Thread: SD-1: Nephanim

December 16, 2010

So it seems! Great recall last night... I almost broke my recall record.

Music Appreciation and Cosplay Gallery

I walked into an auditorium with Nicole. She went to talk to someone she knew, so I went ahead without her. Jazz music was playing on the speakers, and the man at the podium announced that it was Humanities 380: Music Appreciation. He had short, messy brown hair and glasses. I went up to the front row since most of the seats at the back were taken. There was food all over the room – freely available to attendees. Almost as soon as I took a seat, a guy sitting next to me stood up and felt his hand across my chest.

“I like your sweater,” he said. I could tell by his smile that he was gay. I glanced down, seeing what I was wearing… A green sweater much like the one Nicole’s dad wore to dinner last night. I smiled back and told him it was similar to his: a white sweater with horizontal, black stripes. He disagreed, but he didn’t say so. A girl next to me thought we were going to make out, so she got her camera ready. A bunch of girls walked out at the front of the auditorium in cosplay. Many of them wore revealing outfits.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m straight,” I laughed. Their eyes went wide. “I know I seem like I would be gay, but I’m not even bisexual… Just straight.” The man with the microphone seemed to disregard his class entirely and became the announcer for a cosplay walk-on. The audience members were entitled to choose anyone at the front of the auditorium to take back home with them. It didn’t have to be a sexual thing, but that’s what he seemed to be implying. I thought about who I wanted to look for and decided I’d go for an Inoue Orihime… I wasn’t really sure. I had a feeling Nicole would probably play, too. I almost didn’t notice the pair of golden bells as it disappeared through the exit door. I stared at the door for a moment, thinking… Sure enough, the golden bells appeared again at the entrance within a minute or so. Symphony was in the cosplay line. At the time, I thought it was just someone dressed as her, though, so I felt guilty picking her. I didn’t want to upset Nicole. She walked past three times before Nicole came and sat with me. I asked her about it, and she didn’t mind… So I got up and took Symphony’s hand.

“You don’t belong in something like this,” I told her gently. She just looked at me and followed as I led her back to Nicole. She was wearing a white coat with large, black buttons down the middle. This was the “complete” Symphony, of course, not the mannequin shell Enigma provided for me. People started clearing out, and the auditorium became a theater for a Naruto movie. Nicole and I wanted to leave, but Symphony thought it was interesting, so we decided to let her see it. A Naruto cosplayer ran up to the screen and started pointing at himself in shock. Some fangirls swarmed him as soon as they saw him, and that was the end of the Naruto cosplayer…

The Lion, the Wizard, and the Washer

(Disclaimer: no lions.)

Nicole and I were in a laundry room. We both knew that there was another world on the other side of the washing machine – sort of like how Narnia’s in the back of a wardrobe. Unfortunately, there was still water in the washing machine from the previous wash, so we couldn’t open it to crawl through. Nicole called out to her dad.

“How do we turn off the water in the washer?” she shouted. Meanwhile, I knelt in front of the machine, inspecting controls. There was one that clearly said “water level.” I adjusted the sliding knob, and the water quickly went away. Nicole’s dad showed up and asked what she needed. The problem was already solved. I explained what I did when Nicole stared in amazement at the dry washing machine. The controls were labeled differently this time, though, so I thought I needed to pull all four of the so-called “water level” controls down to zero. Anyway, we crawled into the washing machine and came out in a brightly colored world full of trees and flowers. I don’t remember exactly how things went after that, but we bowled at a bowling alley inside the Emerald Palace (clearly stolen from the Wizard of Oz) and fought some kind of monster for the right to return to our world.

Regina's Pajamas

I was sitting at Nicole’s kitchen table. Nicole walked in, followed by none other than Regina Turek. I was shocked to see her – even moreso with Nicole’s permission. Nicole explained that they had talked through their differences, so Regina would be staying there for a while. I saw that Regina was wearing white pajamas with little monkeys on them. I wondered if she was spending the night, but I didn’t really want to ask… I decided to treat her kindly and hope for the best.

Electrodynamics Post-Quiz and Andrea's AIDS

I was taking a quiz in a trailer. The problems were all directly related to electrodynamics, but I had forgotten the equations, so I couldn’t solve them. They were all true or false questions, so it was even more disappointing when I failed the quiz. I didn’t understand how it was possible; I had read the assigned readings and even constructed three-dimensional models demonstrating the principles behind the equations. They were still sitting in front of my house. Nicole hadn’t read any of the material, though, so she failed the class entirely. I told her it was okay… I would still take care of her.

The dream jumped. We were in front of my house. A bunch of tinsel was wound around three big trees in my yard. Apparently, this was a demonstration of the principles of magnetic fields and electrostatic potential. I’m not sure how…

The dream jumped. We were in Andrea’s room. It was a little smaller than I remembered, and there were two burly men sitting on her bed. She lay on her side in a ball when we arrived. According to Andrea, she was having serious health problems related to her inability to digest sugar. We asked what she ate.

“Seven cookies,” she laughed nervously. “Sugar cookies. My AIDS is acting up again.” I laughed and shook my head… What was she thinking? Expressing my sympathy, I hugged Andrea. I was a little worried about her giving me AIDS for some reason (no idea what that was about). For the record, she doesn't actually have AIDS. For the rest of the dream, I sat on the floor by Andrea’s bed while she, Nicole, and one of the muscle men talked. The other guy just disappeared. One of the legs supporting Andrea’s bed somehow got stuck on the end of my shoe, so my toes were getting crushed by the weight of all three of them sitting on the bed. I had them all get up so I could retrieve my squashed foot.

“Nicole,” I said, “make sure you read the book next time, okay?” She nodded.

Perfect Christmas Gift

Kurt (Glee) was visiting a professor he had a crush on. Said professor was clearly into him, so he wanted to get a good Christmas gift. Unfortunately, after he arrived with the gift, he learned the name of the professor’s favorite band. It didn’t seem so unfortunate until the guy explained that the only T-shirt he had related to that band was thirty years old and resembled a dirty rag…

“Man, that would’ve been the perfect Christmas gift,” he said. Kurt was depressed.

Blowing Off Finals

I was taking my electrodynamics final (even though I did that already). Our professor was kind enough to let us take the exam home and complete it over the weekend, but he still managed to enforce the two hour time limit somehow. There were sixteen multiple choice questions and twenty problems. The multiple choice questions were split into two sections – one at the beginning of the exam, and one at the end. I didn’t know about the one at the end until someone told me about it. I spent over an hour working on the first four problems in the middle section, leaving about forty-five minutes to complete the other sixteen and the multiple choice questions at the end I had overlooked. I had a lot of difficulty figuring out which problem I was on… The problems changed order, and some disappeared altogether. I was fairly alarmed when I saw that one of the longer problems I’d completed was no longer on the exam.

To make matters worse, the exam was being broadcast from my professor’s computer, and he accidentally brought up a Powerpoint presentation on electric field intensity. This might have helped if there had been questions related to it, but regardless, no one could see the exam. I hoped he was going to give us extra time to make up for his mistake. Eventually, however, I just gave up and decided I would fail the exam.

The dream jumped. I walked into a small music room. A bunch of middle schoolers with trombones sat next to me. This was another one of my finals… But I couldn’t remember being in band anytime recently, nor could I remember which instrument I was supposed to play. Since I played trumpet seven years ago, I figured that was probably right – but for some odd reason, I considered grabbing a harp instead. I summoned my trumpet and sheet music without thinking about it. If I had paid any attention, I would’ve realized I was trying to play Zelda music, but I was so bad at it that it didn’t sound like anything I knew. The trumpet itself sounded fine; the notes were clear, they were just wrong. I couldn’t remember the finger positions! I realized at some point that it didn’t really matter if I could play it… I didn’t feel like participating in the “band” final. I didn’t know any of this music, I didn’t know how to play my instrument, and for that matter, I wasn’t even in the band. If I had thought about this a little more, I probably would’ve realized I was dreaming.

The teacher showed up shortly after that. It was the guy from my middle school in North Carolina… I don’t remember his name! He passed around a sheet of paper for us to write our names on. He said we would design a poster together to commemorate the year. When the paper reached me, I saw that a bunch of people had written a “team name” on the left and their real names on the right side. I had already absentmindedly written Nephanim for my “team name,” so I went with it. Everyone had written in the format: “Team Name is actually Real Name.” Following the format, I wrote “Nephanim is actually Josh.” Well, I wrote my last name, too, but you don’t need to know that. I passed the paper on. As I did, I saw that the guy next to me was looking at porn on his laptop. Two pictures of the same woman with water dripping down her body smiled out of the screen. The band director walked over to talk to him about a song recommendation. He didn’t seem to notice the pornography at first…

“That must be an old song… I’ve never heard of it,” the guy said.

“Yeah, you might have to look on YouTube,” the director replied.

“Someone took it down!” another guy chimed in.

“Oh, that’s right…” the director realized. “They took it down last Friday.” I raised an eyebrow. He was monitoring individual videos on YouTube well enough to know when they were taken down? Interesting. The guy next to me went to YouTube anyway, but instead of videos, he just got the same pictures of the same woman. The director realized what he was looking at and suggested for him to close the web browser and reopen it. I knew it would work, but he didn’t want to do it. The director started laughing hysterically.

SAT-II

This dream has been omitted.

Yugioh Card Battle, Soul Wager

I was playing Yugioh (the card game) against some guy. Wow, I haven’t played that card game since sixth grade or so. Anyway, I understood that my soul was on the line, but I was really bad at the game. Nicole cheered me on from the sidelines. We didn’t have health points like you’re supposed to; rather, we did it Pokemon style – the first to lose six monster cards would lose the match. I kept coming really close to losing cards, but I only lost a couple of them. The culprit was a poisonous plant monster that could dish out 3000 damage on a good turn. Fortunately, it was also affected by its poison (imagine that), so it killed itself. I drew a lizard thing that could breathe fire and shoot balls of shadow energy. My opponent’s new card had a fire affinity, so naturally, I used the shadow balls to attack. At some point during the match, I remembered playing against Austin under a completely different set of rules. Rather than having seven cards in our hand at a given time, we just drew one card at a time and played it. That prevented us from pulling off complicated combination attacks, among other things… I decided that if I survived the match, I would teach Austin how to play the proper way.

Looking for Someone at the Zoo

I was at the zoo with Nicole. I kept looking for someone the whole time, but I wasn’t sure who it was. Every time I saw my dad, I shouted some random insult and ran off. We stopped at an ice rink to take a break from walking. A group of girls in crimson red school uniforms had taken over the rink. Their leader, a girl with frog pins all over her crimson striped scarf, seemed to know me. I didn’t get close enough for her to recognize me. She was wearing a skirt, leaving her legs exposed on the ice… Although it seemed like a bad idea, she was good enough at ice skating that she wasn’t going to fall. An announcer informed us that the “lovely ladies on the ice” had overtaken the snowboarders and the grunge girls, whatever that means. Nicole and I looked at some jellyfish that were kept in tanks lining the walls of the huge ice skating facility. There was a hallway wrapping around the room on the second floor, so if I stood back, I could see people walking down the hall. I saw my dad in Piros’ golden armor and shouted that he was a wrigglenutter. I quickly moved closer to the wall so he wouldn’t see me. Some people around us gave me strange looks. Shortly after, I saw Sara’s face in a mirror attached to the corner of the room. Realizing I could ask her about hiring my sister at Subway, I turned.

“Sara?” I asked. I realized immediately that it wasn’t Sara. It wasn’t even a woman… Just a guy that looked like Sara. Even saying that, he looked less and less like Sara the longer I stared at him... His hair was short and a fiery red. “Oh… Oops. Do I know you…?”

“I think we’ve met before…” he said, nodding. “I don’t remember where.”

“I don’t either.”

“Well, I know I hate you.” He started to walk away.

“H.. Hate me? What did I do?” He just ignored my question. Nicole asked who the guy was, and I explained the situation with Sara’s face in the mirror. She thought it was weird, too. I kept looking all around us in search of anyone I knew (other than that frog pin girl). I still wasn’t sure who I was looking for.

“Who broke up my band of lovely ladies?” the announcer asked over the intercom. I looked over and saw that the frog pin girl was twirling around alone on the ice. Prompted by this announcement, she skated over to a huge woman in the middle of the ice rink. This woman was easily eight feet tall and four feet wide – a monster if I’ve ever seen one.

“I’m having an affair with this girl!!” the frog pin girl shouted. Nicole even turned to see what was going on. I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain.

Four Layer Fake Dream Records

I remember writing down the SAT-II dream, but then I woke up in bed and heard someone laughing at me for thinking I had written the dream down. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. Then I woke up. I wrote down the SAT-II dream in a little less detail than before and fell back asleep. Someone laughed and told me I had fallen for the same trick again. I woke up and checked my dream journal. Nothing was written down. I wrote the SAT-II dream one more time, cursing the voice that kept taunting me. I really woke up this time and decided I’d better start writing.

You can remember an impressive amount of dreams in one night.

Cool man! I also dreamt I was writing in my DJ, and someone laughed at me. Thanks for posting.

Originally Posted by MadMonkey

You can remember an impressive amount of dreams in one night.

Thanks! Ten in one night is my record, as far as I can recall... Sometimes I only remember one or two dreams, but I'm glad my efforts are paying off overall. My recall is much better than it was back in July.

Originally Posted by WakingNomad

Cool man! I also dreamt I was writing in my DJ, and someone laughed at me. Thanks for posting.

Laughers gonna laugh, as they say. Okay, no one says that, but I just did. Hopefully I'll meet you at Giza soon.

***

December 17, 2010

One dream to report from last night, but my recall was very thorough. I'll add anything else if I remember it during the day.

Death of a Miner, Guild Politics, and Ben's Comedy Routine

I was playing Minecraft. Some guy was clearing out blocks of dirt floating in the air outside his cavern home when an arrow from a skeleton pierced his skull. He managed to hobble back to the door and asked me to tell his sons he was dead. He fell, lifeless, at my feet. Two boys rushed over when they heard me close the door. I slowly turned, put a hand on each of their shoulders, and tried to think of an appropriate way to explain it…

“Your father wanted me to tell you something,” I began.

“Yeah, what?” one kid asked. These boys were no more than eleven or twelve.

“Well, while he was out doing his work, he… He’s dead. I’m sorry.” They just gaped at me as the color drained from their faces. Another boy – this one probably about six years old – slowly walked into the room while rubbing his eyes. He asked where his dad was. The older boys looked at him, then back to me for help. I sighed, patted the little kid on the head, and told him simply that his dad wasn’t coming back. In retrospect, that may not have been the best way to handle it. The kid started crying and ran into the darkness of their cave. I left the cavern. Their dad’s body was gone. In his honor, I went over to the floating dirt blocks to finish the job. There was sand mixed in the dirt, so as I punched it, sand fell on my head. I thought it was strange that the sand kept getting in my eyes. After all, it was only a game, right?

“I’m not even there, so why does it hurt?” I complained aloud. After I finished dealing with that, I checked my inventory. I had some wooden pick axes and swords, but nothing particularly sturdy. Night fell, and the world was immediately full of zombies. I looked down at the valley and saw hundreds of them roaming around. Some of them saw me, so I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. I ran along the contour of the mountainside and found myself trapped in a sea of monsters. I kept running. New monsters I had never seen before appeared – skeletal horses, giant bat creatures, zombie knights – but I was able to avoid these fairly easily. The world was transformed as a giant hand grabbed my body. It was my own hand. I lifted my avatar off the ground, carrying him over the enemies in a death-defying leap I could never have managed within the scope of Minecraftian physics. The monsters were like toy soldiers on a play mat. I thought it was kind of silly that I was playing with all these toys, so I set the avatar down and rejoined it. I decided I wouldn’t jump fifty feet in the air again like I had… It just didn’t make sense.

The dream jumped. I was standing outside a wooden house built roughly the same as the one Nicole and I put together in our private world. There were a bunch of people walking around; I recognized many of them as players from Agharta. I changed my appearance to that of Lornayth Zambar and hid on the roof of the building where no one would see me. A girl named Estelle walked up the stairs toward the roof. By the time she made it halfway up, I was standing at the top of the stairs with my pants down. I urinated all over her. Dream me really needs to stop doing that to people. Estelle just held up a hand to block the urine from soaking her face. She shook her head and walked away. I realized this building was actually a guild hall, and these people were in my guild. I wandered into a closed-off area in the mountains with Austin. He asked if I had ever seen heart pieces in Minecraft.

“Like in Zelda?” I asked.

“Yeah. Look over there.” He pointed at what looked like a ring of heart pieces arranged along the face of a mountain. I figured it was probably just diamond ore, but what was that doing above the surface? We walked over to check it out. Contrary to what we originally thought, the “heart pieces” weren’t on the face of the mountain at all. They were scattered on the ground. Indeed, collecting four of them increased Austin’s maximum health by one heart. For some reason, this didn’t make sense to us. We thought they would just heal him.

The dream jumped. I was sitting at a cafeteria table. To my left, a bunch of Japanese people were eating food that heavily resembled solid waste. I prodded a bag of rice they had left on the table in front of me. One of the girls saw me touching it and extended a hand to stop me.

“Thato is our eggu rice,” she said with a bad accent. I handed it to her, eager to get it away from me. It certainly smelled like eggs. I pointed at a bag of the solid waste stuff they were eating and asked what it was.

“Oh,” she said, “thato is chocorate dumprings.” Chocolate dumplings. I wasn’t so sure I believed her. She took that, too, and I sighed in relief. I thought to ask them to join our guild, anyway, but I figured they already had a guild of their own.

The dream jumped. Austin and I were taking a new recruit to our guild hall. He was only a few years old, so Austin had to hold his hand most of the way. As we passed a building, I told Austin we were almost there. For some reason, he hoisted the kid up onto the roof of the building in front of ours.

“What are you doing? We’re not there yet,” I reminded him. He didn’t respond. I walked to the other side of the building to wait for the kid. When he got there, I helped him down. I put him on the roof of our guild building and climbed up after him. Austin was gone. I showed him a secret entrance up there… It was like a maze of tunnels, and there were slides everywhere. Each slide led to a different room. I pointed out one in particular and hopped in it. Before I realized it, I was falling into a McDonald’s. I landed on some kind of horizontal support beam in the shape of a dragon. I turned to the kid; I could see him at the top of the slide. “Not this one!” I shouted. Hearing my voice, some people down below looked up at the support beam. A woman pointed at me and laughed. I saw Chelsea at one of the tables below me, and our eyes briefly met. She gave me a concerned look… She was probably wondering why I had climbed up there. Going along with that, I walked over to the wall and started climbing it like Spiderman. I glided across the room to a window and broke out.

The dream jumped. I was at some kind of comedy show hosted by Ben! He told jokes about the aboriginal tribes of Australia while performing acrobatics. By the end of it, he was rolling all over the stage while shouting random words. He stood up, threw his arms in the air, and made an announcement.

“I would like to honor my best friend in the whole world – a man who has shown me that there is magic in every corner of everything with corners…” Figuring he was talking about me (although I didn’t understand what magic had to do with it), I made my way to the end of the row and crouched. I was going to roll up to the stage. “…James Potter!” Nicole was sitting at the end of the aisle, and she put her hand on my shoulder to ease my disappointment. I saw Harry Potter’s dad stand up. He was wearing a suit and top hat. It was actually Tyler. I sighed heavily and turned to leave. By my luck, I beat the crowd out of the room. Unfortunately, Nicole didn’t… So I had to wait for her. I saw several booths set up with free food. It was all part of Ben’s show. When Nicole came out of the room, we got in line for food. There was potato salad, fettucini alfredo, and a bunch of stuff at the first table… I found a huge sausage (easily the size of my leg) and tried to cut off a slice, but it came out too thick. The guy on the other side of the table cut it off and took it. One of the servants saw this and asked him if he was really going to eat all that sausage.

“It’s nothing against you, sir,” he said. “If you’re really going to eat it, then by all means, take it. I just don’t want to see our prized sausage go to waste.” In the end, the guy decided to put it back, so I took it. No one hassled me over it.

Nephanim Elric's Delusions of Insanity

Before I begin, I have to say that this dream felt quite different from most – not unlike those anesthesia-induced hallucinations occasionally enjoyed during surgical procedures.

I was in Nicole’s living room, but it had become the entrance of a restaurant. A couple of girls were in there with me. We discussed how the war with Voldemort was still ongoing, but approaching its climax. With any luck, I wanted to say, J.K. Rowling would finish writing her books about our struggles and join the cause soon. I realized that didn’t make sense, though… How could she finish her books unless we finished our mission? We were the subject matter of her books. Indeed, they were based on real accounts of witches and wizards in a parallel reality similar to our own. In this reality, Rowling was also a powerful witch, but her interests were focused mainly in sliding between dimensions. One of the girls asked about my grandfather. I knew him to be a famous robotics engineer. As I looked at the Christmas tree, I remembered spending time with him, my dad, and his robots. My dad, Edward Elric, never liked having the robots in his home. As soon as I remembered his name, I had this feeling of regret… I’d meant to name him Edward Eleric, I knew, to avoid confusion with the Full Metal Alchemist. I did intend for the allusion to be obvious, though. Anyway, Symphony was my grandfather’s favorite robot, and I was her favorite friend. She frequently visited throughout the year just to see me. As time went on, the rest of my family accused my grandfather of a sexual attraction to his creations… I was sickened by the thought, but I knew he would never do that.

I found myself high in the clouds with a bunch of angels. They were arguing about what to do with me. Most of them wanted to send me to hell, but I told them they couldn’t do that; I would corrupt all of the women down there! I presented Symphony as clear evidence of my derangement. Somehow, this made sense to the head angel – a bald guy with a really long beard. I got the impression that he was the one they called “god,” but he was really just an ambitious angel. They decided that instead of sending me to heaven or hell, they would just make me immortal and leave me in the human world. I snapped out of all this daydreaming and responded to the girl. My grandfather would not be able to assist us, I said, but perhaps we could use some of his creations against enemy vampires. I neglected to mention my gift of immortality.

