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Astral Supertramp

BOB Token

I'm after a magic token buried in the lake. It is called a "BOB token" (maybe after Twin Peaks?)
It grants the user unlimited power.
I work at some pizza joint kind of place, and the founders were the last folks to use it years and years ago. They made their business, then buried it in a warded section of the lake in town.
I go at dark. It's easy enough to find. But I have to perform some kind of ritual to unlock it. Don't remember the specifics, but I'm busy underwater for a while..
Too long. Birdie, my wife's IWL coworker, swims toward me, trying to get it as well. Fuck.
I grab it and swim away. My wife is waiting for me and I tell her to SWIM, SWIM! THAT WAY! Not our planned route, just the most direct, easy way away down the river.
It is Easter tomorrow, and this town celebrates by sending Norwegian flags down the river on little boats. They're all over the water and we crash into them. I'm on my wife's back as she propels us through them and I hope they don’t hurt her.
We get to the shore. Birdie is not far behind us.
Then I realize.
My wife is against me. She's with Birdie. Fuck. They both want the token.
I pretend to not know and we go into a convenience store through a hole in the side of the building, thinking we're hiding from Birdie.
She comes in, then I run.
I have the token. I don't care. I'm invincible now.
I have no shoes. It is winter, and night out. I run through town. Some town, not real, but in the dream it is where we live. The streets are old cobblestone, full of mud and shit and snow and I get it all over my feet but I keep running.
Eventually I find our dog, Goose, and grab him and bring him with me. They're the enemy now and we are going to get out of this together.
I run through town with Goose and eventually stop to breathe. I've lost them. I have the token.
I'm outside a building. Record store / radio tower. We need a place to be, maybe they..? I look at the window and yes: apartment for rent. But it's scribbled out, already taken. But…
I become lucid, knowing suddenly that I can just decide to make it free if I act right.
We go in. The folks in the record store eye the dog, and my dirty feet, but whatever. I go up to the counter. One side is record store, one side is the radio tower dude. Their vibes are so different: nerdy vs punk. A customer in front of me finishes and I inquire about the apartment.
They say yeah, it's empty, the last person just left all their shit in there so you're free to use it for now, no charge if you want to help empty it.
Fuck yeah. They give me some keys. But where's the door? I wander the store, eventually find a stairwell near the entrance.
I go up… (The dog has disappeared from the dream now, lol)
It is very sketchy. Super low, unfinished ceiling. Attic vibes. Terribly ugly carpet. A set of washer and dryers are stashed in a corner. A super old jukebox. I marvel at the detail for a sec like I always do in dreams… my brain inventing this shit. Neat.
I find another small stairwell and then the apartment. It is a single room, no kitchen, no bathroom, insulation walls, no windows, yellow carpet, scary, ugly.
No thanks. I wander around instead, get lost in a maze of similar rooms. Kind of scary. Eventually find the way back down.
Outside, Taylor Swift is giving an interview.
I wake up.


Glitch World

I'm in a place similar to the last dream.
Cartoonish maze-like, video game-like world. Circular looping roads rise up through the sky, land on brightly colored platforms, repeat around. Many folks are doing this, like it is a museum piece. Not amusement park vibe, though.
I'm on one of the cars. It hits a huge white cartoon building and falls from the tracks, down into cartoon cloud sky abyss… my dream fear. Abyss, falling.
Oh. But I'm dreaming! It's ok. I'm still afraid but talk myself into confidence and just hover, then fly up to the buildings again.
Flying! Yes! My goals. The comp. Let's do it. I can remember my 3 step goals.
1. Flying. Got it.
2. Eat dream food. Ok!
I land on top of the structures, which on the very top are covered in sparse vegetation. From this height, I can see they all go on for infinity in this massive white space. I look at the little flowers growing… that doesn't look edible, lol. Small purple lavender-like buds, dandelions. Umm. Hm.
Oh! I'll try to manifest something. I put my hands behind my back and think "APPLE!" and.. Nothing. I do it again, nothing. Ok. I'll just eat these weird flowers.
I keep walking and find something that looks like a huge radish pushing out of the ground. Perfect. I pull it out and it is actually an apple growing out of the ground. Funny how dream intentions work.
I take a bite… Ew. It is mushy, like a super soft apple but no sweetness. Well, at least the task is done.
I keep walking, looking at the flowers and enjoying the weird cartoon dreamscape. Then on one of the building tops I see an ancient machine, kind of like a retro car but covered in neon green spaceship lights. Super derelict and run down. Cool! I begin to fly over, but then I remember my other goal, and my current personal goal.
3. Teleport!
I don't really know what to try now. I failed just trying with what makes sense to me, kind of imagine-running-starting toward it, close my eyes.. Some force of will… But I do that again. I almost feel something push, but I open my eyes and haven't moved. Damn. My other idea is to summon an item, a staff maybe, or find something to help me.. But I really feel pulled to keep trying the blink/push move. And fail again.

