Thread: Lucid Task for the Year of 2008

The Challenge
Visit all the planets of our solar system.
Find life on at least one of them.
Draw what the aliens looked like and post the pictures.

The Rules
You must visit different planets in different dreams, you can't do this all in one. Each planet has to have it's own dream. You should post your dreams in this thread, they will get added to the running checklist in the following posts.

Your drawings don't have to be masterpieces, but should get across what you saw. If you don't have a scanner or camera or feel more adept at using a digital drawing medium you can do that. Upload all images to a host imageshack is a popular one.

No one expects your dream planet to scientifically represent the real planet, however you should be able to tell which one that you are on by some means, perhaps the way you got their or by how the planet looks. (Descriptions of the planets are below).

Because most of us were alive when Pluto was considered a planet, you may substitute one of these planets for Pluto.

Additional Information
Mercury - The smallest and closest to the sun. It is dry and has no atmosphere and is covered in craters. The surface facing the sun can reach six hundred degrees and on the dark side it can plummet to a hundred below zero.

Venus - Beneath thick clouds of sulfuric acid the surface is glowing red and lead flows on it's surface like rivers. Due to massive amounts of greenhouse gases it is the hottest planet in the solar system with a surface temperature over 700 degrees.

*Don't need to visit Earth*

Mars - It's red surface has some of the most outstanding features in the solar system, featuring the longest and deepest canyon and the largest volcano. At both poles are large deposits of ice which is a mix of carbon dioxide and water.

Jupiter - The largest planet in the solar system, 1,100 times the size of earth it is well known for it's four Jovian moons, one of which (Europa) has a liquid water ocean. If you want, you can explore one of more of these moons instead. It's signature stripes along the tops of the clouds are storms many times the size of the earth.

Saturn - The second largest planet in the solar system, this one sports it's incredible rings. The rings are made of ice and dust, it has a massive moon Titan which has deep oceans of liquid methane. You may explore this moon instead if you'd like.

Uranus - A cold blue planet, is best known for being on it's side. The entire planet spins in a north-south direction, not in a side to side motion and has faint rings that are also sideways.

Neptune - The coldest planet in the solar system it is primarily an ocean of liquid and gaseous methane. It has the fiercest winds in the solar system at nearly a thousand miles an hour.

Those who have completed the task

Pheonixfire: Uranus, Find Life, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, Mercury
ray: Neptune, Find Life, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Uranus, Saturn
apachama: Mars, Find Life, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto
C911 - Mars, Neptune, Find Life, Mercury, Saturn, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter
iadr: Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Find Life, Pluto, Sun

Checklist of partially completed task

fannyaliff101: Mars
ninja9578: Mars
AlexLou: Saturn, Find Life, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, Uranus
goldentheponygirl: Venus, Jupiter, Mercury
Thornweaver: Neptune
Mr Pig: Mercury

I'm trying to figure out a fitting rewards for doing this, but I'm sure it will be a while before anyone completes this so I've got time. There are six planets to visit because there is only 6 months left in the year, the 2009 task will be longer.

I count seven.

You said that we can't visit them all in one dream, but can we visit more than one in one dream?

yea I think pluto should still be one. Its grandfathered in...

Damn, this night I got really close; I flew into space(I have never done this before and so I was amazed by the view), I howered in space for a bit in search of mars, then I thaught: I'll turn around and then I'm gona see mars. I did and no mars was there, no stars either, just blackness, I thought: "shit!"(I have never been able to sustain a dream when it's gone totally black), I woke up... But I think it's all good now because I didn't find it that hard getting into space and therefore I'm gonna do it sooner or later...

Looking at this thread reminded me: I had a dream with Eris last night. Eris is the largest of dwarf planets, and farthest from the sun. The scientists were all "Oh! For some reason, this planet is much warmer than we first thought!"

I've changed my desktop to a picture of the night sky. I always put my desktop to something I hope to dream about.

