Dream Log: February 21, 2001

My friend is about to be bitten by a grotesque insect - (i have a longstanding phobia about them) - and i try to warn him. I succeed, he isn't bitten, but i attract the thing's attention and it bites me instead. At the same time, i fail and it bites him.

From here, the scenes alternate so i'll try to replicate that in this writeup as best as i can remember.

1. • Path1: I've been bitten, but i feel fine. I go on about my life, and crush the bug under a foot. A lizard eats the remains.
   • Path2: My friend is bitten. He's gone into some sort of anaphylactic shock. I don't know what to do. He dies in my arms.
2. • Path1: I am hungry but i don't know what for. I appear to walking around Bristol University Campus. I meet my old girlfriend from the first year at Bristol, Lou. I kiss her, and then, following some weird inner prompting, i suck the skin from her face and body and leave her dessicated and dead.
   • Path2: Lou is dead. She's been disgustingly murdered. I'm afraid, we're all afraid.
3. • Path1: My body is changing. I grow longer, thinner, stronger. My eyes bulge, my tongue becomes pointed. I kill again, the groundskeeper at the university. I enjoy doing so, it tastes and feels good.
   • Path2: We can't find the corpse of my friend who died. I know what's going on from my knowledge of Path1, but i still believe i am responsible when i know i'm not. More people have disappeared.
4. • Path1: I'm all monster now. I kill for food and for fun, indiscriminately. Apart from that, i am solitary and happy with that. I know they're after me but i don't care. I can take them all, without a qualm.
   • Path2: I know where he is. I know what he's done. I don't have any choice, i have to burn him out. I prepare Molotov cocktails and head for his haunt.
5. • Path1: They've burned my lair, my hideout. I'm now escaping into a tree, my elongated arms and legs, my claw tipped digits easily grasping the branches. My tongue drips poison. I hear an enormous creaking from behind me. The lizard, changed in the same way that i have, is following me. It is vast, i am finally afraid.
   • Path2: I have found him. I plunge the piece of metal pipe deep into his guts and hear him screech in agony. I twist, moving forward. The claws grip my head, the pointed tongue descends towards my eyes. I scream my way into...
6. • Path1: The lizard's tongue lashes out like that of a chameleon. I am siezed, drawn toward the gaping maw. The path ends.
   • Path2: As my skin is stripped away, i force the pipe right through the insect-thing. It's cries and mine merge. As we die together, i wake.

I am walking with someone (an unknown dream person), when I feel someone behind me who bumps into me... well, it is more like they brush against me. Instinctively I reach for my wallet, only to find it gone.

I hold out my hand to the culprit and demand my wallet. He protests his innocence. I repeat my demand, and his friend comes up, a pretty big guy.

Again, like the last time I had this dream, I am not afraid or upset, just thinking about how I can get it back and the things I'll have to do (cancel cards, etc.) if I can't get it back.

The dream bothers me a bit, since it's happened twice in recent days. IRL my wallet is very small, only contains some essential cards, no money, and so its loss would only cost me a little work to replace.

I am a special guest at a beauty pageant. It is a great international event and security is tight. But I know that there is something wrong. Nobody else seems to sense it and nothing appears out of place, but I know that there will be panic soon and it will be up to me to discover the cause and uncover the one responsible. {then the dream fades}

It has been three months and the valve finally fails. I try desperately, but I cannot get the valve to work. I sound the alarm and call for the two of them to come and help me as I have a technician still in the system and she'll drown without help. They both laugh. They knew it would fail and seemed to be hoping that someone would die as a result. I am furious and outraged and incredulous that they could be so evil.

I run to my car in the hopes that I can bring someone to stop their machinations, but my door won't close and I realize that the woman has rammed my car, ruining any chance that I could leave. I storm back into the facility, too enraged to have any fear for myself. They are waiting and laugh at me.

He pulls a gun and tells me that I will have to run the system, believing that I will also drown when I get to the final lap and the non-working valve. I know better. I know that I could swim nearly the entire system without any of the valves working and still make it through. I realize that I will have to manage my air carefully as I have to push the dead technician's body through the system ahead of me for the last leg. I am hoping they do not decide to just shoot me as I start my swim.

While I'm in the system the facility is raided by a pair of government operatives. They had intended to merely visit, but when they saw the damage to my car, they knew something was wrong. The two villains are overconfidant, believing that I will drown and tell lies of how they tried to stop me and that I went in to retrieve the technicians body. My friends watch them both with guns drawn and wait for me to finish so that they can hear the real tale.

• I had never dreamed of meeting an actual deity until last night. It was representing itself as a Hindu god, perhaps Krishna, more probably Shiva. I am meditating in a bright candle-lit room when the space in the room's center expands and becomes distorted like a lens or fish bowl. It resolves into the general shape of a man, perhaps ten feet tall. The transparent space becomes tinted by moving images of star-jeweled midnights. The pure astonishment makes my belly feel like a helium balloon, and is enough to turn this right into a lucid dream. But this divine manifestation shimmering before me is from beyond the astral plane, beyond even my lucid powers of awareness. I awaken in my bed, breathing heavily, realizing I've just experienced the rare and sometimes terrifying encounter with something more real than yourself.

• I've programmed a revolutionary new tool for object oriented programming which is basically a utility for converting pseudo code typed into the program directly into Java code in realtime. I am mostly impressed by the user interface, a dynamic and fluid animation of abstract graphical drawers.

• I awoke from the programming dream and stayed in bed trying to recall the details of my creation. It took a while and led me back into another dream. I am on campus at UC Santa Cruz at Kresge College, on my way to the computer lab to take a second look at my software creation. In my haste, I try flying and it becomes a lucid dream. I perch on the edge of a roof and use the technique of looking at my hand and rubbing the palm with my finger. It increases lucidity and keeps one grounded in the dream body. I remind myself of my wish to try astral projection from a lucid dream, in hopes of initiating an out of body experience. Unfortunately, I am unable to find a quiet place to meditate and waste my time trying to take control of the noisy environment. I run into my artificial intelligence professor who has accidently decapitated himself. Someone is carting his body along with his head lying next to it. The head explains his predicament to me.