Dream - A hand comes from behind my computer, pointing at the screen

On Saturday, June 19, 2010, around 4:00-4:30 PM, I was sleeping at the computer with the radio off. I dreamed I was waiting for the Yahoo email page to update itself, as the computer was running really slow and near the end of its resources (as it was in real life before I fell asleep), and after a while a hand came from around the computer screen and was pointing at where I had been moving the cursor, though it was now off more to the side. The hand seemed to be saying it knew what I had been doing and maybe even suggesting I move the cursor over there again. I wondered how it could know what I was doing. I think I had just been moving my own hand over there on the screen, looking at some items in the list, pointing at them with my fingers. How could the computer know what I had been doing with my hand? With the mouse pointer I could understand, but my hand was not part of the computer.

Then I swiveled my chest around to the right so I was facing toward the street and the computer on the other desk/table (I had two computers in the dream), and was looking at that one. It also had my email list on the screen, with some items cheeked, for possible deletion. I had forgotten that I had it on and the email on the screen on that one too. It had apparently been on since yesterday, tying up the phone line. I had forgotten all about it. I looked at the email there for a while, including moving the mouse to hover over the addresses and subjects, to cause them to expand into little windows, so I could see what they really were. I didn't want to actually do anything to it on this computer now, though, since I was also in the email on the other computer, and it would probably confuse the system, with undesirable results. It seems something odd was happening there too, something strange, but I don't remember what.

I went back to the first computer and started working there again, maybe calling up something else instead of the email, I'm not sure. After a while the hand came around the screen again. I moved my head back, staring at it. It seemed confusing. Could it be my hand? No, there were three hands.

I finally grabbed it and was pulling on it. After a bit of a struggle I pulled a short skinny man out from behind the computer, maybe five to five and a half feet tall, hippie looking, long brown hair parted in the middle and a short beard. He walked quickly out of the room, looking a little scared. I wondered if I should have held onto to him, should maybe go after him and try to catch him, but it seemed too much trouble. I was too tired, could hardly keep my eyes open.

I woke up then, and things were normal. When I closed my eyes a little while later though, I could see, on a background of lesser red, a ball of red particles, not large, turning and swirling, dense in the middle and with wider spaced particles circling it. It seemed almost like some kind of fireworks display. I watched it for a while, sometimes opening my eyes and closing them again, then went back to fiddling with the slow computer.


Note: Prince Charming, the cat, died around a day or so later, and was found in the cat room at my sister's house, wedged behind some things with a paw sticking out, which is reminiscent of the hand sticking out from behind the computer screen.

Dream - I go to work for the last time, then step off into empty space, drifting through the air to the other side

On Friday, June 12, 2009, late in the morning, I dreamed I was taking a shower, in some kind of business area or maybe shopping center. It was in a very large shower stall, probably twice as big as normal, with heavily textured sliding glass doors, I think, very large ones. Other people were around, walking past, this way and that.

My slippers were outside the shower, but after a while I brought them in, I think because I was worried about leaving them out there, but I'm not sure. I was hoping they wouldn't get too wet in the shower, but they ended up getting more wet than I was comfortable with, and dark dirt was washing off them, from the soles I think. I put them back out of the shower, but then changed my mind and brought them back in. I was concerned now about the dirt, that once wet it could be a problem and come off and leave tracks, maybe get on the tops of the slippers too, so it had to be washed off even if they got a little wet. I was tired and sleepy, and everything seemed to be moving slow. It seems I might have even sat down or kneeled at some point, too tired to continue, wanting to rest for a while.

I was sitting down, putting the slippers on, and I still had to finish with my shower, when the shower room shrunk around me, and I became aware I was sitting in a car and had been taking a shower there, inside it. The windows were slightly fogged on the inside and damp, and sometimes seemed much taller and flatter than the windows on a normal car.

I seemed to be parked by the edge of a broad sidewalk that ran along the side of a mall. People were walking back and forth along it, but not great numbers of them. Ahead of me, at the far end where the mall turned a corner and went in front of me, a few more people were walking, and I saw what appeared to be a guard, an overweight person in blue pants and a light blue shirt, with some kind of tag sewed to his shirt. He was frowning in my direction and talking into a little handheld device.

