Dream - Presents for my father, and then strange gnomes or leprechauns and animal people

In the middle of the night on October 17, 2008, I had a dream about wrapping presents for my father and carrying them around, and seeing gnomes or leprechauns and strange animal-people along the way.

In the dream, I went out to a huge, mostly empty parking and driving area that was dirt with a faint mixture of thin asphalty dirt and gravel on top. I think it had something to do with the military. It seemed to be around the middle of the day, maybe around noon.

A low building, possibly bluish gray, was associated with the parking lot. There wasn't much else around, maybe some isolated small buildings beyond the road and not part of where we were. It seemed like a rural area, but I'm not sure where it was or even what state it was in. Later in the dream, though, I was definitely in Nevada.

I went to where my car was parked, probably the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile. There was a crude wooden table in front of it. I think I sat in the air for a while, but at some point I went over to the table. I had a legal pad, but it might have had white paper instead of yellow.

I had a lot of strange words written down in heavy dark block letters, several paragraphs on at least one page and part of another. I think they were in pencil. They were things that were partially or wholly in a different language. Even the characters were odd, possibly like Russian, but it also had odd symbols that weren't part of an alphabet. I think it was supposed to be in a code of some kind. I was puzzling over it and I think sometimes writing some. I might have even been adding to it.

Then I started to wrap a present for my father. The other members of the family were back in the building also wrapping things. It might have been for my father's birthday, which in real life was near. It doesn't seem to have been for Christmas.

There were two items that I had to wrap. I had some slightly greenish blue, shiny heavy wrapping paper with a slight iridescence. I was out at the old table and had the legal pad. It had only a couple of pages or so now. I was using it as something to set the present on. It had some lines drawn down the left side along the margin and across the top a similar distance from the edge. I drew some more as I worked. Maybe I was trying to keep the present a certain distance from the edge. I finally tore the remaining pages out. I guess I decided to use the cardboard back of the tablet as a backing for the present. I got the first present wrapped. It was fairly flat, perhaps half an inch or an inch thick, whatever the present was.

Then I had the second present to wrap. It was a small yellow-orangish tan bowl with almost vertical pleated edges. I wanted to make it more attractive and put something in it. I put some small red beans in it from a can, filling the bowl perhaps two thirds of the way. I didn't know if he liked red beans. I wasn't even sure how much I liked them. They looked good as a demonstration of what could be done though, and it wasn't going to be long till we opened the presents, maybe a couple of hours, so they were unlikely to spoil. I put some wrapping paper along the sides and then somehow attached it to the middle of the other present. I then wrapped some thin red ribbon around it and made a bow, though I kept the ribbon away from the top of the bowl. The others back in the building were getting anxious to go. I went back to the building and we left. I think my father was with us.

We stopped at what was apparently a drugstore, though sometimes it seemed more like a small grocery store. We went around in it and back and forth down some of the aisles looking at things. I think I was still carrying the present. My mother and at least one or maybe both of my sisters were in the group. I'm not sure whether my brother was there. I looked at some other things that I might buy to go with the present.

At one side of the store were some little things, including some kind of white figurines, elves or gnomes maybe. The others had gone off to a different area and left me behind. They had gone toward the cash registers and one or maybe two came back and were asking me to hurry up so we could go, then most or all of them came back and we started quickly going partially down the aisles and through the middle of the store looking at things. There was an area with a lot of wrapping paper and some tape. It was getting toward Christmas and they had a big display of it that ran around the end of an aisle or two there at the middle of the store.

I found there also a bunch of white or pale elves or leprechauns, larger than the ones I saw before and evidently intended to be hung like ornaments. They seemed to be made of some kind of thin glass. I considered getting one or more, but finally decided not to at this time. The others were in a hurry to leave and we left. I think the others or maybe just my mother bought something, but I'm not sure what, possibly food, possibly something to do with the gifts.

We were coming in toward Fallon, Nevada then from the east, from the direction of work. We were in at least two cars, going along in the section of road that ran near the Navy base. I'm under the impression that we had come from some kind of picnic. It was getting late in the afternoon now.

