I was playing some kind of video game in which I had reached a point where you got on a platform which would take you to an underground world. The art was very cartoonish. I had a thought that I really should have saved my game before I had gotten on this platform, but, decided to proceed ahead.

The underground realm was "Owl village" which struck me as a little strange as it was underground and Owls tend to fly. I then saw that there was something about characters from Secret of NIMH, and I pondered how it was that the game developers had gotten the rights to use those characters.

(Note: Now that I think of it, "The Great Owl" in Secret of NIMH *did* in fact, live underground during the day.)

At that point some sort of bridge broke and I got a message that said you had to pay in order to play the rest of the game, and the free trial was over. Puzzled, I went to write about this. I was editing a section called "COMPLICATIONS" in a long text file.

(Note: Not that I'm sure what it was I was writing about, I have a vague feeling that the text file was a Walk-Through for the game I was playing.)

As I was editing the paragraph, my attention turned to a web page up that was troubling me. It was an article about how AT&T was blocking, editing, and filtering certain network traffic. I was viewing it as a text file in Google Cache.

(Note: It looked a bit like this article on a similar topic:

I was in a room and looking in a cage without a top, labeled "Human Hedgehogs". There were a couple of whitish hedgehog-looking creatures gesticulating at me from a cage. They could talk and motioned me over.

hedgehog: "Hey! Hey! Feed me!"

Looking closer I could tell these were people dressed in a hedgehog suits, just much smaller than I was. Half-jokingly I pointed at a sign that said DO NOT FEED.

me: "The sign says 'DO NOT FEED'. How is it that you are so small, anyway?"

They didn't answer my question, but other people started showing up. The tiny human hedgehogs were jumping out of their cage. It was a bit of chaos, but eventually one of the people in the hedgehog costume went around a corner and came back as a full sized person. He took the costume off, but was still wearing some white make-up.

former hedgehog: "So... there's a machine. You can go through it and it can shrink or expand you, up to a point. 97% or so, either way."
me: "How does it work?"
former hedgehog: "Let me explain."

He stopped and laid down a sheet of paper, and crudely sketching on it.

former hedgehog: "Let's say you have a situation, such as a piece of cake. You would like to eat a lot of cake. If you could somehow expand a very small piece of cake into a larger piece of cake—without changing its material properties, such that it had the same overall information content but far more apparent mass... then..."
me: "Yes, obviously, everyone has thought of this... twice the cake but half the calories. But it seems impossible given physics. How does the technology work?"
former hedgehog: "Well *that part* I don't know. But the process is called 'Spoonilism'."

(Note: The actual reasons why this 'Fantastic Voyage' miniaturization is impossible is because designs depend on non-linear relationships. Imagine a cube sitting on top of a skinny pole. If you double the overall size of this cube-on-a-pole, the pole gets twice as tall...but because it's so thin it only gets approximately twice as massive. The cube, on the other hand, will get *8 times more massive*. Whatever delicate balance allowed that cube to rest stably on the pole may be thrown off completely, as gravity will now be affecting it much more strongly than the pole might be able to handle.)

me: "Do you have an encyclopedia?"

A woman in the room ran to grab a very dusty looking old book.

woman: "Yes! Here's one!"

She flipped it open and seemed very amused to find that it had been bookmarked at the 'Sex' page. Because she was dawdling I grabbed the book and flipped it to go read for myself.

me: "This doesn't say much. It talks about who patented it, and that they're from North Carolina. Nothing about the scientific principles. Something like Wikipedia would be much more thorough...do you have Wikipedia?"
woman: "Oh, Wikipedia! Yes, of course!"

I followed her into another room where there was a computer terminal. She sat down to type in the search term, but there was a little orange warning button and it wouldn't let her search, instead telling her she had to contact support immediately.

woman: "I've never seen that happen before. I wonder...if it's because you're here?"

Our environment transitioned to a physical kiosk in what seemed like an airport or the hallway of another kind of mass-transit hub. She was still looking at the screen but she was speaking to a man inside of the booth window. She said what I assume was her name, and was taken through some tests. Though I couldn't hear or see the questions she was responding to, they became increasingly mathematical.

woman: "...and the third vector matrix minus the fourth power."
man: "Okay, good, you can access the database."

(Note: I made that particular math expression up, but something of that sort. I will point out that simple math questions, such as "what is three times nine", have been used to block spam bots on websites in lieu of the unreadable-text-test known as CAPTCHA.)

She walked inside the kiosk, and the man came out, leading me over to a contour map of an island.

man: (pointing) "All right, we give you the California test. Let us say that you are running a boat rental company... here."