I still hadn't finished my shower. I wanted to finish it, but decided I wouldn't be able to. It was not a good place to be taking a shower, and though most people just walked on by, sometimes looking at me, sometimes not, it seemed I was attracting enough attention to get the guard notified, or at least I assumed that might be the case. I couldn't be sure he was actually talking about me, but I couldn't take the chance that he wasn't. I was somehow now partly dressed though, wearing some odd pants and shirt that I wouldn't normally wear. They seemed soft and almost flannel-like.

Another guard was on the sidewalk not far from me, and seemed to be receiving communications from someone, maybe from the first guard, or it could have been relayed from someone else. I thought it might be about me but I didn't know, and he wasn't paying any attention to me. He was looking in the general direction of the first guard but not at him, more just a general look down the way of the sidewalk.

I got out of the car, which might have been the 1970 Cadillac, though it's hard to be sure, it seemed to have a darker interior and so might have been the 1987 Oldsmobile. I walked down the length of the shopping center toward the first guard, probably walking on the asphalt instead of the sidewalk. I went by him and through glass doors into the shopping center. I think he turned slightly my way, still frowning and talking into his radio, but didn't say anything to me.

Inside, there was a dimly lit room, large and seemingly open at the ends to the shopping center or to other rooms, like it was something set up in the aisle without any walls beyond what were already there. A few people were there at computer workstations on dark table-like surfaces. The computers were dark and oddly shaped, with extensions going up square pillars.

I went to my computer, my workstation, and the table that was my desk. The computer was separated into various odd components, it was made that way. It had a small flat screen mounted on the square pillar, with dark wires going down to odd dark little devices, then to more devices on the table. A few people were passing through the area, in both directions, and a few people were at the computers. It seemed sad and bittersweet. I had come back now, after I'd left, but it was really all over.

I tried to log out, but then I found that the keyboard was separated into several dark rectangular pieces, with a couple of them on the square pillar under the monitor, which was mounted high on it. None of the keyboards had many keys. "Oh, that again," I thought. There didn't seem to be nearly enough keys to do anything useful, and I didn't see how I could log out. It would be bad to leave it that way and have people find it like that in the morning. I looked at it, somewhat amused, and decided to just turn it off. As I reached toward a small dark button toward the upper right corner of a keyboard on the pillar, perhaps the second one away from the screen, I noticed that I had somehow managed to log out anyway. I saw the white letters on the black, DOS-like screen, saying so. I continued to reach for the button anyway, and pushed it with my fingers. I pushed two buttons, actually, as there were two grouped close together, and when I pushed the one I wanted I also partly caught the one beside it to the left. The computer immediately turned off, with maybe a small chirp, and the screen flashed and went dark.

I picked up my giant plastic space shuttle model, that I had in the dream. I didn't want to leave it behind. I wrapped my left arm around it, holding it next to my body, sometimes also holding the end with my right hand. The model was probably about five or six feet long. Some people were coming in for the next shift. I recognized some of them from Nevada. Some of them looked at me a little funny, but they didn't want to really look at me. They knew I was going away and would not be back.

I walked back out through the glass doors and found I was now on a tall concrete platform with a lot of stuff on it, some in big dark boxes. I was on the level of a second story. It seemed to be late afternoon, though earlier it had been more toward the middle of the day, maybe late morning. Water was running off the edge of the concrete platform, just little shallow puddles of it, making tiny streams and drips as it went over. Far below, a middle-aged woman stood a little to my left.

I decided to move to my left and step off and glide down, as I could sometimes do these things, though I was intending this time to somehow just step off and stretch my foot down, not really letting go until I was standing on something. The water increased, and was coming out from more places. A lot was coming out from under the boxes and stuff, so it was hard to see what was happening. There was just a narrow space left open along the front, with occasional breaks in the stacks of boxes and things, and it was hard to find a dry spot to step in. I tried to carefully swing around and move to the left, trying to step in a dry spot, and accidentally splashed some water out over the edge where the woman was. I looked and she had quickly moved off, going under the overhang I think. I wasn't sure if she was hit, she might have been but I hoped not. It couldn't be helped now anyway.

I stretched my right leg out far over the edge, hanging there in space, partly holding onto something, but I was so far out that I essentially made a commitment to it, it was too late to turn back now. I swung my leg slowly around, trying to find someplace to put it, but there was too much water now. Most of the platform had water pooled out on it, running off in shallow little streams and dribbles. I finally swung slowly farther and farther toward the other side of the platform, and went all the way over to the corner, where there were some small dry areas, but was still mostly covered by thin sheets of water slowly dribbling off of wet spots around them. I was probably still standing at least partly in wet areas. From there I looked out again on the sunken broken concrete far below me. It rose away in a very gentle slope to where it became level with the ground. On each side were rough, irregular dirt cliffs with thin, half-dead yellow-green grass and areas of broken concrete.

