• I am at my summer workplace, Agilent, except the building is right on the coastline, with an open picnic area looking out on the ocean. It's a Saturday, so there are not many people around and I'm indoors. I become lucid and decide that I want to go out back and fly out over the sea. I'm rude to some co-workers as I leave my cubical but think nothing of it since they are dream characters.

• I am a mid-twenties female who looks a lot like Winona Ryder. I'm outside the Agilent building and it's a foggy day so I've worn dark blue denim jeans and a matching jacket. I'm supposed to meet Dan in back since this is a lucid dream of mine and we're going to fly out over the ocean. Walking around the side of the complex, I make my way to the picnic area.

• I reach the exit and look out through the panoramic windows to the gray foggy sky and ocean. I walk out the door to meet my friend. I'm just now realizing that our consciousness is shared equally between us and I am experiencing the dream reality through both of our sensoriums in parallel. This could be something fun to play with.

• I get to the back and walk towards the edge of the rocky slope. It's a very peculiar sensation having two minds at once. On a whim, I decide to end one of them to recall what it's like to experience only one mind.

• Since I feel more at home in my male body I decide to throw my female body into the sea. (This is all in the morally-free spirit of a lucid dream). We smile at each other as I pick her up and lift her above my head.

• Just then an ogre-like being grabs my male body and shrinks it to the size of a basketball with sheer strength, then discards the body on the rocks. I stand up and the ogre tosses a grape-sized object to me: my male brain, squishy and brown. I laugh and throw it into the water. What a queer dream, I think.

Cold Prickly / Warm Fuzzy

• I was back home. Driving down Keller mountain, we realize that we forgot something. I volunteer to get out of the car, and walk part of the way while my dad goes back for it, whatever it was. I have my dog with me. I'm carrying my dog down the road, and he never shows back up. I eventually make it into my old neighborhood, where I used to live, and see an old friend's mom. My dad is back, and tells me that two of the Hawaiian islands might slip into the sea. This doesn't deter my efforts to go to church, and somehow I make it there alone, 45 minutes late, with my dog. Suddenly, I'm in Wisconsin, and I see my mom and my stepfather. They tell me that my dog is in the white car over near the end of the parking lot, so I drive over to get him. We hear a report on the news that the Hawaiian islands are safe, it was just a false alarm.

This quickly bores me, and I move on to better things. Now I'm in the Tattered Cover of Denver, CO, and kanon42 and I are wandering around with a dog of some sort, looking for a particular old bound set of fairy tales that contains the Sugar Plum Tree. We leave and drive to and wander around Boulder for some time.

There's a whole bunch of palm fronds kinda floating around on a lake, which I go swimming in.

Woah.

I am in a maisonette apartment. There are three or more small floors connected with steep staircases. The place is dimly lit ... mainly uplighting, with some areas not lit at all. On the lower floor there are swimming pools and (I think) a hot-tub. On the main level (first floor) there is a lounge with futon-like sofas built into the walls (diner cubicle style) and opposite the narrow entrance corridor there is a dark dining room (there may be more rooms, but they are out of sight). There is a steep staircase to a better-lit upper room. Most of the action takes place at the junction between the dining, living and lobby areas.

We find out that this is John Carmack's apartment. Carmack (heard, but unseen) and John Romero are here. They are demonstrating something to me. Carmack is running the demo and Romero is interjecting with quips and encouragement. (I don't realise quite what's going on at first). When Carmack says a certain phrase, a set of menus and UI objects unfold in my field of vision (they're totally flat, as though superimposed on a screen). A quarter-circle of bright chrome appears (presumably where John has "clicked") and a bar extends from that like a dock in Enlightenment. A window body drops down from this bar like a window blind. The window dressing is all brightly coloured (aluminum?) chrome, and the text and panels are mint green and olive respectively. Text is coffee brown rather than black. Each time Carmack instigates this routine, a whole bunch of floating windows and tools appears simultaneously. Some are menus of items, others are filled with dials and radiobuttons, and still others contain chinese pictograms (called when Carmack quotes a chinese proverb ... much to Romero's amusement) , soundwaves, and pallettes of all kinds of things. At a stroke, they all disappear again. The most impressive thing about this animate, photorealistic display is that everything sprouts from the point where the cursor is pressed, at branching right-angles. After a few times of doing this (to illustrate different points in his speech), Carmack shows the piece de resistance : a cross-shaped super-menu entitled HyperTexture (I note that there are several real-life programs bearing this name, but I'd never seen them). If you've ever used Fractal Design Painter, you'll know about the "tubes" of paint that allow you to stamp leaves, coins, jigsaw pieces, etc. on the canvas complete with drop shadows and alpha. This looked like an extension of that. Each "menu" was a rack of slightly-different leaves, branches, pine-cones, twigs, pieces of bark. As they are overlapping so profusely, sub-headings mark out different types of object (I recall something like Deciduous 1-20, Deciduous 21-40 ... on some of the flora). I have written on my notepad "bird footprints and feathers" although I think these were in a more traditional menu (like Photoshop's). Carmack moves this awesome construct slightly out of the field of vision, and shows that the whole background is being used as a flat canvas (in the middle of drawing a rotting, ivy-strewn stone wall).