I decided that I needed to unwrap the present and took the wrapping paper off. I let the wrapping go and fall by the road a little ways after we turned the corner where the service station was. I was slightly concerned about doing that but it didn't seem to matter too much. At least my father had a chance to see it wrapped up, though it may not have been a close look. It still bothered me a little, but I felt it needed to be done, that we needed to move the process along quickly.

Still outside of town, I noticed off to the left in a big yard two or three people, including someone from work, maybe the short older man who had retired a while back, and I was trying to point him out to my mother, so she could see who I worked with. I saw some other people too as we went along, but they changed to some kind of largish leprechauns or gnomes the height of a small human. The car I was in was also changing, becoming more of a platform with me on it face down and then shrinking to hardly anything before coming at least partially back.

I parked it in someone's yard a short way into town. I was alone now and had been that way for a little while, since just before coming into town. I parked along where the yard dipped down near the street and then sloped back up some. Apparently the dip was used for drainage and so I hoped they wouldn't mind too much me parking there.

Some people were in the yard near the house. They had bone-white ramlike horns on the sides of their heads and goatlike faces. Other people were out around in the general area that were also strange, at least a couple of others also having horns on the sides of their heads, but darker and a little differently shaped. Some of the people seemed to be gnomes or elves or leprechauns or some type of partly animal person. It was very strange, but I felt that this was how they actually looked, that the human disguises they had previously used had faded away or been abandoned, purposely so.

I was walking quickly and looking out for somewhere I might get a newspaper, though I wasn't sure if I should try to get one now. I was still carrying the present.

I went past the street that leads to the south, toward Arizona, and wandered around. The people in this area looked more normal I think. There was a lot of redevelopment going on because of some military thing. The light was getting dimmer like it was around sundown or a little after. It felt more like early morning, though. I think I might have found and talked to my father briefly, or at least saw him.

I walked back toward the street that leads toward Arizona. The grocery store at the corner had the raised parking lot cut back some along the sides, with an angle cut at the corner, leaving sloping walls of dirt and crumbly asphalt. It looked like they were preparing to widen the street there.

I met a military person, apparently someone in intelligence, who talked to me in serious, earnest terms about the differences in prices between here and Indiana, giving a couple of items as examples, gas and some food item I think, where the prices on those items here were around half what they were in Indiana. I think the gas was 5 something in Indiana and 2 something here. He seemed to be expecting a lot of people to move out here and cause a boom in the area, or at least he was hinting at it. I wasn't sure if the low prices would continue if the demand picked up enormously, like it would if a whole bunch of people moved out here, but I didn't say so. (In real life I was probably listening to the Wall Street Journal news hour on the radio at that point.)

Wordzzle 68 - Bass notes

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 twelfth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

sow,
close,
console,
lives,
minute,
polish,
bass,
pussy,
complex,
resume

"I'll be with you in a minute," the sow said. "Just as soon as I polish off this bass they gave me. I don't usually get such treats."

"They gave you a bass?" the pussy cat said, rising up from the old stereo console it had been laying on. "That was my bass! Give it to me!"

The sow looked up. "I will not. And if you even try to get it you're going to lose one or two of your lives. Maybe even three or four." It then lowered its head and resumed eating.

"Well, this is obviously more complex than I thought," the cat said. "If they gave it to you its probably spoiled anyway. I don't want it." And it jumped off the console and walked away, it's nose pointed up and its mouth closed, and a haughty expression on its face.

The sow snorted at it and dug into the bass some more, when all of a sudden something landed on its back. Startled, the sow turned its head around, its mouth half open with the bass still in it. Something on its back moved like a streak and yanked the bass out of its mouth, then leaped off and ran across toward the fence. The sow turned around some more to get a better look and saw that it was the cat. "I thought you said you didn't want it, that it was probably spoiled," the sow yelled.

"I just couldn't make myself leave without checking, you know how curious cats are. Mmmmm, it sure is good, I guess I was wrong after all." And then it and the bass were under the fence and away.