WBTB, back to sleep...

I enter a dream. I'm at a library, in a city, maybe Seattle? There's guards who pat me down, but then let some others in. Why? Oh, they're regulars.
I go in. I'm walking the shelves when I remember books! Books is a dream sign - yes! Is this a faint visualization? No, it's a dream!
I look to the shelves, so excited, and pull a big book out. Large format. It's a symbology book, all the symbols from some ancient culture. Fuck yeah. Each symbol is created using two or three stick-like figures, but someone has gone in and used pencil to make them all doing obscene things like smoking and fucking. OK then. I put it back; the shelf was ILLs.
I'll go upstairs to the fiction section. I have an idea that this library is an amalgam of two that I know IWL, maybe Seattle and somewhere else, but this is a false dream memory really.
The place is super busy. Lots of folks, and seems like a class of kids as well. I look around, trying to find exactly what I want. Cool short stories. But where's the fiction? So much garbage, non fiction, Christan-themed children's books (though the cover was so cool in memory…) I'm low lucid, because I would be delving into any of this had I my full memory. Oh, well.
I find a tiny shelf of some fiction on an end cap. One of the books is an old mystery writer short story collection, but a massive gilded cicada has bored a hole in each book. I yell "Staff? Any staff?!" and someone comes over with a black knit cap on. (Again, low level lucid, or I'd have loved to speak to any of the many DCs here..) I tell him about the books. He seems like he's seen this before and thanks me.
Something about Chase being here.

I'm with my (dream)friend, a girl, kind of sporty wearing a flannel, at UMF but its not UMF. We're here for tryouts for this... game/thing/college/class.
Its being held down in the Roberts parkinglot, which is busier, with a building in the center. I pass Michelle Darling, hello.
There's a group of ppl who made it and those trickling out who didn't. The test is like, throwing these darts or catching them or something sporty.
She fails. But on her way out she catches one, but it doesn't count. I don't know if it counts or not.
I don't know how I pass, but I do. Eventually all the winners are left and are being guided away toward wherever we're going.
I look for her frantically, I don't want to be alone, but I know she's out.
In the crowd of people I see Rebecca! I have a dream memory of knowing she wanted to go back to school. I get in with her group and say hey.
We're stragglers. There's this big fat happy boy. I say something about my friend (another person, a winner) wants to go to this college thing to dismantle religion.
Everyone laughs.
Eventually we go to where we're going to be for the next like, 6 months.
Its a crystal cavern-turned-school. The cavern is the school. The crystals are super powerful. (This is some Hollow Knight bullshit).
The cavern is kind of 2D and there's a 'flat' back to it, even though it LOOKS like it goes deep. I wonder if we'll unlock it.
We go "right" into a huge chamber and are told some stuff, don't know. Its an important room.
We're herded into a crystal-cavern cafeteria-esque small room to the "left" of the flat center room and sit at tables. Its like everyone had been here before but I'm one of the new kids, even though we're all new: I'm like an hour late to the game or something. I ask the fat boy if I can sit next to him.
"OOO, your body!" referring to all my current bruises and scars. "Yeah I got too drunk camping." "This is my first time being drunk!"
I realize this is why they brought us here: a woman hands out a menu with only drinks. Mostly wine. He orders more wine. Chelsea is behind me and orders Coffee Brandy, but she calls it WBTB (lol). I have that flash-urge of "fuck sobriety" but I consider getting a coffee. Its like 2.98, the cheapest coffee and cream option. Tons of crazy chai coffee stuff, but all very expensive.
My vision flashes outside of myself and I see this crazy cackling headmistress kind of deal, and like a cinema/movie, I know she's got secret/subversive plans based on the "shot" of the scene. She's behind the flat part of the center room and zoom-slips through the crystalline hole. She lands on the outside of the cavern to the "right" -- we didn't know there was a behind. She punches the crystal and it super-charges something. This is "bad" ... she's not telling anyone she's doing this, she has some evil plan here.
My vision flashes again to a group of girls being shown the cavern for the first time. You can see the flash on the edges/seams of the room.
"WOAH," they say. Their faces are like half-drawn anime, I can see those vertical+horizontal face lines artist do, and I toggle the horizontal on and off with some dream-watcher power (not the me of the dream, the me of me/myself dreaming) and I realize they look half-drawn because the flash is so bright.
Then it subsides and I see their normal faces.
Flash back to me going back into the cafeteria room with everyone. The wine is being served.
"I think I forgot to order somehow" I say and the waitress/teacher (there's only like, 2 teachers here, she's one of them) sighs and says they can put in a last minute order for a price. Well, I guess, sure.
I ask her if she lives here year round, half knowing she must not, but just curious.
"Oh, no. This place is inaccesssible half of the year."