(Note: For some reason I associated the area he was pointing to on the map with the color red, like it might have been called the Red Rock Coast or something:

I was in a room talking to two nerdy-seeming guys in front of comptuers. One was thin, and the other had a dark curly beard and was a bit overweight. One of them held a thick magazine, with tons of equations. I motioned to him to let me see it, and he did. So I flipped through it. There were pages devoted to energy systems and others talking about software libraries.

thin guy: "How in the heck do you think you can read that without an assistant?"
me: "Uh... I don't know... I mean, are you talking about help with the content or that I'm in a fuzzy dream state? Do you have access to AI?"
fat guy: "Hm, yes. But mostly we're just kissing them right now."

(Note: I'm not sure what that meant, but perhaps that the level of intelligence of AI was not much better than the likes of Virtual Valerie:

I was watching some sort of story unfold where Bill Gates was in an argument with a female employee over something on her computer. After she had left he enlisted the services of a woman from another department to hack into the files. The interface of the software the woman was using was very advanced.

"Bill Gates": "Where did this software come from?"
woman: "We got it from the vendor who sold us the system for HR."
"Bill Gates": "I'd like to talk to them."

He turned to me, and said:

"Bill Gates": "In case you're curious, we've only just shipped Word 2.0"
me: "Ah. Definitely something fishy going on here then."

I became lucid and for some reason thought it was a communication with the real Bill Gates.

me: "Wait, are you going to remember this conversation? Do you remember your dreams?"
"Bill Gates": "Oh there is a whole collection of people who remember what you've said to them. In fact, there's a documentary being made by HBO about you."

The scene faded and I was walking down a hallway with someone else.

me: "Someone said a documentary was being made about me on HBO. What is it?"
man: "I've heard about it, I haven't seen it. It's titled 'Where I Go To When I Am Called'."

(Note: Title approximated, it was something like that.)

I became nervous as I was led into a closed off room with a lot of people and medical tools.

me: "Whoa, whoa, what are you planning on doing here?"
man: "It is time for the swallowing of the red poison."
me: "Is that necessary? What have I done to warrant being poisoned?"
man: "No, no. *YOU* are the poison!"
me: "I don't understand."
man: "Whenever we touch you, it is very painful. We understand it is painful to you as well."

Someone from across the room reached at me and gave me a brief poke, his arm stretching like PlasticMan. It felt like an injection. He retracted his arm immediately.

me: "Wait, so that feeling... like an injection that I'm always getting, it's just a by-product of touching? And you feel it too?"
man: "Yes."
me: "Then... well... can't we use science here? Like, you could take some skin samples or blood, whatever. Figure out why it happens, and then stop it. Then we can talk normally."
man: "This new king is showing much wisdom."
me: "Er... well I'm not trying to hurt you. Study what you can while I'm here, I can take it."

A stack of Petri dishes were brought in. I walked over to the table, which had become something like a fume hood.

I was speaking with my mother and father in a room. They were showing me some books. Neither seemed like themselves, and in fact spoke with very different voices.

(Note: For a time my focus was on the books and I was trying to remember the titles, but my attention shifted and I no longer remember them.)

mother: "We've been asked to evaluate your situation."
me: "Well this is a situation that needs evaluating. Tell me, am I... am I usually here asleep or something, or what? What will happen to me here when I wake up?"
mother: "Usually you vanish while you're in the system. There have only been a few people who have been miracles, sometimes you get married to one and only find out later."

(Note: I could not tell from this context if what I do makes me a 'miracle', or if being one would require the ability to NOT vanish while dreaming. This was a little jumbly. The term marriage has been used before to describe a partnership between a spirit and a body.)

me: "Now what is going on? I want answers!"
mother: "Don't go with the anger."
me: "Hey I'm calm."
mother: "Well, you are certainly much less angry than usual."
me: "I'm not acting on it, but mind you, there's a lot to be angry about. You seem flippant about keeping secrets, but there's a little thing called transparency. And while you're here building 'The Great Wall of Ether', I'm trying to build communications. I can obviously carry information—any solutions you have for Earth, or any solutions Earth has for you."
mother: "It's very unusual. Monks spend their entire lives meditating and don't come close to what you can do."

(Note: Though I sometimes try to convey things I say in dreams very abstractly and put them in better words, The Great Wall of Ether is something I did precisely say, and I came up with it on the spot.)

We started walking down a hallway that was fairly narrow and contained a stream of people.

me: "This hallway looks awfully familiar."

Written on a sign was an ad for a game called "the Realm". As we approached the room that was our destination, my mother held me back and sent someone ahead of me.

mother: (to confused lady) "You go first. Let him see what it is."

