Dream Log: September 15, 2000

I saw myself from an overhead third-person viewpoint, moving like Lara Croft...jump, backflip, shoot...trying to make my way through a narrow forest path filled with wolves. Wolves who tried to pick my pockets. Finally surviving the passage, I was first-person, and knew I was a young child playing with others in a grassy field or backyard. Several of us began to suspect a nearby thicket of trees concealed something of interest, and sent one dark-haired little girl to investigate. When she returned, she reported with wide eyes that nothing unusual was in there. I knew she was lying through her teeth, and urged everyone to investigate. We started to, but a child wearing a ten-foot tall robot exoskeleton stomped out and announced in Lord of the Flies fashion that we were freed from the bonds of authority.

A strange stone altar was erected, and two effigies were placed in kneeling positions on top. One was wearing a dress, the other a business suit. Mommy and Daddy. All the other children began to circle the altar and listen to the boy in the battlesuit, so I ran into the nearest building and found my mom. She was arguing with a clerk at a counter, with a large line of people growing impatient behind her. The walls were covered in electronic boards announcing departure and arrival times, so I ran to the service desk and urged my mom to stop nitpicking and get the first available hot air balloon away from there! She looked confused, but did so, and I went exploring through the building as we waited for our flight to arrive.

I wandered through a mazelike antique building/toy store, and couldn't resist opening a boxed set of Transformers action figures that contained fruit-flavored hard candy. A strange lady in a trenchcoat saw me and started shadowing me through the rooms, waiting for the chance to tell a security guard what an awful thing I had done. I ran faster and faster, trying to lose her in the mountains of junk, and I was still trying to elude her when I awoke.

I was part of a really weird triathlon involving miniature golf, a demolition derby on a river, and archeological underwater cave diving.

The miniature golf course was set up along the banked track of a mini race course. I don't remember much about it.

The demolition derby was the wildest event: it was something like Carmageddon on a river. There was a race component to it, but you could also win by destroying the other boats. The most interesting vehicle was a sort of floating vegetation collector, a pontoon boat with a rectangular area aft enclosed by a chain link curtain hanging down into the water. A large claw of metal scythes would reach back over the water, scoop up waterlilies or algae or whatever, and dump them in the basket.

But that's not the vehicle I picked. I got a small airplane -- not a seaplane, that would have made sense. It had twin jet engines mounted under the rear wing, what do you call it, the crosspiece near the rudder. There was also a propeller engine mounted somehow on the vertical bit of the tail behind the rudder, as a backup I think.

Then for some reason I'm in a convenience store-cum-Goodwill, and I see a really great deal: $8.99 for our 8-piece glass pitcher set. I get it even though I'm not near home, I've got to take it back to the hotel where I'm staying to compete. It consists of two large pitchers, two smaller pitchers, and four drinking glasses. Perfect for orange juice, I figure, or maybe sangria.

Then -- as a pun on "pitcher", I think -- there's a surprise event consisting of a computer game of baseball. I can't get the timing of the swing right, and it's really frustrating.

The final event is an underwater archaeology thing. We're back on a river, only now it looks rusty and full of stirred-up silt. I pull up to a dock and swim underneath it, groping for a ladder underneath it. I follow the ladder down to a hole in the retaining wall, which I swim through. As I haul out a large stone chest looking like a cross between a picnic cooler and a coffin, the announcer says, "You know, these workers get thirty cents every single time they do this. Thirty cents for each piece they bring back!" The other announcer says "Yes, it's a lot of money, but keep in mind that they can only do this for twenty years before their health is too weak to continue."

The announcer says that these tunnels -- I now notice that I'm not on a river but on a sort of municipal canal in a utility tunnel, or perhaps a flooded subway system -- are underneath every city. The other fellow says, "You mean to tell me that right now these treasures are laying beneath our very feet?" The first announcer agrees.

It's at about this time that I begin to wake up to the faint sounds of bongo drums, which are apparently the last bit of dream for the night, since I've been listening to an audiobook about Richard P. Feynman on my way to and from TBLC. Just before I wake up, as the sound is fading, I hear the announcer say, "You mean those are real bongo drums?"