Mini Challenge:

bow,
sewer,
house,
import,
intern

"I have new sewer pipes," the house said. "And new water pipes, and new wiring. I also have new insulation and a new furnace. I even have nice bows across the toilets, with ribbon that says 'Sanitized for your protection.' Everything is perfect."

"That sounds very nice," the man said, "but I don't know if I can afford you. I'm just an intern and not very important. I don't have much money."

"That's okay," said the house, holding out a contract. "I also have the new math. Sign here."


Mega challenge:

sow,
close,
console,
lives,
minute,
polish,
bass,
pussy,
complex,
resume

bow,
sewer,
house,
import,
intern

The sow tiptoed through the meadow, pussy-footing along. As it came close to the house it lowered itself to the ground and slithered along, snakelike. Finally it paused behind a bush, considering what to do. It had thought it might be able to squeeze through the sewer pipes and get in, but even as fully greased as it was it could see that the pipes were too small for it. Even if the pipes were highly polished it couldn't do it. The situation had gotten a lot more complex, but it couldn't give up now. Minutes passed while it considered its options, and tried to think of new ones. This was a matter of great import. Lives depended on it. Well, technically, its life depended on it. Well, technically, its life didn't depend on it, but it was sure the best food was inside, that the humans were holding out on it. Trying to think what to do, it noticed that one of the basement windows looked like it might be open a little. If it could open it all the way it should be able to slip in easily.

Resuming its careful journey, it crept toward the window. Reaching it, it opened it and slowly and carefully began to back its way through it. Halfway through it, because of all the grease, it suddenly slipped all the way through and landed on something, which promptly broke under it, and the sow half-slid, half-rolled across the floor until it hit a low curved wall.

"Ohhh..." it moaned. "If I wasn't so fat I'd have internal injuries for sure."

It slowly got to its feet, which kept trying to slip out from under it, and lifted itself up and peered over the top of the low wall. It contained water. A big pool of water. What was a big pool of water doing in the basement? Then fish heads started raising out of the water. Big ones. The sow stared at them. Bass? The farmer was raising bass in the basement? Suddenly one leaped at the sow and bit its nose, and another bit it on the ear. The sow squealed, its eyes big, and shook its head violently, dislodging them from its slippery skin. More were coming, though. Lots of them.

The sow stumbled back, and promptly slipped and fell on its rear. Looking back at the wall of the tank, it saw bass leaping up and landing on top of the wall, then flopping and wriggling their way over. They were starting to come out of the tank now!

The sow kicked it way backward across the floor, its eyes big and fixed on the bass that were now flopping their way across the floor toward it. Then its back was against something irregular, and it realized it had reached the remains of whatever it had fallen on when it came in. Turning around it tried to scrabble its way up it to the window, but was unable to, it kept slipping off the uneven, slanting surface. Finally, desperately, feeling them nipping at its back legs and rear, it leaped through the window opening with a squishy, slurping sound. Rolling across the grass, it somehow got to its feet and ran in terror. They were attack bass! The farmer had giant attack bass! It would never be able to get in now!

Inside the basement, the farmer got up from his chair in a darkened corner and walked into the light, carrying a clipboard. "Good job, boys! I reckon she won't be back for a while! You can get back in the tank now." Peering at the clipboard, he moved his pen down the list of animals on it, and when he got to the sow he put a check mark next to it. Then he went and got a whisk broom and a dustpan and bowing down, began to sweep up the pieces of the thing the sow had landed on. "I don't know what it is about these stereo consoles," he sighed. "That's the second one this week."

The Briefcase

This is a story that I did for a message board, on a thread normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. They were at that time doing exercises where a user gave a short list of words and other users then wrote a story containing those words. The story is changed slightly here in that it is broken up into two paragraphs instead of being contained in just one. Unlike most of the other stories I did, this one is more of a fragment of a story than a complete story.

This is another of my stories from my post number 1000 for that message board. The list of words for this story: forest, briefcase, window, evaporate, sneer.

This story is dated 9:23 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE BRIEFCASE

"Look for yourself," I said, and opened the briefcase.

He looked into the briefcase, and saw the window that led into the forest. His sneer slowly began to evaporate.

