Oerravaexinh
Ex-Lurker

There was something I needed to do, and (in the dream) I was awake at night more than once trying to do it. I was trying not to be seen, because sneaking around at night generally looks pretty weird. I was moving slowly around the edge of the house and noticed that a side gate was open, and shut it. I noticed someone else being around, who assumed I was part of their organisation (which I was, sort of) and she gave me a headset that showed me a map, with three massive continents and a triangle between them, the main lines (there were more) that determine day and night in this world, amongst other things. I do remember the continents having names and features, but I forgot them. The 'Worldkeepers' are part of the 'Policekeepers' (or was it the other way around?) and have to ensure that the system works correctly.

The movement of the day and night took place in the minimum time that travel between the continents could happen, like the speed of light being the fastest speed, and only the "Worldkeepers", like I was, had the authority to go beyond it, which happened through a sort of teleportation that followed the lines. I was planning to use this for something or other, but I wasn't familiar with the interface because I had ended up in the past or future or something from use of the lines, so they weren't familiar with me either, and I was trying to cover this fact up.

I remember a few scenes, like a long series of gates in the night, but can't place them. I think some of them weren't possible to see from my perspective inside the dream.

I wake up and look at the clock, then go back to sleep. I'm in a shopping centre and somebody I know is trying to get me going into a shop labelled 'Stargate', which sells merchandise and viewings for that show, which I've never watched, but I'm not interested because I don't think it sounds any good. At first I decide to go along anyway, although I think it is weird that they have such a niche place and it seems so successful. It occurs to me that I'm dreaming, and end up passionately lecturing someone about how they're just part of my dream, but in the end I start to think I might be awake after all and I am left feeling embarrassed. (This might have happened in a prior dream or a different scene, I can't quite place it at the moment.)

In the end I decide to go home instead (and the dream just skips from scene to scene, no need to walk anywhere) and I look at the clock in the car, but realise that every time I look at it, the time is different. At one point, it has the year on the end, 1932, and it occurs to me that it's a classic dream sign. I don't want to make another scene if I'm wrong, but with the case so strong, I end up getting out of the car to try and explore the dream world. I think about shouting for more clarity as you're supposed to do, but decide that would attract too much attention if it's not really a dream. I try spinning instead, but the only result is vertigo, and then the dream ends not too long after.

Between then and waking up, or maybe before the others, there is a fragment where I see a comedy sketch, except it was done wrong or something. When I did wake up, I notice that the time is over an hour earlier than the time I remember from when I woke up beforehand. It was probably a false awakening, and one that felt very real compared to the other dreams at that.

I woke up in the night, stayed up for a while, and tried to go back to sleep, facing the opposite way. I suddenly found myself in sleep paralysis, which I'd only ever had after waking up as opposed to going to sleep. There was a rushing or screeching sound which got persistently louder and louder. It occurred to me that you're supposed to try rolling out of your body when that happens. It didn't make anything happen, but there was this weird feeling where, even though I couldn't see or move, I could get a feeling as if I was actually moving around, like the proprioception of it. By that time the sound had stopped and I eventually broke the paralysis, and got to sleep.

Then I woke up again, left the room and wandered off, and then saw a bright laminated red card lying around, with letters on it that constantly switched but I knew to say 'WAKE UP'. I realised that I'd had a false awakening, and was surprised because it actually felt real, unlike the passive way most non-lucid dreams are. So I just woke up. I got up, tried to turn on the lights, but found that the switch didn't work, so I found a lamp and turned that on, and it did work. I realised that the lights didn't work because I was still asleep. I was worried that anything could jump out of the shadows at any moment, because it was a dream.

Either in this dream or a later one (it was a chain of false awakenings) I tried to exert some control, standing in the bathroom and trying to make a big streak of lightning in the air I think it was. It didn't work, but it did help my faith in the solidity of the dream. Unfortunately I didn't think to try spinning, passive control or just leaving the house. I was just happy that it felt real, mostly. One thing that I probably should have done but didn't occur to me was to look in the mirror. Still, when I actually did wake up I knew straight away, somehow.

There was a fragment from this night where I remember someone doing a monologue about how they preferred cows to people and a few mental impressions of villages, but not so much from it. I think the false awakenings were from disturbed sleep. Maybe having read about all the things that had happened influenced my experiences, although I didn't really believe, except in the abstract, things like shifting text or lights not working or auditory hallucinations that weren't just incoherent whispering, until I'd actually lived them.

I had been sent a few years into the past, into the body of my younger self, by unknown means. I was completely ecstatic that I'd know everything that was going to happen and determined to milk the situation to the very last drop. So I wasn't very subtle about my newfound advantage, and went around laughing, joking, and speculating a lot, feeling very free and confident.

Then I was with a bunch of people when I saw a black car, parked quite out of place, and instinctively recognised it as the car of a Japanese cosmetics tycoon. I basically thought making fun of him would be a great idea, but of course, it would have to be a proper battle of wits. A listing of rhymes and patterns of speech popped out in my head, some of them quite awful ('cake' with 'shake', what does that have to do with anything?) and then a whole poetic monologue which the people with me delivered to him. ('Dear sir, something something something.') He didn't say much back, I don't think I even saw him through the car windows.

A strange thought came into my head, 'I really like this dream'. Then, 'Oh, of course, it's a dream, not real.' It did confuse me for a bit, sort of disappointed it would end soon, but I thought about all that dream stuff you hear about and how you could do it now. The dream collapsed soon after though.

Things like this about time travel have been floating in my head a lot recently, and it's these sorts of stray thoughts that end up in my dreams a lot. I think the idea of a cosmetics tycoon is suggestion from a sketch I watched, and some of the listing rhetorical stuff in my head while talking to him probably came from a small passage in a newspaper about dancing, somehow.

When I put things in sequence the first I remember is a video or perspective about how European settlers also suffered loss and death during the colonisation of the New World. It showed rural children scrambling in a rustic graveyard and hiding. There was a scrolling through a list of things, large pot, iron fence, stone, like that, which were actually disguised children hiding from a militia. They were apparently the ancestors of the Amish or maybe it was just comparing lifestyle to them.

Next I remember wandering in some country area, and on a path was with some other people being informed about 9 people having accidents and 4 apparently gruesome ones, because they didn't understand Planck's Constant, apparently an equation for cellular dynamics or biology. There was a ditch nearby and a sewer was meant to have run through it. A plastic cap was the proof for this, as some girl explained helpfully and unsolicited, although I was wary of touching something that had been of a sewer even if it had been years since it was flowing.