I swung my leg far out and drifted through the air, going across the open space very slowly, the broken concrete of the ramp passing slowly under me. It seemed like a slow, peaceful process. As I went, I looked for a place to land, finally deciding on the top of the dirt cliff on the far side, about halfway along the ramp. I found my brother there, looking much younger, a few feet from the edge. He seemed to be waiting for me.

Dream - Using a computer that shows a list of news stories

I've had lots of dreams at various times in the past involving working on a computer in a room that was frequently on a second story, or sometimes higher, of an apartment building. Sometimes the place had tiny rooms and sometimes the rooms were very large. Generally there was some difficulty of access, such as narrow steep stairs, or frequently a hole in the ceiling of a lower story with a steep narrow stairway or even a ladder, perhaps something that sometimes that had to be pulled down to climb up on.

The computer had a screen with DOS-like elements. I tried to use it to access a site I used to go to frequently in dreams and hadn't for a long time. Sometimes, perhaps frequently, I had trouble accessing it, had trouble finding it or determining if it was actually the same site. It seemed part of the communication was through sound or music. Finding the site was something like tuning a radio dial to a channel. In the old days, perhaps usually then on the first (or only) floor in a large darkened room, it showed a list of news stories that scrolled up and stopped on a DOS-like screen, and I thought about how I used to access it all the time.

Actually using a radio was sometimes part of the experience, at least in some later dreams, and sometimes after fiddling with the radio to find the right channel, I had trouble finding it again later, and wondered if the program I was looking for had been canceled or moved, to a different time or even a different station. It was important to find the radio program, because it was connected to the news website, and sometimes talked about it, sometimes even having coded messages or even special access codes for it.


Near the end of April 2009, it occurred to me that the Whitley's World website (by Whitley Strieber) used to have a screen that was somewhat similar, as it had a centrally displayed long list of news stories on a dark background, interspersed with things he wrote, some of which later became journal entries at the unknowncountry.com website, which replaced Whitley's World and was laid out entirely differently. This list of news stories may have been in part an inspiration for the dreams, particularly since he did the Dreamland radio program, which later became available only over the internet. However, the voice I heard in the dream wasn't his, which may be because I usually fall asleep listening to the radio, which would have something else on it. Unlike the dream, too, the news stories didn't automatically scroll into position, though there were some delays in displaying parts of the screen because of the slow dial-up connection. I think though, that the dreams may have started over ten years ago, before I ever accessed his website, so the original inspiration must have been something else.

Other possibilities are the iwon.com and myway.com websites, which have pages with lists of news stories. I used to access them a lot years ago, but the lists have white backgrounds and don't resemble the lists in the dreams, and they don't scroll unless I make them scroll. Also, I think I was already having the dreams long before I started visiting the sites, though iwon has appeared in some later dreams in a different way.

Yahoo.com also has lists of news stories, but has the same problems matching the dreams.

I did write a program many years ago that showed a scrolling list of equipment, color-coded by operational status. The list didn't stop scrolling, though, unless a command was given. It was also much wider than the list in the dreams, and was in various colors instead of just white, though I did have an almost never used black and white setting.

It's possible the original inspiration for the dreams may have been an actual website that I accessed for a while over ten years ago, but can no longer quite remember.

Dream - The device to help with astral projections

Very early Wednesday morning, September 10, 2008, around 1:00-2:00 AM, I had a dream in which I saw a large radiator-like object floating in a fiberglass tank, then later I tried to connect a similar object to electricity, as a device to help with astral projections.

In the dream, we went to see my father at his business, where he was having his business these days. He had a small fiberglass tank on the left side of a narrow room with concrete floors. The room was big enough to squeeze two and perhaps three tanks in. There was a hallway that led off from the middle of the room to office-type rooms he had. My father went off to the rooms with my mother and they were talking about something. I stayed and looked at the radiator repair tank.

