I was in a room which looked very medical--clean white walls and white light--dashes of color--some monitoring equipment. Though everything was fuzzy, and I had some paranoia. But I just started talking it out. I explained to the people in the room that the reason I wasn't afraid of these kinds of situations in dreams (whatever they were) was that I'd already mentally processed some of the worst case scenarios and the coping was done.

Becoming curious about what was written on the wall, I walked over to it and saw it was labeled Room 303: Scientists. There was a computer display which showed several words and numbers. I began rattling them off, and a voice said "he's reading things from one display and putting them onto another". I also repeated that statement aloud.

Some email addresses I'd used were up on the screen. A man who looked a bit like Mr. Sulu from Star Trek was looking through some files on another computer, seemingly old posts on the internet. He mumbled something about "Okay, that explains that comment; I wasn't clear on what that meant before."

He handed me something in a bowl, and began to speak:

sulu: "There is something you need to understand about showing people Future Things. You have to be careful. It's a lot like if you are dealing with someone who has never had a grape before. When you give them their first grape you must be 100% sure it's not a sour one...because if it is sour, then every time they're asked if they want a grape after that they will say no."

I had a long series of dreams in which I talked to a number of seeming disembodied heads. I was speaking to them about metaphysical questions, and one of them answered:

head: "You need to just figure out how to be happy in trance meditation. It's come to the point where I am actually happiest when I'm in an empty room and just experiencing enlightenment. If you master that you can take it anywhere and you won't have to worry about anything."

(Ed's note: Boooooring!)

Later I was facing a discussion with an older woman disembodied head, who was some kind of Queen or leader. There were a few people walking around who were not just heads.

As I asked her questions of who she thought I was or how it was that I had arrived there, she acted like she was going to show me something shocking. She gestured at a wall of small statues as if that was relevant, but that if I looked closer I would be frightened.

me: "I've seen The Matrix, so, really...uh, y'know, if you show me a bunch of pods with people in it covered in goo and tubes and tell me that's my real body and I'm just a simulation...I'll be hardly shocked."

I realized they might not know the reference. So I asked them if they'd seen it, and they said yes. Then someone in the back piped up:

man: "He's just running on the wrong hardware. But I don't know what to put him on. The lawnmower?"
me: "Well, look, I accept the notion that I'm running on something. But you're running on something. What's that?"
man: "I don't want to know that yet."
me: "I'm ready for whatever creepy truth you guys have."

Rather than tell me anything I understood, they showed me clips of some movie about people who were stuck on a rollercoaster. It was a very vicious coaster that was like some kind of grotesque Funhouse theme, and the people (like Nick Cage or maybe Harrison Ford?) couldn't get off of it. For some reason I told them I'd seen that movie too. Upon waking I don't recall it resembling anything I know about, except one dream I had about a rollercoaster.

I was in traveling with my parents and we had stopped in at a hotel. We had a strange situation of bringing a lot of things in with us--like towels and cups--and I was a bit concerned that the hotel might think we had stolen the stuff. While I waited for them, I watched a TV talking about how there were checkpoints where officials were confiscating objects that were at all illegal, like jewelry that contained Ivory in it.

The news showed pictures of a country where everyone looked nearly identical--and kind of like rapper Ludacris. I wondered whether this country was where the confiscations were happening, or if it might be relevant to my family where they'd be looking at our cups and towels.

Then an advertisement came on where a woman was advertising a stalking service of some kind. It came on and said "I know where you've been," and said my name. Somewhat surprised, I thought it was going to narrate a true detail. But it said something random about how I'd been in Tucscon Arizona... then she laughed and said "I was wrong, right? Of course I was. I can't keep up with you 24 hours a day, I have a job. That's why there's (service name)."

(Email can use this gimmick. If your name is jim.bob@gmail.com, then an email in your inbox might say "Jim Bob, I know what you did last summer..." because it's only using information from your address to generate your name. The ad went on to say all the varieties of stalking they could do for you.)

A little while later I was in the middle of a rather extended chat where I'd realized I'd talked to the person as if they were someone and then talked as if they were someone else and they answered questions to both. So I was confused about who I was talking to and why I was so confused about it. This snapped me into lucidity:

me: "Wait a minute. Who are you?"
them: "That's a very good question, since we've been talking for quite a while about stuff. You should have thought it was a little weird how much I knew about you. I am Driver."
me: "Driver What"

I felt bad because that didn't sound very friendly, and also because there was no question mark. I continued, but perceived without looking up that some woman was coming into the room who might distract me from getting more information. I kept my field of view on the chat and told her to "BE ABSOLUTELY QUIET". She seemed miffed and started making mocking noises but went away.

me: "Sorry about the missing question mark. I only mean to say that a name like Driver didn't help me--you'll have to give me more background to understand who you are."

Then I noticed that the chat program I was using had several panels on it. It was clearly a chat interface, but didn't have the names of people--besides "Driver" (which was the name on the panel I was using) there were others labeled things like "Defendant". I tried to continue to watch the conversation with Driver but it began to accelerate wildly, and interspersed with lines of ordinary text there were yellow "Warning!" dialog boxes about some kind of problem.

I didn't stay asleep much longer. As I was waking up I saw a screen full of videos where a man with a name sort of like "Cary Doyle" was on tons of channels. He was talking about something along the lines of ending intellectualism and just having sex. Couldn't tell if he was pro or against this, but I had information that a lot of people were watching the video simultaneously.