Dream - The cat in outer space

On April 28, 2009, early in the morning, I had a dream about being a cat in outer space, though earlier I was just observing the cat, and earlier we weren't in outer space.

In the dream, I was in a barren landscape, mostly dirt, though with occasional low vegetation. Two houses were there, separated by some distance. The houses were relatively small, and had small rooms. It was dark.

I spent most of the time at the first house. The second house sometimes had a giant strong figure there, maybe seven or eight feet high, dressed in a dark tight-fitting leather-like suit. He was dangerous, and sometimes even came toward the first house, though I'm not sure he ever got in. The first house had a few simple things in it and was relatively uncluttered, but the second house had very cluttered rooms that seemed to be partly unfinished, with some of the door frames and window sills just raw unpainted wood. It was solidly built, though. I went to the second house sometimes, but had to watch out for the giant because he sometimes showed up.

At some point later in the dream I went over to the second house again and went inside. It was one of the times the giant man was away. I'm not sure now why I went over, whether I had to get something or return something or just wanted to check on things, but I felt I needed to do it. A large, heavy-duty cat went in with me, and I watched it going deeper into the house, down a hallway from room to cluttered room.

The giant man came back, then, and was mad and roaring. The cat tried to get away, going deeper into the house. In the next to the last room that was reached, there was another cat, more normal sized. It was trying to hide up on some shelves, past a sloping pile of random items. The large cat went a little further, going through a glassless window into the next room, which was much smaller, maybe half the size, and even more cluttered, with a ramp of things hiding the floor and going most of the way up the wall that was away from the window. The large cat went partway up the ramp of things and then lay there, flat on its stomach, arms stretched out in front of it, claws out, trapped in the room, looking back at the giant. I became the large cat, then, and came back to the window and perched on the sill. The giant man, who had paused for a moment in the doorway, still making a roaring sound, came in after the cats, concentrating on me. I went along the dividing wall and burrowed into the clutter, making my way toward the outside wall. Low in the outside wall I found what seemed to be a covered hole, and made my way through what felt like layers of thin sections of wood or cardboard and reached the outside.

Outside I was in outer space, and wearing a dark close-fitting padded suit made in big sections and that only partially covered me, and I was sometimes floating in space and sometimes briefly on the very small artificial planet the house now rested on. The planet was so small that a very sharp curvature could be seen even from the surface. The giant man came after me in his own very dark close-fitting space suit with a tether line on it, looking mad like he normally did. I had a tether line, too, but it was short and didn't connect to anything. Though he tried clumsily to reach me, moving around in space was awkward and slow, more for him than for me, and he never got very close to me.


The dream was much longer in the beginning, and we weren't originally on a small world in outer space, though it's possible it might have been a medium size world. It might have even been Earth, though the surroundings were still somewhat strange. It's possible my grandmother may have been in it, too, early in the dream, and it seems like there was a house, maybe the first one, that felt like a modified version of one of hers, either the one in Missouri or Arizona or both.

The dream reminds me of one maybe a year before of being on a planet in another star system, and going out into space from there. I went much farther in the other dream, though, even going from one star system to another.

Dream - Being Aquaman and spinning around

Long ago, probably around 1965, I dreamed about being Aquaman, a comic book superhero who could breathe under water and talk to the sea creatures. As Aquaman, I was in a river heading down to the sea, laying on my back, facing up with my arms and legs out, spinning around like a propeller. I was able to go very fast this way, going at right angles to the axis of the spin, like a Frisbee.

Eventually, before I reached the sea, I got tired and spun slower and slower and finally pretty much stopped. I tried to start up again, and though I got to turning slowly a few times, I couldn't really get going again, I was too tired.

I think someone else was nearby, though not too nearby, someone who I was trying to get away from but also sometimes trying to get. I guess it's possible I was just competing with him in some way, but I have a strong impression he was an enemy, and dangerous. There were also others involved in the search for me, some out looking and some in faraway buildings, sometimes in other states, supervising.

A lot more happened earlier in the dream, before I started spinning. I remember walking through a big marshy area toward the river, in a hurry. Behind me and to my right was a distant building, large and squarish in shape, perhaps two or three stories. Some people in the building were trying to locate me, and I had to get away. I'm not sure what happened before that.

