Pixel Perfect

I dreamed that I was looking at an old video game, which used 2D sprites on an isometric 3D landscape.

For some reason, there was a limitation in the game engine that required every object in the game to stand on a single square of the grid, but there were no other limitations. This meant that there were gigantic objects balanced on tiny little feet in order to take up only one square. One of them was a big globe with a person standing on top, and the entire thing was balanced precariously on a tiny stone column.

I skimmed through the world until I reached what was obviously the end of the level. There was a large door for the exit, but in front of it were a series of three colored doors that required corresponding keys to get though. I looked around and saw many other colored doors leading to other places, some of which had keys behind them. I knew that this was going to be my favorite type of puzzle.

I enjoy games that open an entire world lobby to you initially, but require you to discover and unlock many new areas to progress. There is no obvious starting point, and if you work it out wrong in your head you can waste a lot of time running around the level and running in to locked doors. Or worse, you might use a key in the wrong door and have to start over!

I spent a lot of time looking around the level and peering through doors, plotting the path I would have to take in order to solve the puzzle. I started to wonder if I should push or pull some of the items standing around the level to see what would happen; maybe a switch would activate, or I could get in to a basement.

When I was just starting to make my way toward what I concluded to be the best place to start, I woke up. I was pretty frustrated, and it took me around four hours after waking before I felt like my mind was clear and awake.

Dreaming of being Drugged

I had a very, very weird dream last night. It was also extremely enjoyable though.

I was going to party with some friends that I hadn't partied with before at their place. The walls were bare, bright, and white, with light colored carpet like many student apartments. Everything had a healthy glow of sunlight coming from a large window.

After two glasses of some clear mixed drink, it became very obvious to me that there was something other than alcohol in the drink. I was feeling profoundly uncoordinated, and I just wanted to lay on the floor and relax. Around me, everything had become much brighter and blurrier, as if my eyes were a camera severely overexposing each shot.

I was looking at the window out at the bright sunlight, and a smiling face came in to view out of the pure whiteness with a glare all around her face from the window behind her. I was laughing and totally out of it, and I felt like I should kiss her just because. Getting off the ground turned out to be difficult so I just tugged at her so that she would come lay on the floor too.

Opening and closing my eyes didn't seem to make a difference in the least. My vision was slow, and the afterimages stayed so long that I had almost no idea what was going on in the present. I thought that when I closed my eyes, time was probably passing but I couldn't be sure. I told the girl I wanted to give her a kiss, so she kissed me twice cautiously and quickly on the lips. She paused a second and looked at me in the eyes, and then kissed me again, this time longer and with a tongue poking at my lips. Try as I might, I was really not able to focus on what was happening, and I couldn't even figure out if my mouth was open or closed, but I didn't really care because I was feeling great becoming lost in my senses in my own bright and confusing world.

A while later I rolled over and sat up. I was a little bit more balanced and clear, but I held on to the feeling from before. I decided I should give the girl a kiss, but I probably just ended up falling on her for support instead because as I was leaning closer to her, I began to lose my sense of time and place. I opened and closed my eyes but I saw nothing but a bright glow with vague tan blurs that must have been people. I felt like I was slowly tipping over in one direction, but I never ran in to anything and just kept drifting.

Eventually I sobered up and I could once again recognize the people and objects around me, and I woke up.

Abandoned Cavern

An anonymous source gave me coordinates to a secret place that was supposed to be very cool. I had to check it out right away. I followed a GPS, and I ended up in a dusty parking lot sparsely populated by run-down cars. One car with no wheels or roof was directly on the coordinates I was given, so I got in on the driver's side. At my feet was a narrow tunnel leading down. It was padded on all sides with leather seat cushions from very old cars.

At the end of the tunnel there was a drop. I fell a short distance and looked around me. I was in a giant, abandoned underground cave that looked like it had once been a mine and was perhaps halfway converted to being a concert hall. The tunnel I came from was too high to get to, and completely concealed in the jagged ceiling, so I would have to find another way out.

To my right was a long line of broken down vehicles, ranging from small cars up to heavy construction equipment. There was a roof over them, I assumed to keep them from collecting too much dust.

I went into an alcove at the end of the tunnel that was lighting up the room. There was a large opening above the floor that led to a long hallway with windows along each side that were blocked with concrete on the other side of them. The ceiling was flat and narrow because the walls tapered into arches leading to it, and it was a uniform bright white that gave a diffuse glow to the room. I assumed the ceiling was opaque white glass that led to the surface.

I walked around and found a cardboard box in the weeds growing all over the place. There were some interesting old artifacts in the box. I found a few more old books and some leather and brass trinkets around in the grass and put them in the box too.

I turned and went back to the large main room and was about to go around a big pile of dirt when I heard more people further inside. I peeked around the pile and saw that they were wearing hard hats and some were driving small carts around.