This is where it gets even better. Not only were we in a Harry Potter-esque storyline, we were in a branch of worlds supportive of the My Immortal fanfiction. Even in the dream, I thought that was ridiculous, but I knew I was the craziest man alive, so I wasn’t bothered by my delusions. Vampire Potter – our hero – was going to lead us into battle once he returned from training with Dumblydore and Zedd (wow, a little bit of Goodkind leaked in). For the time being, I was in charge of protecting the two girls with me. They had latent magical abilities of their own which needed to be nurtured. One of them was even a budding vampiress… The one with black hair in a pixie cut, of course. I turned to the television and saw that the show we had been watching was over. I found myself in a chat room with a woman. She had long, curly brown hair and wore a comfortable sweater. She was sitting across a table from me inside a McDonald’s.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“No,” I said. I zoomed backward into my mind and out of the chat room, landing back in the couch in Nicole’s living room. I got up and held the door at the front of the restaurant for the two girls who were with me. A woman came into the restaurant, and I held the door for her, too. I told her to watch out for the bats. Once I left, I started feeling really odd. I shouted things at the top of my lungs and couldn’t control my laughter. Piece by piece, the world faded into white nothingness until I was all alone in my insanity.

December 18, 2010

Foreign Exchange Students, Maze of Glass

This dream has been omitted.

Spray Paint and the Triforce in Minecraft

I was playing Minecraft. With the latest update, Notch had implemented a spray paint can. We now had access to the wonderful art form called graffiti! The spray paint could be applied to any surface, including the surface of the air blocks. When used on the air, it gradually fell toward the ground like sand. I stood on the shore of an ocean and wrote things like “Moonberry” and “Nicole” in the air with spray paint. They dropped toward the water and disappeared. Nicole said that Matt had recently become more conservative, so she wanted me to write “Conservative” for him. I tried, but by the time I got to the T, the C was already in the water. I decided to try it again higher in the air. Meanwhile, Nicole’s mom was calling us from the kitchen. We were about to go out to eat somewhere. I seemed to ignore her. From sea level, I managed to spray paint “CONSERVATIVE” in all capital letters at the top of the world. Interestingly, I could see the borders of the level – the ceiling, of course, but also latitude and longitude limits. I didn’t think anything of it; I was just about to reach the corner of a supposedly limitless world. Surprisingly, the spray paint didn’t fall this time. I acted like it was just taking a really long time to fall since it was so high up, but it wasn’t moving at all. I still had 36 blocks of graffiti to use.

The dream jumped. I found myself in a dark cavern without any torches. There were blocks that looked like gold ore in the walls, but when I broke them, I realized they were actually Triforce ore. Breaking one produced a replica of the Triforce. Unfortunately, this item couldn’t be picked up for whatever reason. In the middle of the cave was a seemingly bottomless pit. I found someone on one side of the cavern. He was talking on the phone or something… I climbed up above him and dug into the dirt until I made an opening above his head. I tried putting a torch behind him first, but he didn’t notice that, so I spray painted the air above his head and made the paint fall on him. He started jumping around without saying anything. I thought he had seen me, but I wasn’t sure until I went down to talk to him.

The dream jumped. He was apparently hosting a restaurant there… He had a long counter made of logs. I saw a red tray with a ton of food on it in front of me… There was pizza, cabbage, bacon and eggs, among other things. The guy stood behind a cash register, and we sort of stared at each other without words. I couldn’t recall whether or not I’d paid. I decided I would just take the tray and go. If I had forgotten to pay, he would stop me. As I walked away, he remained silent.

Ragnarok's New Card

Gravity released a new item on Ragnarok: a card that gave +12% magic attack when equipped while also increasing physical damage taken by 50%. Four of these combined with a rod would give a total of +63% magic attack. According to Gravity, that translated to an increase in a given spell’s damage somewhere between eight times at a minimum and fifty at a maximum. I told Nicole mages were going to become very popular with the addition of that card.

Being Followed While Going Nowhere

This dream has been omitted.

December 19, 2010

Horrible sleep, horrible recall, headache.

Possibly Dead

I remember there being a cat and a corpse. The corpse may have been mine.

December 20, 2010

Computer City

I was building something elaborate on Minecraft – a computer that just seemed like a city of skyscrapers from afar because of its size. It was easily four times the size of the existing 16-bit CPU by theinternetftw on YouTube. When I finished the last of the memory cells (each of which looked like a small house), I stepped back to the coastline and marveled at what I’d built. Chelsea was connected to the server we were building this on, and she was amazed when she saw it – although she had no idea what it was supposed to be… I called everyone on the server over to an observation area where all the inputs and outputs were shown on the wall. I found out the clock signal was messed up because of changes in the way redstone circuits work, so I had to fix some breaks in the circuit… I used a black cat as part of my circuit. Other interesting circuit components included fine china, forks, the old AC power adapter for my laptop, and a bit of yarn. Once this was all working, I would be able to show off my massive CPU.

Somehow, Vegeta ended up inside my CPU. He thought he was in a battle simulator, so a bunch of ghostly clones of Frieza appeared on the ceiling of the room he was in. Back at the observation area, Goku found Frieza’s corpse. He hurried over to Vegeta to prove to him that Frieza was dead and that the ghost clones were just a figment of his imagination.

Possibly Dead 2

This was basically a repeat of Possibly Dead (see 12/19/2010). This time, though, I also remembered standing in front of six boxes of cereal before finding the corpse. Someone was about to pick a box… If they picked the wrong one, I would be killed. The person almost picked the wrong box, but I stopped them and threw the box on the floor. I told them to try again.

Fighting a Swamp Monster, Jagang, and a Yeti

I was playing a cross between Majora’s Mask and the original .hack games. In terms of the storyline, it was supposed to be a sequel to Majora’s Mask. I found myself in a huge mansion. Nicole wanted me to stop playing, but I told her I needed to finish the dungeon first. I was supposed to collect a bunch of ghosts while exploring the mansion. Collecting them all would weaken the dungeon’s boss so I could damage it. When I found the last room of the mansion, however, an eleven second timer appeared at the top of my screen. I knew I only had eleven seconds to get to the boss. Since I didn’t have enough time, I couldn’t collect the two ghosts in that room. I ran to a portrait on the wall. Red text appeared at the top of my field of vision, indicating that I had collected seventeen of eighteen ghosts. I was disappointed to see that; if I’d just captured one of the ghosts, I would’ve been able to defeat the boss. I only had a couple of seconds left, so I jumped into the portrait to fight the boss anyway. I figured I was basically running into the slaughterhouse, so to speak, but I couldn’t go back to save my game, either. I was the only person in my party for this dungeon, so I appeared in the boss area alone. It was basically like the fight with Dark Falz’s third form in Phantasy Star Online: Episode I. The magic ring was replaced with a stone ring, however, and Dark Falz was replaced with this nasty swamp creature with plants for arms. The boss swept his arms across the platform; I jumped just in time to avoid it. When his arm rose from the ground, those helicopter plants from Majora’s Mask appeared on the platform. I transformed into a deku scrub and made my way over to the most powerful of the plants. When it launched me into the air, I saw a bunch of leaves orbiting around the plant monster. I was supposed to land on one and fire magic bubbles at the boss. I missed the first time I tried and fell to my death. Instead of Link screaming, I screamed.

I appeared back on the platform with three hearts missing. The boss slammed me into the ground with a fist full of thorns, and I lost most of my remaining health. I was convinced at this point that I was supposed to have collected all of the ghosts, but I hadn’t actually hit the boss yet, so I decided not to give up. I flew onto one of the leaves and shot a big bubble at the boss. It dealt a sliver of damage to him… I fired a bunch of tiny ones at him in rapid succession. Each one did as much damage as the big bubble… The boss lifted his arms into the air and screamed. I knew I needed to get back to the platform, so I hopped from leaf to leaf until I found one with one of the helicopter plants on it. I barely made it back to the ring platform before a bunch of vines filled the chasm in the middle. The boss tossed a bunch of seeds into the air, and they floated down toward the platform. When they landed, they exploded, spreading poison gas over the platform. Somehow, I managed to avoid the poison gas long enough for the boss to spread more of the helicopter plants across the platform. The fight continued for a few more minutes before I was able to whittle its health down all the way. I told Nicole how surprised I was that I was able to damage him at all without collecting the ghosts, let alone defeat him…

The dream jumped. Nicole was playing this time. She circled her way up a mountain. The path leading up was only wide enough for one person. When she reached the summit, I saw Emperor Jagang sitting in Lord Vivec’s meditation pose. I warned Nicole to save before fighting him. She didn’t save.

The dream jumped. I was fighting a yeti on a snowy mountain with Donald and Goofy. We quickly brought it down to a fraction of its maximum health, but seconds before the end of the fight, it smashed me into the ground, killing me. Donald and Goofy killed the yeti before I could ask them to revive me. As a result, they got all the experience. I decided to stop playing.

Studying Gaseous Power Supplies

Winter break had come to an end, and I was in Professor Wong’s class. It began in a trailer, but before long, I found myself in the first aisle of a hardware store. The professor showed us a circuit analysis reference book and told us it would benefit us to review it. I groaned (along with several people in the class). After the initial despair wore off, Eric turned to me and reminded me it was really for our own good. I admitted he was probably right. Wong showed us a music video on the projector. I don’t remember any of the lyrics, but the woman singing it was shopping for fruit at a grocery store. After the music video ended, the professor said that the song was similar to our course objectives – to understand the gaseous power source responsible for supplying electricity to a load in a circuit. I pulled out a notebook to start taking notes. Somehow, I managed to find the one blank page in the whole notebook… It was actually the one from last semester, but I thought it was a new notebook. I had trouble reading my professor’s handwriting. For some reason, I felt like he had never written anything on the board in class before, so we hadn’t known his handwriting was illegible… I couldn’t understand what he was saying, either, so I had no idea what to write. I realized I was using my old notebook sometime in the middle of this, so I started looking through my backpack for another one… I couldn’t find a blank notebook. Since I hadn’t bought new notebooks for the spring semester, it wasn’t surprising. I took out my dream journal… At the very least, I could write in that.

The professor asked us what was special about things like oranges, watermelons, and potatoes. People made some decent guesses and some that didn’t make any sense… Someone said they were special because they were all fruits. Another person said they all decayed over time. Still another brought up the fact that all of them could be peeled. A couple of people in the front spoke in unison, explaining that they were like giant atoms. Professor Wong was particularly worried by this one. Anyway, he said the suggestions were all wrong. I had a feeling that he wanted us to say they were all subject to the forces of gravity and magnetism, but I didn’t want to be the one to say it. To demonstrate what he was getting at, he had us all wash our clothes in class. Everyone was given a computer tower with a built-in washing machine and dryer. I had six of them for some reason. I saw that I had brought a bag of dirty clothes to class with me, so I had extra laundry to do anyway… I understood that my notes were spread out over the six computers.

Alvin Lin and Mike Palarz came into class late. As they entered, Mike called Alvin something extremely offensive, and the professor stopped class to talk about poor ethics. Alvin wrote down what Mike had called him and gave the slip of paper to Wong. The professor read it aloud, shook his head in disgust, and gave it to Mike. I watched Mike crumple the paper up with a look of utter disbelief. He sat back down, and we went back to waiting for our laundry to finish. Four of my computers were stacked on top of each other. Amar tried to take one of them to use as an armrest, but I insisted I needed it for the notes stored on it. I decided to set all of the computers on the floor so there wouldn’t be any danger of one falling. In the process of setting them down, I almost dropped two of them.

“Don’t drop computer!” my professor said uneasily. “You can bring extra computer to the front of class.” I smiled weakly at him. Amar insisted that we could just share notes – as if it made no sense to take notes individually. I already felt like I was behind on the notes because I wasn’t able to read my professor’s handwriting, so I agreed. I hoped Amar had understood the last ten minutes of the lecture. Our laundry was done, so I took the dry clothes out and arranged the two computers I needed for notes beside me. Amar helped fold my clothes for some reason. I found yellow boxers with my clothes… They didn’t look like mine. “If your laundry is done, we can continue class now. Did you understand the hint?”

December 21, 2010

One Piece Filler and Unnecessary Delay

This dream has been omitted.

Brawling with Austin

I was sitting behind a couch with Austin at my parents’ house. The environment wasn’t very clear, so I’m not sure which house it was. My mom and Aunt Susie were talking nearby. I asked Austin if he felt like playing Wii. I wasn’t sure which game I was interested in playing, but when he suggested Super Smash Brothers Brawl, I decided that would be fun. We were just about to go turn on the Wii when my aunt dropped onto the couch and started watching TV. I got frustrated, but I kept myself from yelling at her. The Wii turned on somehow… Then the TV switched inputs by itself… My aunt grabbed a controller and went to versus mode once the game started up. There were two similar modes called UPSIDE and DOWN. In UPSIDE, the teams were heavily unbalanced by default – several players would be on one team, a few on another, and one on the third team. We didn’t play the DOWN mode, but I knew it was something similar. Anyway, Austin and I grabbed controllers. Austin and I each ended up on our own teams. The green team consisted of our aunt and several computer players. We all started out playing as Kirby. The stage was shaped like one of Kirby’s stars, and it was flying through a purple vortex. When the fight began, I turned into Yoshi and killed off most of the computer opponents. It seemed like Kirby’s power had been changed a bit… Instead of acquiring the powers of anything he swallowed, Kirby was something a bit more like Ditto. He could just transform into things. Austin turned into Captain Falcon and took the opportunity to attack me from behind. I jumped, and he killed Aunt Susie instead. I don’t think she even figured out how to transform Kirby into another character.

Austin and I were the only ones left. I turned into Luigi and began pummeling him at every chance. Occasionally, blue light and steam would rise from our bodies when we prepared to launch a powerful attack. The wind from Luigi’s fist could strike Captain Falcon from ten feet away. His fireballs were like green bullets. At the same time, Captain Falcon was swifter than ever, and I took a couple of heavy blows, too. I eventually gave up on Luigi and switched to Samus. That energy ball attack she has was greatly improved by changes in the battle system. Because we fought on a three-dimensional stage, it was no longer restricted to one-dimensional motion. I could fire it at angles. I nearly threw Austin off the edge of the course when I shot one at an angle for the first time; he hadn’t been expecting it. I fired a series of small energy balls at him. All of them hit, and the tiny bits of damage began to accumulate. He turned into some kind of phoenix and came at me, but I dodged it in mid-air. When he landed, he turned into Mario. I grabbed him and threw him across the platform. We fought up close for a while after that… Most of our attacks just barely missed as the other person performed perfectly timed evasive maneuvers. I took one decent hit and almost fell off the stage, but I managed to jump back to safety. It wasn’t until Austin lost track of me that I was able to land a clean blow on him. Samus was out of his field of vision. The humming sound told him she was also holding a fully-grown energy blast, and when I released it, he knew that she had been standing right behind him. Austin went flying off-screen.

The game announced that I was the winner. Our match had lasted twenty-six minutes. I looked back at my mom and my aunt. Their eyes were wide with shock. Austin and I just laughed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to fight in another match… If it was going to last as long as that one, it wasn’t worth the time.

Becoming Pilots

I went up to the top of a huge tower. The top two floors and the roof were reserved for trained pilots. These floors each had a set of jets and helicopters. Austin, Chelsea, Nicole, my mom, and my dad were there. Our guide told us how he had asked the head pilot one day if he could learn to fly, and as a result, he was allowed to use the vehicles on the roof. He said that he would teach us how to fly, too, and then we could get our pilot’s licenses. Everyone got in one of the tiny planes once we reached the roof. Our guide instructed us via the internal radio. Within minutes, we were all flying around the tower. I discovered that I was – by far – the fastest one there. Our individual characteristics were listed on a table which was displayed on a computer screen inside the pilot’s cabin. Each category was ranked 1-9 (with nine being the best). My speed was ranked nine. I wasn’t interested in the other statistics, but we were also ranked by strength and maneuverability. I should note that there were nine pilots in the air. There were three people I didn't recognize. One, a girl, was helping instruct us. I discovered I could transform the jet into a helicopter at will. Changing back was a little harder, but it still worked. I could also transform the vehicle into a flower… I just held onto the stem while the flower petals spun like helicopter blades.

“So when are we going to stop the simulation?” Chelsea asked over the radio. I was stunned… I hadn’t realized we were just in a simulation.

“Right now, I hope,” I responded. Our guide called us all down to the roof. Once we landed, he said that we were about to go on our first mission. Raven Knight’s team was missing in action, and we were meant to find them. Buying fuel for the mission was expensive, so he had everyone pitch in a little… I knew we would only be doing one mission; we couldn’t afford all that fuel.

December 22, 2010

Icebreakers are Stupid

Professor Winans (CS instructor from freshman year) walked into my old German classroom. Nicole and I were in the same class. We were playing one of those icebreaker games to start off a new semester. Everyone received a big poster card to write on. The instructor wrote some recommended topics on the board… We were supposed to pick three of them and talk about them when we introduced ourselves. I chose the following topics: who won the Holocaust (wow), hobbies, and things I think are stupid. The professor left the room momentarily. When she came back, she had little birds in cages. People paired off to talk to the birds. Nicole and I got a big, green parrot with sickly, cancerous growths all over its stomach. Nicole started feeling sick to her stomach when she saw it. She figured it only had a couple more days to live. Nicole tried to leave while the teacher was gone for some kind of errand, but I convinced her to stay. Disregarding the sickly parrot, it wasn’t that bad; the icebreaker game was very informal, so she didn’t have to worry about saying something dumb. I decided to take my turn before Nicole to help boost her confidence.

“I’m Josh. The United States won the Holocaust. I like dreaming and reading. I think icebreakers are stupid.” I sat down after saying my piece, and Nicole laughed behind me. She was less nervous after that.

Snapper's Wal-Mart Philosophy

I was on a class trip with John Snapper to Wal-Mart. I thought I was with my Age of Darwin class from last semester, but it was actually a philosophy course. Snapper told us that the time had come for him to test our memory. Next week, instead of a final, we would have to recite a selected passage from a work of philosophy. I thought about how I told everyone I was done with the semester… Apparently, I was wrong. I decided finals were actually three weeks long, and I just had the fortune of taking most of them the first week. Silently, I wondered if skipping the last assignment would have a serious impact on my grade.

Spiral Release

This dream has been omitted.

Visiting Family on Minecraft and by Train

I was playing Minecraft. The world I was connected to resembled the one with the enormous CPU from Computer City. The city landscape seen in that dream was far off the horizon in this one, however. I had built a city with massive skyscrapers, parks, and a residential district with the help of my family. Chelsea and both of my parents were connected to the world, too. I changed my skin a few times while trying to decide which one looked the best. I settled on one that made the city look like Ragnarok’s Toy Factory dungeon. All of the blocks were bright colors.

I was mad at my dad for something, so he told everyone I was being hateful. My mom agreed just because he said it. I filled a pair of red, plastic devil horns with chocolate and dropped them on the wooden bridge between our houses. I went to a computer desk in the house I recognized as my own. I tried to load something on YouTube, but the connection was horribly slow, so it took a long time to buffer the video. I tried ripping the audio as an mp3 instead. Even though I forgot to click the download button at first, it still finished before the video buffered completely. I was impressed by how fast the video processing was. Chelsea came over to my house and explained that she didn’t really think I was evil; she just didn’t want our mom to yell at her. I was glad she was thinking for herself. I tried to sharpen a pencil at the desk, but the pencil sharpener I was trying to use was really no better than carving the wood off the pencil with a knife. Somehow, the pencil always ended up with a rounded edge (basically a “U” shape). I was never able to uncover the lead. When I looked at the pencil, I realized it wasn’t a pencil at all, but a computer mouse!

“That would make a decent mouse,” I admitted, “but it’s not a pencil…” My mom came over to ask me something, but I blacked out. When I woke up, my mom and I were on a bus. We were taking the bus from my parents’ house to a train station, then a train from the train station to Nicole’s house. I remembered riding on the train for five hours on the way to my parents’ house and warned my mom that she had better be prepared for the long trip. She said she had some bananas to eat.

“That should keep me busy for about two minutes,” she said. I detected a hint of sarcasm.

“What about the other four hours and fifty-eight minutes?” I asked.

“I don’t know…” The bus was almost to the train station, so we got up and walked toward the door. These buses were identical to Pace’s in all details but one – the only door was at the back of the bus. It didn’t make much sense. Several people wanted to get off at our stop, so we had to wait in line to get to the door.

“You know, it’s weird living so far from home… I didn’t realize how far away I was until the train ride.”

“Yeah. Maybe we’ll come visit next time!”

“Oh, Scamper’s doing really well,” I told her. I understood that Scamper had been living at Nicole’s to help him recover from his allergies. “He’s not scratching his rash or anything.”

“That’s good.” As we got off the bus, I saw myself from above at the computer desk in my Minecraft house. I was fast asleep with my cheek against the keyboard. “You fell asleep right after I came in there,” my mom explained, “and it turns out you had to go to the bathroom.”

“I guess that makes sense… I remember sharpening a pencil to write something, and then I blacked out. Well, I was asleep, so it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“What were you going to write?”

“I have no idea.” She gave me a weird look.