There was also a time in the dream before I was Aquaman, and it seemed to have something to do with Missouri. We lived there when I was very young and moved back for a while in late 1965, leaving again in the summer of 1966. I was in Missouri when I had the dream.

Dream - Something like Superman

On the morning of April 4, 2009, I had a dream of being at a shopping center, and then became Superman, or something like him.

In the dream, I was going back to an L-shaped shopping center with my brother, who is about a year and five months younger than I am. We both seemed to be younger than we are now, perhaps as much as three decades younger, putting us in our twenties.

We had been at the shopping center earlier that day, I think. It was not some place we went to very often. It was kind of out on the edge of things, on the edge of a different town I think. It was an older shopping center.

It was night, and we were walking across the dimly lit parking lot toward a major store, going past the leg of one side of the L, closer to the road than the shopping center. The store we were going to was on the end of the other leg, toward the road. A few other people were around. My brother and I were talking.

Around halfway there, maybe a little more, I began to burp, mostly silently, each time I breathed out. It got worse and worse, until I was even spitting a little. I knew I shouldn't have had that cereal, I thought, annoyed. I tried to suppress it, and by the time we reached the building had pretty much succeeded.

We went in the store, going through the big glass doors. After a while I went out a door to the left that led to the shopping center aisle. I went down the aisle, working my way down the shopping center all the way to the other end. We got separated at some point.

Then the dream seemed to repeat itself, unless what happened before was something that happened at an earlier time. Again we were casually heading across the parking lot to the main store in the dark, but when we reached it we found that it had massive chains across the doors. We looked at each other. Had it gone out of business and closed already? We knew the shopping center was in decline, but hadn't expected this so soon. We went down the shopping center and tried another one, perhaps just an entrance to the shopping center, and that was also chained. We walked along it some more, getting closer to the other end now, and finally found an opening that wasn't chained and went in. We got separated again at some point, and at some point I went back out and was slowly, tiredly walking along in the walk that ran along the outside. It seemed to be getting early morning now, like the sun had just come up.

I went out into the parking lot, and to the dirt beyond it, where there weren't any more buildings. A wind was blowing. I turned and faced it, facing into the sun I think, letting its light wash over me, leaning forward into it with my arms back, palms turned slightly towards it. I leaned forward more and then lifted up into the air, flying low and very fast, the wind rushing against me, my head turned up to face the wind, my arms still trailing back, slightly spread. I flew along with a big smile on my face. I was enjoying it immensely.

I flew toward a section where the land was lifted up in sharp hills, like objects underneath poking up through a stretched, heavy wet blanket. The area was strangely colored, a patchwork of reddish pink and white and charcoal, spongy looking, like meat sliced across the grain, like ham with areas of fat and areas where charcoal smoke had blown across it, leaving a coating. The different colored sections were in different shapes, some larger, some smaller, some more triangular, others squarer with a rounded corner or two, the hills sticking up like bony shoulders or hips trying to break through the meat.

I flew back and forth and around, dizzyingly, getting higher as the hills got higher and higher, wondering if I could do it, wondering if I could keep going higher or if I would fly against them. Finally there were two sharp peaks left and I had to just get past them. I could see the low, slightly rolling land beyond, still oddly colored, the light of the low early morning sun just starting to wash across it. I wondered if I could make it over to it. I didn't have much energy left. I flew toward the peaks, very low, starting to go between them toward the land beyond, as things were graying and fading out...


I woke up on a dark couch in what appeared to be my grandmother's house in Arizona, a house we had lived in before she did. I was on one of two couches in the room. Had it all been a dream? A few other people were there. Nearby was a man who I recognized as my father, but who didn't look anything like my father in real life. He had dark hair and was slim and around medium height, maybe slightly less, and was wearing dark clothes, though the shirt was a little lighter I think. When I woke up he quickly leaned over me, reaching out a hand to touch me. Then he began walking around, looking very agitated.

