Dream - Magnetic flux lines hanging down

Early in the morning of November 5, 2008, I had a dream of a town in a valley in the mountains, and later when I tried to leave, utility poles with bright magnetic flux lines hanging down blocked my way.

The dream was fairly long, but the first part is almost entirely forgotten. I think I was driving back and forth, maybe walking some. It was night. There was an area with low mountains with long slopes. At first they were just on one side, but later they surrounded the area, with a town in the valley between them. Earlier, when the mountains were just on one side, I went toward them going partway up the slopes. I think a few people were with me and some were already there. I think at that point I was on foot, though I might have just gotten out of the car.

Now, though, I was just inside the valley, on the long slope of the mountains. I had come there from the town, where I had been for a while. I wasn't far from the pass that went through the mountains. There were lots of utility poles all over the place, with lines hanging very low. So low that it looked like I couldn't get under them without some of them brushing the roof of the car. It probably wouldn't be safe to have that happen.

I had been somehow alerted to leave the valley, that there was some problem with the utility poles, that they might fall down or the lines might fall down. These were normal-sized poles here, but there had been a big one in the town, a very tall metal one, with an open structure with a lattice work of metal beams. I was afraid that it would fall and I hurried out.

I slowed, and finally parked beside the road. I was stopped here, unable to get out of the valley. Another car was parked nearby, perhaps a little ahead of me, though it could have been behind me instead. I think I got out of the car then and walked a little closer, to better see what was happening.

Magnetic flux lines were now looping down all over the place, soft glowing lines, with the lower edges of the lower lines expanding and fraying out and brushing the ground, looking almost like brushes made of energy.

Someone was showing them to me, apparently asking my opinion of them. It didn't seem possible to drive under them, that the car would get touched by the glowing magnetic lines.

A car had tried to drive through and was now stopped there and the person had gotten out. His car didn't seem to be damaged, though lines of force were touching it and were looping down all around it. The man was standing among the lines, getting touched by them without apparent ill effects. Still, I was concerned that something could be happening that we couldn't see, or might happen later if the man or car crossed more powerful lines.

Dream - The hill and the long, long stairs

On November 29, 2008, sometime early in the morning, I had a dream about a long stairway that led from a building out onto the land, eventually going up a hill.

In the dream, I was at a small place, not really a town, more like a business complex largely by itself out in the country, a somewhat sprawling, large, one story building with some smaller buildings or extensions at the edges. The surrounding area wasn't really a desert, it had some drier sections but was mostly covered with green grass with occasional groups or lines of trees. Some more was happening earlier, I think I was driving back and forth in Nevada, maybe from Fallon to Reno and back, or something similar if not to exactly those places.

Now at this place out by itself, I was taking classes but also working there. A road led away from the place, a road that was two lanes and may have been dirt. Beside the road, a hill rose up with a long, mostly gentle grassy slope upward, though the slope increased sharply toward the end, and the top of the hill was far above the land below. A line of steps went straight up the hill, mostly following the contours of the land, though at the top a small area was cut off to make the summit a little more rounded. Even so, the last part of the stairs was very steep. After the summit the stairs continued, going back down the other side a little way. Then there was a cleared area, not paved, just dirt, where something was going on, something was set up. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it was something fairly small.

I went up there a couple of times I think, though I may have driven instead of walking, maybe going by a different route than the stairs took, at least earlier in the dream. Later I did take the stairs, at least part of the way.

Whatever was going on at the top, it seems like it was almost a spiritual retreat, like simply making the trip was a big reason for going there, though it was more than that. There were some scattered stone pillars in the area, roughly rectangular in shape but crudely carved, basically just standing stones, perhaps eight to ten feet high. Some huge boulders were also there, and some bushes and small trees, mostly at the edges of the cleared area. I think there may have been some picnic tables set up, too. The light was dim, like very early morning, before dawn, though it was a bit brighter in the cleared area, where some lights must have been set up. It felt like a very peaceful place, and I wandered around the area a bit.

A few other people were around, though I didn't interact with them. Two or three seemed to be leaders, and it felt like they had mystical qualities, almost like shamans. They had probably all come up the stairs, from the building. It was a long hard trip up the stairs, there were miles and miles of them, and the going got a lot harder toward the end. Even so, people kept making the trip and seemed happy to do so, generally going in groups I think.

After being at the cleared area near the top for a while, it was time for me to go back down. I headed back toward the summit, going up the relatively short section of stairs leading to it, to the cleared off cut-out area at the top, a place with sloping walls of pale loose dirt on either side. The cut-out wasn't very deep, and there was a comfortably broad area to go through, though it narrowed quite a bit as it started back down, to where it came close to the path.

The next group coming up was almost here. A special leader, Tom Brokaw, was making the trip with them. Some people reached the top, puffing. It was a long trip and the last bit was very steep. I could hear Tom Brokaw talking and puffing, though he was still out of sight, beyond the curve of the top of the hill. He finally came up and we talked for a bit.

After a while, still talking, we turned and looked out at the long way up here. It was lighter now, perhaps close to dawn. The building at the bottom, at the end of the long gentle slope, looked far away. The long line of stairs came straight out of it, and up the steep slope of the hill toward us. Immediately below us, on either side of the stairs, was the hill with its green grass. At the bottom, to the left of the stairs, the narrow road came out from the area of the buildings. After an initial slight outward curve, the road went fairly straight, almost parallel to the stairs. It passed to the left of us, close beside the hill, which was much steeper on that side.

Then we went back down the hill. It was a long, disturbingly long journey. The last third or so of the way the slope suddenly turned slightly more gentle, and a ways off to the right a gully, paralleling the stairs, had cut into the land, with largely bare dirt around it, not grass like the rest of the hill.

The stairs ended inside the building, in a large, very open area of it. A few people were in the area, some walking around, some studying or doing various things. A few seemed to have jobs they were doing.

I had been promised a book when I got back down. It was one of the things Tom Brokaw talked about, it was a reward for having completed the journey. The book wasn't given to me, though. The same thing happened before, too. I knew, though, that other people had gotten the book.

I saw a nearby table with small piles of a technical book, with science and equations and maybe some programming, with thick, colored, shiny cardboard pages with lots of pictures and simple language. Some of the pages had clear cut-out areas with plastic over them. The pages also had round irregular edges, though I think the covers were straight.

Was this the book I was supposed to be given? I wasn't sure, and nobody said anything to me about it. I think I finally even asked a person or two, but their responses were vague, and tended to not really address the question.

Some people from Fallon were there, including some managers from the place I used to work. One of them was an older manager, who I talked to briefly.

The book was supposed to be helpful, if not for school, which was almost over, then for the jobs people would have after school ended. I was never able to determine, though, whether the book I found was it.

Wordzzle 66 - Lost

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the tenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

swashbuckler,
heads-up,
dry martini,
recovery,
jungle gym,
whiskers,
bathing suit,
spade,
circular reasoning,
abrasive

The sand blown in by the storm had made the dry martini a little too abrasive for his tastes, and then the pouring rain diluted it. He sat it aside for now. He had been in the chair in his bathing suit, napping, when the storm hit, and it was a complete surprise to him. For some reason, the others had simply gone inside without giving him a heads-up about it. He hadn't even been able to get inside, the storm was so dark and violent that it obscured everything, and he couldn't find the building, or even know which direction it was. He stumbled along, walking in the wet sand, unable to see more than a few inches ahead of him. He thought he heard the ocean to one side, and tried to keep it that way so he wouldn't go in circles.

After a few minutes he almost banged his head on some odd structure. Feeling along it, it seemed to have a lot of struts, almost like a jungle gym, but he couldn't figure out what it was. He went around it and walked for a long time.