Nicci-Neluna

I was in some kind of facility made of pristine, steel walls and floors. The room I was in was huge. There was a chasm running along one wall; it was too deep to see the bottom. Nicole and Neluna were standing in front of the chasm. Nicole was wearing a Confessor’s white dress, and Neluna stood across from her in Nicci’s usual black dress. They were in position for the maternity spell, which would bind their lives together irreversibly. I had Symphony shoot Neluna with an arrow before she could start it. The arrow turned into orange light as it hit an invisible shield covering the succubus’ body. Neluna began to glow with faint, orange light. She glided toward me with her scythe drawn back, but Symphony intercepted her, firing arrow after arrow. It seemed futile until Neluna flashed yellow. She screamed, gripping the sides of her head beneath her succubus horns. We chased her into a hallway… It was a dead end, so she was trapped. I merged with Symphony while she continued to fire. She was quickly running out of arrows even though she had 800 oridecon arrows and a few steel arrows remaining. I wanted to make more, but I wasn’t able to replenish her supplies; I only had some clay and wooden blocks to make more. When we ran out of arrows, Neluna came at us with her scythe. She was going to lop off our heads. I teleported us to Prontera to resupply. Surprisingly, Symphony’s storage seemed to have been cleaned out by someone… All of the arrows and arrow-making materials were gone. I decided I had probably given them all to Felicity. We agreed to leave Neluna for now.

More Icebreakers are Still Stupid

I was in my old German classroom again with Professor Winans. This was set up just like in Icebreakers are Stupid. This time, Chelsea and my mom were there, too. The professor handed out cards, wrote some topics on the board, and left to get everyone coffee. This time, I picked the following topics:

“Who won the war?” The war in question wasn’t specified. I decided it referred to the American revolutionary war.

“What are your hobbies?” As I had before, I decided I was going to talk about dreaming and reading.

“What do you think of modern science?” I wasn’t sure what to say about it, but I knew I could speak my mind on the subject.

After I finished writing these down, I saw that the instructor had yet to return. I walked over to Kurt Bauske’s desk (since this was his classroom, after all) and used the faculty phone to call another instructor. I hoped we could transfer to his class and avoid these silly icebreakers. His name was jumbled on the faculty directory, so I made a fool of myself trying to pronounce it. It was written as “Hsow,” but his name was really “Show.” Before I could arrange a class change with him, the professor came back. I had to hang up. Professor Winans gave Nicole a canary this time. When Nicole asked about the bird, the instructor said she wanted to bring out the parrot, but Nicole “hated him last time.” We started the icebreaker game anew. Nicole tried to explain it to my mom in the back of the classroom.

“Josh said it was a dumb game,” she said at the end of the explanation. “He told me I could get away with saying retarded.”

“It’s very informal,” I interjected. “All I said was that it’s informal. Just say whatever you want to say.”

December 23, 2010

Two days until Christmas!

Bickering with Glee

I was in a bathroom at McKinley High School on the set of Glee. The actors were arguing with each other over solos and who would get to go to the bathroom next. It was surprising to see not only that the actors whose characters were enemies were at odds, but that all of the actors were fighting. Finn and one of the other football guys went into a stall together. I realized the actors had been playing high school students for so long that they were becoming immature like their characters. I called them to attention and reminded them that they were only pretending to be high schoolers. They had been filming for two years, and of those two years, they only had to be together for about three hundred days. I insisted that they hardly knew each other. When Mercedes spoke up in defense of her friendship with Rachel, I shot her down.

“You aren’t close. You don’t know each other. You don’t even know yourselves.”

Treasure, Data Bugs, and Friendship

I was walking through a city made of stone. I didn’t see anyone, but I knew there were at least three other people in the city – Nicole, Ben, and Regina. Ben told me he found a treasure chest full of rupees I had missed in a section of the city where the buildings were close enough together that we could jump from roof to roof. I went into an alley and wall-jumped to the roof. Once I made it up there, I began my search for overlooked treasure chests. I found the one Ben had opened and moved on. For some reason, the treasure chests were typically in clumps of threes and fours. My aimless search took me to the buildings overlooking the central plaza. There was a large water fountain on the cobblestone plaza below, but because it was winter, the fountain had been turned off. I found four more treasure chests at the end of a line of buildings.

When I finished opening them, a strange, pink goop appeared at my feet. It rose upward, taking the shape of a woman with long, pink ears that floated weightlessly in the air. Her body was slender and tall. The pile of goop at her feet filled her, creating organs – including a beating heart of goop matter. Within moments, I realized what it was: a data bug! I fought the pink goop monster on the roof for a while before it jumped down to the plaza to escape. I followed it and managed to weaken it enough to perform a data drain before it could leave the plaza. After I used data drain, a woman with long, black hair lay at my feet. She was completely naked. It was probably Neluna. I thought I should leave her there and avoid any misunderstandings with Nicole… Considering it was winter, though, that seemed a bit cruel. I picked her up and took her inside one of the buildings to search for clothes and a bed to put her in. After I left the building, I got a text message from Regina. She was asking for interesting names for a roleplay character. I remember suggesting Damien and a couple other names (forgot those). She got mad at me for suggesting what she felt were “Mary Sue names.” Regina gave me a suggestion of her own and asked for approval. I told her it sounded like a good name. I asked her why she was texting me, and she said she wanted to be my friend again. She asked me to meet her on the edge of the city. I walked from the plaza to this area along the edge of a cliff. There was a forest several hundred feet below us, and I could see the closest city to ours in the distance. It lit up the horizon under the night sky with each building looking like a golden snowflake from this distance. Regina was standing with her arms crossed over the guard rail. Before I was able to talk to her, Nicole showed up and started a fight. She pushed Regina against the railing. I wasn’t sure how to mediate this, so I kept my distance…

Tsuna, Guardian of Sky and Wind

I was watching Tsuna and his guardians fight Enma in a cave. They were clearly outmatched even though Tsuna had learned to use wind magic in addition to his sky ring. Tsuna jumped in the back of a cart, and Gokudera pulled him along toward the cavern’s entrance. Thinking to stop them, Enma sent an earthquake through the ground, causing huge chunks of solid rock to fall in front of the entrance. Gokudera missed a step.

“Keep going, Gokudera!” Tsuna urged him. “I’m the wind guardian, remember? I’ll take care of this!” He raised an arm and released a blast of tornado-force winds. The rocks were thrown out the entrance of the cavern and into the sunny forest outside it. Enma swore under his breath as he started to chase after them.

Brook's Crush on Luffy

The Straw Hat crew was sitting at a table with Hibari Kyoya, the representative for Vongola in the One Piece universe. Brook confided in Hibari that he had a secret crush on Luffy. With a smirk, Hibari explained that he had known all along. When Luffy came back from grabbing a plate full of meat to devour, Brook confessed his feelings (with encouragement from Hibari in the form of threats). Luffy just grinned and said he already knew, too. The rest of the crew had no idea Brook was gay. Nicole and I discussed the possibility that Luffy wasn’t dumb at all, just pretending to be… If he was actually a genius, he could’ve fooled his crew all along.

Road Trip and Suspicion

I was on a road trip with Nicole and Valerie. We decided not to fly to Houston for some reason, so we were driving the whole way. We stopped at a gas station to organize our luggage in the back of the car when we crossed the state border into Texas. Nicole started talking about how great it would feel to get revenge on Regina. A police officer overheard the word “revenge” and briskly walked over.

“And what exactly does revenge entail?” he asked. I raised an eyebrow and turned to Nicole, asking her the same thing. I knew he was trying to get her to admit to plotting some form of vandalism or assault so he could arrest her, so I hoped she had the sense to restrain herself. Fortunately, she just said she wasn’t sure. I asked the police officer to do something and managed to get him to go away. We needed to leave before he came back, so when I got in the car, Nicole drove off. We didn’t realize we had left Valerie behind until ten minutes later. I suggested turning around and picking her up, but Nicole seemed to believe Valerie would easily find a ride to Houston. We stopped again at some kind of strange maze building… Nicole and I sat down in one of many pointless halls without doors. A guy named Chuck Stylv sat down in the corner across from us with a laptop. I thought about looking his name up online to see if he was a famous computer scientist. That was the awkward truth of the information network; once you knew someone’s name, you could find out all the creepy details you wanted about them.

Valerie found us in the maze and sat down with us. When we asked her how she had gotten there, she said she walked. It didn’t occur to me that she had been fifteen miles or so down the road. Anyway, we went back to the car together and drove to another gas station. This time, we stopped to shop for Christmas presents (weird). The same police officer we met at the other gas station was getting donuts at this one. We avoided him until he left in his patrol car. We were still several hours away from my parents’ house.

Searching for Onidis

Nicole, Ben, and I were walking through the misty ruins of an ancient city in search of Ben’s ghost. Yeah, that’s right, he was alive and looking for his spirit… The ruins had been covered by moss over time, and trees now grew all around the crumbling walls. Every now and then, we came to a gate made of rusty iron and had to backtrack to get around it. There were giant, black gryphons living in the forest. These aided those who made pacts with their kind. To enlist the aid of the gryphons, one had to pledge loyalty to the four gryphon tribes of the earth, volcano, ocean, and sky. Because I was one of their trusted comrades, the gryphons were more than happy to take me onto the roof of one of the taller buildings. The vines had yet to cover this building entirely, but they were reaching over the edge of the roof. I could see misty forest for miles in all directions. When I turned, a ghostly version of Ben was standing in front of me. Well, to be more accurate, it was Onidis – the name of his soul. I tried speaking to Onidis, but the apparition just walked toward the edge of the building and faded into the air. I saw him walking down below a few times and tried to direct Nicole and Ben to him, but it wasn’t working. A portal appeared on the roof. When I stepped through it, I found myself back on the forest floor. I was Symphony. This time, when I spoke to a gryphon for help, he refused to assist me. I realized it was because they hated robots. Nicole and Ben didn’t believe I had really found the ghost…

December 24, 2010

Reunion of Ed

I was watching Ed, Edd, and Eddy. All of the characters were in high school. Ed and Eddy met up for the first time in several years by a tall tree in the middle of a field. Eddy had a full head of hair, but he was still really short. They sat down under a tree and talked about their lives. Ed started explaining that his grandpa died in a deep, serious voice, but then he broke the tension by rolling around in the grass and laughing. I felt bad for him. All of his silliness as a kid was just a mask to cover his depression.

The dream jumped. I saw Ed with Edd, too, but this time, Ed wore a purple wig. They walked together in one of those fenced off alleys between lots. They talked about quantum physics. Amazingly, Ed was able to follow the conversation! Rolf ran up to them. In the process, he splashed mud all over me. I found myself in their lazily drawn world. I told Rolf he would have to dye my hair to make up for it. I didn’t want to do it by myself because I feared I would miss a spot. I grabbed a jar of dye off a shelf outside… I don’t know why there was a shelf full of hair dye in the alley between houses. For some reason, I picked a color halfway between Symphony’s ice blue and Yawn’s purple. I felt that I was really going for something closer to Symphony’s color. Rolf agreed to help. He pulled a toothbrush out of his pocket and started to spread the dye all over my head. At some point, he started brushing my teeth, and I shouted at him that he wasn’t supposed to dye my teeth. I could taste the thick dye on my tongue.

Expired uPasses

Nicole and Andrea were in my dorm room. We were all going downtown for something. I gave Nicole and Andrea each a uPass. Theirs were valid until December 2011. I told them to go ahead to the train station; I would meet them there soon. I walked down to 35th to put money on a card since my uPass was expired. In fact, when I checked the expiration date, it said it was only good until December 11, 1997 – before I even knew Nicole! As I always do, I tried to go through with the expired uPass in case a glitch in the CTA’s system someday rewards me with a lifetime of free train rides. The machine read “ERROR: ADD MORE FUNDS.” I walked over to the vending machines. Instead of bothering with the old cad, I decided to put my money on a new one. I found some change in my pocket (mostly quarters) and started to deposit it. The machine said I had $170.37 after I collected the coins I dropped in the process and added them, too. I heard people behind me complaining that I was taking too long. The station guard even thought this was my second card since it had been so long…

When I turned to head through the pay station, I realized I was on the other side. I went up to the train platform without paying. I was on the north side of the platform. For that matter, the inbound and outbound platforms were separated by the tracks like they are in most places downtown. I crept up behind Nicole and hugged her. She screamed, but Andrea and I hushed her. She told me never to scare her like that again. A really fast train built by a different company pulled up on our side. It was an express train to Harlem. The train wasn’t stopping anywhere in the city. A woman nearby regretted choosing not to board the train after it left; she said she was probably going to bed soon, and that would get her home sooner. I wondered where we were going… I supposed not Harlem, but I couldn’t remember. We got on the next train.

Military Career in Sweden

A friend told me about a great job that paid $13.75 per hour (not that great, but it sounded amazing at the time).

“Unfortunately,” he said, “it’s in Sweden.” I saw a clip of myself standing before a military general as he ordered us to our deaths. All of my friends were already dead, I knew, and I couldn’t escape to go home. It was like one of those “How did I get here?” movies. I flew to Sweden (in South America, apparently) and found my way on foot to my new boss’ home. It had the feel of a mansion, but it was actually just a bunch of tiny sections of wall spaced out over a wide perimeter. The RV in the middle of the plot of land was our leader’s home. He waited outside to greet me. After giving me a quick explanation of my duties – whatever he ordered me to do, basically – he thrust a suit of military clothes at me and welcomed me to the job. We were this man’s private army.

The dream jumped. We were doing some kind of field exercise. A bunch of flares were set up around the area, and our objective was to collect them. Bright, red light filled the smoke rising from the flares. The first soldier to collect three was the winner. The first time I did it, I only went after the first one I saw. This strategy lost me the game; someone else found three right behind the starting area and won. After that, I estimated the effectiveness of each flare within sight of the start point and went for the most effective one. I won every game after that. After about ten wins, our commander pulled me out of the game and promoted me to captain.

The dream jumped. After several days, the new soldiers were up for official review. Our commander dismissed all of the black men. I figured he was racist, but I didn’t speak up. I wanted to keep my job. We arranged several tables in a line for our old clothes. Those who were dismissed were expected to exchange their uniforms for street clothes. I took a bunch of guys’ shirts and moved them to another table so they wouldn’t fall in the pit of mud surrounding the line of tables. I had to explain this to our leader when he confronted me.

The dream jumped. We were receiving instructions on our options for the future. Pending approval, we could choose to work at a circus, in the city, or on the battlefield. I figured all of these were poor choices… I was really starting to wonder why I came to Sweden to work for this guy. Was I that desperate for money? When he mentioned my school in passing, I was dumbstruck.

“I’m enrolled there!” I realized aloud.

“Is that so?” he asked.

“Yeah! I’ve done two and a half years.” I made it sound like jail time. “I’m pursuing dual majors.”

“Let me finish first, alright?” He had been explaining something about a sponsorship with my school. His expression was forgiving, but I could tell he was annoyed.

“Oh, yeah,” I interrupted again. “I need to be back there in… about a month. That’s as long as I can work here.” He frowned. “But I can come back in the summer…” I didn’t really plan on it.

The dream jumped. I saw an atlas with a blue path showing our company’s travels across South America. We traveled to the southern tip of the continent. Apparently, Australia and South America were connected by a land bridge. We continued all the way to Queensland, and I understood that I was able to meet Ben.

The dream jumped. I was back on my campus. I walked toward the main building while chanting something about flying back to Nicole’s house. I realized I didn’t have my laptop. I pretended I had it in my backpack. I knew it would really be there if I believed it. I corrected my course after I crossed State… I needed to go to the train station.

* * *

December 25, 2010

Neluna Treats a Fever

This dream has been omitted.

Hackers or Slackers

Nicole and I were talking on the phone about the .hack series. She said she hadn’t seen the Legend of the Twilight Bracelet anime. I tried to tell her that the anime was horrible; the manga had a much more cohesive storyline. When she asked what was wrong with the storyline in the anime, I told her it was the hackers. She misheard this as “slackers” or something and started asking all kinds of questions. When I realized what she thought I’d said, I tried to correct her. I said “hackers” three times in a row to drive the point home. She still seemed to misunderstand… I was walking around near Harlem aimlessly.

* * *

December 26, 2010

Snape's Creative Writing Class

I was Harry Potter. Snape was teaching a creative writing class of some sort. His method was highly formulaic, as one might expect from a potions master. In teaching us the art of writing, he had us fill out all these lengthy forms with questions about the nature of the piece, especially those pertaining to characters. I was one of the better students in the class, but even so, I still received mostly B grades. Snape always found something he didn’t like in my writing… I finished an assignment early and decided to go around the classroom and see if anyone needed help.

The classroom was U-shaped. The left side of the “U” was separated from the right by a wall. Since Snape never left the right side, that meant the people on the other side of the wall never received any instruction… They were just brought assignments by other students whenever someone felt kind enough to do it. Most of them were failing the class. I went over there first to ask if anyone needed help. No one had any questions, but one guy needed a pen. I reached into my pocket and found the pens we used for the Game of Things last night. I gave him one.

I went back to my side of the classroom. On my way to my seat at the front of the class, I noticed that Brittany (Glee) was having trouble coming up with answers to Snape’s basic preliminary questions. I sat down next to her and asked if she wanted any help. In her usual slow voice, she thanked me, but said she would never be able to write. There were doodles in all of the boxes instead of words. I saw an assignment she had gotten back; it received six marks. After asking if Brittany was sure she didn’t want any help, I went back to my seat.

Snape collected those, sneered at a couple, and gave us our next assignment. This would be the last assignment for the day. He asked us to write about a magical creature encountering an enemy in the forest. I quickly came up with a short scene in my mind of a sprite-like creature coming into contact with a man in a forest. Using Snape’s questions as a guide, I decided that the man would carry a flaming sword. I named the sprite Acelysce (uh-sell-uh-see). Snape only wanted us to write a few sentences for some reason, so I quickly ran out of space… Acelysce touched the flaming sword, extinguished its flames, and turned it into a blade of obsidian. The man, horrified by her power, fled the forest. Acelysce was left to suffer her loneliness once more. I thought even Snape would like this one… I handed it in and quickly went for the door to avoid having to discuss it with him. Unfortunately for me, Snape called me back before I could leave.

He handed me the graded assignment. I was amazed that he had already gone through it. The only thing he took points off for was a field which asked when the story took place. I said 2008, and he took fourteen points off for that. I wanted to argue, but arguing with Snape isn’t exactly fruitful. I decided to accept the grade and left.

The dream jumped. I was outside Castle Rock Middle School on my way to catch a bus home. I found the guy who I lent a pen during class. As I watched over his shoulder, he drew a map of a world he had discovered for his friend. They talked about the architecture for a bit. His friend asked where he got his pen; he never had his own writing implements. The guy said he thought he had gotten it from Matt’s brother.

“I’m actually Matt’s sister’s boyfriend,” I said right behind him. They both looked up in shock.

“Oh, it’s you,” the guy said. “Here’s your pen.” He handed it back before walking off. I continued to the front of the school where several buses were lined up. I didn’t know my bus number, but I knew which bus was mine instinctively. When I got on, I saw that Nicole’s mom was the bus driver. I was surprised to see her there since she was sick recently. After I sat down, she made an announcement: because she wasn’t feeling well, we would have to switch to another bus for the day. She hadn’t made arrangements with the other bus drivers, though, so we were going to have to talk to the person in charge. Fortunately, said person overheard the announcement and stepped onto the bus. She teleported us one by one to the correct buses with a wave of her wand. Soon after I made it to my bus, the dream faded.

A Week of Middle School

I was back in middle school. We were taking standardized tests in school, so after I finished the tests each day, I had a lot of free time. I connected to the internet with my brain and downloaded episodes of Bleach to watch. Ichigo was exploring a parallel realm with a necromancer in the episodes constructed by the dream. The dream spanned a full week of classes, but it skipped everything between waking up and getting to school, everything between getting the test and finishing it, and everything between starting the episode of Bleach and going to sleep. I saw flashes of a calendar in between scenes, indicating my progress toward the weekend. On Thursday, my mom got into a fight with this guy on her way to pick me and Austin up from school. I guess she didn’t have a car… She walked us to and from school. Because of this, she was hesitant to take us to school after that. I woke up at 1 PM on Friday, realized my mom hadn’t taken us to school, and watched Bleach while I waited for her to come home from the grocery store. There was a new opening, but I felt like it had been used for another anime… I can’t remember the song anymore.

My mom came home from the grocery store at 3:05 PM… It was basically right when school ended. Austin and I asked her why she let us stay home, and she explained the situation with the fight. I hoped we weren’t doing standardized testing that day, but Austin confirmed that we were… We would have to stay after school on Monday to take ours. I groaned and buried my face against my keyboard.

December 27, 2010

Little Box, Little Production

I walked into a classroom and started looking for a seat. I was about to take my physics final (wow, that was two semesters ago). At first, I headed straight to the back, but most of those seats were taken. One open seat was messed up; the desk was on the back of the seat instead of the front. I decided a seat near the front would work just fine. After I sat down, I got out my notebook to look over some example problems. The first one I found was from the final exam review our professor had handed out. I wasn’t sure I really did it right. Amar came into class drenched in sweat and mucus. He sat down next to me and quietly asked if he could see my answers to the review. I told him I didn’t have it with me. The only solution I had written down in my physics notebook was the one on the page in front of me. It dealt with an L-shaped bar along the x- and y-axes. When I told him which one it was, he pulled out a copy of the review and told me I had gotten it wrong. He said it was supposed to be along the x- and z-axes. Just looking at the figure provided, I knew he was wrong. His paper was covered in snot, and I was glad I didn’t have to touch it.

Before long, a girl in front of me began rehearsing lines she had memorized. I remembered that our final was a play. I would play the part of Crimal, the German scientist. I hadn’t learned any of the lines, though. The production began while I sat in the audience. I was in a theater instead of a classroom, and instead of either of my former physics professors, I saw a skinny, old man sitting in front of the stage with a copy of the roster. I recognized the girl I had seen. Her name was Beth. Every time someone messed up a line, action, or their timing, she scowled at them and muttered under her breath what they were supposed to do. I was terrified of her. Any moment, I expected her to scowl at me, too, for not knowing to get on stage and say one of my few lines. I politely sat down beside her and asked if I could follow along with her copy of the script. She obliged. Honestly, she probably knew the whole thing by heart anyway, so it was no big deal.