This dream seems to be a movie. It is called The Kiss.

scene 1

A new subdivision. Partly built houses. Mud. Pools of muddy water.

I am in a group of people here to inspect a nearly built house. Some people in the group are the buyers; some, like me, I think, are the builders. The other most important people in this group are a woman, and a man.

We exit a car and go up a muddy driveway to the house. In the car I am talking to the woman. She is, like all of us, rather drab in appearance--a good match for the rather drab setting.

When we get to the building, she goes off with the man--who seems to be English, and seems to be a musician. They disappear into some kind of dark underhang. I hear the phrase "(The woman's name, which I don't know) has pretty pink panties!"

scene 2

I am in the front of the building, in the road facing it. Coming down the driveway is a falling apart car. The driver is someone I know. He smiles at me as the car is absorbed into a muddy puddle. I say to him it--the car--should be in a concrete form; he agrees.

scene 3

The houses are finished. I am in the one next to the one from before. It is some kind of shelter. The residents are malformed in various kinds of cartoonish ways.

I decide to go out. It is cold. I am not too badly dressed; I see I am wearing a vest, but no coat. I see my breath.

scene 4

The woman is seen in her house. She is now well-dressed, and made up--quite beautiful.

scene 5

She is out walking with a woman friend. They are both well-dressed.

I will myself into more appropriate clothes. But when we approach, we turn around and walk away in opposite directions.

scene 6

The last scene focuses on the sky. It is dark. There are large zeppelin-like objects, and large bone-shakers--bicycles with a big front and small back wheel--with riders in the sky. This has a dream-like, surreal quality.

I think, or hear, a voice say "We are not alone!"

THE END

Another night without remembering my dreams. It seems that I remember more dreams (i.e. I wake up in the middle of the night) when I'm not at school, constantly writing stories and stuff.

It's much better this way, I think. The last dream I remember was when I was at home with my girlfriend and I woke up suddenly and grabbed her by the shoulders. That scared both of us.

Last night I saw a dream, but I dont remember everything from it.. At least I was one of interstellar officers, sent to a habitated planet on a mission including an old temple, built before humans had arrived to the planet. We found the temple and fortified it as a military area, but a citizen with sunglasses was apparently interested about what was happening. Others were only interested in the operation, so I decided to stay on guard myself. In some time, the local citizen came to the area, with a plug in his ear, possibly from a recorder, but most likely from a communication device, because he had something large under his t-shirt. He also had a radio controlled car, but I attacked him from behind a military car. I struck him down on his face, and he quickly pulled the plug out of his ear before other officers came to see what was happening. The citizen cried out that he had just come to get the car back, but I pointed out that he had military communications equipment with him. Then, I dont remember what happened..

Later we went to get something to eat in a local tavern, and I got especially interested in the farming method at the field the food came to the tavern. There was a bunker with round holes all over it, and the farmer inside fired potatos through them so they hit the ground in specified spots of the field. He told that though this method caused potatoes some bad spots, it was more efficient than the old method. I went to the tavern to see how much of the potatoes were bad, and because of my authority the apprentice of the tavern owner had to let me into the basement. He assured me that they were all good, but when I opened one of the potatos with my knife and dug around, it was moldy and infested almost completely, leaving only small random pieces of its insides eatable. I asked why they serve them like this, and he got really nervous, telling that he wasnt allowed to tell it. I took a step at him threateningly and demanded explanation, but I dont remember what happened again..

Somehow, the sick potatos and citizens eagerness to get into the temple were parts of large conspiracy I revealed, and in the last dream fragment, I was inside the lower levels of the temple, lit with the torches fired by some alien substance. The temple had something I couldnt let them have, so I defended it with a GES Biorifle against people of the town who tried to get in with pitchforks and other weaponry..

Everything was dark. I could feel people walking on me. Very small people. I did not hear anything though. I tried to move but could not. I tried to speak but could not. I tried to think but could not. I could only feel. Then I realized I was the whole world, I was the planet Earth, and woke up.

This was a pleasant dream.