The woman ahead of me walked into the room. There was a bar in the corner, and a lot of people sitting at long tables entranced at three giant monitors in the corners. I tried not to look directly at the screens. A man flipped me two credit-card-sized objects which I understood to be for putting into the machines on the table.

me: "Okay, if this here is 'the game of the world'... and I'm asleep now while playing *this precise game*... what happens if my consciousness has hopped out of my body and to here, and I jack in again?"
man: "You could get spin-cycled. Not too likely, but it might happen."

I woke up to where I was flipping through things that looked like PCMCIA cards, but smaller. They had printed labels like game cartridges...in a mixture of Japanese and English. Titles I could read were things like "Experience Nippon in 1948", "A Ladies' Introduction to Corey Hart", "The Depeche Mode Stage Experience".

A short Asian man in a very star trek like uniform was helping me put on a yellow shirt and button my collar. I wanted to put a gray sweater over this (incidentally, that's what I was wearing to sleep).

We were in the interior of some kind of very space age room, clean with walls that looked like gray plastic. He was wearing an orange ID badge that I couldn't read.

me: "What do you do for work?"
Asian man: (smirking) "Oh, you mean my bedroom job?"
me: "Well, yes, your job."
Asian man: "I test for bots."
me: "You mean you look for things that are automated, but presenting themselves as if they are not?"
guy: "Exactly."
me: "But how can you tell the difference? I mean, isn't that fundamentally unsolvable in a sense? Might we all be automated?"
guy: "If I answered that, I'd be only speaking from my perspective as a human."

I tried to follow him out of an automatically sliding door, but realized I wasn't wearing any shoes. Turning back to go into the room I faded and awoke.

I was walking down the hall of my apartment and needed to take a shower. For some reason, I thought the only way to access the bathroom was through my roommate's bedroom.

(Note: This is not the case, there's a shared bathroom at the end of a common hallway.)

me: "Ahhh... dream, wait. So I'm mixing up the floorplan from the house my parents and I lived in Virginia with our apartment. Wonder why I'd do that?"
roommate: "Yeah, I keep making similar mistakes. Weird mappings. I put a whole movie theater in our apartment... a 40 screen cineplex. Except, all the movie theaters were bugged."
me: (sighing) "All of them probably are."

This switched to where I was in something like a train station, and I found a young man scribbling in a book at an area that seemed a bit like a diner. He was seated in a booth. I don't remember much of our conversation, but it was pleasant, and then suddenly interrupted when a proctor for a test walked in and addressed him.

proctor: "All right, pencils down, tests in."

He motioned to get up and leave his book on the table.

me: "Oh, I'm sorry for taking your time, did you not finish your test?"
young man: "Don't worry about it."
me: "Well don't you want to turn it in, for partial credit?"
young man: "Even if I had finished, I couldn't have afforded the grading fees. Few people here can. I was just practicing, it's no big deal"
me: "Oh, that's too bad."
young man: "I'm not actually who you need to talk to. Here, I'll show you."

He took me through what looked like a library to a woman with glasses, seated behind a computer.

me: "Hi, I'm what they'd call in my world a lucid dreamer. Which means I can tell you, y'know, that I'm asleep and went to bed in Los Angeles, and now I'm here and..."

I picked up a piece of chalk out of a box on the desk.

me: "Now I'm here, in ur reality, steelin ur chalk!"
librarian: "You need to get us pictures. Y'know, like... your coke cans, something to correlate with the date and track you."
me: "Oh. Hm. Well, how would I get any of that information to you? I mean, should I post something on the internet... or... hey, hey, I got an idea. Take some notes!"

(Note: If it helps anyone, I bought this Coke in August 2008:

 

(Note: I actually don't know the lyrics very well. Probably should, but, I just don't care much for the music of that era. Listening to it now. Oddly enough, mexgeek quoted it as his sole response to my God Criteria Essay.)

(Note: The Garbage video on YouTube does not feature any junkyards, though it all takes place in dilapidated circumstances...and Shirley Manson wears two dresses, a blue and a red-ish one... although the red-ish one could be interpreted as purple or pink in a couple of the lighting shots:











...and it's interesting to note that in the red version she's in a bathroom. The band members are busy trying to destroy giant reams of celluloid film. Perhaps suggesting that realizing that your life looks ruinous, it is just a video veil over reality. A music-video telling of the matrix tale?)

I found a magazine on the ground that was built like a box. It seemed to be some kind of cross between advertisement and pornography (in the spirit of a Victoria's Secret Catalog, I suppose). Picking it up, I went into a house and sat on a sofa...hiding the magazine.