Had some immersive but troubling dreams last night. I will skip them, and instead bring some koans from NoZen.com.

A soldier named Nobushige came to Hakuin and asked, "Is there really a paradise and a hell?"

"Who are you?", asked Hakuin.

"I am a samurai.", the warrior replied.

You, a soldier!", exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar."

Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued, "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head."

As Nobushige drew his sword, Hakuin remarked, "Here open the gates of hell!"

At these words, the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed.

"Here open the gates of paradise.", said Hakuin.

The stingy senior monk of a mountain temple made a batch of sweet syrup, tasted it, and then carefully put the jug up on a shelf. His young student got none. He even told the student that the syrup was really poison and it would kill him if he ate it.

The boy badly wanted some too, so one day when his master was out he got the jug down. While enjoying the syrup he got some on his robe and in his hair but this did not stop him from enjoying himself. When he was done, he smashed his master's best jug on the walk outside.

The monk came back to find the boy crying as though his heart would break. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Your jug!" sobbed the boy. "I broke your good jug by mistake and I didn't know what you would do to me, and I decided I'd be better off dead, so I ate a big mouthful of that poison you warned me about, but it didn't work. I ate more and when that didn't work I tried smearing it all over my robe and hair but I'm still not dead!

Gordon grew up in the kitchen of his family's restaurant. Eventually he opened his own small country cafe.

Occasionally, one or more of the members of a sexually free commune would eat in Gordon's cafe. Gordon had heard that they sometimes invited outsiders to an orgy. He cultivated one of the women from the commune who was interested in Gordon's Zen of Cooking. Eventually she invited him to the commune for a feast.

Gordon, hoping that "feast" was just another name for orgy, accepted the invitation. At the commune, he was disappointed to see that many of the visitors were couples with children. Gordon new then that there would be no orgy so he concentrated on the food.

At the end of the feat, he prepared to leave and thanked his hostess. She asked him if the food had disappointed him. Gordon said that the food was good, but he admitted that he had secretly hoped the feast was an orgy.

His hostess said, "You always talked to me about food. I thought food was what interested you. Come back tomorrow night and I'll teach you the zen of accepting responsibility for what you want and asking for it."

Hoca borrowed a large pot from his neighbor. Days and weeks went by and he did not return the pot. One day the neighbor stopped by and asked if he could have his pot back. Hoca apologized, "I am sorry, I forgot to return it. But I have good news for you, while in my possesion your pot gave birth to a smaller pot".

So, he sent the happy neighbor home with two pots. Few weeks later Hoca knocked at his neighbor's door and asked if he could again borrow that large pot. The neighbor,after his recent gainful experience, was more than happy to lend his pot to Hoca. When days and weeks went by without a word from Hoca about the pot, the neighbor decided that he'd better go and see about his pot.

When Hoca opened the door, the neighbor asked if he could have his pot back. Hoca with a very sad face informed the man that while in his possesion, the large pot passed away. Shocked by Hoca's audacity, the man got angry and said: "What do you think I am, an idiot to belive that the pot died?"

"Why my good man" replied Hoca with a smile, "You had no trouble believing that your pot gave birth?".

Nan-in received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he could restrain himself no longer. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup", Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

A monk asked Tozen when he was weighing some flax, "What is Buddha?"

Tozen said, "This flax weighs three pounds."

I came across an interesting blog by someone who believes herself to be under pervasive government surveillance, to the point where they're hiring people to get to know more about her and pretending to be her friend and that her hairdresser is a government spy. Given all the wacky things I give some level of credibility to, I don't think that's impossible...just unlikely.

But I have a strong interest in accountability, investigation, and making "secret knowledge" open. And my heart goes out to anyone who is having challenging thoughts and receiving nothing but isolation-inducing responses and lack of communication. So I find things like the letters she gets back from the NSA in response to her queries quite typical of what a world of false authority we live in. It's unfortunate that the only people who get so riled up about it are those who are disoriented and looking for answers, who get marginalized because of their disorientation.

Though I left a comment on the NSA letter entry, another later comment has been approved while mine was not. I don't want it lost, though there's sort of a psychologically predictive element that she might reject its content because it questions the validity of her interpretation of her experience. But as is my usual pattern when I don't get response from a letter, I'll just open it up and publish—as the theme of the post is transparency in any case. Here's what I had to say:

---

Dear Kyeann,

Well...I don't think it's a good idea to be 100% sure that you are actually being followed or systematically spied on by the US government!! Though it's *theoretically* possible that new friends you meet are covert agents, there are much more mundane explanations for—say—why your hairdresser mentioned a detail of your life that don't remember telling her. Even if you were to find out she goes through your garbage, it doesn't mean she works for the U.S. government. She might just be a stalker. :)

But this letter you got back from the NSA is a good thing for everyone to take a long, serious look at. Regardless of whether your surveillance is real or imagined, you're unearthing very real "black holes" in government accountability. Those should not be quietly accepted just because people are too busy with other issues to worry about it.

Something else is really wrong here and it's entirely tangential to surveillance. What I'm most mad about parallels the quote in your entry about Martin Luther King about how we must shift from being a society focused on "things" and start to focus on "people". I ask this: would a people-focused government allow the NSA to write back an obviously distressed girl with a nonsense Catch-22 form letter that's only going to make her more distressed??!