Some kind of time skip, and I'm on "leave" from the school, like a vacation or something.
I'm in Walmart in the back room. I came here very much on a mission. My job is like an assassination. I track people down with my team and tell them to go to jail or we'll kill them. We hunt out people who get away with bullshit.
I'm walking and I don't know who my target is until I do (the first person I see: I can feel the dream being made up as I go along).
Its Torrey. I feel bad, some part of me who knows it was random. But he sees us, my team and I, and knows what's coming.
I threaten him. I don't remember the exact words but I make the offer, tell him we know what happened.
"We have a graveyard for you all set up. Westskull or Eastskull cemetary, your choice. But I'd rather you atone. YOU MUST ATONE FOR YOUR SINS AND GO TO JAIL."
He's getting really nervous but refusing. He doesn't want either. He tries me: "How do you know, you have the paper?" "Yes, I do" "So you were in the cop car when it happened? I doubt it" and true doubt flashes on his face, but I know what my job is and I know I'm right, so I press onward. YOU MUST ATONE!!!
A roll-up door rolls up and a truck is parked out there. I have to get away from the situation, and I know my dream makes it up that I can dive under the truck like its my get-away vehicle, so it is (That dream faculty!). I do, and I'm nervous it won't work, that I'm making it up and he's going to get me, but the car rolls away and I'm unharmed as I'm dragged out of the building underneath it. In the parking lot I hop up into the cab.
I see my buddy, the driver, and know I'm safe. He has a super-long lens camera. I take it so he can drive.
We getaway. I fuck with the camera, but it won't stop zooming/adjusting. I go to turn the zoom off, but the body is super-blank.
"Simple camera," I say. "Yeah, it's probably not good." I finally take some shots. They look good. "Nah, it's great."

i am in skyrim.
i am in skyrim! this is cool. i don't know its cool because i'm just living my life
as a character, probably, but i am myself otherwise.

i jump, rock climb, trying to get to "markarth", a place in the game i've been to,
but in this dream i have not, and its entirely different than the game (of course, its a dream)
i jump from a ledge into the water.

beneath the water's surface, the ledge is carved out with a big mechanical heart.
old, old, very cool, very intricate. i'm close.

i jump onto the bridge in this water pool. this is the way to markarth.
i make my way, and find the city alive with people.
tons and tons of folk, dressed in every day clothes, but otherwise the time period/alternate world is accurate.

i'm with heather now. we explore.
she tells me adam and sarina are coming. huh well um okay yes sure.
outside a window, in some other part of the reality dream scape, i see them walking toward us.
except they are children. they are 5 years old. adam is a boy even though he's young.

this is a joke, and i am not happy about it.
i whine whine cry child cry cry. i'm upset. heather, why?
okay they walk in- look normal. act normal.

we explore the city together. find a door marked "nintendo blue gamecube only" huh
some kind of connection cord is necessary to do something strange...i don't know.
didn't know the details in the dream + didn't care to find out. adam comments on it.

we go into a library/thrift store combo. i escape to the children's section
i am alone,
i am happy.
but i want heather with me.

at high school
i was signed up for psyche/history(same subject here)
christian shows me where to go0
"you know my dad"
"no?"
"the clown-"
"yes everyone knows him"
"hes the teacher, my dads the teacher
he's an easy teacher, he doesn't make you do anything"

in the classroom, a collage i did (not in waking life) is taped to the whiteboard.
it is a canyon with a white square with a title on it taped onto the canyon.
i think of how badly they put it together, (as if it came in pieces)
i did not know how they got it though.

he says take your seat. i go to one
well, its the wrong one so i move all my stuff to the only other seat
between emma and rae (its current time though, not past)
it is awkward. adam is sitting in front of me.

emma talking to person in front of her (female): 25 dollars for a mullet is outrageous
me: its only 15 in waterville. (i say this very hesitantly. i only want to respond, not to form any kind of relationship or further conversation.)
her: still a rip off.
i agree.

adam is taking a ring out of an elaborate box.
its for trans prom.
rae: adam, no one even likes you.