Two young children knocked on the door and came in. They were looking for the magazine. I dug it up and gave it to them, and they mentioned something about a "candy contest".

(Note: The mention of candy contest reminded me of a dream from a long time ago, reading someone's Livejournal interests named jadebob, which brought up the term. This made me lucid and I started asking what a candy contest was.)

me: "Wait. Candy contest. I've heard of this before. What is it?"
kid: "You have to solve puzzles, and they plant clues all over the world."
me: "You mean it's like an alternate reality game?"
kid: "It's a story. And if you win, you get a prize."
me: "Who gives you the prize?"
kid: (rolling eyes) "The CANDY COMPANY, of course!"

There was a long segment of a lucid dream I couldn't remember, but it concluded with me talking with two men outdoors at an urban picnic table. One was tall and the other was short. There were a couple of small paintings on the table in a stack.

me: "That's interesting, but I really need you to focus on relating this world to the one I experience while awake? What's the connection?"
short man: "This is really a discussion we should be having at lunch."
me: "I probably won't be here at lunch, I'll probably only have another minute!"
tall man: "What he meant to say is that it needs to be talked about at a table with lots of people, not just us and you."

We started walking into an indoor type of condominum.

tall man: "A lot of people find out that decisions you thought were the wrong ones actually turned out to be right."
me: "Well what is an example?"
short man: "An example of what?"
me: "One of those situations. A story from someone's life about a decision you thought was wrong that actually turned out to be right?"
short man: "The women you date."
me: "How does that matter?"
tall man: "Such choices matter a lot, it's about your center."
me: "Well, is there a hell?"
tall man: "Oh certainly!"
me: "Why would that be necessary?"
tall man: "It's not... well maybe not hell in the sense you are thinking. Perhaps you can think of it more as an aqualung."

(Note: Aqualung refers to scuba equipment, I'm not sure what he meant in this context.)

We had come into the company of others in a nice living room. They led me over to a window or screen on the wall, through which I could see dark swirling outsides. Everything was gray and misty, and I could see silhouetted witches on broomsticks flying by. We got into some kind of clear box, reminding me of the Great Glass Elevator from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It went flying out, erratically.

I was reading something about Pluto's de-classifcation as a planet. It was actually a more broad range of things that were being removed. All space object classes less than 10 meters in width were being removed.

Somehow I was floating in space and passing Pluto, which was in this case only 10 meters wide. It wasn't a planet, it was a crystalline shaped mechanical object. It began to spin and morph, and as it did my body began to be in pain. I became more lucid as I floated near a kind of space station.

My instincts told me I had a light saber, so I pulled one out. There was some kind of sign or logo that said "Kill All Shapeshifters". Using the light saber I cut a hole into the side of the space station, but then realized there was a door. This led to me fighting several people who were trying to kill me with green lightsabers (mine was red)...but I fended them off using an odd mix of slicing them up and telekinesis.

Finally I met a large Samoan-seeming guy who was too tough to be harmed with either technique. He started trying to inflict real pain on me.

me: "Ow!"
him: "Oh we're just getting started!"
me: "Okay, stop. I don't really want to fight, I'm just fighting because I was attacked. I give up."
him: "You can't give up!"
me: "Yes I can. Here I go."

I invoked my reflex to wake up. When I did, I was looking at a flat screen which had the guy who I'd been fighting on it. On screen facing me, he shot at me with some kind of gun, and I somehow vaguely felt it as he laughed.

him: (on screen) "Good night!"

Surveying the room I was in, there were a lot of bunk beds. I felt like I was floating, and, the screen I had been looking at was on the ceiling.

A friend took me to a place where you were supposed to get into a sliding bed. It was low to the ground and some sort of machine.

friend: "It's time you saw a real psychic."

My friend slipped a $10 bill to someone buried in the internals of the machine, in a part that was underground. The elderly psychic woman operator had dials and equipment. I panicked and got out of the machine, and bent down to the window where the psychic was.

me: "I'm sorry, I'm claustrophobic. Is it possible to get a reading from outside the machine?"
psychic: "Yes, it will be fine if you...well, keep your head right there."

The psychic twiddled some dials.

psychic: (sighing) "Why are they always bringing the ones who won't even remember what I tell them?"
me: "I can try my best, but I'm probably about to wake up."
psychic: "Well, with your abilities, yes...something might actually stick."

Something was muttered about meters and how my soulmate was 16, but I quickly faded. My point of view switched quickly to where I was looking at several screens floating in midair.