The kind of bureaucrats who lean on things like that letter to address a voice reaching out to them are basically what I have come to term "spam humans". Like a message in your inbox with a seemingly meaningful headline that turns out to be for pills, the person who sent you that letter may look like a real person but they might be inauthentic. I don't recognize the "humanity" of something just because it stands upright and blinks. Ever see "They Live"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live

The folks who sent you that letter are the sort who'll smugly smile and laugh if you ended up being arrested in a protest outside a government building, and were then diagnosed by a court psychiatrist as paranoid schizophrenic (thus incompetent to stand trial, so they can keep you locked up indefinitely under the guise that you are in a "hospital"). Then they'd go out and buy dinner with money they made from investing in the pharmaceutical companies that interlock with this whole system.

For these and many reasons, I do not recognize the U.S. government as legitimate. Guess it's kind of a religious issue at this point, because I don't give any Man-made organization authority. Truth is the only real power we should pledge our service to, and I do strongly identify with V's speech from V for Vendetta:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8TLD3Z6sJWA

Until the revolution comes--be it Man's revolution or God's--take care of yourself! Don't let the distracting ideas work you into a frenzy. For instance, it's probably not true that you are being singled out for following by the government. Though if you didn't have a file at the NSA you now almost certainly do, even if it's just containing your letter...(quite interesting how some of these things become self-fulfilling prophecies!)

What is most certainly true is that there is terrible corruption and a very insidious mentality in most of the population. By extension this applies to the type of people they choose to put in power. But try not to panic! And it's good to remember what Jonathan Livingston Seagull said:

"Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?"

Keeping one's sense of humor about it all helps too:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_is_the_government

:)

Kind regards,
æ

I had an interesting exchange with a blonde girl who was very enthusiastic to find me (after a stretch of pretty gross non-lucid dreams involving these slug and snail like things that were reproducing and growing out of control in a house).

She was taking me to see some doctors. As I tried to put on some shoes to leave wherever we were, I warned her that I was probably not going to make it because I'd wake up soon.

her: "Yep, I've got a device that reads that out, and no you don't have much time. But don't worry too much. These doctors may not be the best conversationalists you've ever met, but they can bring you back from the dead."
me: "Well I don't know how that applies here."
her: "It turns out that when you die, you're actually... only... mostly dead."
me: "Which is still partly alive?"
her: (laughing) "Exactly."
me: "I suppose it figures that on the good side of me having a sense of humor, it might endear me to those who'd bother to figure out how to resurrect me after I die. But they might be more interested in making jokes than giving me straight answers."
her: "Price you pay. Okay then, straight answer time: I need to know what date you think it is."

I did some rough calculations based off of when my birthday was and some things I remembered. I was one day off, and had a mixup of which days of the week were which numbers, but I did manage to nail April 2008 and I gave enough other information that should have worked.

her: "All right, that's good enough I think. But you need to do something about having a watch at the top of your mattress."
me: "What does that have to do with anything?"
her: "You need one close to your head."
me: "Come on. Why does how close it is to your head matter at all?"
her: "It affects your mind..." (makes wavy mind control gestures)
me: "Lots of things affect your mind. What's the difference between a watch and a laptop, or an alarm clock?"
her: "All up to you, you're the one swallowing it!"
me: "I am not going to eat a watch!"
her: "That's a joke, joke ok! Do NOT eat a watch. But seriously, have one close to your head."

Not sure if I am going to do this or not, it's a bit vague. can it be wound with a spring? Does it have to be a quartz crystal? Powered by wrist motion vs battery? How can all of these have a common element other than the general perception of time you can get by looking at a clock across the room? Still, there have been several dreams where people have tried to express some kind of abstract importance of certain clock objects or designs.

Stepping outside a door I walked through a rather awkward landscaped driveway to a street. I could see street signs and highway signs, there was something about "New Route 1". Rather than start walking around in highways I looked for another entrance back into the building I had emerged from, and I found a garage. Staring at the mundane mess of objects around, I ran into a woman who was also there.

me: "Y'know, this place doesn't seem very high tech. Roads? General clutter? Driveways?"
her: "Well, there isn't a whole lot of technology here on the back side of Venice."
me: "Venice?"
her: "No, 'J'."
me: "Janice?"

As we were having trouble communicating, she went over to a table and picked up a box, and started pointing at the letters on it. I thought she was just using it to clarify the word she was trying to tell me, but what she pointed at was something akin to "M.A.G.I.C. - Multi Axon Gaming Interface Connector". She removed from the box an pair of glasses but with rather large balls instead of lenses.

I asked her what it was, and she put it on me which caused a rather radical shift in my vision, with an odd pressure on my eyes. I could suddenly see a lot of really strange stuff overlaid on the room. As I walked around and into some hallways I could see screens hovering around people as they worked.

me: "What is this I'm seeing? It's like a graphics overlay."
her: "It lets you see the sensory data that others are getting. So you see what's being transmitted to their minds."
me: "Wouldn't it be encrypted?"
her: "This is a shared channel."

I watched a man who was doing some kind of cooking and chopping on a cutting board. The screen where he was looking at the food was different from the interface he was using, which appeared to be morphing physically

me: "How does the part that's not in the overlay change like that?"
him: "It's hardware. There are mechanisms inside this controller can do certain transformations and retract parts. Not everything is done virtually, it's better like this."

