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I am carrying a broken grandfather clock around the local town centre (albeit slightly distorted as my dreams tend to do with familiar locations), looking for clockmakers to repair it. The first one I find is closed, and the second one may or may not have been able to fix it. At no point was I at all concerned with how much it would cost to have the clock fixed.

The dream shifts, and I am visiting a castle with at least one friend. The castle has a large (at least the same width as the castle), flat, square-shaped moat surrounding it that is typically empty so that people can walk across it, but can be filled in times of danger. At present the castle is under attack, and the local army has been sent out onto the moat's surface to deal with the invaders. Someone of authority (possibly the king, possibly one of his advisors) deems the battle to be lost and decides to flood the moat, but the princess expressed concern that this would drown their own army. I venture underground into the tunnels beneath the castle, and come across the control system for the moat - a pair of large sluice gates, one which draws water from a river into the moat and one which drains it. The first gate is open and the moat is partially filled, but the progress is slow. As I head over to the control system for the second gate another group from the castle arrives, including the princess and an advisor who looks like Loki from Thor. Apparently whoever decided to flood the moat should not have done so, and the princess and I raise a stone slab from a slot in the floor which opens the second gate and drops the water, then I jump across some platforms to reach and close the first gate. The moat progressively drains (and some large stone mechanism shifts into place as it does so) and Loki-advisor refers to me as "misinformer" as it finishes - I'm not sure why, but given it's Loki it may well be a compliment of some sort. I am hailed as a hero and my friend (who now looks like Samwell Tarley from Game of Thrones) reminds me that we still need transport to our next location, presumably implying that I should request it from the castle now that I am in their favour. The dream shifts before the scene can continue.

I am entering some kind of cross between my flat kitchen and secondary school science lab to make my dinner, but the room has been commandeered for a film event of some sort. I speak to the guy setting up the event, explaining that it would take me only 15 minutes to cook my food and another 30 to eat it and clean up, but he refuses to let me make my dinner. Some of the conversation is garbled, but I make the assumption that since it is currently 11pm it is not likely the event will be over in time for me to make my dinner that night.

I am then woken up by a knock on the door.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #29: The Lucidity Machine

Wife, dressed in a labcoat, straps me into this huge contraption that we've built called "The Lucidity Machine". She explains that when she turns this on, "you're going to be lucid and the dream will be really pixelly, like an old video game." I tell her that I'm ready. Wife walks over to a huge rocker switch on the wall, flips it, and I'm lucid.

As promised, my view of everything is extremely pixellated, reminiscent of classic Atari games. I'm immediately reminded of Adventure:



I appear to be in a low-resolution version of the same room but Wife is no longer here. I get out of the machine, focusing on sharpening the scene, knowing that it will grow clearer and clearer as I work my way through it. Sure enough, the graphics tighten up with every step that I take and within a few seconds everything's in full clarity.

I walk outside of the building into the sun and my recall gets hazy for a bit here. At some point, I find myself standing in front of a cute bungalo that's surrounded by a broad moat. It has a pleasant garden in front of it and I want to see what's going on in here.

I decide to use a technique that Xanous described in an old DJ entry that I believe he got from Robert Waggoner. Basically, I employ a sort of "targeted flight" where I focus on where I want to go and imagine myself being drawn there rather than on any specific mode of transport, like flight. I focus on a flower in the bungalo's garden and sure enough I'm pulled into a vivid close-up of this bright pink flower.

I hear voices coming from inside the bungalo and my perspective returns to normal. I'm now standing by the front door, safely across the moat. I open the door and walk through a small foyer into a modest bedroom with a window that overlooks the ocean. Two young women in their mid-20s are sitting on a bed taping a video podcast about lucid dreaming. I feel like they must be from DreamViews but they're both strangers to me.

My dream body has sort of faded from my awareness and the two podcasters don't appear to see me, so I just listen. They describe a guy who "built his own lucid dreaming machine" and describe things that I'd done earlier in this dream. I remember them talking about us building the machine in our lab and mentioning something about me hopping on a train (DC nonsense or forgotten scene?)

Suddenly, a group of people in lab counts bursts into the room, completely unnoticed by the podcasters. My friend S from work is part of the group, which is led by an older lady with graying hair. They're an amiable group but they announce that they are here to put a stop to my "abuse" of this "lucidity technology". The gray-haired lady says, "What you did was impressive but now it's gotten out of control." She gestures at the podcasters, and I see that one of them has turned into a 3-foot-tall Asian of indeterminate gender.

Lucidity is probably starting to slip, and I become angry that they want to take this technology away from me. I tell them that they'll never destroy what took years to build. The gray-haired lady says, "You'll find that these things are much easier to destroy than to build." Emotion sweeps me away and I lose my lucidity. I get wrapped up further in this new dream plot but my recall gets very hazy from here.