(Note: As I was looking at a dial during the conversation, it wasn't clear if '16' was a reading on a meter measuring some non-age quantity, or a human age, or what. Digging back into the last time I was 'metered' we saw a mention of 16 hulls. When I saw the floating screens, they were sort of like Etch-A-Sketches, or the hovering terminals from Invader Zim:

I got on a bus of sorts, which was more like a pickup truck you just jumped into the back of. I realized it was carrying me further away from my destination, so I wanted to get off. It would back up in various spots, at seemingly handicapped-enabled water fountains... pause for a second... and then start up again. When I noticed this, I looked and saw that there was no driver.

Hopping off at the next water fountain, I started walking back the way I came, through some kind of urban tunnel. When I did, I saw what looked like a plastic mat sliding along the ground, translucent with glowing yellow writing. I marveled at it, and a woman stopped to talk to me.

woman: "It is used for police operations."
me: "How does it work?"
woman: "Get on."

I got on it, and she started making it move somehow. We went to some office, with many computers. I felt very lucid. She fired up something on a computer with a projector, and encouraged me to try it.

woman: "Pick up that disc. Now throw it."

What was on the screen was an augmented reality system. It realistically reflected my arm and let me interact with virtual objects on the screen.

me: "Yes... lately, I've been talking to people about augmented reality. What is the name of your company?"
woman: "We are (company name). We did the very early demos..."

(Note: Cannot remember the company name, it was two words.)

me: "Do you mind if I, er, use your Google?"
woman: "If you wish."

There were other people in the room. They watched me as I tried to look up my homepage. In the place of my homepage was something about being a friend of the "Crimson Circle".

(Note: I know one person affiliated with this group. A non-realityhandbook address recently got an email from someone in that group on an unrelated topic, that said merely "Welcome Shaumbra". Despite the brevity of that message, I replied with a link to this journal. Of Shaumbra, it says: "You're not going crazy, you're just Shaumbra moving into the new energy." It says other things too.)

me: "See, this Crimson Circle thing, I don't really know them. How are they taking over my homepage? I'm going to view source."

A small child came running up to me, and as I've had bad experiences with children in dreams I picked him up and threw him a little ways away. When he came again I threw him again, which seemed to discourage him from another attack.

me: "I'm sorry, not trying to hurt that kid, he was just coming right for me."

The people were watching, and they started arguing amongst themselves.

man #1: "You must balance therapeutic processes with guided disciplinary action when dealing with him."

(Note: I interpreted them to be looking at and discussing me in this context. Guess there's an off chance they might have meant the speedy child.)

me: "Yes! Yes. Er. More therapy, and more explanations, and less attacking! Can we do that? I mean, try EXPLAINING what I don't know to me and we'll make a lot more progress."
man #2: (exasperated) "But what if... what if you are missing the code you need to understand what you aren't getting?! What then?"

I was waiting in line at some kind of food counter and saw an attractive blond girl who seemed to recognize me. She sidled up to me and I touched her, I was in some kind of awareness that I was dreaming.

me: "Um, hey, sorry is that ok?"
blond: (smiling) "I'm a uni."
me: "Uni what? Are you in some kind of... union?"

She didn't answer that.

blond: "Where are you from?"
me: "Um... the year 2000?"
blond: "Which part? Earth?"
me: "Yes."

Her smile disappeared.

blond: "That is not looked upon highly."
me: "Hey, well me neither, I didn't like it very much."
blond: "Well just because you're here now, this isn't because of anything about you... you just slipped through a crack in the fabric."
me: "Look, I'm not asking for anything. Please don't attack me. I just want to know how I got here, and what's going to happen to me in the future."
blond: "Well, there is a screening process."

We began walking through a very beautiful and refined mall-type environment, a classier version of the wacky and well done interiors of certain Vegas casinos.

blond: "Your world was too competive."
me: "You mean, com-pet-it-ive?"
blond: "Yes, a lot of contention for resources. Here hotel rooms are given out on a first-come, first-serve basis. For example. There are exceptions, but few."
me: "That sounds nice in theory, but what do you do when there are people who are pathological? The homeless who cannot or will not work?"
blond: (smiling) "I kill them."
me: "What?! You, personally, kill people just because they don't have homes?"
blond: "There are many military operations, I'm part of some."
me: "Well there has to be a better way! If you're all evolved and we're such dumb schmucks, can't you come up with something more elegant than extermination?"

I woke up kinda pissed off as we walked into a club-like area.

I was working on a laptop and was pretty sure I was dreaming, because this often happens... where I'm using a computer that has a lot more programs installed on it than mine. It was running OS/X and had some kind of hardware/driver utility open... so you could see all the things installed on the machine.