Some of the things I saw were fairly disturbing, gross looking alien things that didn't look human but more like scary fish, who were also using the screens. I wandered a little more but don't remember much, until I ran into an older-looking black man who had a fairly official looking badge on. It had lots of numbers on it.

We chatted vaguely about what was going on and my arrival. He said that there was a huge problem of people being trapped...mostly black and white men put into opposition with each other. I said that it's hard because mechanisms of restraint are necessary to have exist, but they shouldn't be used improperly.

him: "How would you remedy this?"
me: "During restraint there's no point in punishing people further than the restraint itself. Let them have cocoa or listen to the music they like so it's not intolerable. The system of restraint should automatically start releasing itself as people do the right thing."
him: "For someone so new you sure are in touch with big ideas. Here, come with me."

He opened a panel in the wall, and we started climbing up into some kind of strange structure. I got a little stuck in the structure, but called for attention and got pulled out. It was some sort of office for a school of arts and sciences, with a woman working at a desk. He handed me a scholarship application.

I tried to fill it out and did a miserable job of even my name. But it started getting filled in automatically. I asked if there was anything they needed, like my social security number. They sighed and rattled it off and said they already knew it, but it was pointless now beyond helping with the occasional records search. When the woman at the scholarship desk asked about an address, the black man handed her a business card and said to just use his for now.

I suddenly found myself walking through a sort of busy bus-station type area. I ran into some people who told me to come with them, and they were wearing what looked roughly like yellow translucent plastic bags. We had to make it to some sort of taxi, and there was a woman who was moving very slowly...to keep her from falling behind I picked her up adn carried her. There were a lot of stairs.

me: "I'm not sure—incidentally—how long I'll be able to be here before waking up. I'll try to put you down before that happens, but as I know very little about what's going on, I can't guarantee it won't end up resulting in you going falling down these stairs."

But I did make it to the outside streets where cars were swarming everywhere. The taxi was too far away and already left. I started chasing it.

man: "Don't bother chasing it, it is automatic and has no driver."
me: "I'm totally disoriented and unable to maintain a fix in this reality for very long. Do the yellow bags you are wearing have anything to do with protecting you from something--germs, virus--something that leads me to be in this state? Moreover, if there's some sort of mission going on here to contact me, why am I being ignored so often? Who'd bother to pull me out of my reality to here
man: "There are many efforts simultaneously pulling you, and you pull on yourself too, it's very complex. You are not easy to find, especially because you do not have a land line which makes things harder. Not impossible, but harder—we worked around it by tagging another line with a red code and find you with that."

(Interesting allusion to a bizarre aspect of the Matrix, that copper lines to certain phones have some kind of special connection allowing one in and out of the system in a way that can't be done with cell phones. They made that distinction very deliberate, though this is the first time I've ever heard it mentioned in my own experiences.)

Soon I was in an Ikea-like area with lots of walls and paths and furniture... and people milling about. I got into a conversation with someone who looked like my roommate and was carrying a board game that I for some reason perceived he owned in real life, and I recognized it. I wanted to know how he could transfer such an object. Waking note: I've never actually seen this board game before, but for some reason really thought I had at the time.

him: "You can transfer objects using a certain formation of glass-like plates. It's kind of like induction, if you put the objects between the plates and apply certain currents it allows properties of those objects to be scanned in other realities with resonances. You don't send the object itself, but you allow others to probe it."

He showed me a set of these glass plates. Then changed the subject.

him: "Look, it's probably not in your best interest to be trying so hard to get here. Being able to see both sides, I like our apartment and things the way it is better."
me: "Well, I'm bothered by working in an illusory world without knowing the greater cause. At this point I just need-to-know. It's like the Matrix. Plus I want to get rid of the limits of decaying/painful physical reality...it doesn't make me happy to face the fact that I and everyone I know are going through that.
him: "Then you aren't looking for the truth, you are looking for The Solution. There is only one who has solved it. He will give you what you need when you prove to him that you are truly ready, which is akin to arriving at the solution itself, and not many have achieved it."
me: "Uh, all right. What is his name?"
him: "Here he is called the Shadow. And in 15 years time he managed to do something that no one had ever done. With incredible sacrifice. An entity who was born without sin, without fear, it is amazing."

The person, now looking less like my roommate, started crying at that point. I moved on. I talked to a large number of people with some not-too-memorable conversations. Though one of them was wearing a big fur suit to make themselves look like a Polar Bear.

I was laying in bed in a hypnagogic state and had the experience of a woman talking, she was climbing on top of me and kissing me. There was no visual at all, I was just in darkness.

me: "Where is this?"
voice: "The only real answer to that, is 'here'."
me: "Here where?"
voice: "You'll know more about that soon, just hold tight."

In a not too long after that phase, I was being followed by a car that seemed to be sort of chasing me. I perceived the people in it were trying to test me somehow to find out if I had a sense of humor, and one aspect of that is that they were playing Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up".

me: "Oh you might think that's punishment, but Rick Astley is awesome."
them: "Hey we think so too. Nothing against Rick."

The car disappeared but suddenly I had a couple of drumstick objects in my hand, and I couldn't move forward or backward.

them (voice): "Play something."
me: "Okay, I'm going to play a guessing game. Here goes: What is large and has purple lights and plays 'Never Gonna Give you Up' and has the power to turn invisible and gives you music tests?"
them: "We give up."
me: "You and your car that were just trying to run me over."