After what seemed like hours, the storm lessened, and finally stopped, though it remained windy. The light was still dim, but he could see better, and could make out things around him. He seemed to have wondered off quite a bit. All he could see was the the sand and the ocean and palm trees and other odd plants. He picked up a stick and pretended he was a swashbuckler, though the stick looked more like a spade than a sword. He was too tired to do it for long, though, and continued on his way, using the stick as a walking stick. Eventually the sun came up, with nothing much changed. He thought sure he would have run into somebody or something by now, but it was still the palm trees and sand and ocean. He was getting very, very tired. He hoped he would run into something soon, he was too tired to try to walk back all that way.

Then he came upon a small plane in the sand. He walked up to it, wonderingly. He felt the struts on the wing, and realized it was what he had felt the night before. Despite his determination not to go in a circle, it seems he had engaged in a bit of circular reasoning anyway. Odd that he hadn't come across the building and the people first. He hadn't even seen the place where he had left his martini. He looked at the plane. He remembered that he used to fly a plane very much like this one, years ago. He wondered if the pilot had run into trouble in the storm, and, unable to make a recovery, had crashed on the beach. Maybe the pilot was even still inside.

The door to the plane was hanging open, and he stuck his head in and looked around. Nobody was there. It looked like it was really in need of a clean-up, too. There was dust and sand on everything. He wondered if it had just been blown in by the storm, but then he realized that plants were growing in it. The plane had been there for a long time. But how could that be? Surely he would have known about it.

He rubbed his face with his hand, and was startled to feel long whiskers there. He took his hand away in wonder, and stared at it. Then, looking down, he saw that he wasn't wearing a bathing suit after all, just tattered jeans cut off above the knee.


Mini Challenge:

butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,
stagnation,
chart,
star crossed lovers,
apricot brandy

Though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, he felt stagnation set in to their relationship, and they increasingly found reasons not to be together, and circumstances seemed to be providing plenty of reasons to stay apart. Their astrological charts had been compatible, but they now seemed more like star crossed lovers, and another sip of apricot brandy wasn't going to fix it.


Mega challenge:

swashbuckler,
heads-up,
dry martini,
recovery,
jungle gym,
whiskers,
bathing suit,
spade,
circular reasoning,
abrasive

butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,
stagnation,
chart,
star crossed lovers,
apricot brandy

He assumed a swashbuckler position, and, looking in the mirror, began fencing with himself.

"Put down that umbrella before you knock something over. You've seen way too many pirate movies, and had way too many dry martinis."

"I'm afraid I've started on the apricot brandy, now. It seems to be a local specialty."

"I suppose I should be happy that you're not standing by the sink, filling it over and over again and watching it drain."

"It was like an whirlpool in the ocean, one that could suck a ship down and all aboard her, and they would never be seen again. Think how it would be, to be carried around and around, unable to escape, until the water finally takes you."

"That would be terrible, but I don't see it happening anytime soon, so you can stop with that brand of circular reasoning. We were going to go out to the pool, remember? We're on vacation, so we should at least act like it. Bring the deck of cards, too, so we'll have something to do if we get bored."

"I'd rather not play cards right now, if you don't mind. I keep getting the ace of spades, and it's beginning to creep me out. I suppose I could put on my bathing suit, though, and walk around the pool. Give the ladies a treat."

"Let me give you a bit of a heads-up. You don't look nearly as exciting as you think you do, and being half-drunk doesn't help. Neither does those whiskers."

"We are on vacation."

"Doesn't matter. Go shave anyway. Good thing you've got an electric shaver, at this point I wouldn't trust you with anything sharp."

"Well, I guess I do have to look nice for the ladies..."

"Yeah, it's always the ladies. We are married, you know. What am I, chopped liver?"

"Well, you know the saying, 'That's no lady, that's my wife.'"

"Gee, thanks."

"The ladies are after me, you know. They just can't help themselves. That lady bartender here was so nice to me..."

"Yeah, I know, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, just like all the others. Did you ever think this might be all in your head?"

"It's in all their heads, too. They all adore me."

He turned and walked off, and she heard the noise of the shaver for a while. Then it stopped and he came back into the room.

"There, I'm done. How do I look?"

"You've managed to give yourself some red marks, but the whiskers seem to be gone. You've even put your bathing suit on correctly, not backwards like last time."

"Well, let's go then. Can't keep the ladies waiting."

She sighed. "No, I guess we can't."

They walked out to the pool. "There don't seem to be any ladies around," he said, disappointedly. "At least not any young ladies."

"Maybe they all went out to the beach. Or maybe they just couldn't trust themselves with you and stayed away."

"Yeah, that could be it. I guess we're just star crossed lovers."

"Who, them and you or you and me? Come on. At least we've got plenty of places to sit down."

"I don't want to sit down. I didn't come all the way out here to sit down. I think I'll go for a swim." He walked over and looked at the water. "It's green. Stagnation has set in. It's not safe. I'd probably get some horrible disease."

She walked over and looked at the water. "The water's not green, the pool itself is green. That's its color. There's nothing wrong with it."

"Still... how do we know the water's not green, too."

"Because it's not. Look at it. Anyway, this is a good place, not like the place we stayed last time. They wouldn't let something like that happen here."

"The pool looks kind of rough, though. Abrasive, even. I might scrape myself on it, and the blood might attract sharks." He looked around. "I think I'll just climb on that jungle gym instead."

"That's a trellis, you idiot! If you try to get on that you'll bring the whole thing down! Stay away from it."

He turned to face her, swayed, seemed about to fall, but then made a recovery.

"You were going to go swimming and climbing, and you can barely stand! Come on and we'll find a place to sit down."

"I'm just a pirate, sailing on uncharted seas. And you're part of my treasure."

She smiled. "Well, that's better, then. I can accept that. Now come and sit down, pirate, before you fall overboard."

The papier-mache dragon

A long time ago, probably in high school though it could have been late in grade school, I made a dragon out of papier-mache, probably as something for art class.

The dragon was probably around a foot and a half or so in length, but was fairly skinny. I think I made it out of newspaper and masking tape, maybe with cardboard in places, too, and then covered it in plaster cloth. I painted it in poster paints, kind of a slightly creamy pastel green. It had an open mouth with white teeth and a red interior. The teeth were just folded over strips of plaster cloth on the top and bottom jaws, so it didn't show individual teeth, just a continuous white strip representing them. It stood on its hind legs and had two arms bent in different positions, with hands with stiff skinny fingers and thumbs. The wings were a bit of a problem, as they tended to sag some because of their weight and the narrow attachment area. The plaster cloth crumpled there and broke the plaster at the attachment joint, though the cloth remained intact and the wings were in any case in no danger of coming off.

It's possible I still have it somewhere, but I'm not sure.

Dream - The toxic waste collector man, the moving statues, and the doomsday bomb

On October 18, 2008, I had a dream about being drawn into a scene on a TV, to a place after some disaster had occurred, where a toxic waste collector man, running for his life, got into a fight with moving statues, one of which finally got a doomsday bomb.

In the dream, I was in a large house with large rooms, dimly lit, with low dense rugs. There were many TVs, and one room had at least three. My mother was there and perhaps my brother and sisters, maybe just my sisters, and some other people, too. It was night, I think, perhaps evening. A day had passed.

The TV cable company had been working on the system, improving it. Now the TV screens had three little menu-like things on the top, and an LED-like box and numbers in the lower right area of the screen, up a little ways and out from the corner, somewhat above the place where the channel logo normally is. The box showed the time spent and the money spent in bright yellow-white LED-like numbers that changed frequently, updating the count, until the end was reached, whatever the end might be.

All this was taking up more of the screen than I would have liked. The picture quality was mixed, being a little grainy and bright enough but not terribly bright. The technician had been concerned about everything being alright when he was here earlier fiddling with things. I was a little concerned now as I watched the money spent update, wondering if someone had put a pay per view program on somehow or if we had somehow been changed into channels or a system that charged per time used, but I think the numbers finally settled on zero.