By no intention of my own I ended up on Saturn this morning after only reading about the task of the year last night and was super excited because . . . task completion!

The planet was large and yellow and somehow I knew it was cold even though I couldn't feel it (Did I even know this much about Saturn?) I saw the rings, which really only looked like one massive flat ring. The ring was also yellow. I thought that the task was to see an alien on every planet, so I figured that I'd better see an alien and they appeared. They were little, chubby, and bright yellow. They looked a lot like pikmin except without the flowers/leaves sprouting out of their heads. I noticed that they had four limbs, torsos, and heads. Just like us . . . entirely unrealistic aliens I decided. They walked upside-down, meaning that they walked on their legs but oriented upside-down. So they had to walk on structures built just above the surface of the planet so that they were walking in a little gap between the ground and the structures with their feet on the structures. They also had to keep themselves from falling with their arms. I spotted one walking where there weren't any structures and to do that it had to walk on it's hands. It looked very difficult. I watched it flailing its legs desperately for balance as it walked on its hands down a slope.

Now I decide that I can probably go off and do what I want and somehow my consciousness kinda floats off the planet, and through hazy white mist I can just make out some other planets. They're each a bright color subdued by the mist. But then I wonder if I'm supposed to spend time with the alien for the task. I can't remember but I decide that I'd better 'cuz if I leave something out I'll have to do the whole thing again.

I'm instantly back on Saturn. The alien that I saw struggling to walk wants to spend time with me. It gets in a car and I feel invited to join it for a drive. It's just a regular car, and an old one at that: it's large and rectangular like cars were 40 years ago. The little alien drives. We find our way to little streets between buildings, but there are no other cars or aliens. I decide that I ought to entertain the alien by making the car fly. I wonder if this will be difficult, but pretty soon I have the car hovering above the ground. I do this a few times, bringing it back to the ground each time. Somehow I float out of the car and into the outer atmosphere. I can see the other planets clearly now. They are each a bright color in a sea of stars and mist. It's really gorgeous and I look out at it in admiration. I fly around a bit. It seems that it will be no trouble to visit all the other planets and I reflect that this task may be too easy for me. But for some reason the mist and everything ends abruptly on all four sides like in a video game level with invisible walls.

Nice one AlexLou! You're the first not to go to Mars first.

Now this seems fun!

Originally Posted by ninja9578

The Rules
You must visit different planets in different dreams, you can't do this all in one. Each planet has to have it's own dream. You should post your dreams in this thread, they will get added to the running checklist in the following posts. Visiting a planet means that you landed on it. (I know the four last planets aren't solid, improvise).

Not that I mind if you count it

Mercury:

i was cold when i fell asleep so i though about going to the sun but i wasn't sure it would count as a planet so i settled for mercury.i jumped from my roof and sprouted wings.then swooped up into the sky and went straight towards the sun. i slowed as i watched the flares shoot off its roiling surface and turned towards mercury's orange surface. i flew into a dusty haze that circled the planet and had to slow so i didn't slam into it's surface hidden by the cloud.
i had the sense of it being very hot but didn't feel it much as i had made myself resistant to heat.there wasn't much to see as the planet was a barren orange wasteland with not even a hill in sight. i left soon being bored.

*Don't need to visit Earth*

You make it sound as though there is nothing interesting about it, yet some of the "life" found on Earth has managed to use it's intelligence to explore the rest of the galaxy while it's unconcious. And that's the reality I think that's pretty damn amazing.

A cool addition to the task could be- once you have found life on one of the planets, you then have to have another lucid in which you are a character of the lifeform making a trip to Earth to describe what it's like. Like.. say you find life on neptune, as an ice-man, you have to fly your ice-shuttle to Earth and get off and understand what life is like over here.

Sounds awesome... I think I'm going to try and have a lucid like that at some point

jim.

Kind of made it to Mercury last night.