Firing up a web browser, I tried to Google for my name, but someone else was typing at me--using the URL bar as a place to have a conversation. They indicated that they knew I was trying to search for myself, and began to type as I watched.

typed: "Your problems with madness started in June 2001, when Federal investigators knocked on your door and took you to meet Jamie Zawinski"

(Note: Jamie Zawinkski is the infamous jwz, who is a programmer who worked on the Mozilla project, who is also a somewhat prolific blogger. I do not know him personally, but stylistically I'd say we have a lot in common... especially, well, the prolific part. From surface metrics I'd say he seems like a reasonable, curious, and intelligent fellow.)

After this, the writing started to turn red. A hand moved in to block the red writing so I could not read it. Angrily I tried to bite or move the hand, but this was ineffective, and I couldn't read the rest of the story.

(Note: Since this is the second time some relationship between me and Mozilla has been mentioned, I added a tag for it. Outside of using Firefox, I've not been involved in the project in any way.)

I was in an IM conversation with someone, I wasn't sure who.

other account: "Give up, nobody likes you."
me: "Nobody in the universe? I can think of counterexamples, just off the top of my head."

My point of view switched to where I could see something from this other person's perspective. They were logging of of some system and then coming back on as someone else. Pretending to be someone else, they wrote another message. My point of view returned to my screen.

third account: "Why are you arguing with us?"
me: "Well I'm arguing with you simply because you're the same person I was arguing with before, using a different account. Thus it's not surprising that you also don't like me. Nice 'change user' function, by the way...I can see all of that."
third account: "Oh, screw you. Take THIS."

There was sort of a brief electric jolt I felt. My point of view switched to where I saw a giant explosion and a building was destroyed, but I didn't wake up. Just some monitor broke.

I walked out into an area that seemed to be scaffolding running over pits of Lava. I had a few random conversations with people I thought I recognized, and I saw classrooms full of people. It was suggested that I should teach a class on a topic, but I forget what subject.

Looking for exits, I walked outside to see where this school was. When I did, it was a building I had seen before—it was an urban shopping center with a fancy restaurant in it I'd been to. When I tried to re-enter the building, something was blowing me with gusts so I couldn't. There was water spraying everywhere but somehow I just felt air.

A nice and good-looking couple who I thought I recognized came up to help me, I was pinned to a wall by the air.

me: "Hey again, I'm stuck. Can you help me."
guy: "Can't get by because of the water, huh? We can fix that."
me: "Why do I always seem to be the only person in a situation who's having these problems?"

They started pushing me, and with their help I went flying back into the building, and up various sets of stairs.

me: "Hope this isn't putting you guys out too much, but wow, you sure are among the most helpful."
girl: (smiling) "Well all us helpful people are sometimes also the most intelligent and the most attractive. But that's not all coincidence..."
me: "The last time I saw you, we were... there was snow and skis."
girl: (laughing) "And you turned us all into a giant rolling ball of 300 snow-skis, yes, that was very exciting going over the hill."

I was taken into a room where they were trying to present information about me. The people were trying to make a decision if I was going to be accepted or inducted into a group. It wasn't so much to ask questions of me as to talk to each other, but there was a question for me.

Asian girl: "You said you were an electrical engineer, what does that mean?"
me: "Well, that's just one thing I know about. I've done a lot of things. But to answer your question, electrical engineering is the study of how to build systems that control and direct power of a certain type. The type of power is specifically electricity, which is the basis for how computers perform logic."

Someone held up a piece of poster board, onto which there had been pasted a bunch of objects to represent a circuit and logic gates. It looked like it had been made by a kid, with glitter and glue aesthetics. This was put into a shelf for exhibits which were relevant to my 'evaluation'.

A leader or someone was sitting behind a desk, and she looked a bit like Judge Judy. I started having problems with my shirt flying up over my head, and as I approached the desk something jumped out from under it and attacked me. She and the people seemed concerned about this.

After a false awakening, I was watching a monitor where I was controlling a tank with two joysticks. The video game was called Avalon, and I was getting creamed. I managed to turn away from the monitor and find that the game was embedded into the wall... like an ATM...

(Note: There is a movie called Avalon, about a massively multiplayer online war game that is declared illegal, though I have yet to see it.)

Stepping back I realized I was in the lobby of the same building I was in before, another person guided me forward into an elevator. I understood I'd be speaking with the same group, somehow. When the elevator stopped at a floor to pick other people up, he warned me:

guy: "We can either keep going with them, or take another path. If they stay in the elevator, then they will be part of the vote."
me: "Oh, I'm not going to jury-rig any voting so it favors me, at this point of what I've seen I'm letting the chips fall where they may."
guy: "You should know that democracy isn't always a good thing when the participants are closed-minded."

