Tales From the Butler's Pantry

[Robot_Butler]

Part 1 I was orphaned at a young age, and taken in by a wealthy family in Georgia. The patriarch of the family, Hamilton, always treated me well, but never adopted me as his own son. His money was all old money, family money, and the family politics kept him from ever treating me like a real son. It never bothered me, because he educated me well and taught me to take care of myself so I would never need to rely on any kind of inheritance. Hamilton's only daughter was getting married, and the wedding was lavish beyond imagining. It was an orgy of food, drinking and dancing that lasted three days. All the big families came in from across the state to celebrate at the mansion . I was working with the kitchen crew to keep the party flooded with booze. On my rounds refilling the champagne, I could not find Hamilton anywhere. He had been brooding since the party started, so I figured he must be outside. I bundled up in my warmest coat, and stepped out into the cold night to explore the plantation grounds. As I passed by the family mausoleum, I noticed my friend Angela sitting on the old stone ruins. She was dressed in a light summer dress, but the cold wind did not touch it, or move a strand of her unbound hair. I was happy for some company in the cold night, even if it was the company of a ghost. She glided over to meet me, and we talked about the upcoming wedding. She spoke more honestly than I was used to, sharing family secrets I was not supposed to know. She told me about the cruel history behind the family's money. Money that came from the early days of the slave trade. The money was cursed. As the family's wealth grew, so would its misery. Death and tragedy seemed to plague the family's history, and it would continue until the last generation was destroyed. She called this the prophecy of the moon. As she finished her story, I heard screams and shouting from the main house. I hurried back, but was too late. The place was no longer a celebration. Somehow, things had turned violent. Two of the most powerful families had started to fight, and the wedding had become a battleground. I heard people yelling about rape and murder as I ran from room to room looking for Hamilton. What I found were the remains of the bride and groom. Hamilton's daughter was on the bed with her dress torn to pieces, and her throat slit. Her future husband was crumpled in a corner with a pistol in his hand, and a knife in his chest. This was too much for Hamilton. It destroyed what little spirit he had left in him. He spent the following weeks in a drunken stupor. He would not take any visitors, and would barely eat. My fiance and I moved into the house to care for him, but it took a month for him to finally speak with us. He told us he had to get rid of his cursed money. He had a plan to give my fiancee a job that would pay her everything he owned within the first two years. Get the money out of the family. My fiancee refused, saying she could not replace his dead daughter. That evening, I found him on a hill overlooking the family mausoleum. The spirits looked restless. There were more out than normal, and they were milling around the tombs as if looking for something. As I sat down, they started walking up the hill to meet me. Hamilton opened a box with two curved blue daggers, and handed one to me. As the ghosts approached, Hamilton's dagger began to glow with a soft blue light. Each shade had a dagger, and they came in pairs to touch daggers with Hamilton as if giving a toast. When the finished with him, they surrounded me. They looked at my dull lifeless dagger with sadness. I did not belong. Each shade approached me and touched the point of their knife to my cheek, right below my left eye. A heavy bass beat started to pound out a rhythm, and the night was suddenly filled with pure white light. The ghosts became solid, and started to dance and celebrate. Hamilton and I were carried along with the music and dance, and soon the hilltop became a beautiful party. As we danced, the party became more crowded, until I was in a sea of people. Eventually I noticed that I was in a separate room with half a dozen dancing ghosts. It was not that the crowd was getting bigger, it was the room that was getting tighter. I started feeling claustrophobic. The music changed to an evil sounding heavy metal riff, and the white light started to fade to a murky green. I recognized the feeling of a nightmare approaching, and struggled to fight it. I looked up to see a ceiling covered in sharp spikes, and the room started to slowly rotate. The ghosts around me were now demons, and as the room turned, they started sliding down he walls to be impaled on the spikes. I knew it was a nightmare, so I fought to escape it. I floated off the ground, spread my arms and legs, and started to spin in place sideways, end over end like a cartwheel. Part 2 I became very disoriented, and suddenly found myself alone in the guest room of my own house. I was still floating in the air, rotating slowly. I turned myself one more time, and paused upside down to take a look under the futon. I was disappointed that there was nothing under it except for a crumpled dark blue jacket. I shot out the window, splintering the closed wood blinds, and shattering the glass. I found myself over the open ocean at night. I could see the lights of a city skyline, so I flew towards it. As I approached the coast, I searched for buildings I recognized. I saw the Chrysler Building, and figured I must be in New York. I was now close enough to be flying amongst the skyscrapers. I saw the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and thought it funny that they were still standing in my dream. Each tower had the graphic outline of a key on the upper right corner. I wanted to land and find some interesting dream characters to talk to. I decided San Francisco would be a more familiar city to experience at street level, so I started looking for buildings in the San Francisco skyline. I was searching for the Transamerica Building. Instead, I found a strange futuristic stepped pyramid built entirely of glass. I was surprised, and figured I must be in the future. I landed, and was convinced this was the future. The sidewalk looked metallic, and there were broad canals carved between the buildings instead of streets. There were no cars in sight. I saw an old man crossing a bridge over the nearest canal. I waited for him to approach me. He was carrying a yellow phone book, and reading it like a newspaper. I stopped him as he passed, and asked casually, "Excuse me, you do know that this is a dream, right?" He looked up from his phone book, startled and annoyed and said something along the lines of, "Well, its about time." I asked him another question. "Do you recognize me?" This really made him stop. He looked me in the eyes in a creepy way, smiled and said, "Of course I recognize you. Do you recognize me?" I then recognized him as my future self. Me as an old man. I looked down at my body to see that I was old also. I was wearing the same clothes as him. "You must not have been paying attention to the dream I gave you " he continued. He lifted up his phone book, pointed to the headline and said, "First manned space flight to the moon in 1969. It took 15 years less than their first, unmanned flight. So you figured out a shortcut? Do you think this matters in the long run?" He then pointed to the bridge he had just crossed. A young man was walking towards us, carrying a white rose and a stack of greeting cards. I thought must be here to meet me. I remembered him as a character from the story in the beginning of the dream. I think he was the character I was playing. As he came near, I started to speak, and was startled as he walked right by me. He handed the rose and the cards to a young woman. I felt sad that I can never be reunited with the characters from the beginning of the dream. They can not recognize me now that I am lucid. I will never see the end of the dream.