Most everyone had gone to bed now and all the TVs were still on. I was looking at them with my mother and we were trying to figure out how to turn them off. I looked at the menu things hanging down onto the screen, trying to see if there was an off button or some way there to turn the TV off. As I was looking them over they changed from things on the screen to plastic things hanging down onto the screen. There were less options now and I still couldn't see anything I could identify as something to turn the TV off.

Finally I saw a switch, like a light gray light switch, underneath the overhanging curve of one of the plastic things at the left. I thought it was an older part of the TV, not part of the newer stuff that was just put on, and that I should be able to use that to turn it off. I reached in and turned the switch, feeling somewhat like I was cheating because I wasn't using the new way, but as long as it worked it would be enough for now. I straightened up and then one of the new plastic things came off, loosened by my reaching under it, and then fell on the floor.

I picked it up and tried to put it back on. More were coming loose, and I was trying to put them back together. It seems they joined at the top, with the middle one essentially hanging off the other two with little plastic peg extensions fitting into holes on the others. It was really kind of a delicate arrangement and I could hardly get the things to hold together without it falling apart again. I thought it would be kind of bad for the technician to come back and find we had already taken apart what he had done. I don't think the TV even went entirely off, just changed to kind of a blank static display.

From time to time though, earlier and now again, I was becoming drawn into the show on the TV, watching it, with the story expanding until I was there.

I was back again at a scene after some kind of disaster had happened on the Earth, with the survivors carrying on. There was a huge squarish mansion, with several stories, set in a misty watery area, with wide open stretches of water through areas of water overrun with reeds, with a gray sky and a misty drizzle and occasional slight, cold breezes.

A man was out in a long, large, flat-bottomed rowboat, slowly filling a barrel or two at a time with something skimmed off the water, some kind of toxic waste, what kind was never explained. It might have been chemicals or it might have been biological, perhaps some kind of mutated bacteria. Most of the time the man just drifted through the area, maybe occasionally paddling, until he came across enough of a concentration to begin collecting it.

Occasionally a helicopter would come and take away a barrel or two and leave empty ones. This time he also left some food items, as the man had requested. Some of the food was more conventional and some was in little squeezable tubes that looked like the paint tubes used by artists. Someone even came down onto the boat with him, briefly.

The man collecting the toxic waste eagerly had some of the food, including some from the tubes. The stuff from the tubes looked strange and waxy, with a slight sheen. Unknown to the person collecting the toxic waste, people at the house had been discussing whether they should get rid of him, and whether this would be a good time. The toxic waste collector man was starting to become a little suspicious of things though, starting to wonder now if something was wrong.

After the helicopter man left, the person in the boat, the toxic waste collector man, went back to the house, into one of the rooms near the center. He fiddled with the food tubes he had been given, wondering about them. He became aware, then, that he could hear someone, out in the other rooms toward the front. Someone was coming for him.

When the man arrived, it turned out to be the man from the helicopter. There was a confrontation then and a struggle. During the struggle the man that had been collecting toxic waste held out a food tube and threatened the other man with it, and I think smeared some of it on him, but then at the end poured some of the toxic waste from a metal container the size of a large glass over the man's hands and forearms and told him what he had done. The helicopter man was crouching there on the floor, leaning forward, with his arms low and extended, a stricken look on his face. He said that others were coming. The toxic waste collector man could hear them, talking and making noises as they made their way through the house toward them, a woman and someone else, maybe more than one other.

He got out into the hallway and they were close enough for him to see, down a slightly irregular hallway near the doorway of a room, maybe two or three rooms away. They saw him, too, and started to make their way forward, hurrying more now. He turned and ran, trying go one way and then another. They ran after him, splitting up some to take different ways. He was on the third floor now, though it's uncertain how he got there. People were coming from both sides. The area was a series of very large open rooms with large open areas around parts of the perimeter and center of the floor.

He went toward some stairs, but then went toward a ladder that went through a square opening in the floor. The ladder was made of metal tubes painted white, and it slid slowly down as he put his weight on it. He was also walking down, trying to hurry. The ladder would not slide all the way down anyway, just part of the way. The others were still after him, trying other ladders and the stairs. I think one was even trying to go down the same ladder, but since it was moving it was awkward to get on, and he kept pulling back from it.

The toxic waste collector man was now surrounded by empty space, in a large open area in the second story. In front of him was a railing and balcony room with some statues and figurines and other art. He decided to climb over the railing and get into the room there. There was something in his mind that made him a little worried about it, but he decided that he had to do it.

When he got into the room, the statues started moving, and he remembered that earlier some people had gotten in and had been somewhat slowly and methodically killed by the statues. They had engaged in a sword fight. The people had even been dressed like someone from Shakespeare's time, but they couldn't kill the statues with their swords. The statues, though of relatively soft stone, wouldn't damage that much, and the statues killed them with their swords. Now they were coming for the toxic waste collector man, who was now sometimes me, though sometimes I also just watched. He got a sword from somewhere and was fighting back. The sword blade was about an inch and a half wide, and was flimsy and wanted to flex and bend even if he just used the edge of it.

He got behind one as it tried to get him and as it leaned out over the railing he was hacking and sawing at the back of its neck. Someone was saying that you had to cut off their heads to kill them. I, as the toxic waste collector man, finally got its head cut off and then turned to the other statues. Other people had gotten there and were also fighting them. Earlier the people had been after me, but were now fighting the common enemy. I think the statues might have been winning at first, but as they were thinned out it became easier.

Then, as I went forward in the room, another statue came forward toward me. This one had a long tapering white sword that spread out backwards from a point in the front, becoming a thick blade with upper and lower somewhat dull edges, to having expanding center edges too, before finally expanding out into a wide circle that acted as a hand protector. The whole thing was maybe eight feet long, and because of its length was the sword that could not be beaten. Earlier in the dream it had killed someone who had tried to fight it. I managed to get past the point and made my way partway along it, where I managed to bend it a little, perhaps even hack it in two. I then made my way along to the statue holding it and killed it, as it talked in a somewhat high mournful voice.

Besides the statues, which were definitely thinning out now, there were also figures and figurines of various sizes in niches and shelves and on tables, though the tables didn't start until past the first room. The figures and figurines weren't all people, some were animals of various kinds or part human and part animal or cartoonish animals. Sometimes they were very abstract. Anything with a suggestion of a head or eyes had to be killed, though.

The first table was covered with them. I started picking them up and just breaking the heads off when I could, sometimes banging them against the edges of the table, though this didn't seem to do much good. They were aware of me, especially as I picked them up, and looked at me with slightly worried looks, like they accepted their fate but were still slightly concerned. They all had to be killed, otherwise it would start all over again. Some of them would be growing into knights and become replacements for the ones killed. If all of them were killed, though, it would all be over and even the people hurt by them would be restored.

After killing some at the table I turned to some display shelves on the short section of wall behind me and started breaking the heads off some of them there, then I went to the side, to the right of where I was now facing, but to the left as I had been in the first room. The area formed an L-shaped room full of tables at which various odd entities sat, perhaps in the range of four to five feet high if they had been standing. They were all animated statues and they all had to be killed.

I grabbed the long neck of an ostrich-type thing and I think partly broke and partly cut it in two as the thing's eyes looked at me worriedly. Something that was apparently a vampire got up and fought with me. It got behind me and did something to me, evidently bit me in the back of my right shoulder. I managed to turn around and kill it. It had a smile of triumph, though its eyes had a trace of pain and worry, and of acceptance. It knew it was gong to die, but was happy that it had got me, too. I, along with the others, continued fighting, killing the things.

