that i must be dreaming, i look at my hands and there are 6 fingers on my left hand, they are like 'in pairs'. I go to balcony and it's nearly on ground level again. I jump over the railing onto the ground. It seems like outside area is very unusually open and fully asphalted, there are some cars standing or moving around. Shortly i start flying and feel wings, i attempt transformation again but no success. I accidentally close eyes, but decide to keep them closed for a bit to try teleportation, i visualize some place and, i have weird movement feeling but then i wake up twice.

Dream 1(fragment):

There was some story, according to dream it was pokemon related(Though i can't recall any actual pokemon). There were two anime-looking characters, a boy and a girl, and they were on a show of some kind. There was slot machine that they had to use for something, there was some talk about two realities and their 'pokemon storage' is full since they have caught all of them. They activate the slot machine and after a while floor below the girl disappears and she falls into the... sky? She hits the invisible floor and dies.
Then there's some kind of transition going on between two realities and they start talking in the second reality, can't recall about what exactly. They start flying and then there's transition back to first reality and the girl revives and flies out of the hole, she says that she knows the truth now. They talk that they have advanced to the next tier or something and then some old people come. The boy and the girl shortly fly out of the building. The flight continued over some grassy plains with wooden buildings and some castles.

Dream 2:

I was in some city with family and we were visiting some shop, in the shop i started playing some video game on the PC(Not sure where and how i have found it), then after that i was talking to some people about breads or something, we bought some but half of them were just like cardboard with a picture of bread, i gave them to some random person and we went out of the shop.
Family went somewhere in one direction but i went somewhere else and was exploring, then suddenly bandits assaulted the place, i was trying to find some way out but one of them stunned me from the behind. I decided that i don't want to use this way and activated the quickload to load the last save then went the different way.

Dream 3:

I was in Far Cry editor, i was flying around and i got random piece of terrain copied from somewhere, looking like a bunch of mountains. I copypasted it like 5 times with different rotations, i noticed small cave at the top and decided to check it out. There were interesting terrain formations in form of huge pipes, i thought that there should be an actual pipe in the level that i copied it from. I loaded the other level and there was still nothing. I realized that entities were hidden so i unchecked that and there was indeed a huge pipe and also an entrance to some kind of complex. Also there were some triggers set up for an cutscene so i decided to check that. I went into game mode and triggered it, it was about some mutant attacking the player character and then player character going into the complex through the door nearby. That triggered the level change which was some lab with mutants and red lighting.

Finally broke the the lucid length dry spell, thanks to the competition i guess.
Now need to improve dream control and work on my expectations...

Dream 1(fragment):

I was in some theater/shop place.

Dream 2(fragment):

Can't recall much of start of the dream, i was doing something at home and getting messages on skype from SilentEternity, then i went to continue the nap. I was trying to fall asleep but my legs were randomly moving into some positions, i eventually fell asleep. Then i woke up and was walking to somewhere, then fadeout.
I wake up again and take off headphones, i still hear binaurals so i am dreaming, the room is pretty accurate to waking life. I go towards the balcony door but it's closed, for some reason i decide against going outside this time, and i just start flying around inside, i feel the wings. Random thought comes to me to try to summon a dragon again, but nothing happens. I fly around the room in circles and each time furniture around changes, there are random tables, some food, vases, drawers, the time of day is changing between day and night as well randomly. While flying i decide to try transformation again, this time into one of the characters i thinked up for certain game, Scionox. I feel the change in my hands, i look at them and they are turned into kinda solid darkness, not exactly what i wanted but still success. They fade back to normal after a few seconds though. I do give it a few more tries but each try just reduced the number of fingers on my hands by one with no other effect.
Shortly i wake up, happy and then i wake up again and do an reality check, haha, false awakenings.

Although I didn't get my goals accomplished in this lucid dream, I did meet my first supposed "dream guide". Not as... competent as I might have expected.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #94: The "Dream Guide"

I'm walking down a sidewalk past a construction zone. One of the construction workers is crouched down low to measure something. I notice that he's using our diaper bag to make the measurement. I wonder what on Earth is going on but I'm in a hurry. You know what? I don't even want to know. I wait until the worker isn't looking and then just swipe the bag, throw it over my shoulder, and forget about it.

A little further on, I pass a couple walking with their daughter, a blonde girl of about 7 or 8. The girl glances at me as I pass. I think nothing of this at first, but after a few steps, I'm overcome by this feeling of being watched. I turn around to look behind me and the little girl is following me now, floating a couple of inches off of the ground. She has an unsettling, dead-eyed expression, and I hurry to get away. She's faster than I am, though, and as she seizes my hand, a horror movie "dun DUUNNNN!!" soundtrack plays. At first I'm spooked, but the effect is so ham-handed that I become lucid.