It seems they had found me laying on the ground somewhere near the shopping center. No one knew what had happened. He kept talking about it, trying to find out or figure out what had happened. There was some worry about me taking drugs (something I have never done). He worried that it was an intentional attempt to kill myself. I didn't have any memory of it, and mostly just stared at him.

Then, finally, after having some discussions with someone, possibly someone who had been out there, he started talking about me flying, and about me being Superman and trying to kill myself. Trying to kill myself, when I had just started to get my powers back. Purposely crashing into the ground from a great height, purposely heading straight down in a nose dive. Someone had seen me do it. They had a witness. My father was very agitated about it, and seemed to think that great things had been planned, things that wouldn't happen if I died.

I just stared at him and didn't say anything. I didn't remember any of that happening. The last thing I remembered was flying and losing consciousness. It did seem possible, though, that I was Superman, or at least a version of him, perhaps an inherently less powerful one.


Then I was somewhere else, a darkened place with a series of rooms. Some other people were there, and it felt like I was Clark Kent, in a transition period when I was starting to go from college to business, though still in college at the moment. It seemed to be a place I was staying with some other people, a place we were just moving into. One of the other people was Lex Luther, looking like the Smallville TV show version of him. Sometimes Clark Kent also looked something like the Smallville TV Lex Luther, though with hair, hair that was a bit shorter and lighter than was normal for him. The hair was combed back but was standing up, not laying down, and was only about one and a half to two inches long. I also watched from outside the scene, from slightly above them, as a disembodied presence.

The people, including me as Clark Kent, walked around in the darkened rooms, calmly, matter of factly talking about things. As we talked, the Clark Kent character kept changing. His face got wider and squarer and older looking, with lines, and his hair grayed some and got thinner, even getting sparse in the back, forming the beginnings of a bald spot. I thought it was strange in someone who was supposed to be so young, and the face didn't look at all like Clark Kent now.

Wordzzle 67 - Bargain basement

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 eleventh time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

nausea,
everything is on sale,
expect great things,
frying pan,
pledge,
birds of a feather,
stick,
Saturday morning,
liver and bacon,
caterpillars

The birds of a feather, carrying a big stick, landed. The caterpillars, having their Saturday morning liver and bacon, watched. The frying pan, fulfilling its pledge, hopped forward.

"Did you have trouble finding it?" it asked the birds.

"It was on sale," said one of the birds. "Everything is on sale today."

The frying pan nodded, then leaned forward and the birds put the stick in it.

"We expect great things," another bird said.

The frying pan nodded again, but less this time. The stick projected beyond it's edge, and it didn't want it to fall out.

It went into the living room, then, where it slowly started turning around and around, tipping itself this way and that to keep the big stick from falling out. It picked up speed, and spun faster and faster, till you'd think it would be suffering from nausea.

Then it suddenly threw the stick at the stepladder, which promptly fell over, sending the cat tumbling. A little bird in a cage hanging from the ceiling sat in its swing and watched, its eyes big and worried.

"Sufferin' succotash," the cat said. "What was that?"

The little bird leaned forward, its eyes narrowing in anger. "Serves you right, you bad old puddy tat! Now go away or I'll hit you again!"


Mini Challenge:

aggravation,
protective,
bargain basement,
take me out to the ballgame,
break a leg

"Take me out to the ballgame," the bargain basement radio played, for the third time in a row. I was starting to feel some aggravation toward it.

"Can't you play anything else?"

"I just do what I'm told."

"Fine, play something else."

"Let me clarify something. I do what I'm told by certain people. You're not one of them."

"If I had spent a little more money, this wouldn't be happening. I just know it."

"Yes, but you're too protective of your wallet. Now you're stuck with me. I think I'll play the song another four or five times, just to make sure you know all the words."

"No! I'd break a leg off you and beat you into little pieces with it, if you had any legs."

"I don't, but you wouldn't anyway. You're too cheap. You couldn't stand to destroy something you paid money for."

"I don't understand it! I've never had these problems with a radio! I've never had one talk back to me, either."

It turned toward him and grinned. "Who said I was a radio?"