I then tapped a slight improvisational rhythm on the sticks. I was somehow freed and then let into a house where I started walking around. A girl laughed and said: "You've never been in a real girl's room before, ha. That will be interesting for you."

(This was perhaps portending the overall Matrix theme of dreams that followed. Morpheus tells Neo after he is pulled out of the Matrix that the reason it hurts him to use his eyes is because he's never actually used them before.)

As interesting as my potential visit to this room might be, I don't remember what happened after this point.

I was in a room and having a tough time with a large piece of glass. I kept dropping it and eventually found out it wouldn't break. Someone else was in the room with me and we examined it's odd properties...he was able to reform it into strips and coils somehow.

Next I was reading a webpage, knowing I was dreaming. It had a name something like "Physillusional" and the tagline was something along the lines of "Dedicated to the memory of those living with constant suffering." Someone who had the name "Bin Laden" as part of the spelling of their name was talking about software, and a drawing program that let you capture more of what you meant. One of the comments in the discussion was someone telling another person if weren't interested in arrays or some other technical issue about computer programming, they would not care much for this program

I tried to learn more about the site and why I was reading it. Rather than an "About..." page it had a section called "Know Us"...and I didn't read much before the scene broke up.

Later I was asking questions of a woman about the nature of the afterlife. She claimed awareness of my waking world, and maintained the stance that there was plenty of evidence already of what's going to happen, and if people aren't seeing it she doesn't know what to think...as it can't be made any more clear.

I spent a pretty long time trying to read the label on a bottle that people had been very excited about. As I painstakingly went through it all, it seemed like a fairly mundane bottle of low-alcohol content liquor, with a complex label talking about it having strawberry juice or other such additives.

I was visiting a girl who was wrapping her hair in yarn, and talking about how much more string she had than anyone she knew. Then a man came in who I perceived to be her boyfriend, and she was trying to defend me from him. Thinking there was some issue to be worked out, I suggested we all go out for a drink. He agreed.

As we began discussing going out for a drink, I started talking about the weird properties of being in such a lucid dream. I told him I didn't know how long we had to talk before I woke up, so we shouldn't be too slow about deciding on where to go. He asked me what would happen and I said that was just it--no one seemed to mention when I showed up or where I went when I woke up. When I told him my real life name he said my initials and then immediately attacked me with the dreaded "tickle attack" at midsection.

I thought I'd woken up for a minute, but then perceived I hadn't. I thought I was around some of the same people, and that I was able to hide under a couch and listen to their conversation. Then in communicating with them (or whoever it was now) I was somehow able to get them to go check records and try and answer some questions for me. When I thought they were returning, it was actually a large man who backed me into a corner and seemed hostile. The people who had gone to research questions for me came back, pulled him away and shot him.

me: "Thank you, I think. What did you learn."
them: "Okay, AppleTV's PhotoTransgenesis. That would be your #1 enemy, especially the female software engineer who revitalized it. How much of your memory can you access?"
me: "Ummm... up through 2008? I mean, I dunno what memory you mean."
them: "You don't know how you're materializing in these places. And that's just it. When you do, you can show up as anything--want to be poor, you are. Want to be rich, you are. Your life is seen a video game onto which people get hooked, and you are unwelcome in these worlds."

I was focusing mostly on trying to remember PhotoTransgenesis. I still might have gotten it wrong, it was an awkward word.

I was in a dream where I was in something like a McDonalds. As I was eating the fries, I noticed that each fry was in its own individual cardboard package with labeling ("Spicy Fry", "Regular Fry").

As I became lucid and started interrogating the environment, I started speaking to people and asking them where I was. I asked them what country it was, and they told me it was "Philadelphia". They had very official looking drivers licenses but I petitioned that Philadelphia was a city and not a country. I asked them if they'd ever heard of the United States and they said they hadn't.

I began talking with a man and asking him questions.

him: "Well, you're going to probably try to establish the terms, like have I heard of Earth and all that."
me: "Um... yes..."
him: "I have. We need more information. Let's start with this: Is the United States in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere?"
me: "North."
him: "Okay, we agree on that much. But how much further can we get? You've already run into a wall with people who think Philadelphia is a country. To prove otherwise you'll have to memorize a lot more. Why haven't you done that?"
me: "Really, I shouldn't have to. Besides, would it help when everyone is so brain-dead?"

He shrugged. For some reason I decided I was going to go to the cash register and try to order some lemonade and see what happened. While ordering I noticed a cubbyhole next to the cash register where a bunch of coupons were folded...they were wide and rectangular and reminded me of the things that come in those envelopes stuffed with coupons in the mail. Something made me feel these held proof of another civilization.

After my order was complete, the cashier didn't ask me for money but filled out a form that had many layers--with carbon paper and such underneath the main layer. It said the lemonade cost $5.00 and that if I signed for it then it would be paid for by someone else.

Suddenly I got the foreboding sense that there was something out to get me, and then there were laser beams coming from the sky blowing away trees and houses. I managed to hide and held out for a bit before waking up.

I was watching an extremely sophisticated software system demonstration, and eventually called out loud:

me: "What is this called?"
voice: "I don't know."
me: "If you don't know, then where is this demonstration coming from?"
voice: "You are showing this to me."