More and more people started getting in the elevator. The floor fell out of part of it, but people seemed not to panic. On the level underneath us I could see through a hole a sign for "Buy 'n' Large".

(Note: Buy 'n' Large is the fictional corporation in WALL*E that has encouraged wanton consumerism and destroyed Earth.)

me: "The bottom falling out of an elevator in a dream is... pretty cliche."

Two young children were sitting behind me, and one of them, a young boy laughed and spoke with a foreign accent.

boy: "And so when the bottom of the elevator is falling out, he just goes 'in a dream this is cliche'. That is funny! Also, he knows that word, so he must be older than I thought by his size."

I started flying somehow, alone outdoors. It looked like there was a stage set up, and a lot of people with balloons. Some music was playing whose lyrics I couldn't quite remember but something akin to 'Sometimes you make the right choice'.

As I flew forward I was greeted by a flood of giant balloons which burst and there were more balloons. But once I reached the podium and landed it had a heavy wooden door on the face of it, pointing up. I opened it and there was a stairwell leading down into a purple light.

How open the door was seemed to affect the steepness of the stairs, and opening it all the way made them impossibly flat. Not seeing any sign that going down the stairs would lead to anything productive, I opted not to enter and to instead look to see if there was anyone around.

When I did, there were two small dogs that looked like Welsh Corgis off in the distance. One of them came running at me, and nicked my leg with a bite and ran off. It felt almost like my foot had been pounded to the floor so I couldn't move it. The dog came back and started eating my arm, it was annoying. I tried to hold out as long as possible.

I believed myself to be awake and talking to a friend, who wasn't acting like herself.

her: "I just found out about this Lindows crap."
me: "I don't know that Lindows is any crappier than Windows. At least it runs on Linux."
her: "Uh...what is 'Lindows'? I said 'Windows'."
me: "Sorry, must have misheard you. This is channeling, it's error prone."
her: "Well, what does Windows want us to do?"
me: "Don't know that I'd personify an operating system to the point that I'd give it desires. But, hm, if it 'wants' anything it wants you to send Bill Gates money. Don't do that, though. Money is irritating."

Our conversation wandered to the point where I realized I was dreaming, and I ended up getting abused by some people. A person with a digital camera was watching, and motioned me to get out of the way.

me: "Oh, am I not supposed to be in the shot? Why not?"

The guys with the camera showed me the viewfinder. They were carefully trying to make sure the shot contained those people, as well as certain graphics behind them. There were color codes and lines, it's like my very purposefully assembled screenshots.

me: "This is tough for me, because the same techniques can be used in exploitation. Sure, I busted these guys now, but how do I know if you helped or if you're just creating the next level of problem?"

The guys with the camera just kinda smiled and shrugged. They were both wearing the same kinda wacky and tacky shirts. I followed them out into an open area that felt like the inside of a mall, and struck up a conversation with a geeky-looking guy.

geeky guy: "How are people doing on your planet?"
me: "Poorly! Guess that's relative, but I'm not happy. Wait, you know about planets?"
geeky guy: "Yeah, I live on one."
me: "I live on Earth. What's yours called?"
geeky guy: "I'm from the Mother Earth community."

He pointed out a logo on his shirt and some text that said something about Mother Earth.

me: "Are there different Earths? Was there an 'original' Earth? What variation am I from?"
geeky guy: "We gathered some data, and if you hold on while I look at it, I can tell you."

At this point a young girl handed him a large number of bolts of various sizes and rustiness, some checkers from various board games, and a few other relics. He started putting them into sections on a tray and measuring them. I started laughing.

me: "When this stuff first started happening, I was like 'no! really! I am not crazy, this is for real!' Now that you're here measuring bolts and checkers to taxonomize which alternate reality version of the planet I'm from, I'm thinking...uh, maybe I have gone completely batshit insane."
geeky guy: "I know how you feel, and so do a lot of others."
me: "This would make a good scene in a movie."

He walked into a room where a woman was seated. I tried to walk in but she motioned at me not to come in the door.

woman: "No, no, Quicktime is not allowed in here."
me: "Quicktime is a video format."
woman: "The reasons it's not allowed are published in the paper."
man: "Those reasons were flawed."
woman: "Yes, but not every mistake ever made needs to be corrected, there will be no retraction or correction published in the next edition."

