Reverse dream II

Last month, I had another example of a weird memory that doesn't belong in this world. Perhaps it can all be blamed on the fever. I had the flu for several days and was feverish and tired. I was moving from a lit room into the dark bathroom when it occured. As I shut the bathroom door behind me, I didn't bother to turn on the bathroom lights. Because I 'knew' that the house technology would automatically turn on the lights in any room that I entered. Except it didn't work and I was left standing in the dark. At first, I was surprised to see the system had not worked properly. Such failures are rare and I wasn't sure what to do about it. Then I realized, "Oh yeah, it doesn't work like that here, you have to turn on the lights yourself. Silly me!" Where did I get that weird memory from? It's not something I have ever experienced in this world.

Radiation

I've been here several years now, in this new place, and I'm starting to fit in, or at least a feel like I am. I know what to do now, I'm a useful member of society and they seem to accept me. I stay here in a room at the place of one of the native families, probably so they can keep an eye on me and make sure that I am what I say I am. That seems to be the custom here as a matter of course. Newcomers are placed with established families and stay with them long term as they work for their new society. This are a distrustful society.

Personally, I have no problem with this place but I can't really say I love it either. It's just that I had no place to go and here has worked out for me. I have a good job and a good place to stay and it's been a nice stable environment. They seem to find me useful and if I stay here long enough, they will likely eventually let me have a place of my own. It's only a matter of time, sticking to the job, and staying out of trouble. It's a pretty good life really.

Down the street, another one of the newcomers is also staying. He hasn't been here as long as I have, but he's been generating a great deal of interest because of the new science and technology he has brought with him. At first he just did small experiments but the leaders of this society were very impressed by it, some kind of chemical based technology that generates energy. The main problem is that the technology also generates radioactivity.

People here in this society have little understanding of the dangers of radioactivity. He has tried to explain to them but they just don't get it or they just don't want to get it. They are too excited by the benefits of the technology to want to think about the dangers. I on the other hand have seen some of the damage it's done in other places. I don't understand it either but I do understand that it is dangerous and the expansion of the experiments makes me uneasy. I don't think even he understands fully what he is doing, but the urge to fit in and the excitement of this new society of his both serve to urge him forward with his experiments. There is tremendous pressure on him to do more.

Where before he had only tiny palm sized plastic dishes for his experiments, now he has expanded the experiments to huge wood pallets full of the chemical spread out all across the deck of the house he is staying in. The wood is stacked high and I observe from a distance. Worry gnaws at me and my worst fears are realized when I hear an aweful cracking noise. The deck has collapsed and the wooden pallets on top have fallen to either side! Fearing that radiation is surely escaping now, I run away as fast as I can to the administration building to alert those in charge.

By the time I get there, the place is already in an uproar. People are running around in a panic, some in confusion, others trying to figure out what to do, and still others are found seemingly intent only on proclaiming how right there were that such technology should not have have been undertaken in the first place. Those few had been protesting all along and now their worst fears have been proven right. However, instead of looking fearful or horrified, these few seem perversely happy and justified, as if the chance to be proven right could be actually more important than the safety of their own society. Could they have been involved in the disaster themselves, perhaps to sabotage the experiments and be proven right?

Watching the milieu, I feel frustrated and sick inside. I realize no one knows what to do because there is nothing to be done. My own knowledge of the radiation tells me the only thing that can be done is to run away. It's every man for himself and since my heart never truly belonged to this society, it's an easy decision for me to decide to run. Know the winds blow to the south, I run hard and fast to the north. But all the while, I still cannot be hopeful. Because the winds are not reliable. Eventually they will shift back and the radiation will blow this way too. And I can only go a little to the north before I must stop. Because this land is an island and there is no way off. Eventually the winds will shift, bringing the radiation with it, and then we will all die. One after another.