I ran into an old friend JP and went lucid just after seeing him. So I decided to take him up with me to fly about. We both flew so fast, it was amazing. I have never made it so high so fast before. I could see the curvature of the Earth.

This was remarkable, and it reminded me of the challenge and my goal of making it to Mercury. So I flew up. higher and higher. I couldn't break the atmosphere, but I entered a tunnel to Mercury.

The planet was high up. A small section of its surface had been teleported to me. Just slightly too far for me to reach by levitation. So I balanced on JP and reached out, I touched its cratered surface. It felt metallic, looked dark.

The moment I had put my palm to the ground, I lost lucidity. and the ability to fly. JP was on the edge of an epileptic fit and tried to get me to let go of him and fall to my death. Very JP response to a problem.

I hung onto him and told him to concentrate on levitating us as much as possible while I grabbed onto the side of the portal and used it to slow our fall. This lead to neither of us dying, rather than the death of both of us.

Does this count as making it to Mercury?

Sure does! Metallic Mercury sounds really cool.

It was kind of a disappointment, to tell the truth. Compared to Mars. Awesome that its counted though. My next goal is Venus, which I'm excited about.

Venus should be fun, I can't wait to go there

I made up my mind before I went to sleep last night that I would visit Uranus. As I closed my eyes and prepared for the trip I thought of what I would bring on a trip to Uranus and off I went. I wore a gossamer gown shaded in silver and purples and allowed my hair to flow free. I changed my hair from it naturally curly form to a silken flowing mass. I took a giant leap, right foot first and began to glide, weightless through the air. I cleared the Earths atmosphere quickly and wandered through the stars and planets, gathers stardust in my hands as I went. It was beautiful. The midnight blue/black backdrop with the colors of silver, red, green, blue, and violet swirling and glittering around me as I traveled. Gliding through time and space. It was glorious.
I saw my goal ahead of me and began my decent. I touched down on the planet. It was like landing on top of what I would think of as water. It rippled as I walked along the surface of the planet. The color was a icy blue, like frozen water, but it wasn't. It was like liquid mercury rolling and fluid under my feet.
The inhabitants were so strangely ethereal. Their faces were pale and cold looking with flowing hair. They all had the same general features. I couldn't tell them apart, as they all looked the same.There was no male/female gender. Breeding was accomplished by just wishing for a child. The only thing different about them were the color of their eyes. The eye color was pure color, not like ours with it's mixes. But they all had a silver cast to them. They were all pale in comparison to vivid colors, but they were blue, green, purple and Red. The red eyes signified the inhabitants that had traveled to other planets (including Earth) looking for "intelligent" life, having found none as of yet. One of the "people" wanted to travel back with me, because my visit had increased their curiosity of us. I agreed to bring Shamia back with me, but it had to agree to abide by the rules of my home and planet or I would not be it's guide.
Food was abundant, and eclectic. All you had to do was think of what you would like to eat and it appeared to you. It wasn't the food of Earth, but it was amazing all the same, and it often emulated what I thought of as food.
Not long after the food was served and consumed we began our trip back to Earth. I showed Shamia around the house explained the rules as we went along, and we went to bed to sleep.

do the sun/moon count?

Originally Posted by AlexLou

Not that I mind if you count it

I'll take that part out, I think orbiting the planet should be fine.

Originally Posted by ray

do the sun/moon count?

The moons do, not the sun

Wow, Pheonix, Uranus and it's lifeforms sound so cool.

Yay! I went to Mars last night and it was really cool. Does meeting natives count if their distant ancestors were Earthlings?

Anyway, here's a direct quote from the relevent bit of my dream journal.

Uranus as Phoenix puts it sounds cool. I'm trying to decide where to go next. It'll probably be Mercury I think I'll do baby steps towards the less Earth-like planets.