An odd thing that was apparently a werewolf, though it was mostly a smooth white and just had occasional indented flowing lines suggestive of hair, attacked me and then got away and brought back some kind of bomb. I and the others tried to draw back and then the bomb went off, spraying everything with a watery substance and mist. The substance was a little thicker than water, and kept coming out, it wasn't something that just went off and stopped. It would die down and then come back, spraying harder again. Some of the statues started murmuring about the doomsday device being used. I thought then that it was a device to kill everyone, including the attackers, when it looked like everything was going to be lost. I could see the statues looking with concerned interest as they slowly started to melt and dissolve.

I got the other people together and they hung on me as I somehow took a long heavy cord or rope and swung out through the window away from the building, which was now much taller and in the middle of a city. We sailed far out over the other buildings, crossing several blocks, perhaps even half the city, before finally stopping at an unusually tall one that I think was part hotel and part museum. We were inside it, then, perhaps swinging in through a window. We walked around inside a bit, looking at things and discussing the situation, sometimes looking out the tall windows.

There was a series of watery explosions, with thick water and dark mist coming out of the building we had left, which was now maybe seven or eight stories high. Windows and parts of the walls were gone in the upper section, though it was hard to see much because of the obscuring dark mist. It was apparently the final stages of destruction.

Then a white figure, upright but slightly tilted, flew out of the building toward us, apparently under its own power. We were talking among ourselves, saying that it must be the werewolf, come to get us. It fell toward us, looking like a statue of a man, with blank statue eyes, and with chips and chunks gone but still mostly there, partially cloaked in flowing pieces of statue cloth and partly in something that may have been a statue toga, it flew toward us unmoving and crashed through the window. I got behind it somehow and got it against the wall and managed to cut and break its head off. It only moved as a whole, and never moved any part of it independently, except maybe for the slightest bit and maybe not even that.

We still thought it was somehow the werewolf, but then we somehow got word about something else, that there were clues in some other building in some boxes, some of them like board game boxes and some smaller and taller. A couple of us went to look through them. I was now a separate person from the toxic waste collector man, more of a helper. He was looking through the boxes and then he left for a while and I was looking through them. They contained odd collections of things, like paper dolls and their clothes and game parts and other things. There was supposed to be some clue there left by the werewolf about his next move. The toxic waste collector man came back and looked some more and then left again.

I was standing now on the edge of the building. We had been moving back bit by bit. It was like the tables or shelves where the boxes were had kept moving toward us, very, very slowly. The room didn't have any back wall here. If it did before it was now gone, not even the corners had walls. I seemed to be standing on something like pale dried mud that had squirted out in a fat shelf from between huge adobe blocks. It was part of a series of such shelves. I was still nervously going through the boxes, moving to the left side and then back as the shelves of dirt were crumbling under my feet and falling away.

It seemed now that the toxic waste collector man had been there when they crumbled and had fallen to whatever was down there far, far below. I worried about that as I tried to continue looking through the boxes. I had to find the clue to save him. Once the werewolf was destroyed, the toxic collector man would be restored, or so I thought. It might only be a clue that led to another clue, but I still had to do it.

Some voice was speaking to me from somewhere maybe ten feet away to the left and above. It was an unfamiliar voice, sounding like an older man. Apparently disembodied, it seemed to be speaking mostly commentary that wasn't directly related to what I was doing, but still seemed to in a vague way be speaking about it, offering indirect advice.

A series of mud shelves to the left had crumbled and fallen and even the faces of the adobe blocks there were crumbling and coming loose and falling. The dried mud shelf where I was standing now was starting to crumble, falling away on both sides, the edges shrinking toward me. I could feel the disintegration coming toward me and the shelves coming apart in pieces under my feet. I was falling, then, too, but I only fell a little way, maybe only a couple of inches, and then I found myself standing on a flat floor-like extension, with little scattered pieces of dried mud on it.

I started to get the feeling that maybe the toxic waste collector man hadn't fallen, after all. Maybe he hadn't been there when the dried mud ledges collapsed, maybe he had only gone somewhere for a while. I still had to find the clue, though. I continued standing there, on my now stable and secure platform, and continued searching the boxes.

Dream - A tiny Tarzan from a book

Many years ago, probably in the 1990s or 1980s, I dreamed I was in my bedroom, and that besides the many bookshelves, there were also lots of books piled high around the room in many places, and some were also piled on the bed. Going through some of the books, I came across stories from long ago that I had read. One of them involved Tarzan or a Tarzan-like character. He came to life, then, as a tiny figure six to eight inches high, and had adventures in my bedroom, climbing over the piles of books and things while he fought people and bad people tried to get him.

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 figure receding sideways through the clouds

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 first in the list that I made of them.

In the dream, I saw a dark figure facing the right, completely covered in a bulky suit. The head was slightly pointed down, and the head and neck were completely hidden by a cylindrical flat-topped covering with a faceplate. The head covering may have been of soft material. Overall, it was almost as if he was wearing a containment suit or perhaps some kind of welding suit. After a slight pause, the figure, still with its side facing me, rapidly receded away from me through a hole in layers of dark clouds.

Two days later, on the morning of Friday the 28th, on WGN, Matlock had an episode called "The Coach," in which a person briefly appeared wearing a dark, smooth, bulky coat with a hood. The hood was tall and went to a point in the back. The person was shown from the side, head pointed slightly downward, though the forward slope of the top of the hood exaggerated this, and the person's face was almost entirely hidden and sometimes entirely hidden by the side of the hood. The figure was very disturbingly reminiscent of the figure in my dream.

Later that day, at 10:00 PM, a new Monk Christmas episode came on the USA channel in which monks appeared wearing brown hoods that were somewhat pointed at the back, but the cloth was thinner and the tops of the hoods were more rounded. They were thus less of a match, though it was still interesting that I should see similar costumes on two shows that day, ones that were at least somewhat similar to a figure in a dream two days before.

Wordzzle 65 - The crows and the big sale

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the ninth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

parasite,
meals on wheels,
crows,
it's my fault,
everything but the kitchen sink,
on sale,
patriotism,
the love of my life,
library card,
common sense

The roller-skating crows were nothing but meals on wheels to the parasites, but right now one of them had a more pressing worry.

"It's my fault," he said. "I should never have tried to sell my patriotism. I didn't really believe anyone would buy it, but I got full price and didn't even have to put it on sale."

"You're a spokesman for Peru now, better get used to it," said the second crow. "You've sold almost everything but the kitchen sink now. I wouldn't have believed that anyone could sell a library card, but you did. The first thing you should have sold is these parasites, but they're still here. It defies all common sense."

"At least I still have the love of my life," said the first crow.

"Not if you sell the kitchen sink," said the second.


Mini Challenge:

blackmail,
California,
stethoscope,
postage,
crank

In a place called California, a fat envelope apparently containing photographs went to the dead letter office because of insufficient postage and no return address, and from there was eventually discarded. Without the proof of the photographs, the blackmail money was never delivered. The blackmailer, a crank who hated doctors, and hated this one in particular, was enraged that nothing was happening, and fumed and paced.

He still had the doctor's bag, and could go ahead with the disclosure, and photographs of it and the stethoscope in the motel room, and photographs of the doctor by the cars talking to her. He had followed the doctor and hidden nearby with the camera. They had been outside talking and even kissing for a long time. Doing it openly. They had been so absorbed that he had been able to sneak into the motel room and take some pictures of it, and then take the doctor's bag.

He wasn't really after disclosure, though. Disclosure just seemed petty. He wanted the money, and he wanted the doctor to feel fear.