It was filled with water and there was something large floating in it or suspended in it. I pushed at it from time to time, moving it back and forth a little in the water. Everything was fairly clean, including the floor, like it was fairly new or hadn't been used much, at least not for radiator work. Later, the object seemed more like a floating radiator of some kind, a big thick blocky one. Earlier, it may have just been a hoist for holding radiators, I'm not sure. The radiator-like thing was very heavily built with heavy brass fins that ran across it and square brass tanks, then later it had some kind of rod laid onto the middle of it that was attached to a massive power cord that ran off to an electronic machine. The machine was supposed to be something to help with out of body experiences or something like that.

I had memories then of other times and similar places, a series of such places, in other dreams perhaps or probably. It was a strange feeling and a little disturbing.

Then I was back home at the computer and listening to the radio. (In real life, I was sitting at the computer sleeping and Coast to Coast AM was on with George Noory and guest Lionel Fanthorpe talking about time travel and voodoo.) I was trying to get various largish electronic devices set up, things to help me get an out of body experience or something like that. I had some on the desk or table next to or near the computer screen and one was to the right against the wall. I was having some trouble with it.

I turned the radio off some common setting that it was on and then tuned the channel to bring in the station clearer. Instead of the compromise position, it was tuned slightly to one side in order to have some other benefit. (In real life, the radio is not like this and goes from station to station in discrete steps, not allowing fiddling with the tuning. I do have the bass and highs reduced slightly, though, when listening to AM to minimize noise. However, long ago when I was traveling, probably with the 1970 Cadillac, I did have to tune the radio off center sometimes, probably to bring a faint station in a little louder or to minimize some kind of whine or noise or something like that.)

With the radio tuned properly, the sound was coming through very well and clear, sounding very good. A song of some kind was playing. (In real life it was probably bumper music I was hearing.)

I had ordered something to help with what I was doing. It was $70, and was a heavy brass radiator-like thing like I saw earlier in the dream. I had to hook up the electronics, though, and find some place to put the radiator-like thing. It had to be suspended in a tank of water and I didn't see any place to put it where I was. I couldn't put in the family room because the rod with its massive cable drew a lot of electricity and I couldn't or shouldn't run an extension cord to it. I had wanted to stay in with the computer while I used the device, but it seemed that it was going to be very difficult to get it in there with the computer, and I had to buy some more stuff to even make it work. I didn't have everything I needed now. I almost felt that it would have been better not to spend the $70, but now it was too late, then suddenly things got very ominous and threatening and I abruptly woke up.

Dream - Studying data formats, then flying to a mall and meeting someone from grade school

On Saturday morning, July 26, 2008, I dreamed I was studying data formats when a practice alert occurred, then afterwards I flew to a mall and met someone from grade school.

In the dream, I was at work in Nevada. The Engineering room was filled with rows of long tables. I was sitting at one near the front near the corner. On the other side of the wall was the short hallway going to the front door.

I was reading books and doing research. The books were about various things, including formats for getting user names and passwords and security stuff. A lot of other stuff too, probably user addresses, but also other information. It seemed a lot of stuff to have to enter into the computer. It also talked about formats of a type of manuscript and for the editing of it. Many other things, too, including natural history type info.

The Engineering boss came over. He was on the other side of the table across from me and down a little ways toward the inside of the room, and animatedly talking to people. He was smiling as he talked, but I felt he was really spying on us, me in particular, checking to see if we were working. I kept on reading the books and I think taking an occasional note. It was something I needed to be doing and was work related. I felt a little uncomfortable anyway, though not much.

A practice alert occurred, a prescheduled one, though I had forgotten it would happen. The others left, some faster than others. I continued to try and read for a little while, to try and finish up some what I had been doing, but finally realized that I had better get going, that I would get in trouble otherwise. I left and wandered around. I don't remember now what I did.

I eventually ended up eating in my car. It was parked along with many other cars in rows in, I guess, a gravel parking lot. It was beyond the buildings out in what in real life would be desert, out in the Elko direction, away from Fallon. Although it was around lunchtime the light was not very bright, like it might be a little cloudy. I think I was still reading while I ate, also looking out the windows and thinking.

I looked at my watch (or a clock on the dash) and saw that it was a little after 1:00 PM. It was almost 11:00 when the practice alert occurred. I had decided to just combine it with lunch. I thought now, though, that the alert was probably only twenty minutes long and now it was getting kind of late and I had better get back. It didn't seem important, the amount of time I was taking, but then it seemed that the time might matter, that some people might be upset. Some other people stopped by and started talking to me. I got out and shut the door. It was an old car, like something from the 1950s. It seems I had another car there, too.