To my right I noticed a huge machine. It was a front-loading bulldozer with a patchwork steel and concrete composite armor over it (the killdozer) but the armor was cracked and fallen off in places, keeping the bulldozer from going anywhere. This was unfortunate, because I could have used it to escape without being harmed. Since there was no way to get the machine running, I would have to escape with my cardboard box covertly.

I darted as quickly as I could (while still remaining silent) behind the parked vehicles to the opposite end of the room. I didn't think anyone heard me, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being chased, and my heart and head were pounding. Once out of the main room, I found myself up along the outside of a large spherical structure, (I figured it was another room) with ramps leading up and down along the sides of it. I wanted to reach the bottom so that I could get to what looked like an exit.

Near the bottom, the ramps stopped and there was a drop of about 15 feet. There was a large curved pipe leading to the ground, but it tapered as it went up, and the piece near me was small enough that it snapped like chalk when I tested it with my hand. On the ground below me, I was startled to see two adventurers like myself. They said they had strayed from some kind of guided tour of the caves, and were wondering if this was a good place to get up into the older areas that the tour didn't go. I told them that I would show them a better way in if they would catch me as I jumped down. They agreed, and I dropped my box to them, then lowered myself as much as I could from the ledge and let go, falling back so that both of them could cushion my fall.

Once safely down, we walked up a steep incline back to where the tour was taking place. There were rope barriers like in a museum blocking entry to anything interesting, and the tour guide had her back to a large open area, similar to the one I saw the workers in. The room was much brighter, and everything was relatively clean, however. The entrance/exit was clearly marked, and we ended up in the parking lot. I took them far behind the surface building that marked the main entrance to the rusted cars. I showed them the special car with the tunnel and warned them about the people I saw in there, and they thanked me and went down. I left happily with my cardboard box of little treasures.

Journal is Up to Date

Finally, everything I have written in my journal is here. (except things that are just too horribly cheesy/lovey/embarrassing). I removed people's names but recurring people tend to have a theme so that it's pretty easy to tell if the same person is in multiple dreams.

I totally forgot about killing Zombie Jesus. What the hell is wrong with me? Haha. Only two really horrible killing dreams... that's a lot better than most people, I think.

I hope this blog inspires people to record their dreams and share them as well. Please comment if you read the dream, I put them up here to see what people think, and it will motivate me to record more if people are interested. Several dreams are especially long and should be interesting.

Many Things

I was on the bottom floor of a dorm building, where the whole floor was a dark series of gym-style shower alcoves and bathroom stalls. There was a girl in pink following me playfully with a big smile on her face. We went all around the building, up and down stairs, through semi-hidden routes that involved climbing down the outside of the building in some places, and finally through the first floor area. She left and I walked to a house nearby and was transformed into a tiny black snake, that stood up like a letter S.

The house had two stories, and a carpeted staircase connected them. As a snake, I could absorb objects through my skin in order to grow. I could usually just move over small objects to pick them up. I found little pieces of paper, office supplies, and candies at first. As I got bigger, I absorbed larger things like the children's toys in one of the rooms.

If there were a group of objects all together, many of them would be left behind after I moved over them. To osmose a large number of objects at once, I would stop scooting around as an S shape and lay down on them, touching the stuff with my midsection, which felt like my abdomen. When I did that, the feeling was very strange. At first it hurt, having everything poking into me at such a defenseless part of me. The toys underneath me would then feel like they were melting under me, and the feeling of absorbing them felt good, but not in any way that I can easily describe using real-life feelings.

I would gain some mass proportional to what I incorporated into myself, and it would be distributed evenly so that I stayed the same shape but became larger. When I had finally reached the size of a human, I transformed into my normal self but retained the ability to absorb things.

The two kids living in the house came home and didn't notice anything missing. I found a giant toy they had that had an opening large enough for a person to fit into and it had a small dull-colored button near the opening. The whole thing was decorated with dinosaurs. When I began to climb inside I saw a portal back in time. I was determined to climb completely inside in order to go back in time, but each of my attempts ended in failure because the two kids would mess it up, and they eventually broke the toy.

I left the house and went back to the school where I started in order to gather support for my journey. I went to a large hall that seemed to be the heart of the school, with entrances on all sides where everyone passed through between classes. It also had a large number of seats like a lecture hall. I quickly gained a small following of people wanting to help me, and we decided that it would be possible to send me back in time at the beach the very next day, using the broken toy.

I was standing on a seat in the hall, and then walking around showing people my hand which read "let's go to the beach" which was a campaign slogan of sorts. By then there were a lot of friends trying to help me reach my goal of successful time travel.