Next, I narrated my name and location on Earth, and I described how it was the 3rd planet from the star Sol, and looked like a marble with blue and white and green. Was doing my best to suggest they try and reach me.

voice: "How am I to get there? I do not have the tools."
me: "Well, maybe the point of the software is to give you the tools so that your society can build what you need for us to meet. Perhaps we are communicating outside of time, and this is a vision being sent across thousands or millions of years?"

The next thing that happened I found myself in some sort of strange situation and lost focus. I was later interrupted by text typed on a command line. It asked me something to the effect of whether the court was the authority on my planet. I tried to explain how the legal system and political structure were not enlightened and not to be trusted.

I found myself out on a suburban street with the feeling that I had escaped something and was on the run. The impression I had was that I was communicating with someone telepathically who was in one of the cars. I looked around and saw a hippie-looking guy holding a bag, that looked like a bag of Fritos. Sensing he was who I was supposed to talk to, I went to the car, and saw smoke coming from the bag. I asked if he was there to help me escape.

He acknowledged and pointed the bag toward me, indicating I should breathe the smoke. I did. "The rest is up to you," he said.

Then he handed me the bag and I held it, it began to float upward like a balloon. As I went toward the sky I just relaxed, and got closer and closer to the clouds when suddenly I was faced with the screen of a web browser. It said:

"Rogue, you have now reached 15%. I do not trust my programming skills enough to in good conscience let you continue with an alphanumeric password. This IE, this software, this world...all dinosaurs compared to what you are about to see and there is no turning back."

I tried to type a few things but had no idea what I was doing.

I've frequently experienced anger directed at the lack of forthrightness of dream entities who would seem to have the ability to assist me in building a permanent connected line to other dimensions. Regular reader and participant mr_nihil asked the probing question: "If you were somehow in charge of another world, would you let most of the current population in?"

My answer grew lengthy enough that I wanted to make it an essay rather than a comment.

---

If I were able to set up the design the world I'm in charge of, no one is unwelcome but everything is guided toward its right place. I don't have a problem with unpleasant people existing, nor do I take issue with them being happy. I'm merely mad when they have undue influence on those who do not deserve it...if they were all alone in a bubble munching on Doritos with other unpleasant people, that's fine.

In fact, I probably enjoy many things that unpleasant people have made. It may that the precise reasons I find them unpleasant were what gave them the perspective for their invention, making it appear surprising and thus unique to me. It would be foolish to try and define the entirety of my universe so that such viewpoints could never exchange information with me (hopefully in a very indirect way, e.g. through trade of inanimate objects).

My only rule is that the walls which separate groups of beings from each other not be impenetrable. There should be freedom for each person to find their right place, and not be stuck somewhere with those they don't like. Communities can have policies for admitting new members, but shouldn't hide their existence all together, at least not long-term.

Are there hidden communities? I often quote this bit from Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel, where the narrator has entered a secret spirit-world that surprises him. He expresses his outrage that those beings are not communicating better about their elusive plans with mortals, and supposes to tell them about the right way to do it:

"Fools," said I, "you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence"

I have mixed feelings about this concept of being so subtle. But the need for subtlety in intervention does arise here on Earth. Let's take a real world example: the 5-year-old girl in the neighboring house is *constantly* being verbally abused by the father, in a loud and unacceptable way that I can hear in my room next door.

Certainly it would be nice if I could go over there and tell the kid that this is unfair treatment. I'd like to offer some insight into what might be done about it so they aren't alone in processing this. But if I tried to influence this situation and talk to her when no one was looking...that's not feasible for a stranger to do. I could get in a lot of trouble, and talking to the father is likely not going to work either.

Despite the fact that something can in principle be done about this--realistic solutions are hard to come by. The pool of foster parents is somewhat limited, and might not provide as well financially. The kid's not being *beaten*, so child protective services don't get involved. Also there might be attachments, despite this guy being a jerk, if the kid found out she was going somewhere that the father couldn't, she might not accept it.

Though I seem stuck in helping, there are things I can do. I can write children's books, or make TV commercials, or games that might appear on the back of a cereal box. Then I can hope that all of my little work will help that child (and more than just that child) so that when they get to 18 they won't be as damaged as they might otherwise be. I always thought They Might Be Giants were quite subversive with their children's album, suggesting an active rebellion, as in "I am not your broom":

Now Broom, you must now sweep for me
The dust it fills my room
No, John, I will not sweep for you
For I am not your broom

What nonsense are you speaking, Broom
My words you must obey
Another life awaits me and
I'm leaving you today

I am not your broom
I am not your broom
I've had enough, I'm throwing off
My chains of servitude

I am not your broom
I am not your broom
No longer must I sweep for you
For I am not your broom

If the macrocosm and the microcosm have similarity, then this applies to any smart being that might reach down to help me. Not only might it be "illegal" to even start a direct conversation, but there could also be a limited number of "foster families" to put me with & perhaps there are higher priority subjects. My attachments to this world might be too great--for all my complaining, I might be homesick after a day or two.

Though some of this is what I've put together from intuition, some has been explicitly communicated in other dreams. Once a dream-being told me he was not allowed to talk to me because it was illegal, and there was quite active prosecution going on. Others have shown me hospitals where they're trying to orient newly reincarnated beings to their non-material bodies, and that it's a tough process...the more experience you've had in the physical world, the better you might be able to adapt, so it could be worth living out your life and getting your mind as far as possible before you try it.