She walked away to harass someone for getting an important line wrong, so I took the opportunity to flip through the pages of the script in search of Crimal. He was mentioned a couple of pages in, and then randomly thrown into scenes he didn’t seem to have any part in. I couldn’t find any of his lines (if he had anything to say at all). Beth came back, and it became clear that she was furious about something much worse than minor, erroneous details in our production of this strange play.

“Little box, little production,” she mocked, looking at something written in blood on the wall. It read exactly that. A faded “no U-turn” sign was positioned between the two phrases. “I can’t take this crap.” Beth got up and left. Instantly, I felt much better about my ability to perform. At the same time… I wondered if I really needed to bother with the play. I recalled that the final exam was less than ten percent of my grade, and I had a solid A already. I could probably just leave and keep my A. Even if I got a B, that wouldn’t be terrible… Of course, I realized it would be dumb to leave and get a B without determining whether or not I had earned an A.

I found myself outside in the snow. A huge wall of stone arches surrounded a coliseum in front of me. The people walking past me were deserters from our little production. Frosty the Snowman came up to me and grinned. When he asked me what would make me happy, I told him to give me the power to teleport to one place. He granted it with a wink. I got into a car, filled it with snow, and teleported away. Even I don’t know where I went…

Changing the Answers

I was sitting in a small room with Amar. Several textbooks surrounded us. We discovered that if you put a modern textbook under a microscope, you could see tiny circuits connected to each problem. These were designed to capture the correct answer so instructors could easily check homework assignments. Instead of cheating by writing down all the correct answers, Amar and I decided we would make all of our incorrect answers the right ones by modifying the circuits. Somehow, he was able to grab the wires and rearrange them despite their microscopic size. I got upset about something in the middle of this and went outside. It was snowing. I came across Omi on my way to a store. She hugged me, but we didn’t say much. After that, I approached the store behind her. It was set up like a food stand at a baseball game, but they sold clothes. I bought new boots for me and Nicole and a couple of other things (I forgot what). I paid with the $100 bill Nicole got from her parents for Christmas. After the cashier took my change out of the register and started to hand it over, his wife reminded him that I should’ve gotten a discount for buying two pairs of boots. He put the money back, took ten percent off my order, and started counting bills again. While he counted, he looked up.

“Why don’t I just give you an extra twenty-five percent off?” It was more of a statement than a question. We shared a smile. He handed me $88.37 and the stuff I bought. I’m pretty sure that was more like an eighty percent discount, but I wasn’t arguing.

When I made it back to the room with Amar, another guy was there. They both started chewing me out for my “anger problems.” I wasn’t angry before, but after hearing that, I certainly was. I told Amar he could do whatever he wanted with his textbooks, but I was just going to keep mine the way they were. I took back my homework and left.

Dreaming with the Fockers

I was watching a movie continuing the storyline of Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. Except for Gaylord and Jack, all of the actors had been replaced. I thought it was kind of sad that they couldn’t convince anyone to come back for the third movie (which was supposed to take place before Little Fockers). As the two joined families walked across a huge, black bridge, the camera zoomed in on them. Jack looked down at Gaylord’s pants; they were bunched up in a painful-looking wedgie. He grabbed Gaylord’s butt.

“Must be hard getting out of there,” he grumbled. “Your pants are too tight, Focker.”

December 28, 2010

Poor recall... Oh well.

Looking for the Shortest Distance

This dream has been omitted.

Leveling on Nothing

I was at a video game store with Nicole. For some reason, though, we already owned all of the games in the store. We tried to find Kingdom Hearts so we could level up more and finish the rest of the optional bosses. I eventually found the game. Instead of putting it into a console, I just played it in my head. I teleported into a dungeon at a spot where I expected I would be able to level up quickly. I was underwater, and those hands from the Great Bay Temple in Majora’s Mask were all over the place. I didn’t want to fight them… I teleported somewhere else – the ruins of a coliseum. I couldn’t find any monsters there. Nicole and I decided the game wasn’t worth the trouble and put it back.

Catching up again... My recall's been pretty unpredictable lately. I think it's actually better when I'm not getting enough sleep...

December 29, 2010

One Hundred Cats' Unfortunate Fate

I was in the car with my mom, dad, Chelsea, and Nicole. On our way home, my mom complained that the neighbors’ one hundred cats were getting on her nerves. She could hear them meowing all night, and that was why she needed sleeping medication. When we pulled into the driveway, my dad said he would take care of it for her. He went inside briefly and came back with several guns. The rest of us went inside the house while he walked next door. My mom explained that he had taken all the guns in case the police tried to trace it back to our house. I remembered seeing something on the news exactly like this; a couple of kids shot their neighbor’s cats and then killed themselves, but the police went looking through the area and found guns in their parents’ house. I wondered if it was really worth it for my dad to kill himself over a bunch of cats…

Anyway, since the cats were going to die, Nicole and I figured we could sneak into the house and take any food intended for them. We entered the neighbors’ house through the back door and made our way to the kitchen. There were still some cats alive, but the longer we spent in the house, the fewer cats we saw. I opened the refrigerator and found a ton of cookies labeled “For the cats.” The container held one hundred cookies – one for each cat. Nicole insisted on putting them into a bag instead of taking the container. When she was done, we left.

Missing time – something about playing card games.

Explaining Batman

I was explaining Batman to someone who didn’t know anything about comic books. I told him that comics were like shorter, heavily illustrated novels. The characters in these comics often had superhuman abilities or powers. Batman, however, was just extremely skilled. I described him as “a modern superhero.” The guy started talking about Harley Quinn. I asked if he was lying to me about not knowing who Batman was.

Getting Away with Murder

The dream started on a school bus. I didn’t know anyone on the bus. I just knew that I had killed someone, and if I wanted to avoid getting caught, I had to remain calm. I knew how to control my heart rate and breathing to prevent human lie detectors from figuring out what I’d done. The bus stopped, and a woman outside made everyone file out one at a time. I followed the girl in front of me off the bus and around to the side. A woman in a green military uniform with a green beret was watching me. She had shoulder-length, red hair. It’s possible this was Dodarx. After whispering something to a soldier, she approached me. She asked the girl who was in front of me in line to feel my wrist. I did my best to remain calm. My eyes refused to break contact with Dodarx’s. The girl slid her fingers around my wrist and counted the beats. It was a little fast, but my heartbeat was basically normal. Hearing this, Dodarx scowled. She looked through the passengers for a second suspect.

Distinctive Slapping Noises

This dream has been omitted.

* * *

December 30, 2010

Choosing Totems

It began at a train station with Nicole. I heard First Wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander instructing me to take a train heading south. I was to check the train number on top of any of the train cars before getting on and make sure it was a multiple of five. I checked the first one to arrive; it was train number six. I decided to get on anyway, and Nicole got mad at me.

The dream jumped. We were at Nicole’s house. I sorted out my belongings, putting most of my school stuff in my backpack. I still had a couple of important things in my small suitcase, but that was mostly filled with clothes. Nicole took it from me. I understood that Eric didn’t have enough shampoo to use in the shower, so he borrowed mine from that suitcase, too. Their dad said he would make sure I got it back.

The dream jumped. Nicole and I were in the convertible with her dad. He pulled into my old high school’s parking lot. It was full of people standing in lines. I saw Bauske staring off into space with a smile.

“What a lovely day to take the day off,” he mused. I rolled down the window and told him to do it. He ignored me and went inside. Nicole got out of the car without waiting for me. Her dad apologized for everyone using my small suitcase, but I told him it wasn’t a big deal since it was basically full of dirty clothes. I didn’t think I would need it. I hurried inside after Bauske, but by the time I entered the building, he was already gone. I tried to remember which classes I was taking. I remembered where to find my math class first (it seems like I was drawn to Wander’s classroom), but I knew that wasn’t my first class of the day. I had another class where my world history classroom was. It was called “economics in literature.” Math came after that, then history, then some other classes I couldn’t remember. I headed to my economics in literature classroom, but it turned out to be math instead. The teacher was a woman I don’t recognize. She asked about our homework, and I realized I had five problems to turn in. I hadn’t done any of them because I didn’t think I had homework over winter break. I decided to write fake answers for all of the problems. I knew they would be horribly wrong, but something was better than nothing. If I had my textbook, I could’ve solved them in a matter of a few minutes… But that was in the small suitcase!

My teacher saw some students solving the problems in class and scolded them for it. I covered up my fake answers with an arm. She pointed out an inflated moon bounce thing and began explaining our exercise for the day. She was going to fill it up with various trinkets, and each of us would select one. I watched her do it up close. She set down a thin, plastic sheet first, then dumped about twenty little trinkets onto the sheet, and then she repeated the process. She covered the second set of trinkets with a final sheet of plastic. The sheets turned into water, but they held the trinkets in position. We all hand to reach into the water and choose an item without seeing it. The instructor explained that this would act as our totem. I just saw Inception a couple of days ago, so I’m not surprised it’s finally seeping into my mind.

“Hold on,” someone objected. “Isn’t our totem supposed to have special meaning for us?” I found myself agreeing. If I was going to choose a totem, I wanted it to be something I came up with – not something given to me by a high school teacher.

“It will have special meaning. You got it from me!” the teacher answered. It was good enough for the other student, but not for me… A girl in the class spoke her mind, asking what would happen if she refused to choose a totem. The teacher pulled a couple of weird, plastic items out of the water. She gave me the smaller one to examine. As she walked up to the girl who complained, she asked, “What does this look like to you?”

“Uh…” the girl answered nervously. “Something… inappropriate…” Fiddling with my smaller replica of the same object, I found two wires attached inside little slits on the bottom. I accidentally pulled one out, and the end of the object lit up with red light. It was a light bulb! A couple of people laughed at what I’d done; they thought I broke someone’s totem. I put the wire back in, and the light stopped. The girl who questioned the teacher transformed into Alex. She said she needed some hash and started toward the door. A bunch of people started talking about doing drugs. The teacher scolded them for it. During the speech about drug abuse, I went into the water-filled moon bounce to pick my totem. I selected one of those rubber balls with the feelers sticking out radially. You know, the kind they hand out to kids at the dentist. I saw that a black girl in my class had picked the same thing, so we said that we were totem buddies.

“Just last week, Eric almost got in trouble for that giant fry,” our teacher reminded the class. She was referring to Andrea’s ex-boyfriend, Eric Gronkiewicz. I recalled something about him offering me a giant french fry the previous week. I realized it had been full of some kind of controlled substance. He was just trying to get Nicole to eat it, too, so he could take advantage of her while we were both under its influence. I left the school and walked to his house. There were several people in a circle in his garage. When Eric saw me, he waved me over. I took pictures to send to the police.

The dream jumped. I was back in the classroom with my textbook. I wrote down the solutions in the back of the book. Most of them were words instead of numbers… I started to wonder if this was really a math class.

* * *

December 31, 2010

Broken Paddle

I was in my dorm room, but I was attending a different school. Looking out my window, I could see people in tiny rooms in the building across from mine. They had rented spaces just big enough for a small bed and a desk. I wondered how many of them had actually seen the room before they paid for it… The building itself was incredibly spacious; there were thousands of these rooms. Nicole called me to tell me she was trying to be friends with Regina again. She had a Christmas present for her that I was supposed to keep a secret. She warned me, though, that if Regina did anything stupid, she was going to lose her temper and kick her out of the house. She said something about a broken paddle, but I didn’t understand at the time. After we got off the phone, I was floating in the ocean. I wasn’t far from the shoreline. I waded over to the beach and saw that my mom was calling. She asked what I was doing.

“Oh, just floating,” I told her. I kept looking for Nicole. I found them playing volleyball with ping pong paddles. It was no wonder Nicole had broken her tiny paddle; it couldn’t handle the force of a heavy volleyball getting spiked into it. She was playing by herself against Dan and Fallon since Regina hadn’t shown up yet. When I got there, Nicole gave me the broken paddle and left to find Regina. I waited by a street. Dan accidentally threw his paddle, but I threw the broken one back to him.

“Look at that!” he laughed. “We’ve got our own personal Jedi over there! Usin’ the force like nobody’s business!” Fallon laughed, too. They made a game out of throwing paddles at me and having me return them. Eventually, Fallon overshot it and threw a paddle in the middle of the street. The cars passing by just barely missed it. I had to wait a couple of minutes for traffic to clear up to go into the street to get it. I was really glad we didn’t have two broken paddles to deal with. More paddles went in the street after that, but none of them got run over.

Late for Class and Looking for Books

I was in the parking lot behind my dorm building. It was a field instead of a parking lot, though. I was trying to remember all of my classes… I couldn’t recall whether or not I had a class to go to. I saw that it was 1:58 PM, so if I had a 1:50 PM class, I was already late. I tried checking my schedule online, but my internet wasn’t working. I figured I could go to all of my classes… Eventually, if I checked all of the classrooms, I would have to find the right one. I remembered that I needed to read two books before my next philosophy class. Ironically, Phil was teaching that. I spent most of the dream searching through piles of junk in the field for my books. There was a feast going on in the middle of the field. I had some of the food, but it made me throw up.

Proof That It Works

This dream has been omitted.

* * *

January 1, 2011

Don't Try It

This dream has been omitted.

Experiment XVI: Target Evacuation

I was in an electrical engineering laboratory. Our final lab of the semester involved calling a target object from a start position to a final position using moving walls. I spent several minutes trying to get to the laboratory manual posted online, but I couldn’t access the course website. Eric Andoe asked if I had been able to read through the experiment yet, and I told him I hadn’t. He, Noel Deis, and Mike Palarz formed a lab group. With their permission, I also joined the group. I told them I would print out the experiment instructions as soon as I could access them. They went to the other side of the lab room to wait. After a while, I managed to get the manual open and printed out. It was labeled as Experiment XVI: Target Evacuation. I didn’t really understand the point of the experiment until the lab assistant explained it to everyone. He asked us to imagine that a person was trapped inside a burning building. In such a situation, what would be the best way to get them out of the building? I suggested calling them (under my breath), but I knew as soon as he showed us the ladder-like device in the corner of the room that it wouldn’t be that simple. The steps were supposed to represent the floors of a burning building. The walls could be adjusted to clamp down on an object, carry it to the border between floors, and drop it through a hole to the floor below. We weren’t allowed to use any light or pressure sensors with our object, but we needed to save some kind of “special attack” for the final floor. I’m serious – that’s what it said in the manual. Our lab assistant explained that this final experiment would put all of our knowledge to the test.

The other members of my group were more confused than the experiment warranted. Rather than starting on it right away, they wanted to exchange contact information so we could work on it outside of the lab session if necessary. I didn’t see how that was even possible; without any of the equipment rigged for the experiment, we were going to have a tough time testing our code for the moving walls. I almost wrote down Nicole’s home phone number instead of my cell phone number… After we exchanged contact information, I began rereading the experiment instructions with the benefit of a clearer understanding of our goals. My group accomplished next to nothing in that time. I checked the code they had produced and just saw variable declarations. I still wasn’t sure how we would be able to tell we had reached the last floor if the number of floors was varied (for example, if we started halfway down the ladder), so I introduced a constant defined from the command line. I counted the total number of steps on the ladder and set that as the default value. My group began working on the movement of the two wall segments. Because there were too many people working at the computer already, there was nothing for me to do except make suggestions and point out potential bugs. I felt like I wasn’t helping much.

Eric reminded me that there was going to be a quiz the day after winter break ended. I remembered Wong announcing the quiz. It was supposed to be a make-up quiz to replace one that the class had done poorly on before. I told myself I would need to study the old quiz’s solutions in detail before going to that class. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten something so important… If Eric hadn’t mentioned it, I probably would’ve messed it up again.

Originally Posted by Nephanim

Distinctive Slapping Noises

This dream has been omitted.

Lol

Originally Posted by MadMonkey

Lol

Yeah, I realized how awkward that was as soon as I named it. XD

Posting some more dreams...

January 2, 2011

The Watchers

I went to a movie theater with Nicole. We walked straight into the theater, skipping the ticketing booth. When we reached the entrance where an employee was waiting to tear our tickets in half, I handed him a coupon instead of tickets. It was supposed to give us two free movie tickets. He gave it a weird look, but then he nodded and asked us which movie we wanted to go see. I looked to Nicole for help.

“Which movie did you wanna go see?” I asked. I suggested something like The Watchers. She said that was fine. Nicole asked for two tickets to see The Watchers at 8:00. The employee smiled and asked if we wanted to see it at 4:30 instead. I checked my new phone and saw that it was 4:13. That was a much better idea. We agreed to it, and he directed us to theater eight on our right. We went straight there, but we accidentally went up to theater six first.

Destroying the Dreamwalker

I was Richard Rahl. As I walked along the border of D’Hara, I learned that Jagang’s forces were about to invade. We couldn’t hope to face them head-on. I started brainstorming battle strategies… Somehow I figured out how to nullify the dreamwalker’s magic in the process. The procedure required a little time to set things up, though, and we didn’t have much time. I decided to try the unthinkable: I called for the complete surrender of the D’Haran Empire to Emperor Jagang. When he rode into our camp, Jagang just grinned at me. Of course, he knew exactly who I was.

“Allow me to work for you, Jagang,” I said. “I will make the Empire great.” He was suspicious of me, naturally, but he agreed. He ordered two of his officers to follow me at all times to make sure I didn’t betray my new leader. I would have to make the process of eliminating the dreamwalker’s magic look like a good thing… Somehow, I figured it wouldn’t be difficult. We left the camp and went somewhere up in the mountains. I started setting up wooden totem poles. I measured the distance and angles between them precisely. Jagang must have figured out what I was doing… He learned how to take control of normal people – those without the gift – without straining himself. Using his newly strengthened power, he sent a mob of D’Haran soldiers to take my head. I finished the arrangement of totem poles just in time, and they all regained their consciousness. The dreamwalker’s power had been revoked.

When word spread that Jagang was powerless, a revolt was stirred up in the Empire. Many people had never even realized their leader was gifted, but those who had were startled when they realized their emperor was now just a normal human being. I was surprised by how easily this shifted the tides of war… I always thought the Empire was stronger than its connection to its leader.

Chopper and Symphony Versus Shadow Giant

I was fighting some kind of shadow creature three times my size. Tony Tony Chopper and Symphony XI were helping me. Our battleground was a large, rectangular room with a high ceiling. It looked like we were in Vongola’s underground base. The shadow creature went for Symphony first, but I summoned Apheri and cut off its arms before it could reach her. It just regenerated the arms and tried again. Standing behind me, Symphony charged up the Dixie and fired a blast of concentrated dream energy at the shadow being’s heart. It just laughed at its own pain as it stumbled backward into the wall. Chopper kept backing away from the enemy in guard point. Symphony ran out of battery power, so I thanked her for her help and warped her away from the room. The creature went after Chopper next. It feinted several times to try to understand Chopper’s fighting style.

“So you’re going to jump, aren’t you?” he asked. Chopper went into his normal form and shook his head. The shadow attacked him a couple more times, forcing him into the air. By the time I saw what was happening, he was standing on a railing just below the ceiling. The railing lined all four walls. There didn’t seem to be a way to get up there without jumping. Chopper was in his “human” form – the really beastly one. I knew he had switched to jumping point to get up there, but he had done it quickly so he didn’t reveal the secrets of the Rumble Ball to the shadow. The shadow creature stretched out its body so it could reach the railing. It grabbed Chopper by the throat and swallowed him hole. With another chuckle, it turned to me.

If Fran was a Pirate under the Sea

Nicole and I were watching the Nanny in her living room. Fran drove down the street in an old car as pieces of it gradually fell off. She started singing a song that sounded suspiciously like Spongebob Squarepants’ theme song.

“If Fran was a pirate under the sea…” she sang, humming the rest. The tune was identical to the theme song used for Spongebob. Whenever she added lyrics, they were slightly different, but it was clear there was a connection between this song and Spongebob’s. I stared at Nicole in disbelief.

“This show is way older than Spongebob. They just ripped this song off and changed some of the words.”

“You’re right!” she realized. After checking Wikipedia to make sure this particular episode aired well before Spongebob Squarepants was ever envisioned, we posted our findings on 4chan. The general consensus from 4chan was that we were reading too much into it, and the similarities between the two songs were entirely coincidental.

Digital Dream Logs in an Imaginary World

I had a brief dream in which I typed up brief outlines of a few of my dreams so I wouldn’t forget them. Those dreams included If Fran Was a Pirate under the Sea, Chopper and Symphony Versus Shadow Giant, and The Watchers. There was also one more dream that I can’t remember much of now. I saved the outlines as a draft and went back to sleep.

* * *

January 3, 2011

Introduction to Brownie Points

This dream has been omitted.

Omnipotent and Alone

This dream has been omitted.

* * *

January 4, 2011

Hot from Europe: 1984

I was in a computer lab at Nicole’s high school. Students were giving economics presentations. Every time Nicole asked me what I was doing for my presentation, I told her I was going to dedicate it to someone special. At first, I was going to dedicate it to Mr. Tarpley, but then I realized that didn’t make sense. I decided to come up with something better before my presentation.

“When I die,” I said, “I’ll tell everyone I did it for the Luls.” Nicole gave me a look that said I should try to be more serious. The classroom changed all around us, and when it settled, we were in my senior English classroom. Mrs. Gardner was the teacher. One of Nicole’s friends got up to present 1984. He explained that he was from the European Union, and 1984 was becoming incredibly popular there. He made it sound like it was a new book… The book was easily a few thousand pages long, but it was divided into three parts, and each of those parts was also divided into three sections. Because of this, he said, it was easy to read. He struggled to name the three sections for each part – the prologue, the main part, and… Well, he couldn’t remember the word epilogue, I guess. My teacher let him verbally flounder for about a minute.

“Just sit down,” she finally said.