"This is just a dream," I tell her.

She smiles happily, no longer the fright figure of just moments ago. "It is!" she exclaims, dropping my hand and raising her arms over head triumphantly. "And I'm going to help guide you through it!"

Cool, I could use some help... "So that means you're a Dream Guide?"

"Oh, okay!" she says, not inspiring my confidence.

"Can you help me out with teleportation?" I ask, walking down the street with her. The road soon turns to cobblestone as we move away from the construction site. There are fewer people around now.

She shakes her head. "I haven't learned that kind of stuff yet..."

"Okay," I say. "Well, my goal for this dream was..."

She interrupts and speaks really rapidly: "You're going to summon NewArtemis and have her turn into a werewolf!" She grins, proud to show off her ability to read my mind. (She refers to Art by her DV handle.)

I smile, amused. "That's right... [NewArtemis]. The plan is to use a handshake summon. Can you help me do that?"

"Oh no," she says. "I haven't learned how to do summoning yet."

The street seems to be ending so I hop casually over the buildings at the end of the street, float over them, and land on another cobblestoned street just beyond. The little girl follows, floating just slightly behind. We're at a T-intersection and to my left is the mouth of a dark tunnel. I say, "How about I show you how to do that handshake summon?"

She nods eagerly and I extend my hand off to my right, out of sight, and repeatedly imagine NewArtemis performing the handshake. After a while, I feel the beginnings of a handshake. The little girl gasps and claps her hands. "What's it look like?" I ask. The girl doesn't answer and as I look at her now, I realize that she looks like a teenager and that her hair has lengthened and changed color. "Am I changing you?" I ask, starting to feel confused. It occurs to me how confusing it is to look at the girl while trying to imagine NewArtemis. It's like trying to remember how a song goes when something else is blaring on the radio. I feel like I might be morphing the girl into NewArtemis but I'm unsure whether I should switch to trying that. I'm becoming distracted.

I feel an insistent tap in the palm of my hand, as if the middle finger of the person I'm shaking hands with was repeatedly poking me and trying to get my attention. My mind races between the summoning effort, the tapping in my hand, the girl's shifting appearance, and my own indecision as to whether the summoning is ready for me to turn and look. Soon, the dream collapses.

Dream 1:

There was something about forest and then some kind of weird cartoon scene. Then i was playing some game that i was thinking was Dino Crisis, but it was completely different, for one it was an FPS, though dinosaurs were here and i had to battle through some levels, mostly indoors of some kind of a bunker and some purple outside area. One of my abilities was apparently ability to place projection forcefield like champion's from AI War. Then i have found some friendly people and we were traveling around the ocean using an medium-sized ship.
Eventually we have found an facility of some kind, right in the middle of the ocean, it was strange and looked abandoned. I got in and had to do a few puzzles as well as to deal with a few dinosaurs, while the rest were guarding the ship. Soon i got to some kind of reactor area, there were some important documents which i picked up and also i have found another friendly squad, which was stuck there for a while. After a bit of talk reactor started overheating and we had to get out of there, and at the same time, some weird creatures that looked like combination of dinosaur with some kind of an insect, started coming out from everywhere. They were really quick and overpowered and i was thinking that "AI is really better there than Nintendo 64 version".
The squad i found was killed but i managed to get outside. The creatures that attacked us were swarming all over the facility and ship was way too away, but i have managed to find the flight powerup that looked like a yellow-ish metallic sphere. I was flying around really quick, but the powerup was hard to control on changing direction, i got to the ship but suddenly T-Rex appeared that could walk on water, right near the ship. The squad started the fight with it while i was flying around fighting something else, there also were alot of flight and water walking powerups scattered a round the ocean that helped me in fight. After defeating it i flied towards the ship and noticed that T-Rex was stuck in some telescope thing. I thought that even if AI is better, things like this can happen. And just waited around till the time we needed to survive ended. Then dream faded out.

Dream 2:

I was recording some game, can't recall what exactly but i feel like it was some kind of FPS. Then i took a bathroom break and then went to play a game that looked like Far Cry, i was playing not an actual level though, was just flying around in the editor. Then i loaded some map and it was somewhat unfinished. I made level start in some unfinished place for testing purposes and there were alot of crates full of weapons and i could carry more than usual four, icons were alot different too. One of weapons was Sniper version of Heavy Machine Gun, that had even more zoom in than sniper rifle, but still low accuracy. I was testing it in more finished part of the level and it was not really effective. Then i woke up.