[skunk]

wow your dreams are so epic. The part 1 from yesterday's is ridiculously detailed and like an actual full length story. My dreams are sort of in stories, but more short story than anything. The only ones that are lengthy are ones where I feel like I'm continuing a dream and I have knowledge of what happened in the "past" but in real life I can't really remember ever having that dream before. that part about the family curse though sounds freakin creepy bro! I'm guessing that Part 2 signifies when you became lucid? let's see a sketch of this dream

[psychology student]

Are you sensationalising your dreams or are they actually that vivid and detailed?

[Robot_Butler]

Oh, I'm sensationalizing the shit out of them. But yeah, I only write the good ones. The ones where I am lucid enough to keep things fun and vivid and give it a good plot.

[psychology student]

Ah, that was my plan, only the good ones.

[Robot_Butler]

The night before last, I took Galantamind for the first time, and didn't sleep very well. It was a great experience, but I definitely missed some REM periods. I think I had REM rebound last night, because I swear I was dreaming non stop all night. I had several awakenings, but each time I would pass right back into a dream. I was too tired to really worry about being lucid, but I slipped in and out of lucidity anyways. The Implants I was on the subway in New York, when I recognized my friend who I haven't seen in a while. I went to say hi, but she was having a hard time recognizing me. I had to tell her several old stories about us together before she even remembered who I was. I thought this strange, because I still talk to her on the phone all the time. As we were leaving the subway together, I recognized her boyfriend sitting in the front of the train. He didn't seem to recognize either of us. In fact, he was such a zombie, it was like he couldn't even talk. He seemed to be in some sort of a coma. I have dealt with unaware DCs before, so I knew what to do. I put my hand on top of his head, like I was ruffling his hair. I felt a little static shock, and he immediately snapped out of his trance. I was heading to a shopping mall, but they were catching another train. I waited on the platform with them, chatting. When we said goodbye, I think we all made out together instead of just giving friendly hugs. I exited the station, and went into giant shopping mall. The place was located in a pretty bad part of town, but the stores inside were all extremely upscale boutiques. It was deserted. Totally empty. I found a lobby area that was decorated like an expensive hotel, with bookshelves, a fireplace, and shiny leather furniture. A homeless woman had set up camp with sleeping bags and a shopping cart. She was delusional in that street-person kind of way. She thought she was on a reality TV show, and was getting paid to eat these huge squirming grubs worms. They were 6 inches long, and she had to eat them in multiple bites like a squirming candy bar. We spoke about the empty mall, and she told me the place had been deserted for months because people were lining up to get their implants. I kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye. Finally, I caught a good glimpse of a young 7 year old boy running from store to store hiding. I chased him all over the mall, and eventually came to a dead end at the top of a huge ramp that spiraled up through four stories of shops. The boy was precariously climbing up the rail in the center of the spiral, oblivious to the danger. When he was almost at the top, he slipped and teetered backwards. I planted my feet and lifted my hands. In an instant the whole spiral ramp, shops and all, collapsed upward like a giant spring or slinky. All the storefronts merged into the ones above them, and the ramp collapsed upward to a single story ring with a pond in the middle. The boy fell backwards, and splashed into the pond. I helped him out, and we made our way to an emergency fire exit. Outside, the city was a shining futuristic utopia. Everything was made of clean shining metal. Ramps and stairways spiraled up to multiple terraces styled with classical details. There were white stone bridges and silver metal arcades. Every building looked like a courthouse or a Greek Temple. The streets were packed with people waiting in huge lines that wound around city blocks, up staircases, and zigzagged back on themselves. It was nuts. The scale of the city was daunting, so I held the child's hand, and teleported us from terrace to terrace. It really hurt my knees, and at one point the boy said to me, "You better be careful, by the time you're 30, your knees are going to be so ruined you won't be able to walk up stairs, let alone teleport." We walked up and down the lines trying to talk to people. They were all zombified in comas, similar to my friend on the subway. No one would talk to me. I stood in the middle of a courtyard, held my arms out to my sides, and slowly turned in place. The world