There was some kind of odd locking device on the outside. Sometimes it was on the fender near the passenger door and sometimes it was on the other side of the door around the bottom of the thick roof pillar. A key went in it to turn it. It was a round thing perhaps a couple of inches across with a bar across the middle. Once the key went in I turned the dial around quite a bit, it had a lot of travel. I kept talking about it as I demonstrated it. It seems it also had something to do with the wipers. One person was still there listening, but the others had gone on, going back to work. We had to get started, too.

I went and looked and there was a long way down to the shopping center. Although it was now a shopping center, not the place I worked, it didn't seem to matter or even be noticeable. The shopping center was at a lower level, down in the desert. The desert had occasional brush and plants. There was a broad dirt road that led down there that went to the side and then turned to the left toward it. Someone was still with me, though it didn't seem to be the same person as before, he seemed taller. Though I suppose he could just have changed in the dream, he looked different, too.

I decided to just fly down there, that I could do it. I wanted to show the other person, too. I think I was encouraging him to fly, but he didn't want to and either drove or hurried down on foot. I flew down, low over the landscape. I couldn't get much height.

As I got closer, a bunch of people were coming out and going down the road toward me. Then the man I was with suddenly came out of the tall brush at the right side of the dirt road. As I came down to the ground the people moved past me, talking among themselves. It seemed to be closing time, at least for the shift the people were on.

I went in to the shopping center. The light was dim. There were still people around, though not huge numbers. There seemed to be some military connection, like the shopping center had some military connection or side purpose.

I was still thinking about the user name, password, and user data formats as given in the book. It seemed there was some manual there that also talked about it as part of other things. It talked about something completely different at the front of it, maybe appliances or something like that, like the rest was partially hidden.

I needed to go to the upper level. It seemed the shopping center was very tall (though it didn't seem so when I saw it outside). The upper levels may not all be shopping and I think that some of them may have had more of a military purpose. There was some kind of projecting balcony or landing, maybe with folding stairs, though I think there was also a stairway or elevator somewhere far at the back of it.

I showed the person with me that I didn't need to use the stairs, I was so tall that I could reach up and grab the floor or something around there with my hand and then pull myself up on it. I think I may have originally thought more about flying up, though.

However I did it, I was now up on the walkway and could go toward the next level of the shopping center. The walkway was made of some dark material, metal and maybe old wood. It went into a right angle turn to the left and then I reached the end. There was a bit of a gap between it and the next level of the shopping center, and the next level was slightly higher, maybe a couple of feet, maybe more. The next level had a narrow walkway long the front of it with a thin metal railing. Someone was already there, or got there just as I was reaching it.

I recognised him as a short person I used to go to grade school with. He was still short and looked much the same, just older. He was there now on the walkway beyond the railing. He wanted to know if I recognized him. I said yes, and told him my name just in case he didn't remember it. I was very, very tired now, though, and I didn't get the name out very well. It was soft and blurred and trailed off. I tried again, saying something like "Stlephebim Morgahn." It was not very good, but I was so tired it was very hard to talk. He seemed to understand anyway.

He offered to help me up on the narrow walkway where he stood, there in front of the next level. I took his hand and he pulled me up.

When I got there I saw he was much taller and his face was longer and narrower. He was much taller that I was, maybe a half foot or so taller. I was surprised. He said he shot up a lot after grade school (or I simply supposed that to be the case). There was some other quality about him too, like he had some extra knowledge and/or power and was part of the military aspect of things in some intelligence or security function or knew something about it.

Dream - Repeated out-of-body experiences, and a computer on the wall shorting out

On Friday, May 30, 2008, just after 7:00 PM, I fell asleep in bed while watching television. Countdown on MSNBC was repeating its earlier show. I had two dreams, of which I eventually remembered one. It was long, surprisingly so, considering the time asleep.

In the dream, I had repeated out of body experiences or attempts at such. I was mostly just lying in bed, though, while odd things happened. I kept hearing things and thinking that my mother had come, time after time, and was in the doorway, sometimes saying that supper was ready, sometimes bringing me it, sometimes she was there for something else.

One time it seemed my feet and maybe legs left my body, and one time later on I tried to have an out of body experience and then opened my eyes and suddenly found myself looking at the blue wall perhaps a foot or so away. I think initially I thought it was the ceiling (which is white), but then realized it was the wall by my bed. I thought then that I hadn't had an OOBE after all, but thinking back on it I was actually laying facing mostly the other direction, though my head was pointed up.