Finally -- Advanced Task of the Month!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #87: The Diamond

I'm driving somewhere in California, preparing to merge onto the freeway. Some guy in a Hummer blocks me from merging in, though, even steering his behemoth vehicle toward me so that I have to run off the road. I wind up on some semi-abandoned, crumbling old road, following one other car. The road's filled with enormous potholes and huge slabs of the road jut up at crazy angles. The other driver and I steer carefully around these chunks as best we can and I'm very worried that I'll break an axle. I think that this is all cause by California's ever-present budget woes.

The road ends at a marina but the other car has vanished. I get out of the car and sit by a wooden railing, pouting about my problems. As I look down at the water, I see a little girl crash a jet-ski into a dock, fly over the handlebars, perform three perfect back hand-springs, and walk off as if nothing has happened. I'm impressed by her athleticism and very relieved that she wasn't hurt.

There are narrow wooden walkways leading in a couple of different directions, but none of them are wide enough to fit a car. I need to keep driving but I don't want to leave my car here. I think that if this was a dream, I'd just go jack one, Grand Theft Auto-style. This thought makes me critically question reality and I realize that I'm dreaming!

I leap to my feet and take flight, soaring high enough to see the top of a nearby apartment building. There's a huge pool party on the roof of this building, lots of DCs milling around, and I decide to check it out. I discard the "Great Wall of China" Task of the Year for now and decide that I'll do the "make a diamond out of coal" Advanced Task of the Month.

I look for the DC who seems most in charge and central to the storyline of this party scene. A girl that's seated in a beach chair nearby seems to be the focal point of the scene. She's mid-20s, black, very cute, and three or four of her girlfriends stand deferentially around her as they all talk. While it's not an exact match, I notice that she looks a bit like Stacey Dash.



As I walk up to pseudo-Stacey, she and her friends turn to look at me. I say, "I'm going to give you a diamond." One of her buddies, a brunette holding a slender glass of what looks like champagne, laughs at this.

"Are you serious?" asks "Stacey".

"Totally serious," I say. "It's for a task. You just need to hand me that lump of coal that you're carrying around."

"Sure, take it!" she says, handing me a peach-sized lump of coal. Whew, glad that worked, I think to myself. Stacey and her friends watch me, intrigued. I give the coal one quick squeeze, imagining that it immediately feels sharp and hard like a diamond. I open my hand and yes it's a diamond! There are some lumps of dusty black coal-crap on it, but I quickly brush them away, revealing a sparkling, golf ball-sized, round cut diamond.

Her friends murmur appreciatively and I hand Stacey the diamond. "Aww, it's so nice!" she says, smiling appreciatively. She holds it up to the sunlight to admire it then stands up and approaches me. "Hey, will you help me out with a question that I had?" she asks.

"Sure. What's up?" I'm very intrigued about what her question is.

"What's the difference between..." she begins, pointing toward herself and circling her finger as if to indicate "me" or "all of me". Her voice trails off and I quickly wind up in the void. The excitement of TotM and the anticipation of the question get me too wound up, though, and I wake up before I can use the void to travel anywhere.

I buckle down for DEILD but I feel like I'm not going to fall back asleep. I try to really let go, and after waiting for a bit, I slip back into a non-lucid dream: "Stacey" is in a dark, wood-panelled office, seated across from a severe-looking woman in her 50s. Stacey is visibly upset and says, "You have no right hire someone else to ghost write my story! How can you do this to me?"

The lady, who I think is her publicist, is unsympathetic. "Not everything is about you." I wake up.

Dream recall from today's nap.