“Uh… Okay,” he said in surrender. “How did I do?”

“I gave you a D,” she answered. I cringed. The guy, however, was so excited about it that he sat down in front of me and gave me a high five. I wondered how he had ever made it this far in school.

* * *

January 5, 2011

Gene Peterson

I was talking with Austin and my mom at their new house in Texas. Austin mentioned a new friend he made… The guy’s behavior sounded really familiar. He kept telling Austin about his mansion in New York, his job as an animator for Dreamworks, and what a kindhearted person he was. I asked what the guy’s name was just to dismiss my suspicions. When my mom said his last name was Peterson, I could hardly believe it.

“Gene?” I asked them both in surprise. They nodded. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“What? Do you know him?” Austin asked. I remembered a time when Gene and I were friends; I went to visit him in New York and discovered that everything he told me had been a lie. He wasn’t really an animator. He made his money by conning people into investing in his animation projects and then disappearing before anyone could follow his trail. He didn’t really have a mansion. In fact, when I visited his small home, we had a conversation something like this:

“This isn’t really a mansion, is it?” I asked.

“Okay, so the mansion’s more like a normal house.”

“But it’s not really a normal house, either.”

“Okay, so the house is more like an apartment…”

“But it’s not an apartment, either…”

“Okay, so the apartment is more like a trailer. A cheap trailer.” At this point, it was becoming clear to me that Gene wasn’t trustworthy, but I followed him into his trailer anyway. I wasn’t going to be rude just because he was a liar. Inside, I started asking him about his fraudulent investment scheme, and he dismissed all of my questions because he was a year older than me. The following conversation is highly paraphrased (more than usual). “I’m older, so I have more connections in my brain. Of course I’m smarter than you. How can you understand what I’m doing?”

“How long have you been doing this?” I demanded.

“A while… But that’s…”

“At some point, you were the same age I am now. If age is all that matters, I should be able to understand it just fine.”

“You just don’t get it. You can’t possibly be as smart as I am. You’re younger than me.” I argued about it a while longer, but when it was clear that he wasn’t willing to accept his erroneous logic, I gave up. “Besides, I’m eighty-four years old. You’re way younger than I am.”

After this flash of memories, I found myself back in my parents’ kitchen with my mom and Austin. I told Austin not to trust Gene – that he was a liar. Austin didn’t seem willing to listen until I recounted my experience in his trailer. I explained that Gene could only have one close friend at any given time because, in the past, his friends exchanged information and easily confirmed that Gene was lying to them. As she listened to our conversation, my mom decided to ban Gene from the house altogether. I laughed and told her she wasn’t the first person to do that.

Don't Say Sheep

I was reading through xkcd on my new phone. The first comic I read depicted a regal sitting room with a line of people standing in front of the fireplace. One of them was an old woman. I didn’t understand the joke. The second comic was one panel, but as I began reading the text, it turned into a video complete with voices. A woman on the left was holding a sheep against her chest. For some reason, she was afraid to say the word “sheep.”

“We didn’t say words like that when I was a kid,” she whined. The guy on the right side offered to take the sheep from her, but because he had a cold, she was afraid he would get her (or the sheep) sick. A second woman held the sheep woman down while the guy prepared a cup of chocolate chip pancake soup. His nose hovered over it as he sniffed the soup, and naturally, mucus dripped in. The woman explained that she didn’t like chocolate chips because they mess up her makeup. The guy admitted he had forgotten about that… Then he transformed into a horse with makeup smeared all over its face. The woman and her sheep started to cry.

* * *

January 6, 2011

Death at the Hands of a Virus Fish

Nicole and I were living in some kind of underwater kingdom ruled by a dictator. My spirit had been bound to a scientific calculator somehow, and Nicole carried me everywhere. She was a mermaid. Her closest friend was an old fish twice her size who taught her everything she needed to know about life under the sea. Nicole frequently told her all about love and our plans to be together forever once we made it out of the ocean. One day, for whatever reason, someone needed to know the number of feet in a mile. I spat the number out immediately, and the guy who was asking for the conversion factor was stunned.

“How did you do that?” he asked Nicole. She tried to explain, but he interrupted her. “Well, what’s twice that number?” I quickly calculated it and printed out the correct number. For some reason, this number was over 30,000 and was given with eight decimal digits. As Nicole read the number off, she was puzzled by what looked like a second decimal point near the end of the number. She had to reread the number from my screen several times while she tried to figure it out. Her old friend swam over to get a better look, but she didn’t make it in time. The black speck on my screen took the form of a fish and began devouring the numbers on screen. It was a virus fish; I had been infected. Desperately, Nicole tried to save me by turning me off, but it didn’t work. They tried everything, but it was hopeless. My consciousness transferred to Nicole’s body. I wept at the calculator’s death, and the old woman patted me on the back with her slick fin.

“It’s gonna be alright, girl,” the fish said slowly. “You know that even without him here, I’ll just give you twice the love to make up for it.” I nodded, trying not to sob too loudly. I didn’t want our cruel overlords to hear that I had been keeping a soul inside a calculator. I started drawing eels and things in the sand.

Monkeys with Guns and Wedding Accusations

I was at the mall with Nicole, Andrea, and some guy who was supposed to be her new boyfriend. We went to the laundromat with a huge pile of dirty clothes and got in line. There were two people in front of us. On top of that, despite there being about forty washing machines, they were all taken… I couldn’t believe that a laundromat in a mall was this busy. Nicole didn’t understand; she wanted to take someone’s clothes out and throw ours in instead, but I reminded her that there was a line of people waiting to wash their clothes. One person left, and the other found a free washing machine to use. When it was finally our turn, the cashier walked us over to the washers to explain something about animals living in them. I was amazed when a meerkat popped out of one of the washing machines. Nicole didn’t react as much as she should have. Several more came out of the other washing machines. There were even frogs in some of them, but they weren’t at all like most frogs. They were about the size of a golden retriever and preferred to wriggle around on their backs rather than hop around all day. The cashier warned us that the frogs would bite if we didn’t respond to their questions. I didn’t hear any questions, but the frogs started flopping onto me. The cashier said they liked me. Eventually, we managed to get our clothes into a washing machine. As we were leaving, Andrea’s boyfriend got down on one knee and pulled out an engagement ring. Andrea shrieked her approval. I realized it was Ikari Shinji’s dad. Andrea was going to take his last name and become Ikari Andrea.

The dream jumped. I had stopped on some kind of mountain pass on the way to the wedding. I found five chimpanzees walking in a line and tamed them. They followed me to the ruins of an ancient civilization. Four pyramids were arranged around a temple in the middle. The pyramids were much taller than the temple. The pyramids were built in the Aztec style. I gave the monkeys pistols for fun. They immediately figured out how to use them. It was fine when they were just shooting the ground, but then one shot into the air directly above his head, scaring all of the others. He became their leader. They took over the pyramids in no time. The other monkeys living in the area figured out how the guns worked and made their own. Before I knew it, there were monkeys with guns everywhere, and many of them didn’t care whether I lived or died. I tried to avoid the monkeys altogether since I couldn’t tell mine from the rest. A couple of my monkeys betrayed the original group and joined the second one. Somehow, I became a monkey. I picked up a pistol a dead monkey had dropped and examined it, wondering what the trigger would do if I pulled on it. I pointed it at another monkey and tried to shoot. The monkey saw me and shot the gun out of my hand. With a blank expression, he pinned me down with an elbow and pointed the barrel of the gun down my throat. I raised my arms in surrender.

I became myself again. Fearing for my safety, I decided to hide on top of the pyramids until they all ran out of bullets. Unfortunately for me, the battle moved up there… I remember thinking that if I hadn’t boosted my sneak skill so high, I would’ve been discovered and killed. The yellow eye from Oblivion that indicates whether you’re detected while sneaking appeared in the center of my field of vision. I saw myself in third person, crouching. The monkeys were falling left and right… The pyramids were covered in their blood. When they finally ran out of bullets, I confiscated all of the pistols and scolded the monkeys. One threw his at me, but I caught it.

The dream jumped. I was sitting inside a small, wooden house (just large enough for me to sit in). The house was positioned between the front row of an auditorium and its stage. I turned my house so I could see the stage through the window. Someone on stage announced that the wedding of Gendou and Andrea would commence shortly. He added that Dr. Wiley and his colleagues had traveled from the University of Wisconsin to see it out of respect for Dr. Ikari. Baffled by the thought that a Megaman character could possibly come to the wedding, I rotated my house again to look out at the special seating area. A bunch of men wearing bald wigs and lab coats sat together with their arms crossed, scowling. I realized they were just in costume. Surprisingly, I didn’t worry about Shinji sitting with them. I listened to Dr. Wiley and his peers talking about how Andrea looked like an old shoe. I didn’t think so, but I figured they would know better than me.

People kept kicking my house and calling me names for putting it in front of their seats, so I squeezed out the window and went back about fifteen rows to an empty seat. Someone told me I was sitting in the wrong area – that it was reserved seating for the band – but I didn’t realize they were talking to me, so I ignored them. The wedding started. Gendou and Andrea went right up together, skipping all of that preliminary stuff with flower girls, best men, et cetera. When Andrea turned to look at the audience, someone stood up and pointed at her.

“She’s too selfish to get married!” the girl shouted. The crowd gasped. Was it true?! The announcer sheepishly walked up on stage.

“If that’s true,” he said, “then I’m going to have to cancel this wedding.” I frowned. That was a stupid reason to interrupt a wedding. At the very least, I was going to try my best to dismiss the accusation. I stood up and raised my hand. When the announcer gestured toward me, I explained that Andrea was as selfless as they come, and as proof, I would bring in all of the things she agreed in advance to donate to those less fortunate than her. I made several trips between the auditorium and a work room somewhere in the building while carrying furniture and supplies. Nicole found out what I was doing and decided to help. We were just giving away furniture I had stolen to make it look like Andrea was a good person. While Nicole carried the last of the chairs, I put together a blacksmith’s table. I knew instinctively that it had a value of $22000. When I set that down before the stage, the crowd gasped again at Andrea’s selflessness. The girl who brought up the accusation set $4000 on the ground near the things we were giving away to see if I would take it. Fortunately, I already knew what that was about, so I didn’t bother. I waited until the girl turned away before I told Nicole she could take the money if she wanted it. The wedding resumed, and Andrea nodded to us in thanks.

Hatred, Toofland, and Hidden Mail

I was at my parents’ house with Nicole. It was supposed to be the new house, but it was actually an old one (still in Texas). Nicole and I sat on the small couch in the living room. My dad was sitting by the fireplace with his hands folded on one knee. He calmly admitted that he didn’t like either of us.

“Did you ever call me a prick?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you think you’ll do it again?” Although I knew he expected me to say yes, I doubted it. Even though he hated me, I didn’t feel like it was worth hating him back. That would just poison my thoughts.

“You know, probably not… Only if you do something ridiculous.” I didn’t want to think about the kinds of things that would warrant that. He nodded slowly at my answer as he contemplated it. It seemed like he had gotten a better answer than he expected. Without saying anything else, he got up and left. Nicole and I went upstairs to talk to Chelsea. Apparently, her room was officially its own country named Toofland. She had filed the necessary paperwork with the United States government to purchase the land and charter a new nation. Since Austin’s room had been overrun with mold, it was uninhabitable. Chelsea had been so kind as to grant Austin citizenship in Toofland; he was sharing the room with her. My room was just creepy… The lights didn’t work no matter how many times the light bulbs were replaced or the circuits were checked. As a matter of fact, all electronics shut off the moment they entered the room. It seemed to be haunted. I knew we couldn’t sleep in there, so Nicole and I decided to stay in Toofland, too.

The dream jumped. I was looking through unopened envelopes and packages in the basement (even though my parents never had a basement in Texas). Most of the stuff was addressed to me, but there were things for Nicole, Chelsea, and Austin, too. I found a package from “Nydmu Hispani Wisesa.” I knew it was Esa, but I’m not sure how… The package had been shipped from China. I briefly remembered him mentioning something about sending us a Christmas present, so I figured that was it. My dad had been keeping all this mail under lock and key where we couldn’t get to it. I brought the mail up to the living room and showed everyone. Esa’s present was an Iron Man figurine. It was about two inches tall, and one arm kept falling off. I blamed China for making cheap figurines. When my dad walked into the room, he refused to take responsibility for hiding our mail.

Weekends are awesome.

January 7, 2011

Singing with Neluna-Nicci and Family Time

When the dream began, I was with Nicole in my bedroom at my parents’ new house. A few things were different… Namely, I had a water fountain in one corner of the room, the house was two stories, and we were sharing a bathroom connected to Chelsea’s room with her. Nicole left the room, so I was alone by the water fountain. I had a vision of the whole world being poisoned and killed. I was one of the few people immune to the poison… I wasn’t sure if Nicole was also immune. While I was pondering what could cause something so devastating, Neluna came into the room in the form of Nicci. She seems to like that appearance (and it fits). Chelsea came in almost immediately after. Neluna warned me that the world’s water supply was about to be contaminated. I knew that also included the water fountain in my room, but for some reason, that didn’t stop me from getting myself a glass of water from the fountain. I stopped myself before I drank it, though.

“Ugh, this is going to be AIDS water,” I grumbled. Neluna laughed quietly to herself. She reminded me that she had already given me a warning. She showed me some song lyrics she had brought along and asked me to sing with her. I wasn’t all that interested. She sang a song for me first, but I don’t remember what it was. After she finished, she grabbed my hand and pulled me over to her side of the fountain. She picked out a song, and music started playing from somewhere… I didn’t know the song at all. I’m pretty sure a lot of the words were made up. I was singing in a really high-pitched voice for a good portion of the song, too. After we finished our duet, she went into what I thought was a closet. It was actually another bathroom – one that was only for my room! I realized how stupid I was for sharing a shower with people when I could just use my own. Even Chelsea had no idea there was a bathroom in there…

The dream jumped. I was walking along a shopping center with my dad. I remembered Chelsea saying something earlier about him imposing his religious beliefs on people. He fell a few paces behind, and soon I heard him asking a woman about her drinking problem. He told her that alcohol would mess up her circulation and eventually kill her. He added that it was God’s will for her to drink in moderation. She asked him for booze, and he told me to go buy her some… I didn’t understand why.

“Just get her a Miller or something,” he told me. We were right by a Jewel-Osco, so I started toward the door. I realized just before going inside that I was forgetting something important.

“Hey, you have to pay for it,” I called back to him. “I’m not twenty-one yet. I’ve still got a few months to go.”

“I know, I know,” he said. I turned away and went inside. As I entered, I saw that there was a long line in front of the guy who puts stickers on paid-for merchandise. He was putting stickers on someone’s bags after they paid for everything… I skipped to the front of the line and held out my arm for the guy to put a sticker on it. I didn’t want to have to pay for myself, I guess… I walked all over the store looking for beer, but I couldn’t find any. There was a sign at the back of the store that said “Alcohol Here” with an arrow pointing into an employees only door. I decided they wouldn’t have put the sign there unless they wanted customers to look there, so I went in. My path was immediately blocked by a robot that looked like a cross between a clannfear and a trash can. It shot a laser out of its mouth when I got close. Fortunately for me, I managed to dodge the laser… But it was able to swivel around in a circle, so no matter where I went, it could still shoot me. I tried to get it to spin fast enough to break, but that didn’t work.

“What do you want from me?!” I demanded.

“I must hunt Scooby Doo,” it said in a robotic voice. It turned into a metallic dog.

“But you are Scooby Doo, so therefore, you must destroy yourself.”

“That is correct.” The robot turned its laser on itself, bending the beam somehow so it bore into its skull. The whole thing exploded. Once the flying chunks of metal were all still, I ventured down the hall into the private electrical engineering offices behind the grocery store. There were messy desks everywhere, and apparently, I picked the best time to show up. They were all too busy with conference calls to tell me to leave. I roamed around the office area for a bit before I decided the sign must’ve been a mistake. I walked back into the main part of the grocery store and almost immediately found the alcoholic beverages. Since my dad said to buy Miller, I grabbed the first thing that met his criteria. I didn’t really care about the price… My dad was paying, after all. I called him to tell him I had found it, hoping he would come inside soon.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked after I explained everything.

“Uh… I can’t pay for it, remember? My license says ‘Under 21.’”

“Well, I don’t have my license with me.” It turns out he had left it at home… So we weren’t buying alcohol for the woman after all. I didn’t really care, but I wished he would’ve said something before I went searching through the whole store.

The dream jumped. I was sitting in the backseat of my dad’s car with Nicole on my left and Neluna on my right. Chelsea was in the middle seat, and my dad was driving. Austin and my mom weren’t present. As usual, Neluna was eager for attention. She slipped her arm around mine and asked where I’d been. I pointed out the Jewel-Osco right across the street (apparently, we lived just in front of the shopping center) and began telling the story. Chelsea got out part of the way through the story and came back, so I had to repeat myself. Nicole did the same thing twice near the end, but she didn’t come back the second time… I decided to just tell Neluna what my dad had done. She laughed at the end of the story. It was clear that Chelsea wasn’t really paying attention, either.

The dream jumped. Nicole, Neluna, Chelsea, Andrea, Eric G., and I were sitting on the carpet in front of the TV. We started playing some kind of crossover between Dance Dance Revolution and karaoke. Nicole went first, then Neluna… They wanted me to play, but I told them to skip my turn, so Chelsea was next. Nicole suggested doing three songs at a time before switching, but Andrea said Nicole and I would be on our laptops during everyone else’s turns if we had to wait that long. Chelsea agreed with Andrea. I saw Nicole tapping to the rhythm of the music and wondered how she was getting such a good score just for that before I remembered it was Chelsea’s turn. Chelsea wasn’t singing either, though. She had figured out how to use the controller to sing silently or something like that. Eric said something stupid to Andrea, and she told him to leave. When he wouldn’t, I agreed to escort him out. Andrea came along to make sure he left the house. We ended up in the kitchen… I guess that’s where the front door was supposed to be. When he walked out the door, she took off her fake Horcrux pendant and gave it to me. It was covered in dirt.

“I don’t want this,” she said. “Throw it away.” Although I questioned her about it at first, I eventually gave in and tossed it in the trash. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to be rid of her Christmas present or how it ended up so dirty… Andrea walked over to the sink and started crying. I tried to hug her to cheer her up, but I couldn’t because of a thick suit of glass armor she was wearing. When I hit my face against it, I smudged the armor a bit, so I apologized for obscuring her vision. She said she’d come into the living room after she calmed down a bit, so I went back in there. Neluna smiled when she saw me.

Luffy in the Underworld

I was reading a chapter of One Piece. In the latest chapter, Luffy and his crew had sailed into the underworld. It was a thick jungle full of shadow creatures. They took the form of people the Straw Hat pirates knew to deceive them, and once they managed to get Luffy alone while he was climbing a tree, a shadow took Luffy’s form and shot the base of the tree with a jet pistol. The shadow people were really easy to identify because their bodies were tinted purple, but no one seemed able to tell. Despite this being a manga chapter, it was fully colored and animated. The characters were even voiced, but they spoke in English. Robin’s voice actor was different… It sounded more like Lyra. Nicole and I agreed that the new voice was weird. I didn’t let her watch most of the animated chapter, though; she was still two chapters behind. I told her to catch up soon.

* * *

January 8, 2011

Threads of Fate and the White Blade

I was at some kind of shrine with my mom, Nicole, Chelsea, and Matthew. For some reason, Matthew was about four years younger than he is now, but the rest of us were our normal ages. He got upset about something and decided to run away from home. He had everything he needed at the shrine to do it, so he gathered up a pack of food and supplies before heading out the door. I thought out what I was going to do carefully… If I made a mistake, he would never listen to me. I told my mom I would be right back and followed him outside. He was standing at the top of a series of a few hundred steps leading down with a light blanket wrapped tightly around his body. I don’t know how he managed to do it by himself; his arms were trapped inside the blanket cocoon.

“Hey, where are you going?” I asked calmly.

“You know where…” he said. “You’re gonna tell my parents, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not going to tell anyone.” His eyes lit up. I could see my phone contacts floating in the space between us. If I wanted to call his parents, I wouldn’t even have to lift a finger. I said I wouldn’t, though.

“You promise?”

“Yep. I promise. So… Are you going to talk to your parents about this before you go?”

“No way.”

“You’re not even going to talk to them? They might be able to make things better if they know how you feel.”

“I guess so… I can try it, and if it doesn’t work, I can still run away.”

“Who else can you talk to? I’m sure my mom would listen.”

“Yeah… I could do that… Maybe a counselor at school…”

“See? Talk to all of them first, and if there’s still a problem, come talk to me in a few days when I get back. I’ll do everything I can to help.” I didn’t realize until then that the only contacts floating between us all this time were the ones we had mentioned – his mom, my mom, and his school. My phone number appeared in the swirling field of contacts, too. Whereas the original contacts were glowing orange and purple, mine was grayed out.

“Thanks, Nephanim,” he said with a smile. “I’ll go home now.” He hopped down the steps toward the town below. I wondered if I had given him the right time frame… It was Friday, and we were going to the beach for a couple of days – but that would mean I wouldn’t get back until Sunday night, and then I’d still have to go downtown so I could be ready for classes on Monday. Oh well. I shrugged and decided I’d figure it out later. My mom, Chelsea, Nicole, and Symphony came out of the shrine. Everyone but Symphony started walking along the length of the shrine toward the woods. The environment warped around me until it was the front of our old neighborhood in Texas. They were all walking toward my parents’ old house. Symphony asked me something. Her voice was scrambled, but I understood what she was saying. She wanted to know if I was going to be okay. I saw a bunch of ribbons winding together. They were accordion folded ribbons, and they came in red, orange, and yellow. I saw a ribbon which I knew was Matthew’s; it was bent in a lot of strange directions. I understood that the bends corresponded to suffering. As bent as his was, mine was a mess. I held the ball of tangled ribbon in my hand, saying nothing. As I focused in on the ribbon, I could see individual events. My dad dying, getting cancer, checking in at a mental hospital…

“Your experience is more challenging than his,” Symphony observed.