Toward the end, I saw a big structure on the wall that was some kind of computer. It was maybe fifteen inches wide and a foot and a half to two feet tall, and maybe a couple of feet above the bed. It started shorting out midway up it. I was worried about a fire and tried to unplug it, but I was having trouble moving properly. I think I finally managed to do it.


My mother woke me up rapping sharply on something, possibly the filing cabinet. She was in the doorway with a paper plate of food. It turned out to be a beef pot pie and some cucumber slices. Only about 15 or 20 minutes had passed.

Dream - The computer message board, and what lay beyond

On Friday, December 12, 2008, probably around 1:00-3:30 AM, I had a dream about seeing an odd message on a message board, and then my mind going through it, through the computer and through the system to the computers on the other side.

In the dream, I was looking at a message board that had a white screen, with the messages in a box centered in the screen. I came across a thread, a set of messages, that was different. The box was different and was missing some columns, and the very top edge of it was cut off by a line separating it from a site/message board logo/title area at the top of the screen. Looking at the thread's only message, I deduced that it must be the first message from a new user, although the column showing the post count was missing and some things must have been left off when the user created the post, causing some glitches in the software.

I think I was going to reply to it, commenting on the situation rather than the message contents, but I ran into some trouble of some kind. I tried to go back to the original message, maybe just hitting the Back key on the browser to do so, and the screen came up showing the box for the thread but with a default colored background in the box, with the box having blue and gray diagonal smears across it instead of just the normal blank white background, and no thread contents.

I think I tried to hit the Back key again and seemed to get physically lost in the computer system on the other side, seeing and being physically present at a big aluminum cast or machined cooling fin array mixed with other things. It was so large that it seemed industrial, roomsize, but it may have just been because of my perspective. I was getting worried about things falling further apart, and I seemed to be falling further into darkness and the deeper innards of the massive computer system on the other side.

Falling deeper into it, I saw a tall refrigerator-size panel that said "Cray" on it. Evidently they used Cray supercomputers. I pressed the Esc key on my keyboard, maybe a few times. I was essentially operating blind on my keyboard, though sometimes I could see a little of it, or get a sense of it. I think I may have come back briefly to the computer screen showing the default background in the thread box, and then I was in a darkened room with various things and equipment in it, and a little boy was standing in approximately the center, apparently in front of a camera and pulling up and holding in front of him a big piece of cloth or perhaps very large sweatshirt, with just his head sticking up over it. The cloth/sweatshirt had printed on it the thread box, though apparently an empty messageless one, but without the colored background. This seemed to be a last-ditch attempt to provide a proper image, since the equipment itself seemed unable to do it.

Then I was back at my computer, which was on a table, perhaps a card table, in a large room that seemed more industrial, like possibly a garage, maybe even a commercial garage. My brother had come in and I called him over to see what they were doing, laughing a bit about it. I think the image on my screen still showed the colored background. Evidently the picture on the cloth hadn't made its way through yet, but I wanted to show my brother the little boy holding up the cloth anyway, and I drew my brother back into the computer system with me to show it to him. The little boy was there as before, finishing pulling up the cloth with the image, trying to straighten or smooth out the edges. I think someone was off somewhere in a darker area several feet to the side this time, to his left and a little to the front, maybe a girl around the same age, and they were talking a little bit about what was happening.

Dream - The computer in the sky

Around June 7-8, 2009, I dreamed I was sometimes outside or in an open area, and I accessed at least twice some kind of computer or computer program out among the stars. It was night and the scene expanded to some stars and gas clouds/nebulas and/or large galaxies that spread across a significant portion of the sky, and the computer or program or web site was somehow encoded in the information there, in the arrangement of things, which were not quite static, but had a slow movement.

I was smiling and pointing at it, showing it to people standing near me, and I was talking about it. I think my mother was there and maybe my sister, but I don't remember who else. There might have been maybe four or five people in all.

Other times in the dream I was inside a mostly empty dimly-lit building, a medium large building probably, probably not more than two stories and maybe only one. There was some sadness at times, something to do with accessing things on computers, old sites or places I used to go to years ago but didn't much anymore, maybe something about old radio shows, too. A lot more happened but I've forgotten most of it.