I wound up in a fight with some people in a field, and while I was waking up I saw a book that was supposed to be on the topic of self-help. It had the Windows logo on it, and the title was something like I'm old, I'm outdated, and I'm only 100x100 pixels. What should I do?. The vague impression came to me that someone was talking about new approaches to wake people up from the Matrix.

I was rearranging furniture in a house and trying to place things. There was clearly something wrong with the old arrangement, and I tried to reason through a better one. All the furniture was dark, but I noticed a piano against the wall. I walked up and started playing it...thinking about what I liked about pianos and wondering where this very nice one had come from.

Turning to look on the floor, I saw a lot of candy. I opened a few to taste them. One was "G.I. Joe" branded candy—it was chocolate covered and had a sort of odd taste that reminded me vaguely of something from childhood.

(Note: Now that I'm awake, a bit of research landed me on the name of the candy I had in mind: Sixlets, which I actually never liked.)

I read the wrapper, and it had a long rant about "How's it made? Well we start with two pieces of wheat toast and then there's a candying process. And with the help of the musician Kenna we're proudly sponsoring a tour of the Atlantic."

(Note: I had just referred mrnihil to a Kenna video recently, but it seemed to be very clearly in the text I was reading.)

Tried to get someone's attention about all this, and the fact that I was dreaming. A guy went over to a computer and asked someone (not me) about what the link was to my dream journal. He started reading it. I milled around.

Eventually I went back to the guy who was reading my journal, and saw him on the other side of a window. He was scribbling notes on a piece of paper. He was wearing a hat and looked a bit like a skipper, kind of oldish.

I reached in and grabbed the piece of paper away from him and looked at it. There were titles of dream posts and ratings ("clear, unclear, good") etc.

me: "What was so 'clear' about the dream titled 'Home'? How can you rate these things anyway?"

(Note: I have no such dream title, but he may have had his own naming system.)

skipper: "Well even if I wasn't there, I can tell from the narrative. Some have more apparent structure than others. You just have to have the right perspective."

The discussion diverged a little, and he brought up something about me being angry and wondering where that came from, or what to do about it, or something.

me: (angrily) "Yeah well, I'll tell you a bit about being angry. And I got an idea that might make this a lot more 'clear'. How about if people took a minute to stop and actually explain things. Why doesn't anyone come to me? It really wouldn't take all THAT long."

He turned his back to walk away.

skipper: "Because that would be no good. Then you'd get all the wrong people."

I chased after him.

me: "Well what about you then? Why don't you help? How about I pick YOU?"
skipper: "No, not me. Just keep looking."

I was awakening from another dream when I started reading a chat.

person1: "Yeah, well, the computers always are trying to get address block 105. It's like if hackers were going to hack a domain to put their sites up, they'd choose .gov. All things being equal, why not give what you say some authority?"
person2: "Who could blame them, everyone wants to include themselves for recognition."
person1: "Also, in that range you can route the lower ranges."
person2: "They sure like defining the rules for combat, surface to air... ground to ground."
person1: "Did you see they just submitted their first modification to an article that wasn't about computer military history? It was to the article on the Intellivision game system. Really changed the spin of some parts of it but did an excellent job, when the raters graded the changes on a human scale they gave it a 96% quality mark."

My field of view showed a "before" and "after" of the cover graphic for a book on the Intellivision game system. The design had been enhanced somewhat.

The next thing I knew I was reading a three-frame cartoon about a family being upset with a dog for being disorganized. In the first frame the humans gave it a computer and told it to do a better job. In the second frame you saw the dog being stressed out reading all the things it had to deal with ("That's the 50th time I had to close the door for you this month! etc.") The third frame showed the dog sweating and it said "I am SO pregnant."

I was watching a lot of information downloading, and somehow I could only see it when I had my glasses on. Keywords and text were going by, and then full graphical web pages—some of mine. They were being edited. When I took the glasses off, I couldn't see anything—so I kept trying to put them back on but they would fall off.

(Note: I had just seen a rather impressive demo of Augmented Reality online, where you use video devices you are looking through to overlay imagery that has been referenced onto the real world.)

Wanting to see who was doing the editing, I started turning a mirror I was holding around until I realized somehow that it was a copy of me. Yet I felt the work that was being done on this page wasn't vandalism, but rather making notes and doing various bookkeeping about various countries. There was also a rearrangement of some musical scales.

So I wasn't angry, and I tried to engage the clone in conversation.

me: "Hey! Hey! Can we talk?"
clone: (sighing) "Yes, I suppose, I've got a little time."

At this point he morphed a little, and looked a bit like Gary Oldman's character from Batman.

After a segment of a dream where I was talking to some people at a schoolyard who were having some kind of petty argument they wouldn't qu