I was at home, and i decided to do some WILD attempts, the room looked completely different but i didn't noticed. For some reason i was trying to do WILD in the uncomfortable corner of the bed, i noticed that and moved to the better position.
Then dream skipped and i was going through some greyish town ruins and there were some zombies that i was shooting.
After a while i was back at home and i was playing some abstract shmup. It was in the space and there were energy platforms floating around, enemy was attacking with spaceships and there were also tanks at the platforms. And out of everything that shmup was using Hellsinker OST for the music. I got through a couple of levels, each of which was ending with an boss fight versus some big abstract spaceship.
But after i have done that game suddenly not just switched to the first person, but i was actually in the game. I was walking down an spiral set of the dark red spiral stairs, descending into the darkness. It was deep underground. Soon i have reached some kind of island, floating in the middle of the darkness. At the island there were ruins of the castle and a few more buildings. I crossed the bridge, and music started playing. As music was catching on, glowing white dragon flew out of the darkness and stopped above the island. Shortly dragon became darker and he started talking about something(can't recall what), shortly i recalled one of my dream goals and realized that i am dreaming, but before i could do anything, some force started attracted us together, and everything went pitch black. I feel weird sensation, like my body was changing in some way or getting fused with, but shortly everything stopped.
I woke up but the room looks different so i am still dreaming, i get up and rub hands but dream fades out again.
I wake up once again and it's daytime, i look at my hands, 5 fingers on the right, 3 fingers on the left, then suddenly back to 5 on the left. Balcony door was blocked by some garbage, so i decide to do small trick with the window nearby. I go backwards through it while expecting it to disappear and as i start falling backwards i notice that window is not there anymore. I feel the wings and fly around while randomly shouting commands for transformation and doing visualization(And completely forgetting how to do it properly ), i get my hands to slightly change, but once i look back at them they change back. I even try visualizing that dragon from before but no dice. After a while dream fades out and i wake up properly.

Dream recall from today's nap, recall of waking life in dream didn't updated with latest change in plans for some reason

I was doing stuff at home then went to bed, decided to WILD.
I had transition sensation and i feel that someone is there apparently, i open the eyes, i am in my room and there is random DC, i shove DC off the bed and he says some nonsense, i take off headphones and binaural beats are still playing, i fly to the balcony and further outside, phasing through door on the way, i feel wings. I shout the stabilization command, and for once, it works and dream becomes more clear, i also try shouting the control command but don't feel any change. There's some reflecting surface floating in the air, i look at my reflection, instead of me it's some weird roughly humanoid figure made out of some kind of dark blue wires, it has wings and it has no head. I look at me and i am normal myself(In retrospect, i should have used that for transformation instead, haha, i should remember to do that next time). I fly around and decide to attempt transformation into a dragon again, but before i can do much, dream fades out.
I wake up in my room, i take off headphones normally(No reality check is perfect) and go to my PC, as i am about to type dream recall keywords into file i wake up properly.

Recall from today's naps, bunch of confusing false awakenings once again and fake sleep paralysis.
The first nap was weird one though, i am not sure what i was trying to do there.

Nap #1(fragments):

Can't recall much other than that i was WILDing and the room was different.
Then i woke up in my room and i exactly knew that i was dreaming, i got up from the bed and spontaneously started trying many kinds of dream control and failing... i probably didn't had full control over myself either. Shortly dream faded out and i woke up.

Nap #2:
Dream 1(fragments):

There was some kind of theatre and i was behind the scenes, where people were making a movie. Then later i was using subway to get somewhere, then i was in some other place and there was movie like cutscene. Finally i was back at home and i was doing WILD, family was watching movies and distracting me but i continue.
I wake up back at my room, and i can't move, i try to break out of it, but chandelier appears and everything gets filled with lamps. Dream fades out and i wake up again, i take off headphones and i still can hear binaural beats, but before i can do anything else dream fades out again and i wake up distracted by family watching movies, can't recall much after that other than some dream skips.

Dream 2:

I was back at home again, and again trying to WILD.
I wake up again in my room, can't move, and chandelier again is here, i attempt to break out of paralysis and this time i barely manage to get able to move to take off headphones, binaural beats still heard. Then suddenly dad appeared out of nowhere, grabbed me and thrown me out through the balcony door, while shouting 'Thanks!'. Outside i am able to move normally again, i feel wings and fly, i respond to him "No, thank /you/" since for once family member helped me in lucid dream, usually they were more distracting me.
Dream, however is not very stable, so i rub hands and quickly stabilize it. Then i look around and outside... is weird. It looks like outside area near the house is surrounded by same walls that are in my room somehow? I fly higher into the skies and do decide to attempt to do transformation into a dragon again. I give it a few tries, using various commands and visualization, and during one of attempts, i start feeling bigger... but my visible body is the same size, not changed at all... that's weird, also my voice gets more booming. I fly around some more and i somehow get into some kind of tube, walls of which are made of screens with blue ads on them...
At the bottom of the tube there's room with wooden floor, i fly there, by the time i reach it the feeling of bigness vanishes, i also notice that walls are white and cyan. I am now inside some building and there's janitress, as i fly closer she throws a bucket at me, i feel the hit but i take no damage of any kind. Then she disappears while i look confused. I look around some more and see a group of schoolmates from my past. I fly closer to them, but before i can do anything dream fades out and i wake up.