Dragon's Death

I peered around from behind the cement pillar, looking for the enemy. I sensed danger around me and became concerned that we had been found out. My clan leaders were inside the building I was guarding and there should have been no enemies here. They should not have known our location, yet we had already found one enemy scout and suspected several others were near. This was not good. I had a bad feeling, but to move without caution now could easily mean my death. As had happened many times in the past, I was in a life and death struggle to find the enemy and kill him before he found me.

My surroundings appeared to be ordinary every day modern day buildings, one several stories tall cement building inside of which my superiors were currently working, some flat parking areas around me, a tall cinder block wall in front, other buildings and a sparsely used roadway beyond, and several large rectangular well manicured grass areas along the road. It all seemed so normal but I knew danger lurked at every corner.

Eventually, I made my way back to one of my superiors near the building and we discussed the situation. We felt we were in considerable danger with our important people still inside the building, so few of us guardians present, and our location likely now known by the enemy. We could easily be overwelmed if we were not careful, but my superior offered me one solution.

He informed me that I could turn into a dragon! I immediately agreed and the next thing I knew, I was a dragon, not the lithe and sinuous creatures of Chinese legend, but instead a huge thick bodied brute of a creature with huge arms, slashing claws, and dark grey green scales. And somehow, despite the obvious problems of gravity and physics, I could even fly!

I sent out my dragon mind and sound found I knew the locations of nearby enemy agents. Now in my huge beast body, I easily descended down upon each one of them and slashed them down to death in seconds. No more did I need to sneak and scurry for my life. Now I could simply pound anyone to death in seconds using my huge scaly dragon arms and claws. I felt a great freedom from fear and a great pleasure in the new simplicity of executing my tasks quickly and efficiently and without fear. Thus, were the 3 or 4 nearby enemy agents dispatched and then I flew up and grasped onto the side of a nearby building to think and survey the area further.

Indeed, I could fly but it was not an easy task. I found I had to concentrate every second of the time in order to keep myself aloft and not crash into some nearby obstacle by mistake. My heavy dragon body was difficult to control in flight and it seemed that gravity and momentum were only just barely compensated for at any given time. Thus I found that I could not effectively think about anything other than flying during times of flight. And so I had to aloft on the side of the building in order to consider what next I should do.

At first as I sat there clutching some curly cue ornamental stone work on one corner of the building, I felt the job had thusfar been strangely too easy. It seemed almost a waste to have had so little to do and such an easy task for such a great and powerful body as the dragon. But then I let my mind stretch out further beyond my immediate surroundings and I realized my task was far from over.

There beyond the tall cinder block wall, arrayed out on top of a structure that looked like the top of a parking garage, were many many scores of the enemy. They lay in wait as part of a trap set for us. They only awaited the order for when to move on us, maybe 100 or 120 of them total, a large allotment of resources even coming from a larger clan like themselves. They meant to crush us and they were putting out a lot of effort to do so.

Quickly, I met again with my immediate supervisor and he advised me of that which I already knew, that it would be my task and my task alone to slaughter those atop the parking structure. With so many of their resources there, he did not know if they would have weapons that would be able to harm me, but that would be a risk I would have to take.

Trying not to worry about danger to myself, danger that most likely I could do nothing about, I flew to the parking garage roof and starting killing as many as I could as fast as I could. At first, I killed by slashing down with my powerful claws and arms, ripping open flesh and crushing bones. But then I realized that some might survive such an assault. Any victim that lived would be another person that would come against us as a powerful enemy in the future, probably an even more dangerous enemy than they had been to start with, but yet I did not have time now to be checking each body to insure death as I had done with the few scouts I had previously killed. So I reasoned that the only way to insure death would be to rip each body into two parts, the lower half from the upper, a procedure that surely no one would survive.

And so, as much as I loathed it, I began to tear many of my victims in two. Unlike the simple pounding slash that I had previously used, the tearing caused the majority of the skin to come away on one specific side, like a sock coming off a foot, while the majority of the meat would slide out into the other half. The feeling in my hands was akin to yanking apart a large slimey lumpy sausage with a very thick and stubborn casing. This horrible feeling weighed on my mind as I performed each killing and I did my best not to think about it too much and instead concentrated on killing as fast as possible.