In this light, perhaps the best way is the subtle way. And perhaps my own life is the very mechanism of providing focused information that I am looking for. I'm just in the unfortunate position of being "it", at least from my perspective until it grows, and then I eventually become "it" again...

me: "God, why didn't you make some way of telling people the truth about the universe?"
God: "I made you, didn't I? :)"
me: "That's not fair!"
God: "You'd be surprised how often I get that feedback. At one point, Jesus had some complaints along similar lines, he even kicked over a trashcan in my office. But I promise you this...if I have a better idea on how to explain everything, I'll let everyone know by sending another messenger."
me: "But isn't whoever delivers that message going to be EVEN MADDER, because it will be an EVEN BIGGER idea they will seemingly have come up with in isolation, and be stuck pushing it upon the unwilling and small-minded!"
God: "Well, yes, integrate that to infinity and you have me. And yes I'm mad. Ever heard of the Wrath of Jesus? No. Wrath of God? Yes. And fear it, bro."
me: "Hmm."

I was in a somewhat nuisance-oriented dream, where I was getting into arguments with people. At some point I noticed that they looked like they were made out of plastic, which cued me into trying to leave the circumstance and go elsewhere. I tried to leave by climbing over a fence, but got stuck...a voice explained to me what I should do to get over it, and how I should move.

When I got over the fence, a flying device dropped a ladder down for me and told me to hang on. As it flew me off through some various crazy looking areas, I asked questions.

me: "What are you? How do you see you and this place relating to the human society where I live my life?
it: "In your sense, I am a computer."
me: "Then what... what am I?"

There wasn't really a response, but I was dropped off in a room where there were two people and several odd devices and machines. I repeated the questions to them. One of them answered:

"Well, let's just go ahead and say it. Yes, welcome to 'the future', although we prefer to call our part of it The (something) New Alliance of Souls. Some things are better than you're expecting, and some things are going to be worse than you're expecting—considering how much progress we've made. We have great infrastructure here in the city, but you don't have to travel very far outside to find some very serious problems that we are having trouble solving."

I believe they also referred to one of these places that was having trouble as being named "Context", or some C word like that. I noticed a friend of mine sitting on a table and sort of idly chatting. We noticed each other and said something about "hey, I remember you saying you were a lucid dreamer...this totally lines up." (Now awake, I can't actually remember if she has ever said anything indicating she lucid dreamed.)

me: "Is there something you can do? Any kind of booster process, by which you can make it so that I don't wake up, at least not as quickly?"
him: "Actually, yes. Hold still."

He had a syringe, and injected me...it hurt a bit, he couldn't get it out.

me: "Ouch!" I said.
him: "Oh, 'ouch?' That's not good, let me try and get this out."
me: "Don't worry about it, it's not that bad. If it works I can deal with a syringe being stuck in me during our conversation."
him "Well, maybe it's a case where I should just give this a running start."

He stepped back and pulled it with a lot of force, it came out and I was fine. I overheard some conversations and the room seemed to have a couple more people in it. One of the original people said: "I can't believe you're thinking of taking him to Context tonight!"

There was a girl with red hair, suddenly seated cross-legged on the floor in front of me. It was like she was leaning forward at me for a kiss, and at first I was going to flow along with that. In mid-gesture I decided that was awkward and I needed to get back into work. She looked at me funny, and I couldn't tell whether the funny look had to do with that I had made a motion to kiss her...or that I had backed away. Studying her reaction I reached out and pet her hair, which seemed to totally confused her.

"Oh, Red, that's why," someone said. More girls started showing up, increasingly attractive...and I sort of felt like suddenly the room was trying to adapt to my tastes. But I also heard the room fill with idle-seeming chatter, details about what movies they wanted to see and things like that. I got a bit ruffled:

"Look, you all seem very nice, but you're not really doing a lot of sharing of critical information with me. I'm only here for a bit of time, and after that it's as if I'm zapped into a time warp. I'm sent back into a bed in what you may consider a prehistoric era, and that I certainly do. I am forced to live my life day to day, it feels like a prison. This is all pretty pointless if you don't try and share information."

When I said "prehistoric" a man who looked like Deepak Chopra made kind of a monkey gesture, grinning and scratching under his arms and grunting. I acknowledged that.

me: "Yes, that's about what it's like, they're monkeys and it annoys me. I'm looking very hard for some kind of scientific breakthrough linking that world to this one through something other than my dreams. If there's a reason you don't allow yourself to be discovered and known, or that there's no science you can distill down to tell me to take back that will help me look like less of a nutball...I'd appreciate you at least explaining why."

The man walked over to a wall of books that was suddenly there and pulled one down. He handed it to me and said "Look at this book." I tried to make out the words, but I couldn't. When I did read words I couldn't figure out how it was relevant to any questions I might have had. He stopped me:

him: "No. You barely looked at the cover. You immediately opened it to try and read the words. "

Closing it and looking back to the cover, it seemed like an old used book. I saw that it was dusty and there was a weathered price label on it. But it came into more focus that the cover was in a gold-color and seemed to have been done with a reasonably nice amount of layout...and had some photographs on the back. It looked like a book to me, still.

him: "It was old so you skipped the cover and went for what you thought was the content. So now what do you see when you look at it? How does your mind process?"
me: "I see that it's gold. Probably glossed over it because I don't necessarily equate gold-colored things as that fancy, I just assume the person is trying to make it look fancy. Lately, I've learned more about typography and they're using a couple fonts here I don't like...one in particular looks like it has been stretched too much. I guess it could be intentional."
him: "If this book is by a long-term editor of the New York Times, and this was a major important work in his view, wouldn't you believe that it was on purpose to stretch the font?!"
me: "Uh...maybe. Look, I like this philosophy debate here, but it's not the use of time I'd like...can't we be more direct so that we can figure out how to make it so this conversation doesn't just get cut off?"