Why wasn't he getting the money? When he had mailed the pictures, he had included a note with the place and time for the money delivery, and how it was to be done. He had named a date several days after the mailing, to allow time for delivery and time for them to get the money. He had waited on that day, watching, all day long, but nothing had happened. He went back the next day, too, and the next, and the one after that. Still nothing. He continued pacing. He hated to go back and wait again. Some people were starting to look at him funny. They might be able to identify him if questions started being asked, or maybe even call the police themselves to report a suspicious character.

He looked at the doctor's bag one last time, and finally put it in the closet, next to the other doctors' bags. He couldn't understand why these things never worked out.


Mega challenge:

parasite,
meals on wheels,
crows,
it's my fault,
everything but the kitchen sink,
on sale,
patriotism,
the love of my life,
library card,
common sense

blackmail,
California,
stethoscope,
postage,
crank

On a tree limb the crows sat, watching the activity. Since they were California crows, they wore sunglasses as symbols of their coolness, though of course they already knew they were cool.

"Looks like everything is on sale down there," said one. "You'd almost think they were looting the place."

"I hope they leave some for us," said the other. "I'd like to go down there now, but I'm not sure it's safe. Normally we could scare people away, but the way they're acting they probably wouldn't even see us and we'd just get trampled."

"Well, it looks like they're taking everything but the kitchen sink, and we really don't need any more kitchen sinks. I really think pickings are going to be pretty slim if we wait. If we see an opening we better take it,"

"I wish I had a stethoscope, so I could hear what they are saying."

"Will a stethoscope work at this distance?"

"Maybe with enough batteries it would."

"We could always take the flag up there on the pole. We could put it on the tree and show our patriotism."

"I think it's bigger than it looks. We probably couldn't manage it. Besides, we've already got five small ones."

"Yeah, but five is such an odd number."

They watched for a while in silence. "Look," the first one said. "Some of them have started fighting over something, and it isn't even food."

"Yeah," said the other. "People can get so cranky at times. and being cranky is the opposite of coolness. People have no common sense."

"Although," said the first thoughtfully, "we can sometimes be something like parasites. Is being a parasite cool?"

"It is if crows do it."

They watched for a while more. "You shouldn't have mentioned food," said the second. "Now I'm really, really, hungry. Sometimes I really think food is the love of my life, my one true love."

"Good thing your girl friend isn't here to hear that, or something really uncool would happen."

The second crow seemed startled and looked around nervously for a minute. Not finding her, but afraid there was a chance she might actually be out there, he said loudly, "Of course, I love Mabel more than anything." Then, much quieter, "Man, you sure know how to destroy a mood. Still, I really wish we had some food."

They continued watching. "That guy on the edge there has something sticking out of his pocket," said the first. "I think I can swoop down and grab it."

"You'd better hurry then, before he manages to get back in the crowd."

The first crow took off and quickly flew down toward the man, then swooped around and plucked something out of his pocket with its bill. Landing back in the tree, it laid the things out on the branch.

"This isn't exactly food," said the second crow.

"Yeah, but I got a credit card and that might be useful. I also got some postage stamps. Maybe we can sell them to someone."

"I'm not sure the stamps are any good. They don't have any numbers on them. If they don't have numbers, how can you know if you have enough postage? And if you don't have enough postage, don't they just send your letter to the blackmail office?"

"Hmmm. Well, maybe. There's still the credit card, though."

"That's not a credit card, it's a library card. I think they have pretty low limits, because libraries don't have much money."

"Well, I guess it's my fault. I should've picked a different pocket. Still, we should be able to get something with it."

"Maybe, if there's anything left after these people get through."

They turned and stared at the scene some more. "I hope there's some food down there," said the second crow. "I see a bunch of stuff but no food."

"I think there's something over there to the left, not far from the entrance," said the first. "I think it might be a food vendor of some kind. People are getting things from it and eating them."

"A food vendor! Where did it come from!?"

"I think it must have rolled up while we we talking about the credit - er - library card."

They stared at it. The second crow said, "There seems to be enough room around it. We could swoop in and grab some stuff."

"Well, let's do it then."

And they took off and swooped down on the food cart and then back up, their feet grabbing as many hot dogs as they could hold.

"I love food carts," said the second crow, joyfully. "They can show up anywhere. They're just meals on wheels, meals on wheels."

"Yeah," said the first. "Too bad we couldn't have given him something in return."

"Don't worry," said the second. "I left him the library card."

The Wombat on the Trellis

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 three paragraphs instead of being contained in just one.

This story was one of several that I did for my post 989 on that message board. The other stories were separate from this one, with their own lists of words. The list of words for this story: wombat, trellis, electricity, cobalt, stink

This story is dated 5:04 AM, November 29, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE WOMBAT ON THE TRELLIS

A wombat climbed a trellis and was silhouetted against a cobalt blue sky. A tourist, watching the scene, raised his camera to take a picture.

Suddenly, there was a blinding flash and an incredible crash of thunder. The wombat clung to the charred trellis, its eyes big and its fur smoking slightly. The air had a stink of ozone, and fingers of electricity ran everywhere.

Murmuring to itself the wombat said, "Wow. I didn't know cameras still used such large flashes."

Dream - Super-Neanderthal

On March 14, 2009 I dreamed about driving and road construction and cars I once had, and eventually about a person who was a super-neanderthal. (Neanderthal man is generally thought to be a side branch of early man, one that died out in the last ice age.)

In the dream, I was driving out in the neighborhoods near where I live, probably in the 1970 Cadillac, though it could have been the 1987 Oldsmobile. I was in the area slightly north and slightly east of where I live. It was night now, or getting close to it. It might have been late afternoon when I started. I had been at my house and was trying to get back there. I was trying to go south down a minor city street, but it had construction on part of it, as I knew. The construction was mostly south of a major neighborhood street, one I had to cross before getting home. I had done this before, earlier.

Now, for some reason, I was driving the 1955 Cadillac. I would have to go back and get the other car somehow. It was extra trouble. I parked by the road that had the construction, by the edge of the road, just before the neighborhood started and before most of the construction started. I was trying to walk home, going west down the neighborhood street I would eventually have to cross, then I somehow had the 1955 Cadillac with me, carrying it on my shoulders. It was smaller than in real life and seemed almost ghost-like. A few other cars were around, but not many. Perhaps one police car was nearby, maybe at the neighborhood cross-street I came to, but I'm not sure. I was concerned about what people might think, seeing me carrying the car, and whether it might be one more reason to decide to report me. I got it home and put it down in the strip of paved side yard near the fence. The car was just a faded brown blur now, semi-transparent. I went inside, then.

Then I had to leave again, and at some point became a super-neanderthal, though at first I was just looking at him. He had super-strength and was super-smart, though not nearly as much as Superman, but I felt that he did connect to the Superman story in some way, and had some kind of connection or similarity to the Bizarro Superman.

The neanderthal was dressed in clothes and was unshaven but didn't have a beard. I think it was kind of rustic clothes, a plain flannel shirt and pants with suspenders. The neanderthal was probably around six feet tall, maybe a little less, with his chest and stomach area very broad and projecting outward some. He also had some kind of jacket, which seemed too small to comfortably close over his chest.

He couldn't talk, just make some grunts, but he could understand what was being said to him, though most people didn't realize that and thought he was stupid. This gave him an advantage, because they could talk around him, not realizing he knew what was being said. He also didn't act like he could do much, or was even very strong.

He went from my house off to some place else, a restaurant I think, though it was somewhat laid out like the house, but in a larger way, and wandered around. He was carrying something with him, some little device maybe, perhaps even a camera, but I'm not sure.

Before he left the area, and was probably either just inside or just outside the restaurant, someone wrapped a narrow tan leather strap around his chest and shoulders, with it coming together and knotting at odd angles, forming a complicated network, to hold the device. He looked at it a little surprised and somewhat bemused, but happy that someone had cared enough to do it for him. I wasn't certain he was smart enough to take it off and put it back on again.