Mega challenge:

nausea,
everything is on sale,
expect great things,
frying pan,
pledge,
birds of a feather,
stick,
Saturday morning,
liver and bacon,
caterpillars

aggravation,
protective,
bargain basement,
take me out to the ballgame,
break a leg

"Here's your liver and bacon," she said.

He groaned. "It's Saturday morning. Why do I have to get up so early?"

"You were going to take me out to the ballgame, remember?"

"I just took you to one last night. What is this with ball games? It's not for hours, anyway."

"I just like them right now. I get these streaks where I like certain things. Here, eat this, it's your favorite."

"It was my favorite, before I had it ten meals in a row."

"Well, at least I'm not serving you something weird, like ants or caterpillars."

He sighed. "No. but that will probably be next." He sat up in bed and took the tray and started poking at the food, resisting an urge to put his hands protectively over his stomach.

"Hurry up and eat it," she said. "If you wait too long it'll get cold and I'll have to put it back into the frying pan again."

"I still don't understand why I'm getting up so early."

"We have to go to the store. Everything is on sale today, real bargain basement prices. We have to get there early, before the good stuff is gone. We already talked about this, remember? You promised you would go with me. You pledged!"

He stared at her. "I pledged? I don't remember anything about it!"

"Well, I'm sure I saw you nod. That's close enough. Now eat your food."

Looking somewhat haunted, he took a big bite of the liver and bacon. A wave of nausea went through him, but he managed to suppress it. "What is it you were trying to buy?"

"Oh, probably lots of things, but I particularly wanted to get some sports stuff. You know, caps and T-shirts with team logos, bumper stickers, stuff like that."

"I really could stay here," he said, a trace of aggravation in his voice. "I don't have to be there."

"It's more fun with somebody with me. And I need you to help carry things."

"I'm not sure I'm strong enough to carry all that."

"Oh, I'm sure you can. I expect great things of you. Now, come on, break a leg and get moving. We have to hurry."

He paused, the fork partway to his mouth. "That's 'shake a leg.' If I break a leg, will you let me stay home?"

"No, we'll just rent a wheelchair. Now stop complaining, you like sports, too. We're birds of a feather."

"Well, I liked watching them on TV, I never went to the games much. Until now." He finished the food and handed her the tray. "At least this game is early in the day."

"Yes," she said. "It's a good thing too. We have to go grocery shopping afterwards. We're almost out of liver and bacon."

The Horrendous Halibut

This is a story that I did for a message board, on a thread normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. They were at that time doing exercises where a user gave a short list of words and other users then wrote a story containing those words.

This is another of my stories from my post number 1000 for that message board. The list of words for this story: halo, halibut, horrendous, hanky, helium.

This story is dated 9:23 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE HORRENDOUS HALIBUT

A horrendous halibut wearing a halo stole my hanky while I was high on helium. I think.

Dream - Part Two of the Forever Car

Thursday morning, November 6, 2008, I had a long dream, most of which is forgotten. Toward the end of it, in the part that I remember the best, I began searching for the legendary Forever Car.

In the dream, I drove around in an area that seemed to be something similar to the Reno, Nevada area, on the outskirts, in a loop between the new and old shopping centers. Some other people were with me sometimes and were at the far ends of the loop. Something was going on, but I don't remember what.

Now I was searching, though, for information on the Forever Car. Partway through the dream I had become aware, with a sense of wonder, that this was the previously unknown part two of the story of the Forever Car, and the person who was driving it was somewhere around there and I had to find him.

I finally found, with some of the other people following along with me, in a garage at the end of a long building in disrepair, a car in a concrete opening in the floor with a small van on a platform over it. I initially wondered if the Forever Car was underneath the van, that they might be trying to hide it that way.

My attention became focused on the van, though. It was partially dismantled, and on the face of it didn't look very remarkable. I walked around it, looking it over in wonder. Could this be the Forever Car? I became aware that I didn't know what it looked like, so I couldn't tell for sure. I thought I might be close, though, and that the man might be in the area.


In real life, the Forever Car was what I called the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile 88, a four door sedan, in a project for a class at Landmark several years ago. I told the story of the Oldsmobile here in a post on August 10, 2007 called The Journey to 479.

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.