One woman saw me and started ranting about how we were horrible people ruining society and corrupting little kids, and on and on. She obviously had mistaken us for some other people, or was at least overgeneralizing my group, so I concisely and respectfully countered her. She sat down and faced away from us, extremely embarrassed.

Some party-jock and his girlfriend sat in the row behind me. One of the two butch Asian lesbians I've met in real life (that's as specific as I can be, I couldn't tell which of the two it was) walked over next to me and the guy's girlfriend got up to get something. She came back with some food, which appeared to be cooked bean sprouts with garlic put inside each one. She offered them to me and the girl, and they tasted very good. She asked us if we could guess what the secret ingredient was. She paused only a short time and gave a hint, "it's not olive butter" at the same time that I guessed "olive oil." She said I guessed right, and it sure tasted like it.

Introduction

Hello, this is where I will post my dreams from my journal. I started with my most recent, but I have quite a few older ones in my journal. I'm still typing them up, starting with the oldest and working my way to the present.

What I post here is from my direct recollection of a dream as recorded when I wake up. They aren't intended as masterpieces, but I think that as dreams they are interesting.

When I wake up with a dream, I tend to remember the end. I write what I remember in my journal, and then begin to remember more. The journal format is many small chunks of memory with "but before that, this happened..." Sometimes I remember more about something later and elaborate on it. In this web journal, I try to reorder and reorganize what I wrote so that everything as chronological as possible.

Please post comments on anything you can think of. Everything is out in the open and up for discussion, complements, questions, etc!

I'd Rather Be Sleeping

You can get the song that goes with this here.

I dreamed that I was part of a small group of ambitious scientists who had invented the replicator years ago and were famous for revolutionizing human society. Our current project was decades in the making, and was coming to its final stage; we were determined to create the first true transhuman, an evolutionary leap aided by technology to artificially create a better species of thinking being. There were four of us, in all, best friends united be a reckless goal of advancing technology regardless of the risks involved.

After the replicator, we had privately worked on several techniques to regenerate dead tissue and revive people from near-death conditions, and used it on numerous occasions on our escape from the society which had grown hostile toward our research. We lived in an isolated compound; a serene and sterile grounds for creation surrounded by nature.

We were ready for our final project to be completed. One of us would begin a new humanity. We had chosen her at random, and should would become a being of overwhelming grace and ability only faintly imaginable to us. She would walk to the end of the dock near our building, and I would initiate the process from the patio overlooking the lake.

Our great achievement would come at enormous cost. The only certainty in the process was that the remaining three of us would be annihilated entirely. I stood at the beginning of the dock, the sun becoming a hazy orange and colliding with the massive pines at far end of the lake, and held her for what I wished to be an eternity. I poured over my fear and doubts, my love and my regrets. After all we had been through, she was finally going to realize our ultimate dream of becoming a replacement for our failing human race.

I lowered my head so every part of me was close to her, and imagined her at the end of the dock, a white light transcending reality as a beacon of the future, as all humanity perished in a wave of death emanating from that very spot. I would be the first to die.

I pulled away from her and watched my tears stain the ground. By the time I finally looked up again, the sky was darkening and the color of the sunset dominated the lake and the trees. The sun behind her lit up her dark brown hair, cut short above her shoulders. She flashed a wide but sheepish smile and made her way down the dock.

The three of us remaining were all armed, in the unlikely case that an outsider had discovered our location and intended to stop us before we had finished. I walked back to the console, our only connection to the outside world. We had already announce our intentions publicly, and as I powered up the terminal a torrent of protest, intrigue, and pleading flashed across the screen too quickly for me to read.

When the terminal was up, a song, Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping by Grouper faded in slowly, and played continuously from that moment on. The beautiful but melancholic drone fit the task at hand. I imagined that, standing at the end of the dock on the shimmering sunset lake, she was singing softly, “Love is enormous, It’s lifting me up, I’d rather be sleeping, I’d rather fall in sideways, Right where the deepest currents flow...”

My thoughts were racing. Could I really do this? We had worked for so many years perfecting the process here. I knew all the steps by heart. I had known these people for so long... seen so much. Could I kill all of humanity in the name of progress? My lover would become something unimaginably noble, the pinnacle our research and of human achievement. And I would never witness it.

I initiated the first stage via the console and watched her as she was lifted up lazily over the lake by an invisible force. There was only one step left, and that was all. My mind was breaking down, logic became illogic as the pressure mounted and time collapsed in on itself to crowd around and witness this single momentous action. I pulled the gun out of my belt and looked it over. At that moment there were now two options, neither more imaginable than the other in the crushing panic. I aimed the gun for the center of the lake.

I froze. The primal instinct of survival was overwhelming. This was suicide. I stood there for a long time, battling myself for control. For an instant I regained control and smashed the butt of my gun down on the terminal, breaking the glass, but initiating the final sequence, and I woke up.