He was just outside the building now, on the concrete walk along the front of it, and facing toward the parking lot beyond the walk, with the person finishing it up.

Then someone brought out a little wheelchair for him. He looked at it a little surprised, but happy, and sat down in it, and was going to use it to go home in. He did finally make it home, back to the place I lived.

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.

Wordzzle 64 - Under water

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the eighth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

albino,
trench,
marble,
assistant,
Indian,
What's that supposed to mean?,
sound first principles,
the key thing,
moat,
curtain

He pulled the curtain aside, and saw the albino Indian assistant there. He had thought someone might be there, but he hadn't really been expecting him, or anyone, actually. "Urk!!" he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" the assistant replied. "You act like you've never seen me before."

"Well, I wasn't really expecting you. I wasn't expecting anyone, actually, but certainly not you."

"You're starting to hurt my feelings."

"Well, nothing personal or anything, but aren't you dead? We gave you a marble casket and everything. I'm sure you were in it."

"Yes, I can see the need for that. Can't have dead people laying around and stinking up the place. Sound first principles and all."

"Yes, um, well, that's true, but you make it sound so bad!"

There was a pause in the conversation. They continued to look at each other.

"I told you not to put water in the moat. I had a bad feeling about that," the assistant finally said.

"I had to put water in it. Without water, it was just a trench, and trenches aren't nearly as useful as moats. Besides, what would people think?"

"I fell in the moat and drowned. I'm sure someone pushed me."

"Well, it's a castle, full of intrigues and things like that. Castles always are."

"When I got my head above water and turned around, the only person I saw was you."

"I was nearby and heard a splash, and went out to see what had happened."

"Why didn't you help me?"

"I did, don't you remember? I got a board and held it out to you, so you could grab it and pull yourself out."

"You kept hitting me with it."

"I was just, um, trying to get it near enough that you could grab it."

"When I did finally grab it, and pulled myself closer, you managed to get the end of it against my chest and pushed down on it, pinning me under the water, against the bank. I couldn't get out from under it. You kept pushing and pushing until I drowned."

"Really, I'm sure this is a distortion of what actually happened."

"No, I was there, remember?"

"Well, even so, even supposing all that to be true, the key thing is, what are you going to do about it? You're dead. Do you plan to haunt me?"

"Yes, but not for long. While we've been talking, I've been moving toward you, and you've been backing up. Now you're on the balcony, almost up to its outer wall. On the other side of the wall is a long fall, with the moat far, far below. The wall is very low, low enough to sit on. I can easily push you over it."

"You're a ghost! You can't touch anything!"

"We'll see about that."

And the ghost leaped at him, and he did feel something, and stumbling back in terror he fell over the wall, and fell into the distant moat. He tried to get back to the surface, but somehow the ghost was there, sitting on his chest, and he couldn't get out, and he couldn't get away....

"He's dead," the doctor said. "Died in his sleep from all appearances. It was probably his heart, even though he was a bit young for that. Although I suppose someone could have killed him in some way that isn't obvious. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened. All sorts of odd things happen in castles."


Mini Challenge:

under the surface,
doomed,
grand design,
temple,
aspirin

He looked around him one last time at the grand design of the doomed temple. Water was already washing over his feet. In a few hours, the whole place would be underwater. He took another headache remedy, similar in its effects to aspirin. He wasn't sure how much help it was going to be to him now, and it sure wasn't going to fix what was happening. It felt like the whole world was in agony, and was shaking itself like a wild beast. This was going to be one of those memorable times in history, he knew, one that people talk about in ages hence. Assuming anybody survived to talk about it. Another quake came, and more pieces of ceiling fell into the water. A wave washed through, splashing his legs up to his knees. He made his way unsteadily to the entrance. The trembling of the ground was almost constant now.

At the entrance he stood for a moment, leaning against a pillar, looking out at the city. Most of the buildings still stood, but the lower parts were covered by water. Beyond the city, the tall mountain also still stood. Would the waters cover the mountain, too? He didn't know. Perhaps, though, he had better try to make it to the mountain, and hope for the best. The temple was far above the streets, now invisible under the rushing waters. He would have to swim if he was going to make it anywhere. He looked at the water. All sorts of things were in it. Even bodies. It was moving fast, too. It wouldn't be an easy swim. He looked toward the harbor. It was hard to tell exactly where it had been, now. It had been wrecked, along with most of the boats, and people had already taken any of them that could still float. He knew there wouldn't even be a rowboat left.

Another quake hit, and the pillar he was leaning against tilted sharply. He tried to keep to his feet but was unable to, and slipped and fell into the rushing water. He was under the surface for a while, tumbling along, but finally managed to get his head above the water. Gasping for breath, he saw a long earthen jar floating nearby. He wrapped his arms around it.

Looking around, he tried to see where he was. He was surprised to find that he didn't know. He had lived here all his life, but everything looked different now. He could still see the mountain, but the water didn't seem to be carrying him that way. Unless he wanted to hang onto the jar until he died, he was indeed going to have to swim for it.

He let go of the jar and began to swim, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make any progress. The water was too fast, and he watched the mountain slowly move past him to the side. He swam for what seemed like hours, until he couldn't swim anymore and just paddled enough to keep his head out of the water. He watched the mountain recede in the distance. Darkness fell, then, and it was hard to see much of anything.

Something brushed against him in the night. Feeling it with his hands, he found that it was the branch of a tree. He felt his way along it and came to the trunk. He wrapped his arms around it and clung to it. After a while he managed to climb up onto it, and he lay there clinging to it, and finally fell asleep.

Sometime the next day he woke up. The tree was scraping against something. The water had carried him to another land, one that also had a mountain. He wasn't sure where he was, because none of the nearby lands had mountains that looked like this. Then he realized it was his mountain. The water had carried him in a circle and brought him back. Except now he was on the other side of the mountain. It had looked different because of that, and because he was so close to it, and because the lower part was covered in water. He got off the tree and back into the water, then made his way the few feet to the mountain and climbed up onto it. The mountain wasn't too steep here, but there were some steep parts he would have to cross to make it around to the other side.

He made his way slowly along. An occasional quake would come, and one even threw him to the ground, but they seemed to be lessening. Twice he came upon landslides that were too treacherous to walk upon, and he had to go back to the water to get around them. He found some fruit and berries to eat, and managed to catch a few fish, which he had to eat raw. He also came across a couple of streams. The water was muddier than he would have thought, and didn't taste good, but in the end he drank it. Days passed. He noted that the water was still rising. It was easiest to tell in the morning, for he could see that it had crept closer to him as he slept. He had not seen another living person during this time, just dead ones in the water and along the shore.

Coming around at last now to where he could see where the city was, he could see nothing of it at all. It was entirely underwater. During the next few days he made his way along the mountain to where he felt that the city was directly in front of him. He still couldn't see it. He walked along the edge of the water, trying to find it, but there was no evidence that anything was ever there. No evidence, perhaps, except for the debris along the water's edge. He decided to look through the debris and see if he could find anything useful. Most of it was broken in some way, and some things were just scraps. He found an occasional jug or jar that was still intact, some still partly filled with something.

He came upon, then, the top of a small table missing its legs. He realized that it was his table, from the temple. Not the big table, where he ate with guests, but the table he used when eating in his room. He picked it up. It was waterlogged, but not so heavy that he couldn't carry it.

He turned and started climbing the mountain. He had to find a high place to put it, some place he could make a permanent camp. It was possible the water would someday overrun it, but if it did he would find another place on higher ground. Along the way, he met some other people, some other survivors. They traveled on together, up the mountain. They walked for several days, finally stopping at a place that was almost level, a place far above the distant water. Here they would build their new city, and their new temple. It wouldn't be much of a city at first, and the temple would be smaller than his bedroom in the old one. It was a start, though, and something future generations could enlarge upon.