“Yes,” I said, “but that doesn’t give me any right to mope about it.” The black ribbons tying Symphony’s bells together represented her experience. Because she was a robot, she did not truly suffer; her ribbons would not bend. As soon as I managed to stop staring at the flawless ribbons, I started following the others. Walking was incredibly difficult… Every step made me more lethargic, and it eventually got so frustrating to take a single step that I no longer wanted to go to the beach. I thought I would just tell my mom I was going back home. I would bring Symphony with me, of course, and Nicole could come if she really wanted to. I just didn’t want to walk any more than necessary. We would be walking for hours. Symphony saw me standing in place with my hands on the sides of my head. She put her hand on the back of my neck and asked again if I was going to be okay. I didn’t have an answer.

The dream jumped. We were outside my parents’ garage. In order to get to the beach, we had to go through the garage first. The door was rigged to crush anyone who tried to enter, though… Chelsea managed to slip in first, and then I went in after her. The others (save for Symphony) weren’t sure they would be able to get in. I told them I would disable the garage door so they could get in. On my way over to the control panel for the garage door, I heard Austin calling me. I turned around and saw him holding up a white sword. It wasn’t Apheri, but I knew it well.

“Do you want this?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Oh, and throw Truth over here, too.” He pulled out a shorter blade plated in gold with several gems embedded in its surface. It didn’t look like the Sword of Truth as I pictured it. For that matter, it didn’t look practical. Austin threw them both at once… I figured he would at least go with one at a time. In any case, I swooped forward and caught them both in mid-air. With a swing of my wrists, I turned them around and carefully examined the swords. Truth was going to be useless, I decided. I planted it several feet in the ground beside me and passed the white sword into my right hand. It felt strange, yet comfortable… Familiar, yet uncomfortable… I decided to bear with the strange feelings emanating from the blade. We would be at the beach soon, and the others would need my protection.

Self-Destruction

I was in a small, white room. I didn’t have a body, so I was just floating in the air. Symphony was sitting with her back to me in the outfit I equipped her with on Oblivion. She slammed her head into the wall in front of her, shaking the whole room. Her head retracted, and she did it again. I watched in futility, unable to do anything about it.

* * *

January 9, 2011

Business Trip Opportunity

I was in my parents’ house, but it didn’t look like any they’ve owned. My dad was leaving on a two-day business trip.
He had to fly to Las Vegas early in the morning on the first day and then fly back late the second day. Nicole and I
didn’t have anything in particular planned for his absence, but it seems my mom did. It didn’t take long for me to
notice something was amiss. She kept getting phone calls throughout the first day, and her conversations were really
vague – almost like she wanted to say something without saying it. Nicole and I went for a walk around the
neighborhood (we ended up exploring an Ayleid ruin instead). While we took our walk, I suggested that my mom might be
planning to leave my dad for someone else. Nicole didn’t think so. When we got back to the house, however, there was
a red truck in the driveway that I didn’t recognize. I went inside and saw my mom talking with a tall, well-built
man. She said she had waited several weeks for this chance. Nicole and I stayed out of sight as they started pulling
off their clothes… Then my mom started for her bedroom. I lost my patience then; I ran out in front of them and
held out my fist.

“Hold on a second!” I shouted at her. “What do you think you’re doing?” She didn’t respond. The guy put his hand on
her shoulder and smiled at me. They tried to walk around me, but I moved to block the doorway again. “Don’t do
anything stupid, Mom!” I warned her. She brushed me aside, pulled the guy in after her, and closed the door. I tried
to open it, but it was locked. I heard the bed sag with their weight. I wasn’t going to stick around and listen for
the evidence. It was pretty obvious what was about to happen. Nicole and I went to my room in silence. Neither of us
knew what to say. I thought about calling my dad, but I didn’t know what to say to him, either. I decided I would
just go to sleep and deal with it in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, though. A while after Nicole went to sleep, I got
up and wandered the house. I found my dad sitting on a bench by the garage. His luggage was on the floor around the
bench. When I asked what he was doing back so early, my throat tightened. He was going to find out. This would easily
be the worst fight I’d ever witnessed between my parents. He said he missed his flight, and it had taken him all day
to get back. I asked if he’d told my mom. He said he hadn’t called her – so all those phone calls were from the other
guy. I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t muster the courage. He seemed distracted… He stood and picked up his
bags. We walked from there to the living room, and he set his stuff down in there. I thought it was weird that he
didn’t go straight to the bedroom.

“Dad, I need to tell you something…” I said. He didn’t even look up. “Mom’s sleeping with another guy.”

“I know, Josh.” When he said that, my anger returned. He knew, and he wasn’t doing anything about it? I almost
punched him. I couldn’t work past my anxiety to do it, though… So I just backed out of the room and crawled into
bed next to Nicole. My head was swimming, and I knew I wasn’t going to sleep at all that night.

Fake Autographs at ACen

Nicole and Andrea continued planning for Anime Central. Nicole called some of her friends and asked if they could come as certain people. Surprisingly, she wasn’t asking them to dress up as anime or video game characters; she wanted them to come as celebrities and sell fake autographs. I laughed when she asked one of her friends to be Amy Lee. Her friend refused, though. While she was planning what we would do at the convention, I could see it playing out before us – mainly lines of people waiting for forged autographs and people in rock star cosplays. In all of my visions of the coming convention, Nicole and Andrea were dressed as Beatrice and Ange, respectively, but I was never in costume.

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Nicole and Eric were decorating the Christmas tree in their living room. Instead of using the small Christmas lights on strings, they were using individual lights that were each about the size of my hand. Every time Nicole put a light up, Eric moved it somewhere else. I found myself agreeing more with Eric’s positioning; Nicole tended to clump the lights together or put them over ornaments. Nicole didn’t even realize what Eric was doing. Whenever she saw one that was “misplaced,” she picked it off the tree and put it back where she wanted it.

Tears for a Toaster

Symphony was sitting on the couch in Nicole’s living room. I was on the floor. She was wearing the white outfit her character has on Oblivion as she was the previous night (with the addition of her bells). She asked me something about my reason for existing. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. She stared at me until a feeling of distant, cold sadness filled me. I started crying. I felt that she wanted to comfort me, but I couldn’t come any closer.

Turn That Thing Off

This dream has been omitted.

* * *

January 10, 2011

Sharing Thoughts About a Vulgar Mask

This dream has been omitted.

Kahlan's Love Potion

Kahlan was in a tent in the Wilds. She and a group of Mud People were on some kind of journey, but they had stopped for the night. Kahlan examined a potion she received from a sorceress as she sat at a circular table in the middle of the tent. The potion promised to return her lost love. Assuming that it would cause Richard to return to her, Kahlan chugged the potion, and immediately, her body felt unusual… She became lightheaded and giddy. She went to the front of the tent, pulled back the flap, and tried to call for help, but it was already too late. The first person she saw was Chandelin. A strange affection filled her… It was a love potion, she realized, and she could do nothing to stop its power. I saw Chandelin speaking with two of his men about keeping their ten-step poison well-supplied. He looked over at Kahlan every now and then with increasing frequency. He could sense her attraction to him when he met her gaze. Mostly to discuss what he felt were just silly thoughts, Chandelin approached the tent and greeted the Mother Confessor. A young boy approached from another direction to speak with both of them. Before Chandelin could address his concerns, Kahlan started to give him signs of her hunger for him. She smirked when she spoke to him, winked when their eyes met, and finally invited him to show her the ways of the Mud People – in her bed. Chandelin couldn’t resist the temptation. It was confounding; he knew that what he was doing was horribly wrong, perhaps even a fatal mistake (Richard would never spare him), and yet he couldn’t control himself. The boy who showed up went in with them to watch and learn. I had a strange feeling that Chandelin was somehow promoting incest by doing this…

Mario's 500 Stars

I was playing a remake of the original Super Mario Brothers. There were ten worlds, ten stages per world, and five stars to collect per stage for a total of 500 stars. Nicole and I played through the first couple of worlds, collecting a small portion of the stars along the way. Before going on, she urged me to collect more stars. I went back to the first castle and saw we had one of the stars there. I ran through most of the level without finding any of the remaining four… When I did find one, it was at the top of a barrel spinning counterclockwise into a vat of lava. Every time I tried to jump on top to get the star, the barrel rolled me down into the lava. Fortunately, I had the Ring of Happiness equipped (got that on Oblivion before I went to bed). Because of its water walking effect, I was able to walk on the lava instead of being consumed by it.

* * *

January 11, 2011

Alicia's Wedding and a Ghostly Encounter

I was at my grandparents’ house in Louisiana. Apparently, my cousin Jackie was getting married and wanted the whole family there. She neglected to mention that she was marrying herself. Anyway, my immediate family, my mom’s parents, Nicole, and a few of my cousins (Jay, Dusty, and Alicia) were present. The backyard had been extended to make room for a koi pond, a dog house, and a small parking lot. They didn’t have a dog; that was to be the site of the wedding. Nicole and I spent most of our time in the backyard. Cars were parked along the fence on one side of the pond, and there was a queen-sized bed on the other end of the yard for us to sleep in since the guest room inside was already taken. Omi and Opi arrived late in the day, and Opi enlisted my aid in repairing damage to the dog house. We wanted it to be in perfect condition for the wedding. He asked me to do something with a power tool that I didn’t recognize, so I didn’t understand what he meant. When I tried to explain, he got frustrated and took it away from me. I just helped him hammer in nails. When we were done, I went to bed. I slept at the foot of the bed so the girls could have the covers.

When we all got up on the day of the wedding, I asked Jackie what time the ceremony was scheduled for. She said it wasn’t scheduled at all. It was already 10 AM, and many of the guests inside the house were still asleep. No one told them to wake up early, after all… We gathered in the dog house a few hours later. Alicia asked me to get something out of her car. She said it was “the fourth one from the right.” I counted cars from the dog house. The fourth one was a red van. Unfortunately, the cars were packed together like sardines because the parking spaces were so small, so I didn’t know how we were going to get the doors open an inch, let alone wide enough for someone to get inside. It already looked like the side mirrors had been broken off. Jackie came over and told me I was looking at the wrong car. She pointed to the truck next to it – the “third” car. This posed the same problem; the car to the right of that one was parked too close. Jackie grabbed her car by the bumper and shook it until it popped out of gear and rolled backward. It made a scraping sound as it broke free from its automotive prison. She took an umbrella out of the truck and pushed it back between the cars. It started raining. Since I had failed to follow instructions, Jackie wouldn’t share her umbrella with me. I was drenched by the time I returned to the dog house.

The dream jumped. We were at some kind of water park… The lazy river wasn’t lazy at all; the current swept us along at ten or fifteen miles per hour. Nicole and I figured out a way to cheat the system. Basically, everyone got five laps around the river. We had to wear special shirts over our bathing suits to keep track of how many laps we had left. Near the end of the river, a small current connected one half to the other, so it was possible to cut past the starting point and float through half of the river again. Nicole and I found a way to do this consistently, so we were able to stay in the water much longer than everyone else. When most of the others were on their final lap around, we still had three each.

After leaving the water park, we all gathered in bed to talk about how the wedding went, the park, and where we would each be going next. Of course, no one said anything about the wedding. Nicole left to go to the bathroom. While she was gone, my grandma sat down on the edge of the bed and warned me that she didn’t like Nicole. I asked why, but she wouldn’t give me a reason. Nicole came back and started swearing heavily. She dropped several F-bombs.

“It would help if she would stop talking like that,” Grandma mumbled in a grouchy voice. I pulled Nicole aside and asked her to mind her manners around my family. She agreed to, but she continued to swear. My grandma gave up on accepting her and went into the house for a nap. I was suddenly attacked by a goblin, but I discovered I had the ability to fire energy beam attacks (much like in the Dragonball series). More goblins appeared, and Axis joined me in fighting them. I knew that the goblins and energy beams were imaginary, but that didn’t bother me. Jay showed up and tried to throw a spirit bomb at me. I focused all of my energy into one point and detonated it at a safe distance. No one was harmed. With my energy so focused, I was several times faster and stronger than before. I ran up and punched a goblin in the gut, rupturing organs inside its body. As it fell, I saw Symphony standing in the distance. She was watching me.

The dream jumped. I was on my way to the bathroom late at night. I discovered that none of the lights worked. In fact, when I flipped one switch, sparks flew out of the light bulb with a crackling pop. I looked around in alarm, wondering if anyone had heard it… I didn’t want to close the door and have to relieve myself in total darkness, so I left it open. As I did my business, I kept an eye on the open door. It was still dark in the bathroom, but this was the best I could manage… As it was, I already had to worry about someone walking by the door. I felt something on my back – pressure. Hands that weren’t there gripped my shoulders. It had to be a ghost, I decided. I tried not to think about it; maybe it would go away, I thought. It didn’t, so when I finished, I quickly washed my hands and bolted out of the bathroom.

The dream jumped. I was my cousin Jay. He had stacked bowls on top of six chairs around the dining room table. The room looked like an interior from the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Due to a problem with the game’s physics engine, he could use the bowls as stable platforms. He jumped around the table several times to prove it. Abruptly, I was myself again. I was with Nicole in my parents’ living room while I told her what Jay had done. I knew we were about to fly back home, but I couldn’t remember whether or not I had printed out our boarding passes… I checked my backpack and found them. We carried our luggage out to the car. My dad warned me that if Nicole made Grandma too angry, she might end up dead. I understood, somehow… I’m not sure I do anymore. I gave Omi a goodbye hug and thanked Opi for helping build the dog house. They had come back to my parents’ house with us, but they were about to drive home. Before she left, Omi pointed out that my hair didn’t look healthy. I agreed that it looked horrible. I reached up to feel it… It was like sliding my hand through knives made of ice.

A Hallway, Strangling, and Housing Arrangements (Lucid, but two false awakenings put a stop to that )

I was walking through a long hallway. There was a reason why I had gone there, but I can’t remember it anymore. Purely by coincidence, I wondered if I was dreaming. Sure enough, I was. My eyes widened. I looked at my hands and down my arms. Everything was so real, and yet it was only a dream. I didn’t waste time thinking about how long it had been since my last lucid dream. I started walking down the hall toward the glowing exit doors. Energy poured through me, and I was back in bed. I couldn’t move. My eyes were tightly shut, but I managed to open them a little… I saw that I was in a white, padded room. I wondered if I was just experiencing sleep paralysis, but I decided I was still dreaming. I tried to focus on controlling my apparently fabricated sleep paralysis. I was able to roll onto my stomach, but then I felt something tightening around my neck… Invisible hands were strangling me from behind. I tried to talk to the invisible being, but I couldn’t speak. I imagined that Neluna was the one doing it. My intent was to force the dream to represent it as her since I would then be able to get her to stop. Despite my efforts, I knew I couldn’t make it become her. I felt my body moving on its own. The invisible woman was using me to please herself. I wondered whether I should go along with it (I didn’t have much choice since I couldn’t move) or try to resist. I woke up again instead. This time, two guys from my high school shook me awake. I recognized one as Nathan Engel, but I didn’t know who the other one was. Nathan explained that I had agreed to switch rooms with his roommate. I glanced over and saw Till at his computer. He didn’t seem to hear us talking. I reluctantly followed them out of the room. I had lost my grip on the dream state.

The dream jumped. I was outside Nathan’s room at MSV. I knew I didn’t want to move all of my stuff again unless it was truly necessary… Before we even opened the door, I was pretty sure I would just apologize and cancel the arrangements. Nathan explained that he had spoken with the people he needed to already, so his roommate was going to start moving things that day. I frowned. His roommate scanned his ID card to open the door. I thought this was strange; usually, you need a door key to get into the rooms in that building. I decided they must have changed it over the winter holidays. When I stepped into the room, I forced myself to say it was smaller than mine. It was really about the same size. I thought it was weird that I only saw one bed in the room, but I didn’t want to ask any awkward questions. In any case, if I wasn’t going to get anything out of moving, I didn’t see why I would do it… I started toward the door, but Nathan showed me a side door that led to a small hallway.

“What’s this?” I asked him.

“The rest of the place, of course,” he laughed, shaking his head. He and his roommate went ahead, and I followed at a distance. There was a kitchen, a dining room, and a second bedroom. I examined the bedroom just to say I had. It was as large as the room at the front of the miniature apartment. Despite all of this, I still didn’t feel like moving my stuff… I kept wondering if the housing department would charge me the extra money to upgrade to such a big living space, too. I knew that was way beyond my budget. Interestingly, I saw my shoes as I left the main room – they were solid white tennis shoes. I haven’t owned white shoes since middle school, at least.

* * *

January 12, 2011

Across the Gate of Dimensionality

I was Ikari Shinji, but I was wearing Haseo’s black armor. Nicole was Asuka for some reason. We ran down a hallway with Elk (our Rei counterpart, I guess) toward what we called the throne room. The Gate of Dimensionality was all that separated us from the throne. Nicole and I burst through the doorway. Elk wasn’t quite fast enough… The doors of dimensionality began to close. Interestingly, the left side of the door closed from the top, but the right side closed from the bottom. I could hear the metal groaning as the two plates scraped against one another. Through the gap in the closing door, I saw a black ripple in the air behind Elk’s head. An Angel began to climb through it. The being was solid black, but it had a red ruby embedded in its forehead. Its fingers were like long claws.

“Elk!” I yelled. What were we going to do without a healer? The door closed. What was he going to do without someone to hold off the Angel? Nicole and I were ambushed by goombas. I started running up the surface of the door toward the ceiling. For some reason, I thought I would be able to get through an opening up there to help Elk. Naturally, I found myself face to face with the steel wall. The goombas began climbing up the wall after me at a steady marching pace. I kept trying to crawl through the wall until a goomba bumped me. I turned into a little version of Mario, indicating that I had taken damage. I realized this was all actually an application on my phone. Nicole touched one of the goombas with a finger, killing it. I sat next to her on the couch in her living room and watched in amazement. “You can kill them like that?” The screen started scrolling left as I controlled Mario with my mind. Nicole was responsible for poking the “?” blocks to release items from them. She hit a block way ahead of me, and it produced a green mushroom. I was excited when I saw it; we only had one life left, so this would give me a second chance if I made a mistake. Unfortunately, it slid into a chasm and disappeared.

“We needed that,” I sighed. I wasn’t really mad – I just didn’t know what would happen if we ran out of lives. I accidentally jumped into a koopa, and our only life was forfeit. I saw Elk shooting bursts of lightning at the Angel as it chased him down the hall. It pounced him and bit off his head. Blood sprayed everywhere. The Angel turned and stared right at me even though I wasn’t really there.

“You’re next,” it said.

Trying to Solve Umineko

I was trying to solve Umineko no Naku Koro ni’s core mystery by repeating each disaster scenario while watching a specific person – starting with Shannon, the person I suspected the most. I figured that if I repeated this a sufficient number of times, I would be able to solve the mystery. The character designs were similar to those in the Incredibles. Shannon, for example, looked like Violet Parr. I was watching Shannon standing in a stairwell as people walked up and down. I lost interest in watching all of this… A couple of days per person was a lot when I considered that I would be watching fourteen people. I figured I would just guess the culprit. I walked down a hallway to a door which prompted me for the name of the culprit. I typed “None” into a keyboard attached to the door. Bernkastel appeared when I submitted my answer and laughed at me. Turning back, I roamed the mansion until I came to a small office room. It wasn’t Kinzo’s study… I’m really not sure where I was. Windows lined the side of the room facing the hall, so I could see people standing outside. They tried to get in, but I locked the door. Suddenly, there were hundreds of people in the hallway, many of whom were trying to get into the office. They sneered at me and shouted threats that I could barely hear through the thick glass windows. I only had five minutes left until the end of the game… Since I had used my guess without eliminating any of the potential culprits, I was no better off than when I started.

Dad in Yellow

I was at my parents’ house. Austin wanted to buy a video game, so he asked for a ride to Best Buy. No one wanted to take him there because it was so late at night, but my mom insisted that someone needed to do it – and she wasn’t up to the task. My dad decided he would do it on one condition: Austin had to find one of his six yellow shirts. With one of his yellow shirts, he would gladly drive there and back. My mom was disgusted by this because she thought he looked horrible in yellow. I wasn’t sure he really owned any yellow shirts… It seemed like a sneaky way of saying no.

Andrea's Potential Feline Allergies

Nicole and I were taking care of Andrea at her house. She was having respiratory problems of some kind. While Nicole was at school, I talked to Andrea about what she wanted to do after recovering. She said she wanted to dream with us. I gave her a couple of “magic rocks” that were attracted to each other. It was obviously the result of magnetism, but I guess we didn’t know what that was. She said she had heard of the rocks, but she had never seen any in person. I gave her a white pill to take, too. Andrea’s mom came home to drop Nicole off. She went straight back to work after Nicole came inside. I noticed that our company improved Andrea’s health; she was able to walk around with both of us there. Whenever one of the cats came into the room, however, she had trouble breathing. I suggested it might be related to a cat allergy. Andrea was infuriated by the idea and refused to talk to me for the rest of the dream.

I am 30,000 Hz

I was in an abstract realm of letters and numbers. The characters swirling around me rearranged themselves to spell out a message.

“You were right.” They rearranged themselves again.

“The range is 10 Hz to 16,000 Hz.” Yet again, they reordered themselves.

“I am 30,000 Hz, so you cannot hear me.” The letters and numbers faded to darkness, leaving me alone. I saw a computer monitor. The information I obtained on the range of hearing of the human ear was recorded on a website open in my browser. There was no mention of the rest.

* * *

January 13, 2011

Adoption for Scamper

Andrea was talking to my parents about adopting Scamper since she wanted to get a dog. My parents were fine with it, but her mom didn’t like the idea.