around me froze like I stopped time. I explained to my new 7 year old friend what the plan was. He ran up and down the lines of people, picking their pockets for ID cards, bank receipts, or scraps of notes that gave some hint of who these people were. I then walked around pressing my palm to the tops of people's heads to zap them and jog their memories of who they were. I woke up several people this way. As I woke them up, they became unfrozen, and gathered in the courtyard. We became a team of rebels who were investigating the cause of his worldwide phenomenon. I thought it was some sort of alien invasion, but it turned out to be a totalitarian govenrnment plan to implant people and control them. I guess the crazy homeless lady was right. We established a base at the top of an abandoned skyscraper. We gathered the children together in a nursery. There were constant risks of sniper attacks, so we had to be careful around the windows. The whole adventure took hours, I think I was in and out of lucidity all night. It was really fun. I'll write a few fun parts. I found a secret passage in an abandoned house that led to a long stairway. I had to pick the lock with a safety pin. It was so easy I became lucid. The stairs led straight down for a mile or more. They led to more underground bunkers and houses. At every level, a gate or door was locked, and I had to pick the lock. The last flight of stairs ran underneath a long banquet table. I could only see people's legs under the table, and hear their voices. There was a secret government meeting going on. I was crawling around under the table trying to understand the conversation and gathering supplies. Of course, my idea of supplies was pokemon video games, socks, and bags of candy. I remember lucidly thinking how amazing it was that my brain was able to create dozens of conversations all at once, and that I could understand them all. There was an action packed firefight in the desert with these huge burrowing worms the size of buildings. It was like a mix between that old movie 'Dune' and the beginning of the new Transformers movie. The worms looked like the grubs the homeless woman was eating in the beginning of the dream. They were somehow related to the implants in people's brains. I was making myself invisible and sneaking around a town filled with people. It felt so real, and I could physically feel the invisibility like I was shifting myself out of sync with the world. I could look down on my body, and see myself as translucent. I was in and out of lucidity, but I had amazing dream control. I could manipulate the whole dreamscape just by thinking about it. I could rearrange buildings and streets. I could change the scale of things, and make the world collapse on itself by changing the focus of my vision. At times, this was all so easy, I just took it for granted and forgot I was even lucid.

[Robot_Butler]

I was in charge of surveying abandoned houses to see if they could be rehabilitated. I was sent to measure the abandoned house in the crater, just outside of town. When I got there with my partner, everything seemed normal. It wasn't until we entered the basement that we angered the Centipedes and the Millipedes. At first, there were only one or two of the small millipedes. They were poisonous, but nothing we couldn't handle. A quick tap of my boot, a satisfying crunch, and they were out of the picture. After crushing three or four of these fast little twerps, the big Centipedes came out to investigate. They were the size of small dogs, two or three feet long. Their segmented bodies were fuzzy and black. Shiny round red shells lined their backs like a stack of soup bowls. They appeared from the shadows in large groups. They would only approach us one at a time to examine us, then run back into the swarm. I became more and more nervous, but we were almost finished with our measuring. My partner taunted me, saying "Whats wrong, scared of the little bugs?". I ignored him, kept alert, and finished measuring fast. As we exited the building, the swarm of giant Centipedes followed us up the stairs. They seemed angry now. From the corner of my eye, I saw one charge straight towards me. The thing was faster than I had previously thought. I fled up the stairs and out of the house, only pausing long enough to kick down the dilapidated front door. I looked back over my shoulder in time to see the Centipede curl up like a spring, and then leap in the air. It landed on my back, and dug its razor sharp armored plates into my upper arm. I felt it squirm around like a snake as it worked its barbs deeper into the meat of my shoulder and upper arm. As I struggled to wrench it of my flesh, I saw more of the miniature Millipedes squirming all over my back. They were all over me, biting and stinging me in a thousand places. I realized that I had been covered in the millipedes the entire time I was in the house. I had only noticed the ones that had fallen off my back and dropped onto the floor.