Mega challenge:

albino,
trench,
marble,
assistant,
Indian,
What's that supposed to mean?,
sound first principles,
the key thing,
moat,
curtain

under the surface,
doomed,
grand design,
temple,
aspirin

He looked beyond the curtain, out toward the edge of the world. It had been getting closer for some time now. Soon it would be close enough to touch. If it could be touched. What would happen then, when it was close enough to touch, and then too close to avoid touching it, and then so close that it passed over him? It was just a formless grayness, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to it. Airplanes flew in it, and airplanes flew out of it. Cars went in and out, too. There was nothing on the news about it. He couldn't help but worry, though. Were they all doomed?

He had thought at first it might be fog, but as time went on he became certain that it wasn't. He had seen fog before, and it wasn't like this. The transition line was a little blurred, but it was a very tight line, and very straight and flat. Nothing natural could be that straight.

He walked to the window and looked out at it. What was under the surface? Was everything still there? That was the key thing, he thought. Was everything still there. He got out a crystal ball someone had sold him long ago. It was supposed to have been made by monks in a temple in India. Were crystal balls made by religious Indian monks better than other kinds? He didn't know, but he had never been able to get it to work. Oh, sometimes he had seen some odd things in it if he stared at it long enough, but never anything he could figure out, and he wasn't sure it meant anything. Nothing was happening now, either. He held it up in front of his face, putting it between him and the grayness, and then moved it close to him, until it was almost touching him and he was cross-eyed looking at it.

"That's not how to make it work," a voice said from beside him.

"Oh, you again. I haven't seen you in a long time." He lowered the crystal ball.

"It's not been as long as you think. You don't always remember."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means the same thing it did the last time I said it."

There was a moment of silence. He didn't turn to look at him, but continued to look out at the grayness. He didn't like looking at him. He was whiter than an albino, and there was something strange about his appearance, but he couldn't remember exactly what it was right now. Finally he said, "Shouldn't an assistant be more helpful?"

"I sometimes help you, but I'm not your assistant."

They stared out at the grayness some more, or at least he assumed that both of them were doing it. He had no desire to turn and check. The grayness got closer and closer. The building across the street, a temple, faded out.

"I wish there was some way we could stop it. Or at least put up something like a wall or trench or moat, something that would keep it away."

"None of those things would make any difference. Nothing you could make would have any effect on it."

"Is this the end of the world, then, is it all over?"

"What you are seeing is a natural phenomenon. Though it doesn't usually happen in quite this way. Most people don't notice it because they aren't tuned to it, and most of them will be unaffected by it. Since you do see it, you will be affected by it, or at least you could be."

"But, what is it? What does it do?"

"It is the dividing line between your timeline and another. On the other side, things will be a little different. In some cases a lot different. Most people will remain in their current timeline, but some will cross over, and some, because of imperfect alignment or other factors, will cross to a different timeline than what is beyond the grayness."

"How can such a thing be?"

"Do you believe the universe was designed on sound first principles? Do you think it is all part of a grand design? If so, then this must, since it exists, be part of it. If you believe that the universe and everything in it has a scientific explanation, then this, too, must have such an explanation."

"That's not telling me much."

The grayness was just outside the window, then all of a sudden the window and curtains and wall faded away, and it was coming across the floor toward him. He quickly backed away. Coming to the other side of the room, he looked around desperately. Even if he made it to the door, he knew he couldn't get out of the building in time. And even if he did, there was no place he could go to escape it. He saw a bottle of aspirin on the dresser, and picked it up and threw it at the grayness. It disappeared into it without a sound. He put down the crystal ball and pulled open a drawer, looking for something else to throw. Seeing a marble, he grabbed it and threw it hard at the grayness. He knew there was a wall back there, if it still existed. He still didn't hear anything, but the marble came bouncing back at him. The grayness was almost upon him, now.

"Isn't there anything I can do to stop it?" the words coming out quickly, his voice tense and shrill.

"If you put your mind to it in the proper way, you might be able to move to a different timeline than the one that's coming, or even come back here. Such things can be tricky, though, and may not be an improvement."

"It's almost here, there's no time to learn anything, IT'S ALMOST HERE!" He put his hand out, trying to ward it off, then when his hand disappeared he jerked it back. "Help me! DO SOMETHING!"

"Here, take this."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw something being tossed at him, and he grabbed it with his hand and arm, holding it against his body, and then the grayness was upon him. There was a moment of lightness, which quickly passed. He turned around and saw the grayness receding from him, and then the wall faded into view. Looking down, he found he was holding the crystal ball. That was the thing that had been thrown to him. He stared at it, wondering what it meant. Then he noticed that his shirt was different, and his pants, and his shoes. He looked slowly around at the room. It seemed a little bigger. The dresser had moved to the side a little, and was now of a different design. The curtains were also different. Everything else seemed pretty much the same, or at least close enough that it was hard to tell.

He saw the bottle of aspirin, then, on the floor where it had fallen after he threw it. He went over to pick it up, but then saw that the bottle design was different and the label had changed. He straightened back up and left it there, not being able to bring himself to touch it.

He turned and looked at the window, then walked over to it. The temple was gone, in its place a supermarket. Some of the other buildings were different, too. There were still cars on the street. Some of them looked familiar and some didn't, but he didn't keep track of what they all looked like anyway, so he couldn't say if any of them had changed or not. He saw a plane in the sky. They still had those, too, though it didn't look like any plane he had ever seen.

He looked again at the supermarket. He had gotten used to seeing the temple there, and would miss it. But hadn't there always been a supermarket there? He looked at it blankly for a momant, confused. No! There had been a temple, of course there had been. But there also had never been a temple. In fact, he now remembered them building the supermarket, years ago. Before the supermarket, the area had held a bunch of little shops.

Other memories were also coming, of the city and the types of cars and types of planes and of everything else. Memories of his life, also. Big parts of it had been different, some better and some worse. He wasn't sure of the extent of it, he was just getting some highlights right now. He would have to think about it for a long time, going through things in detail, to see what all had happened. He still had memeories of his old life though, and the world as it had been. It was terribly confusing, and it was already hard to tell what had happened here and what had happened there. Maybe he never would get it fully straightened out, and occasionally refer to things that never happened, and have people look at him strangely.

He suddenly had a desperate longing to return, to go back to the timeline he came from. He held the crystal ball in both hands and glared at it, clenching his teeth, willing it to take him back. Nothing happened. It wasn't that easy, he guessed. He sank down to the floor and sat the crystal ball down. He rolled it around absently with one hand while he gazed at the wall and thought. There had to be a way. He had even been told this, by someone, though he couldn't quite remember who it was. He was starting to have memories, too, of actually doing it before, several times, but he couldn't quite remember yet how he did it. He had to do it, though! He had to! He had to get back!

Or did he? He was starting to get a feeling that this world was better than the one he had left and that his life was better here, and had been better for a long time. What about all those things, though, that had happened in his life, and that now never did? Some of them were important things, too. Well, other things had happened instead, and some of them were also important. Maybe he should stay here for at least a while. Maybe things really would be better. Only time would tell.

The Hyena Sets a Trap

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 several that I did for my post 989 on that message board. The other stories were separate from this one, with their own lists of words. The list of words for this story: avalanche, dust, guppies, hyena, banana

This story is dated 5:04 AM, November 29, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE HYENA SETS A TRAP

The hyena carefully placed the banana in position, and was covering the string with a layer of dust when he was buried in an avalanche of small fishes.

A man carrying a clipboard came up and said, "Delivery of guppies from ACME Corp. for Wile E. Hyena, sign here."

