Dream - A man is served a meal by a mysterious figure, in preparation for a mission on another world

On the morning of August 28, 2008, I had a dream that started out fairly normally, in that it involved driving, something I once did a lot of. It soon changed, though, to something much stranger.

In the dream I was driving on a divided road, seemingly somewhere in the Wickenburg area and past it. My brother was with me in a different car. We might have been competing in some way.

Later I was a giant figure, moving the cars by hand like they were toy cars. Later on I was walking and normal size, though it seems I was also controlling the cars, at least for a while.

Walking, I came to someone who was being given a meal by the road, not a last meal apparently, but a special one-time thing, apparently from God. Various dishes were presented on small, saucer-like plates. They were being served to the man by arms that faded to an indistinct body that faded out before the legs were reached. The food included biscuits and many different kinds of cooked vegetables, and other things as well. I noticed in particular a plate of creamed peas and a plate of corn, perhaps a little creamed also but not much.

The food was supposed to be exact, perfect recreations of things served many decades ago by someone, I think maybe my grandmother on my mother's side. She herself, my grandmother, was coming from maybe ten or fifteen feet down the road, having seemingly materialized there, apparently as a reassurance that the dishes were in fact genuine. She never actually reached where they were being served, at least not that I saw. She seemed to always be in the process of walking there.

Though the meal was not exactly a last meal, it had the feeling of finality about it, and seemed to be a reward or inducement, perhaps even the promise of a future reward, a showing that the promise could be kept. The man was to be required then, or was being recruited to, perform a duty that involved going to a world that was faded of color, drained of it, where the people there and the reality there were more shadowy things than the reality here, but that reality was nevertheless real to them and had its own rules that it followed.

The meal apparently ended early for some reason, and the dishes that were being held out were put down and the man stood up, apparently having actually eaten only a little of it. The time had come, seemingly a little earlier than expected, for his mission to begin.

If a Burglar Came

This is a scenario I thought of when two bags of trash were sitting in the kitchen against the back door. For much of this time, which was during the day, the door was unlocked, though it is normally locked. I thought of various incarnations of the story, some of them with me starting it and some with my mother starting it, before deciding on the one here.

I planned to tell this story to my mother, but I put it off for quite a while before saying anything. When I did, though, she seemed to be distracted with what she was doing or thinking at the time, and it was hard to get her full attention. She did finally mention that she thought the Boston Terrier was much more likely than the Pekingese to grab the burglar's shoes and run around the yard with them.

This story is dated 12:28 AM, November 4, 2008, Arizona time (MST).


IF A BURGLAR CAME

My mother: There are bags of trash still sitting against the door.

Me: Yes, and the door is unlocked, too. Anyone could get in.

My mother: Yes, anyone could get in.

Me: If someone did, he would go, "What the ??? AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" and fall face first over the trash. Then the little dogs (a Boston Terrier and a Pekingese) would come up and grab his shoes in their mouths and run madly back and forth over the yard with them. The burglar, rendered helpless by the loss of his shoes and knowing that the game was over, would take out his cell phone and call 911 himself and tell them to just come and get him and get it over with.

[Pause]

My mother: That is very strange. [finally smiles]

The Cyclops and the Hockey Match

This is another story that I did for a message board for a thread that was normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. At that time people were taking turns writing short stories containing a short list of words given by another user. The story is changed slightly here in that it is broken up into two paragraphs instead of being contained in just one.

This story was one of two that I did for my post 997 on that message board. The other story was separate from this one, with its own list of words. The list of words for this story: cyclops, hockey, panties, mesa, grudge

This story is dated 3:44 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE CYCLOPS AND THE HOCKEY MATCH

One day while playing hockey, the cyclops fell off his mesa and tore his panties when he landed. They were his favorite panties, too. Not being one to carry a grudge, he only destroyed part of the mesa, coincidentally the part that held the opposing team. The match was canceled, the newspapers said, because of an act of God.

The cyclops knew better, but he was busy trying to find some new panties.

A sly school paper

Back in high school, a long time ago, a teacher gave us a homework assignment to write something using a list of words. One of the other kids, a boy, wrote something particularly good. We were evidently supposed to read them to the class, otherwise I wouldn't know what he wrote.

He said, in part (this is an approximation), "I had a dream last night about a foxy lady carrying a suitcase with a snake hanging out."

Suitcase and snake were probably words from the list. Fox was definitely one of the words. There was some question in the class about whether converting it to foxy was proper. The other kids liked his story, though, and laughed when he read it. I did, too.

Other worlds with other versions of us

There are theories in which an infinite number of worlds exist in the universe, and theories in which an infinite number of universes exist. Within these infinities, every possibility is explored. It's said that everything that can exist, must exist, and must exist an infinite number of times.

And so, there are worlds where the sea and the land are populated by creatures that do not exist in the seas and on the lands of our Earth, but the humans are exactly the same as they are here. The humans there have our faces and our names and our life experiences, and live in houses that look like our houses and have neighbors that look like our neighbors, and they speak our languages and live in countries that look like our countries, which have histories that are like our histories.

The fish in the sea are different, though, as are the animals on the land, and they have different names. This situation exists an infinite number of times in an infinite number of worlds, because no matter how unlikely, it is possible.