Dream - Computer problems that blended into reality

In the late morning of Wednesday, November 26, 2008, the day before Thanksgiving, I had a series of strange dreams. The following dream is the second in the list (the first one is "The figure receding sideways through the clouds").

In the dream, I was using the computer, and had been rapidly looking at several things and doing various things, at sites on the Internet I think. I was very intent on what I was doing, almost like it was some kind of business activity, though I may have just been checking what users were doing and their responses to things.

Suddenly, some error occurred and shiny pastel curtains filled the computer screen (again). Long pink curtains in the middle with short blue ones hanging at the top and long blue ones at the sides, or something like that, something like a theater or a Loony Toons sign-off screen.

I pressed a key, the Ctrl key I think, intending to respond to the message at the top of the screen and try to get out of the error, and then mentally berated myself for doing so. These attempts don't usually work and it generally just gets worse from then on, resulting in having to manually turn the computer off, and I should have just done that to start with.

I heard a slight beep (or maybe the beep was at the beginning, when the curtains first appeared), then the screen changed to dark gray with just slightly lighter gray swarming static. I stared at it, and then pressed Ctrl-Alt-Delete, but nothing happened. Disgusted, I pressed it a couple more times, and then suddenly a loud beep was heard along with some clicks, and I realized that the power briefly went off and then came back, shutting the computer off and turning the monitor to a default OVERRIDE mode. I realized this even as I was waking up from the loud beep, sitting in a chair in front of the computer, where I had been napping.

It's odd that the dream seemed to predict computer problems and the computer being abruptly shut down (which in the dream I was trying to do). The dream even said that it was "curtains" for it, and if it really was a Loony Toons sign-off screen, those come with Porky Pig saying, "That's all, folks!"

Dream - The robot box with the girl face

On March 13, 2009 I had a dream about working late and accidentally activating a mechanical thing like a large ladybug, and a little later meeting a robot box with a girl face.

In the dream, I was at work somewhere. It was a continuation of the work in Nevada, but at somewhere else. Ir was getting late. My mother came and wanted me to leave. I finally decided to and she went out to the car to wait.

In the place where I worked there was a broad paved parking area by the building and beyond that a tall wire fence. I'm not sure if it was chain link or not. The building was dark in color and low and very large. I was in a room about the size of a large living room. It had a low dense carpet. It was mostly empty but had some things around the sides of it. It had an opening to a hallway on one side, the right side when facing the parking lot, and windows along the side by the parking lot. It also had an opening to another room halfway along the wall on the side away from the parking lot. The other wall was along the outside of the building. There were at least two workstations along the wall away from the parking lot.

I was looking around, seeing what I needed to do to close up before leaving. It was Friday and approaching 9:00 PM now, though it was still light outside. I remembered I was still logged in on a computer and needed to log out and shut it down. It would be bad to have people come in in the morning and find it still on with me logged in. I also needed to find my time card and fill it out before I left. The Engineering boss hadn't liked me working so late, and probably wouldn't be happy to see the time on it, if he happened to notice it. After considering it for a while, I decided that it didn't really matter. I was making trips here from Arizona to work now long after I had quit, and probably wasn't getting paid for it and probably didn't even have a time card anyway.

I went to the workstation to try to log out. I had been using both of them but the one toward the hallway, on the other side of the opening to the other room, was already shut down.

Working at the one that was still on, I saw that it had a view of a small boat speeding along on some mission, with the viewpoint being a little bit behind the boat and up in the air a bit. It was a movie camera taking a picture of a real boat, but sometimes it seemed to degenerate into some kind of video game.

I kept trying to type "logout" but now I had gotten very tired and it was hard to see, hard to keep my eyes open and hard to do anything, and I was having trouble finding all the letters. The screen was fairly high up, and below it there was a small square keypad with not many letters, and a lot of them were numbers, and a ways below that another keypad, more rectangular but still very small, and below that, on the desk surface, the almost forgotten normal keyboard. I kept getting confused and having to start over partway through, typing a zero instead of an "o" or some other mistake. I thought there was probably a logout link somewhere on the screen if I could find it, but it seemed a lot of work to look for it right now.

One time I typed it with a mistake and accidentally pressed Enter instead of backspacing it all away, and it turned out to be an actual command for something and some device was activated. It was about a foot long and looked something like a giant ladybug, but it was much more subdued in its colors, being gray and light gray green. It flew around fiercely out by the boat.