Dream - Flying away from the castle on the mountain

Around the middle of December 2007, I had a dream about driving, and eventually about being chased from a hospital that became also a castle on a mountain. I wrote part of it down around the time it happened, intending to get back to it later. However, though I occasionally came across it in the file, I never got around to finishing it, and eventually forgot about it. When I finally did finish it, it was December 25, 2008, a little over a year later. I was, nevertheless, able to add some parts that I still remembered, and was also able to do a major expansion and polishing of it.

It was a long dream. Most of the earlier part is forgotten, though it was also very long. The earlier part had something about driving through Phoenix, I think, probably from around McDowell or Thomas Rd. to Camelback Rd. or beyond. I think the trip was done repeatedly.

In the part that I start to remember more clearly, I was outside, driving, then flying. It was night, I think. At some point, well into the dream, long white stucco walls were by a road. They also appeared earlier, and I had come back to them. There was also a taller stucco post with something on it about four feet up. I think someone at this point was after me, but it may have been a relatively recent thing. Though it was night earlier, it was now becoming daytime.

I went to a hospital in a different location, off to the side several miles at least, perhaps quite a few miles, maybe twenty or forty or even more. I flew out to the hospital, using my ability to fly, and left and went back to the walls, then returned to the hospital.

Lots of old folks were in the hospital. It may have been a old folks home, too. While there, I met a black woman nurse. She was medium build and perhaps just a little overweight. I talked with her a while. It was pleasant. She even laughed a little. I also met her a little later and carried her while flying.

I had been earlier kind of gliding around a few feet off the floor, sometimes flying instead. Part of it was showing off, but part was also the sheer joy of doing it. Some people did seem to notice. I think some grinned a little at me, their eyes opened a little wider than normal. There was a danger in attracting too much attention, though, because some people were trying to find me and get me. I tried not to be too overly conspicuous, and I did worry some that I might be overdoing it.

Now, though, when I picked the nurse up to fly with her, I found that she was much heavier than I had expected. I had put myself into a cross-legged sitting position, with her sitting in my lap with her back to me, and was trying to fly like that. I found, though, that her weight dragged me down, almost down to the floor.

I fought to stay in the air, and went toward wide steps that led down to a huge open area with a few people scattered around, apparently workers. I zoomed down into it, hoping I could stay up, but I went down at an long angle toward the floor and ended up only a little higher than before. I forced myself, willed myself, to think that both she and I were light and I zoomed up high toward the distant ceiling.

A least some of the people down there turned out to be part of the group that was trying to get me, and chased us. We went up to the upper story of the hospital, perhaps the third floor, perhaps higher, and went out a door to a flat roof or balcony that ran along this side of the building. Beyond it was a low wall, and on the other side of the wall was revealed a high cliff with the ground far below. Behind the building the mountain continued up. The hospital seemed to be castle-like now, a castle embedded in a mountain.

I looked out at the distant ground far below, dirt and shrubbery and farther out a wall and more things beyond that. I hoped I could fly, but I wasn't sure. I think there were people coming from both sides for us now, and maybe from behind us, too, through the door we came through. I had to do something, they were about to get us. I had to try to fly, to get away from them. I had to go out over the wall, out in the air far above the distant ground, carrying the nurse, and hope I had enough power left that I wouldn't simply fall, that I could at least glide in for a soft landing. I hoped it would work.

We went off the cliff in a long downward glide, eventually going over a road that went crosswise to us, with two walls running along it. Two important military officers were there discussing us. They seemed to know we were somewhere nearby.

I flew off over the fields, gaining altitude. The sun was mostly set, and the tops of things, such as trees, bushes, buildings, etc., were softly lit, emerging out of soft shadows. As time wore on, the light faded into darkness. I came to a small town and turned back to go to the hospital, to see if it was safe yet.

I flew back in the night over fields that were in major sections, separated by long crosswise roads and hedges running from road to road. Each major section was divided into small plots that were very roughly square, bordered with wiggly lines of thin hedges. Each major section had differently shaped plots and different hedge designs within each plot, with all plots being the same within each major division.

Although the woman was a nurse at the hospital, she was getting too tired now, and didn't want to continue all the way back to it. I stopped there among the fields and put her down on one of the roads, then I went back into the air and continued on alone.

Dream - 'Uncle Jed' and flying

Sometime in the first few days of November, 2007, I had a dream about an 'Uncle Jed' and about someone mistaking me for my father.

In the dream, I was in Scottsdale, but it was a much smaller town with much empty space, perhaps something like it was decades ago. In the earlier part of the dream, I traveled back and forth to different buildings. I met two important people, who came up to me. One of them, the leading one, I knew as Uncle Jed (Jed Clampett, from the Beverly Hillbillies TV show) and the other one might have been my father at a much younger age than he currently is (he might have been around 40). (I have, in real life, on rare occasions, jokingly referred to myself as Uncle Jed when talking with my mother. I don't look anything like him, however.)

After talking with them for a while, I left and went through a series of buildings and rooms. At some point, I was in some kind of waiting room, perhaps for an automotive repair facility. Two older women, perhaps in their mid fifties (at the time of the dream I was 54, but could have passed for someone less than 40) came up to me. I paid the most attention to the one who talked. The other one was a shadowy figure who stood slightly behind the other woman and to her left. The first woman had very curly hair that was dusted with gray. The hair was not too long and was combed down except where it was allowed to blossom out at the sides. Her eyes were open wide and she leaned forward, looking closely at my face (I was sitting down). She asked if it was really me, and was marveling about coming across me after all these years. She got an envelope with large plastic windows from the other woman and showed me a drawing of a man, mostly from behind, holding a torch and working on a radiator. The name and address of the radiator shop were to the left of the figure, and the whole thing was in the upper left quarter of the envelope, showing through the plastic window, though part of the name and address was blocked. I felt that what she was showing me was from the mid-to-late 1960's.

She was apparently under the impression that I was my father, and that this was a picture of him. I felt that she had seen him in person, though, and knew what he looked like. I tried to explain to her that I was not my father and that the drawing was not him, just the little man that was used in the ad (though for all I knew the drawing could have been based on him). She never seemed to understand, though. I was also uncomfortable because I was dirty and wearing dirty work clothes, and had not shaved for days.

Eventually, I left and continued to wander from one building or room to another. It was dark, but it may have been dark for a long time. At some point, I ended up in a building that was several stories high, and I was at least three stories off the ground, with other stories above me. There were some other people in the room.

For some reason, I was becoming increasingly nervous and uncomfortable and felt that I had to leave. I went over to a large window that stretched almost to the floor. The window was either open or I opened it. I looked out into the dark, down the building toward the parking lot or alley below. The building had small ridges that ran around the building above and below the windows.

I wondered if I could just drift down to the pavement if I stepped out the window. Sometimes I could drift down or fly and sometimes I couldn't. I wondered if this was a dream or not. I decided to go ahead and try. I stepped out the window and did drift down, catching at the ridges with one of my hands and slowing myself in little jerks. It all seemed like a lot of work, requiring too much concentration.

After I got down, I decided to try to fly. I spread my arms wide and partly behind me and soared up and out at a forward angle. It felt so natural and easy, and was so much fun. I wanted to turn to the left, though, and was making a slow, wide turn. It seemed much harder to turn for some reason, than just soaring up.

As I drifted down toward the ground, Uncle Jed and the person who might have been my father came striding up, Uncle Jed in the lead. They were about three stories high now, though, and seemed to be made of wood with built-in joints, like giant wooden dolls. Uncle Jed's face seemed to be at least partially human, though. He had the same fixed smile that the robot in my "And fly away" dream had, and reminded me greatly of him, especially after I woke up. The other figure, the one who might have been my father, remained mostly in shadow. I felt that they, especially Uncle Jed, had come to help, both with the flying and with whatever situation had been happening in the building.