I assemble my friends around a table. A, LC, JP and Rooster. God, its so nice to see them all together relaxed and having a good time. I tell them that I'm dreaming and that I plan to go to Mars. I ask if any of them would like to come along. They say they're okay with small town America for now. I respect that.

So I have to figure out a way to Mars. I try drawing the invoking Mars Hexagram in the air, but I can't remember how that one goes. In the end I decide to walk out onto the street and pretend I'm on Mars.

After a while, I hear this loud wind over-head. Damn. I think It didn't work. There's not this much wind on Mars. Then I realise whats happening. I've teleported the city to Mars. The high air pressure of the city is being blown out because it landed in an area of typical low pressure Martian atmosphere.

I see red sky breaking through the clouds. And I'm so excited I bound towards the city limits. There's traditional Martian sand and pebbles. There's also puddles. Which confuses me.

Unfortunately, the low gravity cuts in right at that minute. I find it really slow to walk. Easier to fly. Even then, I'm used to flying on Earth gravity. I tend to veer upwards until I adjust to it.

I reach down and touch the puddles because they confuse me. Then I notice a traditional Martian van, and car repair shop. Ah! So I'm in the future and Mars is partially terraformed. I see a mountain in the distance and think about how I'm love to see a Martian mountain and canyon. So I fly towards it.

After a while, I'm flying over foot hills, and I come to a little village in a valley. The grass here is green and sat on a precipice I see a young girl with her parents, the girl is stuffing food into her mouth with a bread knife.

I think about intervening. I don't want the poor girl accidentally cutting herself. But then I remember - these are Martian hill-people. Descendents from the first colonists. This kids been using knives competently for just about as long as she's been able to walk.

Another interesting fact about Martian hill-people. They believe in demons. In fact, they teach their children how to use several banishing rituals as soon as they can talk.

As I'm flying over, I stop and say "Hey kid! I'm an evil spirit! Show me a banishing ritual!" We both know this is just a game. I'm not very threatening looking in my ill fitting brightly coloured suit. She tosses the table over and shouts a line from a nursery rhyme. I am flung right out of the valley, laughing as I hit into the side of the mountain I was flying towards and wake up.

Last night I visited Mars. That trip wore me out and I feel as if I need to sleep now. I stood on my front lawn and gazed into the sky and found Mars. I bent my knees and just shot up into the sky, defying Earths gravity as I went. I reached a point just before I broke through our atmosphere where I couldn't breath. But I wanted to stay there for a couple of moments looking through the blackness to see our planet, with the fires and smoke in California, and the lights and smog from New York and New Jersey. It was beautiful even with all that. I finally turned, gasping for breath and continued my journey.
I skimmed over a meteor shower, really not a pretty as it is seeing on from Earth. It was all black rock and Icy chunks speeding along. It made me mad so I kicked one and watched it collide with the others, going up in flames as if they were composed of magnesium.
I finally landed on Mars. I was bigger than I should have been. I know this because I looked for the face that they see from Earth and found it. I sat next to it and it was all dusty and covered up with rocks and debris.
I dusted it off as I sat there with a paint brush that I pulled from my pocket. There was a message written on the side of the face that told me how to find the people that had lived there before and had left because they had destroyed their own planet, much like we are doing to ours.
I brushed aside the dirt and dust and saw the actual portrait of the people that lived there. It was beautiful. We only see the tip of the iceberg as they say, when we see "The Face" of Mars. I was also able to trigger a hologram that showed me what life was like there. I pulled a notebook from my pocket and wrote down the directions on how to find the people that had left so I could go and find them at another time. I put it away in my travel coat so I could access it the next time I needed an adventure.
I ate a sandwich that I pulled from my pocket and watched the planets go by before I reluctantly left to come back home. Landing in the same place that I left from I pulled a shower curtain around me from thin air, (I always love that) and showered all the dust from me before going into the house to sleep.

Man, Pheonix, you're going through these pretty easily That meteor field sounds so much fun. I seriously need to break this stupid dry spell and go back into space.