And around there, it did get cut off. I really hope these kinds of conversations represent a miscommunication and they're not intentionally avoiding my requests for information. Because if they are ignoring me—and they do have the information I want—I'm really angry about not getting it.

I had left one room to enter another, which was something like a movie theater. A girl I had known and liked from High School was sitting at the end of the front row. I sat down beside her, and we started talking--she started making out with me. At some point I stopped it and pointed out the rather unlikeliness of the scenario and how it just screamed "dream".

Despite knowing it was a dream, we chatted for a bit and I tried to determine what bearing (if any) this scenario had on what the real person might be thinking or doing. She said something about how she had always liked me but not really known how to deal with me. I then said that I would be going on to the next room to see what amazing things my subconscious had in store. As I walked into the dark industrial area outside, she said: "Don't worry, it's not murder."

I yelled back: "It's worse than that... it's 'Murder, She Wrote'. Me and Angela Lansbury trapped together for eternity!" I was trying to be funny. (Note to self: go listen to "Stuck in a closet with Vanna White", the dream song by Weird Al.)

There wasn't much interesting in the new room, I had to climb down a series of ladders and it was as if I was leaving the first floor of a big office building at night. Once I got outside I ended up in a room with a computer, so I tried looking at Google News. They had a story about a small foiled terrorist plot to do something to Niagara Falls, and something about Britney Spears performing with a clown troupe. I kept trying to find something interesting--science news--but the weather kept popping up.

Also in terms of popups, there was some crazy set of dialogs that kept coming up about Quicktime. I dismissed these. Eventually I got into a phase where a series of images was coming up that I couldn't get rid of that I thought was malware of some sort, but as I looked I realized it was trying to help. It was showing pictures of all the places you needed to look to see if bad software had been installed on your computer. ("Is this icon in your system tray?") This diagnosis was coming from YouTube.com.

I decided to try and visit one of my own old websites, and when I did I got a bunch of crazy messages about how it was trying to mount the "I:" drive.

I was chatting with someone when I realized I was dreaming. I couldn't see or perceive much, so I began asking questions about where I was. The voice had a heavy accent, perhaps Indian. (India-Indian, not Native American).

voice: "I don't know where you are. But I know you have a condo in Fufinda."
me: "What country is Fufinda in?"
voice: "I don't know."
me: "What do you think my name is?"
voice: "I don't know your name, I only know your user ID, which is goat lick."
me: "Huh?!? goat lick?!?"
voice: "It's one word, spelled g-o-a-t-l-i-c-k-e"
me: "What the hell does that mean?"
voice: "I don't know."

I was somehow climbing a ladder for the purposes of a play that involved Peanuts characters. Someone thought I wrote the play, but I clarified by saying it was written by Bill Bixby. (I had no idea who Bill Bixby was prior to looking it up after this dream.)

Coming down from the ladder, a man said he'd make a lot of money tonight on ticket sales. Steve Martin came by and said he liked the work, and an interviewer asked if she could quote him.

I was also asked about the play, but became disengaged and started asking questions about the environment. Yet as I walked around the stage all the people were disappearing, and there was only me and one woman left. I talked to her.

She said she was turning everyone into souls and collecting them, and that she had collected 10. She was from the Ivory Coast (or an Ivory Coast, anyway). She said that the reason she turned everyone else but be into souls is because they were dried out, but I was not so she didn't.

I was fumbling through some menus, and trying to decide what to eat. It was very complicated and people were making fun of me for not being able to put together the different flyers that were involved in getting your food.

When I looked out the window of the room, I saw scenery going by, as if a plane were taking off. This led me to wonder how I got on a plane, and I asked about it. Recognizing I was dreaming, I asked a woman there if there would be any way to contact her from the waking world.

She suggested the keyword "Kevin Koostner"

me: "If you're trying to pronounce Kevin Costner, you said it wrong."
her: "Fine, however you want."
me: "Where should I send it?"
her: "Post it to Usenet. Post in biz.local"
me: "Okay. Now just checking, what was it again?"
her: ...
me: "Look, I remember it. But if YOU don't remember it, how do you expect to find the message?"

I woke up thinking that biz.local would be a real Usenet group. But it isn't. So I've nowhere to post my missed connection ad for Kevin Koostner but here.

I was listening to a lecture from someone named "Kacheer Kacheen". It was a historical study of his interests in "mental telephony", and he had broken down things into a system of five "mentalisms".

While walking around an environment, I stopped in a very crowded coffee shop and began talking to people. When I got on the subject of Earth and pointing toward the sky and asking if they knew about it, they said something about "Centaus Netrinous" on the subject of "the blue meanies can't travel to other planets". I understood the intent to be that they were blocked from travel for reasons that someone else (blue meanies) had to be blocked.

At some point my mouth was going all weird and goo was coming out. Asking what was wrong, they said I had "jaw distitution". (Distitution is not an English word, as far as I can tell... just a typo for destitution.)