Some other people came in from the hallway, and I was momentarily distracted and got confused, then woke up some (in the dream) and the giant ladybug-like thing was in the room, up on the broad post that the monitor and the two small keypads were mounted on. It moved around some but much less than it had been doing. It might have been around the size of a fist, more with the wings spread. I think the people who came in were part of a later shift, one that overlapped mine, and actually worked somewhere else but came in here for some reason. I think I finally managed to log out. I think I managed to somehow shut the little machine off too, and went into the other room through the door near my computer.

The other room was more dimly lit and had a concrete floor, and was filled with things, various equipment and tools and stuff. Some people came in from another way, from the side that was an outer wall on the previous room but seemed to lead to some other rooms from this one. One was a man who had evidently been working on an old small cellular radiator for most of the day, and still hadn't gotten it fixed. He hooked up or maybe just stuck an air hose in one end and turned it on, and air of course shot out of all the openings, but also from a place in the middle on the other side.

He was complaining in despair, "Oh, no...." and turned it over, showing it to me while he looked at it himself. It had a big rust-stained area on the core, but I saw no evidence of soldering or of work of any kind, except for some scrape marks where he had been poking a screwdriver into it. I looked at it doubtfully, my eyes a little big, and started to say something about it. "You want to work on it?!" or maybe "You want to fix it?!" he demanded, but at the same time a little hopefully.

I thought about it for a couple of seconds, thinking that I possibly could but really didn't want to, and then picturing fumes from the flux coating my face again and really didn't want to do this again and said, "Uhhhhh..... no..."

He turned back to it, seemingly satisfied that an answer had been given, but somewhat grimmer because it wasn't the answer he had hoped for, even if it had been only a little hope.

There was a square rack in the room near the opening to the hallway. It was a couple of feet on a side, with a series of long metal hooks sticking out of each side near the top, with things in wide partially clear plastic bags hung on them. Some of the hooks also had cardboard pouches that opened up accordion style, like some briefcases, with small clear bags stuck in them. I had been looking through some of the stuff there when the men came in, and the man with the radiator. It seemed to be mostly stuff purchased in various department or discount stores by various people, perhaps some of it as gifts. Now I went back to looking through the things on it.

People occasionally went by in the broad nearby hallway. I thought about the people who had worked here for a long time, and about one of them that I had known since high school, maybe even grade school (in real life, the only such person might have been someone from DeVry. a college). We had had some kind of disagreement several years ago, and were no longer friendly with each other. It seemed very sad.

Suddenly, a dull, light gray metal box rolled up and asked in a soft female voice what I was doing. It was about three feet high, with various intricate little things attached to it at various places, and a gray metal face high in the middle of one side. The face was sheet metal and was somewhat smaller than a real face, and shallower, like a Halloween mask. It had sheet metal formed into a vague representation of hair around the top and sides of the face. It also had skinny arms at the top corners of the box, composed of rods and cables, and grasping appendages on the ends of the arms that were like two narrow triangles hinged together at their bases. It may have had two more arms at the back top corners, but I'm not sure now.

I think the other people had moved on now, or had moved off a little ways and I was no longer directly concerned with them.

I looked at the robot thing. It had spoken with a little bit of authority in its voice, like it was in fact demanding, in its soft way, if I had the authority to do what I had been doing. Its face was bland and expressionless, and it had gray featureless eyes.

I talked to it a bit and it explained a little about itself, though I think part of the knowledge simply flowed into me independently, just a knowing. She was something that had been built as some kind of special project, and had an advanced artificial intelligence. She said she had also been changed at some point so she could make her face look human, and I think had competed in some kind of beauty contest.

She then demonstrated, and her gray sheet metal face faded into an entirely human female face, complete with makeup and real-looking hair. The face was still a little smaller than normal but looked astonishingly real, and was capable of movement. Even the eyes moved. Her voice became a little louder and took on more expression, too.

I talked with her a while, and then one of the inventors came in and talked a bit. At one point the inventor said to me, "You know what she is", apparently cautioning me to remember that it was really a machine with an advanced program.

I said "Yeah...... but it doesn't make any difference." I turned and looked down at the robot and said, "You're very pretty" and she beamed and blushed.


When I woke up, the dream quickly faded and I looked at the time and was surprised. It didn't seem that I had been asleep at all. I had been trying to sleep and having some difficulty, but a lot of time had evidently passed and I was puzzled as to where it went. Then some of the dream came back to me, just a little. Much more came later, especially as I typed it down.