He then closes all this, and I go to leave. I take a wrong turn and end up in the upstairs room that John had told us not to go in. There is a neon blue glowing cabinet (like a shower cubicle) in one corner. On a dresser to my right there is an incredibly furry mohair sweater/towel. I go back out and wonder why we weren't supposed to go in there. As I am trying to leave later, I end up in one of the swimming pools, believing it would be quicker to cut across it than negotiate the path. I find that the water is sluggish and difficult to swim in. I take in a huge swallow of water, but surface again and climb out. My Dad is here now (I think my family or some other people have been waiting in the leisure area of this floor). He asks me if I found the water difficult to swim in. I say yeah. He seems to be as puzzled about this as I am.

The thing that was most impressive about this dream was the UI design. It was incredible. I can still remember it quite clearly. There were no specific applications running, just dozens of control windows placed (I presume manually) to cover any task. No desktop. No files. Oh, and the mint green writing that was used to label components was remarkably similar to the heading text on Everything 1.

I had another dream when I drifted off again, about me and a friend visiting Boy George's house, where he'd set up a LAN. His dog (a chihuahua type thing) was angry. We had to let it look at dog porn on one of the computers. I remember we were all "prepared" for the dog to do this, and when it clicked on a link, we all turned away quickly with our eyes shut. I mention this dream merely out of completeness, it seems to be a programme filler for the other dream, which was the main feature.

The Dog of Higher Evolution!

The canine in question was your average beagle. The first panel depicted the animal walking down the street pondering its enormous intellect. However, since the dog cannot yet speak it is impossible for him to share his lofty thoughts and dreams with mankind. His intelligence had long ago surpassed that of most men so this was the final step needed to claim his rightful spot as our superior. But how to accomplish such a feat? Suddenly, the answer presents itself. In order for the dog of higher evolution to proceed in his development he must kill and dine on the brains of unsuspecting humans. Upon arrival at home, the dog approaches his owner- a young girl in a little skirt with pigtails. He sends subliminal messages to her suggesting that he is in need of a bath. The girl complies and begins to fill a tub with water. As she bends over to dump the water the dog leaps triumphantly into the air and locks his jaws onto her head...

The end.

I was with a friend, and, coincidentally, a fellow noder, and we were at a music festival. The bands there were in more of a Woodstock vein, and the setting was more like a folk festival. I started crossing over a hill same wonderful music came into my ears, it was Cake, and I think the song was Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle, but I'm not sure of that. As I crossed over the crest of the hill Cake came into sight, which is odd, because I have no idea what Cake looks like. The only person I can remember at this point is the lead singer, who was quite tall, and had black hair. There was also this one guy in the audience with a mike, and after the song he started asking the audience members questions, at which point the singer would respond in song form.

After a short while someone asked a question and there was a reaction in the crowd that indicated that the question was a common thing, and people were growing old with it. The guy with the mike then decided to spice things up and surprise people, so he says to the singer, "Cut my life into pieces." The singer follows suit, and we've been quite abruptly jumped into a rendition of Papa Roach's single, Last Resort. Sounded surprisingly similar to the original version. I walked away, in a small bit of shock from the turn of events. The next stage I get to is spooky, in that is has Papa Roach on it, continuing the song from exactly where we left off. I can't remember if I backed up, or ran away, but I left the area in a hurray...

... and I'm suddenly in a store, and Eclectic Scion is there, having abandoned me sometime before I got to see Cake. On the radio in the store a song is playing. Can you guess what song? Good for you! I sigh about it and relate the tale to Eclectic, who acts quite uninterested. I then look for a drink in the store, the drinks are for one, not in a cooler, and secondly, they were alcoholic. After I noticed that fact I stopped looking for Coke, and immediately found a 40 of Peach Schnapps. It was 22.5% alcoholic, I remember this because I remember seeing something on the bottle which made me think it was 40%. It made me happy, when you're at my mass you've got to buy alcohol for percentage, not taste. Then I looked closer, oh well.

That was basically the end of my dream, except for one part with the singer from Cake in a radio booth singing. The moral of this dream is obvious... If you sleep by your computer, turn off your mp3's before you go to bed! Now if you're all nice, I might tell you about the dream I had in which my friend did a line of cocaine off a fifty dollar bill I lent him, and his ex-girlfriend tried to get him back by disguising herself as his sister.

A sleep paralysis dream. Well, more of a nightmare really.

We had been walking, him and I. The day was warm and there were birds in the sky. As we sat down, he offered me a drink from a flask. I drank deeply.

Suddenly I couldn't move and was really scared. The scene had gone dark and cold and I was in a lot of pain. I was face down and felt a great weight on me. I realised that he had raped me. I was so scared and disgusted and in pain.

I woke up unable to move my arms or legs, covered in sweat and terrified.

It was an awful nightmare.

I had my first furry dream. I dreamt ?everyone? had to go to hospital to get an injection ?to prevent some illness?. However, to make the injection work, they had to make you furry first.

I didn't want to turn back again. There were a few others who felt the same. I felt very relaxed and happy.

Oh well...