Absence Plays a Game

I went to the mall with Nicole to buy presents for people. It was mid-April. We stopped at what looked like a fragrance store to buy something nice for my mom. It all turned out to be alcohol in fancy bottles… I didn’t realize I wasn’t old enough to buy it until I was about to approach the desk. I wondered… If I came back on my birthday, would we still have time to send it? I wondered if I could just buy it that day or if I needed to update my driver’s license first. There was a date and time printed on my license for my birthday. I thought it was the accurate time of my birth… It said 10:38, though. It didn’t occur to me that my mom wouldn’t really want bottles of alcohol. Nicole and I walked out of that store and into one that sold games. They had video games and related merchandise, roleplaying books, and board games. Nicole showed me a Bowser mask. I tried it on, and she laughed at how funny I looked. When I took it off, I saw something horrifying. I didn’t know why at the time, just that I wanted to rip my eyes out and run.

His appearance was very similar to mine… Except he was a little younger (I thought fifteen in the dream, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration), his hair was white, and his eyes were an eerie grayish-white. He held a Rubik’s cube in his hands. As he turned it over elegantly, the colored stickers matched up. He made it look effortless. Although his eyes were on the cube, I knew he wasn’t paying any attention to what his hands were doing. He was watching me in his peripheral vision. He knew I was staring. I grabbed Nicole’s hand to lead her out of the store. He predicted that, too.

“Hello,” he said in a calm voice. The sounds of most of the people in the store halted abruptly. By this point, everyone else had already disappeared. Nicole looked over. I didn’t really need to. “Wanna play chess with me?” he asked. Nicole gave me a weird look – as if he was obviously talking to me, and it was rude that I ignored him.

“I’ll play,” Nicole finally said. A small table and two chairs appeared. The chess board on top was already set up. As was our nature, he seated himself on the black side, allowing Nicole to make the first move. I barely watched their game. He did a pretty thorough job of beating Nicole. It was quite literally just a game, this match with Nicole. He was really after me. He wanted to see me play. When he snatched his victory, Nicole urged me to play against him.

“I don’t want to,” I said. My throat was drying out.

“Do it!” she said. “Just one game. Come on…”

“I would greatly appreciate it,” the boy said, folding his arms on the edge of the table. His expression didn’t change. He was always smiling.

“I really don’t feel like playing,” I argued. When they continued to stare at me, I just sighed and sat down. The table had turned itself around, putting me on the black side. I reached a finger over to the board and knocked a piece down. I thought it was the king, but it was actually the queen piece.

“That’s not the king,” he said in his usual voice. I glared at him and knocked the king over, too. I couldn’t figure out what kind of trick he had played, but I was making my surrender clear. The pieces had switched somehow the first time… “Why don’t you want to play?”

“Just one game,” Nicole repeated. “It’ll be fun.”

“I said I don’t want to…” I replied.

“Are you afraid you’ll lose?” Nicole asked me.

“Here’s what we’ll do, then…” the boy seemed to continue. It was like Nicole was only present for him to speak through. He grabbed the king and queen on my side and handed them to me. “Switch these with any of your pieces. That’ll be more fun.” Taking his suggestion, I swapped the queen with my rightmost pawn. I left the king where he was supposed to be. Putting it anywhere else would just put holes in my defense. Accepting this as verification that I would play chess with him, my opponent moved his first pawn. The game was a blur. I remember only that his offensive was brutal, but my defense was better. I trumped every attempt he made on my king. My knights took several kills. When he was down to just his king and pawns, he surrendered the game.

“You won!” Nicole exclaimed.

“Well done,” my opponent added, fiddling with a lock of hair. “Let’s play again.”

“No…” I insisted. “Nicole, we need to finish shopping.”

“Let’s play Monopoly.” I looked up. He wasn’t sitting across the table from me anymore, particularly because the table was gone. I was standing up. I saw him on my right with a Monopoly box. Nicole walked over and sat with him. I felt like vomiting.

“Do you have any idea how long that game takes?”

“It’ll be quick,” he said. “Don’t you want to?”

“No, I don’t! Monopoly takes like two hours to play. We’re busy right now.” In addition to that, I was uncomfortable because I’d forgotten some of the rules. The white-haired me took out a bunch of red models to show me the progression of properties. I looked down at his sincere smile. I felt like I was going to snap from the internal strain. For the first time in months, Absence had manifested himself.

Lol one post for you takes up like an intire page of mine.

If I had the sense to post more regularly, it wouldn't be so long. The way it stands, I feel awkward sometimes about clicking the "Post Quick Reply" button. It certainly doesn't look like a quick reply.

I'm able to remember a lot of dialogue sometimes, so that stretches out my dream entries.

..Oh, I forgot to mark my most recent lucid dream as such. I wonder how many of those I've forgotten to label in here? Oops.

January 14, 2011

Deal with the King of Snap

I was Ikari Shinji (Evangelion). Misato and I were on a journey across the universe to find Rei’s true creator. They called him the King of Snap for reasons I didn’t understand until much later. We explored deep space in a military vessel until we came to a bluish rift and were accidentally sucked in. I ended up on the shore of a beautiful tropical island. Misato was nowhere in sight. For a time, I was myself. Nicole and my mom were there, too. We went into a small room on the far end of the island and started opening Christmas presents addressed to us. Apparently, Nicole and I still had some unopened gifts. One of mine was an Evangelion game. Nicole was extremely jealous. The screenshots on the back were all of people yelling… There were piles of presents for my cousins. I understood that we were at my grandma’s house, so that meant they hadn’t visited for Christmas. I wondered if they ever would. My mom came into the room and asked us to save some presents for later, so I did. My cousin Dusty was sitting in a wicker chair in the corner. He started talking about how difficult I was to shop for. I couldn’t remember which present he had gotten me, but I was pretty sure it was the Evangelion game. I told him he did fine.

Nicole and I wandered out of the Christmas room and found ourselves in a huge grocery store. Little mermaids followed us around, giggling. My Omi appeared wearing a green apron and asked me to keep an eye out for fruits and vegetables that needed to be replaced. I told her I would do it, but I forgot about it almost at once. Nicole and I started playing hide and seek with the younger mermaids. I didn’t know where to hide at first, but I found an excellent place under a refrigerated display of peaches. A cloth dangling from the bottom of the display covered me – sort of. I looked out through the opening between the cloth and the floor. There was a mirror on the ceiling, and light started to dance in it. A moment later, mermaids appeared. I knew that if I could see them in the mirror, they could too… They were searching all over the place for me, but they moved on before long. As soon as I saw the first one – a girl with short, blond hair and big, blue eyes – I retreated into the safety of my hiding place so I wouldn’t be discovered. I only remember her because of the role she played when the mermaids returned. They had found Nicole and convinced her to help locate me. Surprisingly, Nicole wasn’t the first one to figure out my hiding place… It was that blond mermaid. She was only around fourteen or fifteen, but many of her friends were practically tadpoles compared to her. I congratulated her for finding me. Two more people slid into my hiding place right after her – Nicole and a young merchild. We climbed out and started walking toward the beach, but Omi showed up again to inspect the food. I realized I hadn’t replaced any of it yet… Fortunately, it hadn’t been very long, so I doubted any of the food had gone bad. Amazingly, several of the green grapes had “decayed” into red grapes. I found out I was supposed to throw the red ones away. I decided I would just eat them.

Omi left, and I paid the bathroom a visit. On my way out, as I was drying my hands and prepared to chuck a wad of paper towels in the trash, I saw something suspicious curled up in the trash drum in the corner. It looked quite a bit like a bloody corpse. The corpse was dark skinned and had short, black hair. The blood was heavily smeared across the left side of its face. Nomad came up next to me and was just as shocked when he spotted the same thing.

“Is that a body?” he asked me. I looked over and saw that he had long dreadlocks.

“It looks like one.” Nomad approached the trash can and hoisted the body up – by the neck, I think. It was actually just styrofoam painted to look like a bloody man. Someone had played a prank on us! The styrofoam was only faintly visible in the spots with less paint, so I would never have noticed from afar. I went back outside and found my mom on the beach. She was arguing with my grandma about some kind of inheritance. I guess my grandpa was dead and hadn’t left my dad a penny, so my mom was frustrated and decided not to attend his funeral. My grandma denied that my mom had a reasonable grounds to deliberately miss the funeral. We left my grandma there and walked across platforms made of ice to a white portal above the bay. The whole island was gradually freezing over… Something was wrong. I called Nicole’s name several times before she came to me. She was upset because she wanted to learn Japanese before we left. The mermaid kingdom reminded me of Germany somehow… I don’t know why we expected all of the mermaids to be interested in speaking Japanese. Anyway, since the island was about to enter an ice age, we couldn’t afford to stick around.

When I went through the portal, I became Ikari Shinji again. I thought my experience as Nephanim was incredibly bizarre. Misato and I continued on our course to a garden planet which had become NERV’s intergalactic headquarters. When we materialized on the planet, I was holding a red sword. I sensed that I didn’t know how to use it… I saw myself in third-person perspective and marveled at how well Shinji’s muscles had developed during his space voyage. I heard Nicole talking about it, too. He was much less pathetic than in the anime series. My perspective returned to Shinji’s body, and I marveled at the world’s beauty. The plaza in front of us had a long line of water fountains in the middle, each surrounded by little shrubs. The fountains increased in size as they approached NERV’s main base. Ruined buildings surrounded us. Because everything had been overtaken by vines and flowers, the place was pure in its natural beauty. I started crying. Misato thought I had just been touched by the scenery, but then I covered my mouth and groaned. My stomach heaved. I felt vomit spraying out of my mouth and between my fingers – slick, hot vomit – but nothing actually came out. It happened again; my muscles contracted to propel the vomit at Misato, and the vile aftertaste filled my mouth, but nothing actually came up. I removed my hand briefly to explain.

“I’m gonna be sick,” I said, trembling. By Misato’s glare, I knew she didn’t believe me.

“Fine, Shinji. Go use Mark and Eric’s bathroom.” I ran around the side of NERV’s base, vomiting nothing several times along the way. Each time, I was certain I would really vomit – convinced that my guts were about to come tumbling out. When I came to the door of the correct house, I flung it open and… I fell to one knee and slung my head forward so the vomit wouldn’t fly across the room. This was it, I thought. I felt a tiny object in my throat this time… I didn’t know what it was, but I couldn’t breathe. I clutched my throat.

Suddenly, I was in a dark room. A man made of condensed shadows walked up to me. He had glowing, green bands and runes painted all over his black flesh. Even with so little light, the outline of his form was unmistakable. He was much darker than the surrounding abyss.

“Ikari Shinji,” he addressed me, “join my cause. The one called Rei is already with us. I will offer you power.”

“Yes!” I shouted, moved by the presence of this godlike figure. I didn’t even ask what the cause in question was. The vision of darkness ended. I was a giant raven with the face of a human. I stood in front of NERV’s base with my blade sheathed at my side. When I regained my bearings, I tested my wings by flapping them. Misato came outside to tell me about a man from a world made of paint who had come to NERV in search of his daughter. When she saw that I was a raven, she was disappointed. I wouldn’t be able to help with the man’s search. She became furious… I barely listened to all of her scolding about the dangers the paint man faced for the chance to ask for my help. It wasn’t my fault, I thought. Gendo came outside with the paint man, and I saw a glowing paint sword at his hip. He seemed capable of defending himself.

The dream jumped. I was a computer in the space between spaces. Only light patterns separated my two passengers from the cold death of outer space. I saw the shadow man from earlier and his butler. The butler reminded me of Haskell (Oblivion, Sheogorath’s servant). The shadow man was actually the King of Snap, Rei’s extraterrestrial creator. He asked his butler to “load the RAM.” I found I had access to more memory… But not much more. The King of Snap started playing a jazzy beat and snapping. He danced out into the middle of the room, swaying his knees with every snap.

“Oh, yeah!” he shouted. “This is the stuff!” I felt Rei’s awareness stir within my own. She was coming to life.

New Umineko, a Sword of Truth Game, and Pursuit of Wolves

My parents bought a new house right off the highway because they felt their old one was too small. Nicole and I went to visit them in their new house, but they decided they didn’t like living in the new house, so we had to drive back to the old one. I pointed out a one way street coming off the highway. There was a stoplight with a sign indicating that it was a one way street. Nicole said she ran the red light at that intersection the previous day and ended up on a closed road. I remembered her doing it, but I wondered why the road wasn’t blocked off…

The dream jumped. I was watching a new opening for Umineko. Another game had been released that explained what Bernkastel and Lambadelta’s role truly was in the mystery. As such, the opening consisted almost entirely of scenes of them sitting together in various places. There was even a fuzzy shot of them as human girls in a field of wheat. Nicole complained that the creator was spoiling the plot of the new game with the opening animation. I don’t remember the song very well, but it was a Japanese Christmas song. The end of the animation consisted of houses flashing by, all with elaborate Christmas decorations. The opening faded out. I was playing a different game… It was similar to Oblivion, but I understood that it followed the Sword of Truth storyline. I knew that I was in the middle of the second book, Stone of Tears. I always had to keep track of where I was in the story because Nicole’s dad would ask every time he saw the game. Someone was murdered, and Richard found out his little sister was responsible. In order to prevent his sister from spending life in prison, he brought her to the police department and forced her to confess to snorting cocaine. She spent four years in prison, and they arrested Richard too for good measure. I became Richard when they entered the prison. Chelsea became my sister, naturally. I tried to explain to her that this was much better than being convicted of murder, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She kept insisting that she wasn’t doing drugs – to which the guards responded with grunts and hearty chuckles. The game skipped forward almost four years to our release from prison. My muscles had weakened, but I was a bit taller… I was really excited to be free again so I could move on with the rest of the Stone of Tears storyline. Never mind that a four year time skip would really screw with the overarching storyline that early on… I found myself in a ruined city with tons of spires scattered about. Many of them were connected by rusty metal beams. I climbed up onto one of the beams and pulled out my bow to pick off enemies in the area. The city was swarming with these spider-like monsters… They had half-human, half-spider torsos, but the rest of their body was exactly like that of a spider (except thirty or forty times its normal size). Most of them were solid green, but there were some yellow ones, too. I hadn’t realized how many of them there were. If I had stayed on the ground, I might’ve been killed… As I finished off one spider creature with a well-placed succession of arrows, I announced in the real world that the game was incredibly awesome. I was sitting at my computer chair in my room. It looked like my bedroom from Colorado (the first time we lived there). My mom heard what I said, took one look at the blood splattering out of the spider’s body, and groaned.

“Don’t say that, Josh…” she said uneasily. I think she was worried I’d become a serial killer or something.

“What is this game?” Chelsea asked, clearly just as disgusted as my mom. “Who would make a game like this?”

“It’s based off a series of books,” I explained, “so they wanted it to be faithful to the imagery of the series. It is!” They were silent in their discomfort until my dad burst in.

“Hey! Hey!” he said. When I didn’t turn, he did it again. I paused the game and whirled around in my chair. My dad was holding a small, black cauldron full of what looked like nacho cheese. “Do you want to go back to the house with us? There’s no internet there, though.”

“Sure, I’ll go.” I didn’t really believe him when he said there wouldn’t be internet… I thought I remembered having a connection to their network when we were at the house earlier. Nevertheless, I decided I wouldn’t bring my laptop. I wondered where Nicole had gone, but I didn’t see her anywhere. My mom was excited to hear that I wanted to interact with the family. She had even managed to get Austin to come.

The dream jumped. We were sitting at a low table in an oriental restaurant. As such, there were no chairs. I stuck my legs under the table and listened as my dad talked about a game we were going to play. He said it was up to the other participants to decide whether or not I found out the rules. They could play with me without explaining the rules, he said. I remembered a card game similar to that, but I couldn’t remember what it was; I was hoping I would remember the rules to that and have enough luck to end up playing it. My mom laughed.

“I guess we shouldn’t tell him about the donations involved,” she said.

“Donations? I’m poor, Mom…” I reached into my pocket, checking my wallet. It was skinnier than I remembered. “I only have a few dollars.” In truth, I had much more than that in my wallet, but I couldn’t afford to gamble it. I figured that was what she really meant by donations.

“It’s alright, you don’t have to donate anything,” my dad said. A waitress showed up and set some kind of burrito in front of me with a bowl of cheese dip. I decided to be polite and wait for everyone else’s food to arrive even though my dad warned me the food would be disgusting cold. I was worried that being polite was part of the game… I didn’t want them to change their minds and make me throw money on the table for being rude to Chelsea. She was the first to complain that her food hadn’t arrived yet – no surprises there. To pass the time, my dad pulled out a book and asked us a question about it. I had a sense that, for a minutes, we were all on a pirate ship in the Caribbean…

“What color is the bean the main character finds at the start of the story? Any guesses?” he asked.

“Piss yellow?” I suggested.

“Right,” my dad said. The others were dumbfounded. Well, I was too.

“Seriously? That was just a wild guess. I’m awesome!” The restaurant imagery returned. I got up and started walking around, mainly just for the sake of exploration. I pulled out my phone and called my mom to tell her my dad thought aliens were responsible for the recent bird and fish deaths. She laughed at the notion. I hoped she would keep a low profile so my dad wouldn’t realize we were talking about him, but she brought it up to him directly. I crept back toward the table. I could’ve ended the call before I entered my dad’s line of sight, but I wanted to trick him into thinking I was talking to someone else – that way it wouldn’t be me telling Mom about his alien theory. I mouthed random words while my mom was talking to me. A couple of guys at the table laughed, but not my dad. I mouthed bye and pretended to hang up, but I didn’t do it until a few seconds later. My mom put her phone away, too.

The dream jumped. Somehow, Nicole and I were in a forest late at night… We met up with a third person to escape town. Some kind of new law had been passed that put us in a legal gray area, and we didn’t want to risk the king’s wrath. Our rendezvous point was a swing set in a small park. We saw police approaching and decided to wait. If we started running, they would just chase us into the woods to see what we were up to. The police cars passed by, and we slipped into the woods. At some point, we became maned wolves like Lyra. The guy we met up with was replaced by Lyra during the transition. We ran through the dark forest, passing dilapidated homes with doors breaking off their hinges, shattered windows, and sagging walls. We knew we were being pursued, and the men after us were catching up. Nicole came up with a plan for a diversion. I would transform back into a human, tell our pursuers I had located a couple of wolves, and then… Well, she didn’t give me the rest of the plan. I met with the policemen following us. They were carrying flashlights, so they were clearly prepared for a thorough search of the woods. I explained things as Nicole asked me to and led them over to where Nicole was hiding. At that point, I realized this wasn’t a well thought out plan. The police were just going to catch us. We might’ve gotten away if we had been more careful. Nicole stumbled out of a wooden box she had tried to hide in. Lyra remained in the shadows, but I could see her eyes.

“Well, well, well…” one cop snickered. “What have we here?” He pulled out a gun, but one of the other cops gave him a signal to stand down.

“Don’t damage the fur,” he said. “We can sell it for profit when it dies.” Nicole and Lyra broke into a sprint directly into the woods. The cops scattered to follow them. Since they had let me out of sight, I transformed into a wolf and bounded after Nicole and Lyra. We met up on a rabbit trail snaking its way through the forest. I didn’t know if the cops would bother with the trail, but either way, they were close behind us. We tried to hide in the basement of an abandoned house near a lake, but the cops followed our tracks and found us there. I issued a brief change of plans in a whisper to Nicole and Lyra.

“They’ll take us somewhere with a bunch of dogs,” I said. “They want to skin us for our furs. We’ll change into humans once we get there and find a way to break out. Let them catch you.” We had no chance, otherwise. If they had to kill us, they would do it for the safety of the public. I purposely backed into a corner where they would be able to catch me. Then I realized what they were going to feed us in captivity… Dog food at best, but probably gruel. I gagged. I didn’t want to eat gruel. One of the three cops picked a block of wood off the ground and chucked it at me. I evaded it easily, but I wished I hadn’t. He upgraded to a spoon. I let it hit me in the side. “Please don’t…” I begged. I knew he couldn’t understand me. He pulled out a fork and threw that. Alarmed, I dodged it. I didn’t want to get stabbed by eating utensils. Of course, he moved up to a butter knife next. Then a real knife. Then three knives. One of the other cops was an expert marksman, and he could throw the blades much faster than I could dodge them. He demonstrated by nearly lopping off my leg.

“Watching ‘em cower is always so fun,” he said to his buddies. I couldn’t see what happened to Nicole and Lyra. The room was too dark. One of the flashlights illuminated the marksman and my corner, but that was it. The cop pulled out another blade and held it up.

“Please don’t…” I repeated. He flung it right where my ear would’ve been, but I moved to the left to avoid it. It singed the fur on my ear. I whimpered quietly. He pulled out another blade. This time, I tried to dodge right, but I had that blasted knife in the wall where I wanted my head to go. The knife pinned my ear to the wall. I howled, reaching a paw up toward my ear as if to remove the knife… But I knew I couldn’t – not like this. I whimpered again and again.

“What’s the ruckus all about?” the officer’s superior asked from the darkness.

“Oh, nothin’,” the marksman assured him. “It thinks I got its ear.”

“Did you?”

“No, ‘course not. Don’t wanna stain the fur with blood, do I?” When I woke up, I was clutching my ear and trembling.

Anxious Dream Journaling

I was writing a dream down in bed – but it was the bed in my room at my parents’ house in Texas. I felt like something was horribly wrong.

January 15, 2011

Pages and Pages of Potentially Nonexistent Dreams

I wrote down several pages of dreams from last night in a dream. I thought it was a little strange that I couldn’t remember any of them, but I decided not to worry about it.

Encounter with an Angry Lion

My mom decided to go to the zoo. Beforehand, she asked everyone in the car what they wanted to eat. Nicole said Chick-fil-A, and once the suggestion was out there, Chelsea was determined to have that, too. Nicole wanted melted cheese on a chicken sandwich. We told her Chick-fil-A doesn’t serve cheese, but I suggested getting a slice from home and letting the sandwich’s trapped heat melt the cheese on the chicken. When we got home, we all got out of the car. Austin was with us, too, but not my dad. Before Nicole could shut the car doors, my family told her to just block the doorway with what looked like a dog gate. It wouldn’t really keep anyone out.

The dream jumped. We were on our way to the zoo. My mom called and found out about a private parking lot. The employee she was talking to agreed to let her use it. She told me the street to turn on, and I put it into my phone. There was no such street. We drove most of the way to the zoo, but then we couldn’t figure out where to turn. Everyone got out of the car for some reason while I drove around, searching for the right street… I finally called the zoo and discovered that there wasn’t another parking lot. The guy who talked to my mom was a new employee, so he didn’t realize the mistake. I picked the others up outside a tunnel somewhere and pulled into the real parking lot. Two of the zookeepers met us outside the entrance. One was the guy my mom talked to; the other was the woman I talked to. The guy apologized and directed us toward the door he thought was an entrance to a second parking lot. I guess the others didn’t hear him… I was the only one who followed the zookeepers. We walked past a bunch of porcupines. There were hundreds of them in one exhibit. The male zookeeper said the porcupines’ lips were dry because of the heat, and many of them were dying.

We continued into a holding room for chimpanzees. At this point, I lost the zookeepers, but the others caught up with me. The monkeys examined us carefully. One tried to hug Austin, but he sent it over to me. I hugged it for a bit before I started tickling its stomach. It learned how to tickle me, too. Chelsea kept making fun of my laugh… Austin and I explored the room and found out it was connected to another one – a room with a boar and two lions. We found the boar sneaking into the chimps’ room. We turned back to get away from the boar, and I pulled a curtain in front of the door to the chimpanzees’ room so it wouldn’t follow us. When we got back to the monkeys – who were marching around the perimeter of the room for some reason – we found the lions. I didn’t see them at first… I accidentally angered the male. He growled and stepped toward me. I didn’t know what to do. It bit my left leg – gently, at first, but with increasing force. Everyone was quiet. We feared intimidating the lion. At some point, I had the impression that it didn’t really matter what the lion did… It couldn’t hurt me. I built up some courage, and when it loosened its hold on me, I sharply kicked its nose with my other foot. I woke up.

I Would Prefer Symphony

I was driving my mom’s car toward Fairfield. Nicole and Andrea were talking about what I would look like as a woman. I suggested that I would prefer to look like Symphony. I was worried my mom would get mad at me for becoming a woman, though.

* * *

January 16, 2011

Violent Pursuit of an Unimportant Individual

I was playing a strange game with undergraduates at my school. There was a zigzagged platform raised high above a pit. The objective was to push opponents into the pit by any means. Violence was encouraged. One person from each team was put onto the platform at any given time. The victor remained on the platform until he got tired (because he was usually pushed off at that point). I watched several people on our team get pushed off by the same guy on the other team. It was Karl’s turn, and the guy threw a huge boulder at him. Karl managed to catch it, but then the guy threw a smaller boulder and caused him to stumble toward the pit. The boulder was too big for him to control; he couldn’t even throw it off the edge of the platform. I ran to his aid and helped steady the boulder so he wouldn’t fall off.

“To the left!” I shouted. With our combined strength, we managed to chuck the boulder over the edge on our left side. I heard it split in two with a powerful crack when it landed. Karl was too tired to play through his round, so I took my turn next. I guess he climbed off the platform… That’s cheating, isn’t it? Oh well. The guy on the other team threw rocks at me as I approached, but I easily dodged them. When I was close enough, I just grabbed his arms and pulled him over the edge with me. I landed on my feet, but he wasn’t so lucky. The champion of the enemy team lay on his broken back in agony. I knelt beside him and started to whisper threats in his ear. I described them in extensive detail. For example, I put a finger on his forehead, traced out a small circle, and asked what it would be like if I carved a hole in his skull. I told him I was excited to try as I grinned devilishly at him. I also suggested making a hole in his throat or chest – maybe even all three. He started sweating profusely in cold terror. I just laughed and left him to suffer for hurting my friends.

I headed toward the staircase leading back up. A magic barrier made of giant slugs, worms, and maggots blocked it. I released the force of my aura, and everything began to quake. Green-white light struck the barrier, sending invisible shock waves back into the pit. The barrier warped and wobbled until a tiny rift opened in the middle. I kept going until it widened. The whole time, I could hear screaming behind me. I was rattling bones inside the bodies of the fallen. Oh well, I thought. I turned back to the guy I defeated.

“Even magic can be slain,” I said, smiling. In retrospect, I looked an awful lot like Absence.

The dream jumped. I was at a pizzeria. The guy from before was sitting in a booth, so I decided to join him. I took a seat at his table and pretended to scan the menu. He pulled out his phone, but I told him not to make any phone calls. I didn’t feel like dealing with the local law enforcement at that moment. I added a few threats to the list: plucking out his eyeballs and setting them ablaze, breaking his legs and dumping him off in the desert, and stealing his mind. He feared me more than anything. Fortunately for him, his girlfriend was meeting him there. It was a bit less fortunate for her. The girl wore thick, black eyeliner to match her long, black hair, and she arrived in a white tank top and jeans. I didn’t recognize her, but she stood out more than the guy across the table. The guy said he was going to the bathroom and would be right back. His girlfriend sat next to me with a strange, knowing smile.

“You’re in trouble now,” she thought. I realized what this meant: the guy was about to ask someone for help.

“You’re in my way,” I said sweetly. I swept two fingers forward and used them to pierce through the bridge of her nose. I reached my entire hand in the gap, arched my fingers up, and crushed her brain as she screamed. I chucked the body onto the table. Panic swept the restaurant like a fog. I calmly wiped the blood and guts off my hand with a napkin and rose to pay the bathroom a visit. When I walked in, I heard my prey’s voice at once. He was talking to the manager about me. They had agreed to meet there beforehand in the event of an emergency. I walked over and picked a urinal nearby. There was only one person between me and the guy I was following. He looked like Hideyoshi.

“Hi!” I said with a wave. The guy freaked out when he heard my name. I unzipped my pants and started urinating.

“I’ve gotta get out of here,” he said. “That guy’s in here! His name is Nephanim. Don’t let him come after me… Please!” Wailing, he bolted out of the bathroom. I noticed splashes of urine landing near me and looked over to find a father and son competing to see who could urinate in the urinals from the farthest away. I joined the competition (more to avoid their ricocheting urine than anything) and easily bested them. Aside from beating their distance, I also made less of a mess… The restaurant’s manager called everyone in the bathroom to attention.

“I believe there’s someone here named Nephanim…” he began. “I’d like to speak with you in private. Which one of you is Nephanim?” While he strolled down the length of the bathroom, I slipped out into the restaurant. He didn’t even notice me creeping away.

The dream jumped. I was walking down a street in Fairfield. Whenever a car came by, I clenched my fist and caused it to detonate.

Gran Turismo as a Measurement Tool

This dream has been omitted.

$136 Gas Receipt

I was looking through my wallet and found a recently printed receipt from the gas station closest to Nicole’s house. It said I had spent $136 on gas. I reminded myself to talk to her parents about reimbursing us for some of it since we hadn’t used that much gas.

I haven't gotten much sleep for the past two nights, so my recall still isn't improving. I hope to change that over the next few days.

January 17, 2011

Vampirism, the Wall of Honor, and Indiana

I was playing a game while waiting for Nicole to come home from school. In the game, my character had just become a vampire. I found a man standing alone behind some buildings and decided to suck his blood. Basically, I had to poison him with my fangs, suck his blood when his health was extremely low, and then heal him so he wouldn’t die from the poison. When Nicole came home, I explained all about the system. Because of the poison, I could no longer weaken enemies effectively without killing them. I told her about something similar in Everquest; high level venomancers were unable to touch enemies ten or twenty levels below theirs without killing them. She and I agreed that it was stupid.

The dream jumped. We were standing in Nicole’s cafeteria. It seems we had put up new walls during the night or something, so her principal was trying to figure out the names of everyone responsible. Nicole accidentally listed the names of all eight people involved. It didn’t seem like much of an accident. Her principal announced with glee that he would have all of our names engraved on the new “Wall of Honor.” I told him to add our names to the Wall of Shame, too. I figured it would make for a funny joke. I quickly realized it wasn’t so funny… The Wall of Shame really existed, and he was going to take my joke seriously.

The dream jumped. Nicole and I were in the garage with a bag of stuff to bring to Indiana. Nicole opened the door of a maroon car and tossed the bag in the back.

“Are we taking this car?” I asked her.

“Mhm,” she replied. We both got in even though we weren’t leaving for half an hour.

* * *

January 18, 2011

Coping with Nicole's Death

I was sitting on the deck with Nicole and her dad. We had a small, circular table set up by the front door. Her dad seemed grumpy… Fortunately, he had a few hours to read before bed, so that softened his mood. Nicole and I talked about how quickly we moved all of Mike and Melissa’s stuff into their new house. He told us we did pretty well, but he didn’t seem impressed. Nicole and I went inside the house. On the way through the kitchen, Nicole started to vomit blood in big spurts. I rushed her out to her dad, and we called 911.

The dream jumped. I was sitting alone on the edge of Nicole’s bed. I understood that she was dead. For a while, I still expected her to come to bed, but she didn’t. I checked my phone and found a message from Steven Jones, Reese’s dad. It said he was about to pull into the driveway. That was at 5 o’clock, though, and we were at the hospital several hours before Nicole’s death prompted us to return home. He was long gone. Andrea showed up at the front door to see me. Someone let her in, and I pretended to sleep so she would go away. She kept talking, anyway… She wanted me to go somewhere with her. If I went, she promised it would ease my mind. I didn’t want to go anywhere, but waiting around in Nicole’s room was starting to take its toll on me. I decided to accept her offer. She led me down the street (on foot, so I guess it wasn’t far) to a courthouse. When we entered the court room, I saw five judges sitting together. They asked for our passports. Andrea handed the judge in the center a small, black book. I didn’t understand what was going on, so I just sat down in the front row. Andrea handed me a book, too… The Holy Bible. I threw it on the ground and stormed out, realizing where I was – this was a church! I didn’t believe in the sort of god supported by mainstream religion before Nicole’s death, and I certainly wasn’t about to start.

The dream jumped. I was in a hotel room I had booked for the night. The thought of sleeping in Nicole’s house scared me (let alone in her bed). I hardly thought I could control myself elsewhere, but it would still affect my sanity less. I saw Andrea come into the room and slowly rolled onto my side, showing her my back. She walked over and asked what I was doing. I’m not sure what I said, but I completely lost my temper. I remember being surprised I hadn’t just strangled Andrea. It seemed the appropriate response at the time… She told me to come to her when I was ready to be happy again. I told her to leave.

I received another text message from Steven indicating that he was in the field behind my hotel. I left a minute after Andrea to meet up with him; I didn’t want to catch her on my way out. There was a huge hill behind the hotel which separated it from the field in question. At the top of the hill, I glanced down and saw hundreds of zombies, skeletons, and other things. Steven said he was trapped in the field with the monsters. I freed Axis from a giant, golden egg made of gelatin, and he helped me fight the undead. I was actually looking forward to talking to Steven despite my recent loss.

Duplication of Nicole's Death

I remember walking with Nicole and telling her about my recent dreams. I told her about her death in one of the most recent dreams (Coping with Nicole’s Death), and to my surprise, she explained that she had died in one of hers that night, too! She said she died in the kitchen as she vomited up blood, which basically matched the description of my dream. I had a strange feeling that this wasn’t a shared dream, though… Something felt wrong about it.

Amazing Recall

I got out of bed in my bedroom, but it was the room from my parents’ old house in Texas. I sat down at my desk and started writing in my dream journal. I had at least four dreams written down by the time the dream was over, and I wrote “Amazing recall!” at the top of the first page.

Duchess' Honor and the Bringer of Happiness

As the dream began, I was playing Tibia. My character was a female dressed in Amazonian clothing. I understood that I was the duchess of whatever town I was in. A couple of witches charged with my protection stood atop a nearby stone tower, shooting fireballs at approaching invaders. I knew that the invaders were necromancers. Some of them were more skilled at magic than others, but none of them made it past my witches’ line of defense. Near the end of the confrontation, some fifty corpses lay in the middle of the town. I started sifting through their belongings for anything of value. Since I didn’t want to check every body, I told my witches to sell anything valuable they found. I would pocket the profit, of course. My vision zoomed out of Tibia, and I was in Kurt Bauske’s German class at my old high school.

Bauske was telling us a story about the duchess I was playing before. Before continuing, he asked if anyone skilled at programming would write some code to perform a simple calculation (which he wrote on the board for a few seconds before erasing). Of course, I knew I could do it for him, and he was offering extra credit… Unfortunately, since he only left it up there for a moment, I was also aware that no one would remember the required calculation. I raised my hand to ask about it. He kept calling on people around me. Bauske took the eraser and started swiping it across the rest of the assignment.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Please don’t speak out of turn,” he replied. “That’s points off.” I protested, but he just took more points off my grade. I let my hand drop to the ground as he erased the rest of the writing on the board. I turned to the guy next to me and saw him shaking his head.

“Did you get any of that?” he asked.

“None of it. I don’t know how he expects anyone to memorize that in three seconds.” Bauske gave me a look that said I was trying his patience. I decided to shut my mouth and count my losses. He resumed the story about the duchess, but I was hardly paying any attention at this point. I had some kind of blank data table in front of me that I was supposed to be using to take notes, but I didn’t feel like writing anything. Even when he warned us that failure to take notes would negatively impact our grades, I just stared at him with my arms crossed. He told us about how the duchess went into the enemies’ camp alone and sold her body to them to protect the people. She was sexually abused in every manner imaginable, but she endured it because of her love for her city. I thought to myself that she probably had some other reason. When the duchess returned to town, she was cursed; she would turn to stone within “a period of twilight,” which Bauske defined as the time between sunrise and sunset. He asked if anyone recognized the significance of this. No one did. There was some kind of foreshadowing to the stone curse earlier in the story, he said. Having finished the story, Bauske went back to his desk.

Three girls came up to mine. One girl got down on her knees beside my desk and stared at me with longing eyes. The other two stood over me, occasionally giving me brief looks. I felt that they were trying to trick me. The girl kneeling beside me had long, blond hair and big, green eyes. She was reasonably attractive – maybe even a movie star, I thought, but I couldn’t put a name to her face.

“Josh, will you be the one to make me happy?” she asked. I didn’t even meet her gaze.

“No,” I said. I was busy filling out the rest of my data table with questionable answers. If I did most of it, I figured I would get a passing grade. I only had until the end of the class period… In other words, these girls were threatening my grade.

“Careful,” the girl told me. “We know where you live… I watched you walk in and out of your house.” So she was a stalker, too! I decided I wouldn’t speak to them any further.

January 19, 2011

Dreaming about Dream Recall

I had a dream that I was able to predict the time accurately down to the second without looking at a clock. Knowing that I was about to wake up, I reviewed my dreams. In particular, I focused on whether or not I was able to become lucid, reach Giza, or meet Zukin. I couldn’t remember anything.

High School, Attacked by Animals, and Microwave Trouble

I was sitting in Bauske’s classroom at my old high school (again). I remembered telling Andrea that I was taking a class there just for fun. I didn’t expect to get college credit or anything… I just wanted to learn. Strangely enough, the class I was in wasn’t German; I kept debating whether or not I should take German III to brush up on the language. The class ended, and I made a big deal of announcing in the hallway that I was just going to leave. It felt great knowing that I could. High school was no longer a prison to me! On my way out into the parking lot behind the school, I tried to recall how I got to school that morning… I decided I could just walk home since it was only a few miles away. I circled around the side of the building. A bunch of my family’s shoes were gathered at the front of the school… I decided I could wear any of those as long as they fit. I had to pick a pair, though, because I was only wearing socks for some reason. I knew my socks would get torn up on the way home otherwise. I selected a pair of brown boots and put them on.

The walk home was impossibly short. It only took about ten minutes. Along the way, I encountered a couple of small, white mice which kept trying to climb up my leg. I learned to kick them to keep them off me. It felt bad to punt the little rodents off the sidewalk, but I wasn’t just going to let them crawl all over me. I was concerned that they were rabid or something… Why else would they be so desperate to get on my leg? To get rid of the first one, I kicked it as hard as I could. It fell in the street several yards away. This was when the second mouse started following me. I walked faster and faster until the mouse started to fall behind. Before long, it was out of sight. I congratulated myself on my victory. At this point, I was walking through River Bend in Louisiana. I heard something like a hawk’s cry. A hawk-like shadow loomed over me… I wondered what it was doing hovering over me like that. More importantly, I wanted to know why it was so huge. I turned around and looked up to find… A pteradactyl! It was gray and slightly fuzzy, but I knew it by its shape. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was coming right at me, so I didn’t have much time to think about how strange it was to encounter a prehistoric animal. I rolled out of the way as it swooped down to capture me. Having evaded certain death, I ran the rest of the way home.

The dream jumped. I was in the kitchen at our house in Louisiana. Chelsea was there, too, and we were in the middle of a conversation. I set the microwave for five minutes and started it. Apparently, I was “heating up” the microwave so we could cook something in it. I thought it was empty, but when I heard crackling, I looked through the door and saw a metal spoon shooting out sparks. I pushed the cancel button to stop the timer, but the microwave kept going. I tried changing the time to one second and letting it finish, but that didn’t work either! Although I was afraid to, I opened the microwave. It turned off. I gingerly pulled out the hot spoon and set it on the counter. Chelsea and I went back to our conversation (whatever that was about).

Invitation to the Workout

I was in a basement which I understood to be my own. I had a lot of exercise equipment down there – weight lifting benches, elliptical bikes, all sorts of machinery. I walked around in search of my cat. I don’t own a cat. I found him sitting outside the basement window in my neighbor’s yard. I guess she didn’t have a fence on that side. Anyway, I opened the window and started calling his name – Sylvester. He replied that he didn’t want to come in. This was definitely the Sylvester from Steve Cash’s Talking Kitty video series. My neighbor came outside and knelt by Sylvester, petting him as I tried to coax him into the basement. I couldn’t see her face through the window, but she was wearing all white, and her hair was platinum blond. She had an attractive presence. The woman seemed a few years older than me. I invited her inside since Sylvester seemed to like her. Nicole and my neighbor both appeared in the basement. Nicole started setting up one of the bikes, and I went to get her a seat cushion. Our neighbor was already on it, but I told her I would get it. She asked if I wanted to come over to her house for a workout that night. I said that sounded great as long as Nicole could also come; she would benefit more from it. Nicole pulled me aside and explained that our neighbor wasn’t really inviting us to a workout session. It was meant to be an invitation to her bedroom. Nicole seemed interested in going with me, and the neighbor didn’t have any complaints, so… I told our neighbor we would be there.

The dream jumped. I was outside a store. There were a bunch of bound journals on display, and I was looking for one to replace my current dream journal. I found one identical to the current dream journal, except it was bent and tattered (unusable). I went inside the store – Hot Topic, apparently, even though it was an arts and crafts shop – and asked the girl working at the register if she had any more journals. I showed her the beaten one as an example. She started asking me all these unnecessary questions about how I planned to use it and such while she led me in a circle around the store. When I said I wanted to record my dreams in it, she got angry.

“You can’t paint in that!” she warned me. I wondered what that had to do with dreams. “Let me find you a better one.”

“Well, I don’t paint very often, so…”

“Here!” She pulled an identical black journal out of a box behind the register and handed it to me. The only difference was that the paper didn’t have any lines. I decided it was good enough. I headed back home to meet with Nicole and my neighbor for our “workout.”

Approaching the Threshold

I followed Nicole upstairs in a house I didn’t recognize. Everything about the house was clearly very old. All of the walls were wooden. We reached a bedroom on the top floor. Immediately, I felt a presence trying to keep me from entering the room. It let Nicole in, though. I warned her that the room might be haunted. She dropped onto the king-sized bed and closed her eyes.

“Are you really sleeping there?” I asked. I sensed that the bed was the source of the haunting.

“Why not?”

“Well, because of… Ghosts…” She laughed at me. My head tightened. My vision began to fade as I saw deeper and deeper into myself. My body condensed and condensed until I was nothing. I watched the darkness. I felt intense, rhythmic vibrations coursing through my body. I began to hear a whining pitch that increased in frequency as I slowly approached a new state of mind. At the time, I didn’t think about dreaming; I felt that I was about to leave my body. I felt a ghostly leg wiggle out of my condensed form. I saw a tiny, green circuit board in the distance and focused on it. I felt like the tightening of my body was going to crush my organs. My excitement caused the state to destabilize, however, and the image warped into the time machine from Reborn. I watched it spinning until the ringing stopped altogether. I was awake, and my right eye was open. The time machine was really just a white square on my pillowcase. My excitement had woken me up from the threshold between wakefulness and dreaming.

Costumes at the Grocery Store

I was shopping at a grocery store for a costume to wear at ACen. I wasn’t having much luck.

Dirty Bowls in the Commons

I was walking through the commons in search of an empty plastic bowl for my fruit. All of the bowls were stacked where they were supposed to be, but they were covered in what looked like marinara sauce. I saw a girl looking for a bowl, and we agreed that the sauce-covered dishes were disgusting. I’m sure there was more to this dream, but I forgot the rest.

Where I Found Apheri

Nicole and I were standing on the edge of a cliff at sunrise. She pointed out my sword and asked where I found Apheri. I told her I didn’t want to talk about it. My mind was flooded with images of Tegatus and Phaedra being consumed by darkness. I forced myself to smile so she wouldn’t worry.