I had not time to lose because as I killed, I could sense the warriors at the edge of the hoard were not thinking of attacking me but instead were scattering in all directions like ants into the forest, running in many directions at once, blending back into society, not easily to be found again. It would be impossible for me to get them all, but I knew I had to get as many as possible. The killing proceeded for some time until all were dead or ran away.

After the slaughter, I returned to my supervisor and was advised not to return to the killing area again for some time. And indeed, I already felt a strange urge to return there again later, when everything was cleaned up again and the bright sun shined on the green grass and the blood had been mostly washed away. I longed to see the place in its natural state again without the bodies and death, but I was advised that the investigators would be monitoring the area for some time to come, hoping themselves that the perpetrator of the killing would come back to see his handiwork. And so I could not return for that reason. I could not give them even the slightest clue that it had been me.

But overall, my superiors were pleased. Most importantly, we had all survived. The enemies, it turned out, had no weapon to use against me and many of them had been killed. All my superiors had finished their business and escaped and we now blended back into the society around us. No one would know we were involved in the killing. The mission had been a success.

I slept for a while with a strange feeling of peace and security and eventually found myself awake in the now waking world of here. For several hours, I retained a strange feeling of grim determination, and I could still remember the power that had been in my great dragon arms and of the strange stubby wing protuberances that had been at my back. And I remembered the sickening feeling of the skin ripping off the human victims as I pulled them apart. And I tried not to think of it too much until finally the regular concerns of the day, getting gas, arriving on time for my appointments, finding lunch, finally pushed aside some of those dream memories.

Reverse dreams?

In many of these dreams, it's like I enter some other life and experience that person's or creature's thoughts. At first, my own regular thoughts are predominate, but then shortly, I 'remember' the 'truth' about the place I am now at and my thoughts quickly are bent to those of the creature's mind that I inhabit.

But can it it happen the other way? Can their minds come into my mind? Can they briefly inhabit me with their thoughts before my mind takes back control?

The other day, I was driving my car at night. Few other cars were on the road. I was relaxing and enjoying the process of driving without tons of traffic in my way, when I found myself idly worrying that since it was late, how soon would it be before they shut down all the roads for nighttime? Would I make it in time or would they shut down the roads before I got home? I realized I had not planned properly for this trip.

Then suddenly I remembered that they don't shut down the roads at night. Duh! Roads are typically open all the time. Why had I even thought such a weird wrong thing in the first place? Where had such a thought come from?

A Lesson Not Learned

I lived in an underground city, my living quarters just off the hall leading to our work place which was a large 'workstation' that dealt with managing the inner workings of the rest of the complex. My area of involvement was just one of many many others. My view of the overall picture was limited. I worked with the same people each day, maybe 5 or 6 main people and occasionally I had cause to chat with a few dozen others. But that was about it. I had little knowledge or interest with what went on beyond my area.

But there were rumors circulating. Some people from other complexes in far away areas said they felt sorry for us, that our latest development was built on unstable ground, that we were in danger. But I shrugged these rumors off. There were always naysayers. Like that guy in the other building who was always spouting off about dangers. Sure he was intelligent, in many ways a genius really. He knew all about the machinery and inner workings of things. When there was a complex problem, he was the one to fix it. But sadly, his personality was lacking. He just didn't know how to talk to people right, so they would understand, so they would listen. And he was always frustrated about something. After a while, nobody wanted to listen. You can't spend your whole life living in fear. At some point, you just have to get over it and move on.

And that was what I was doing as I quietly ate lunch in the communal eating room where food was always available. We selected and ate from a buffet area according to our tastes. Lunch was always a pleasant and relaxing experience. The area was spacious and never crowded. We didn't believe in inconvenience when it came to eating and we always had plenty of time. We were expected to do our work, but rarely to watch the clock unless there was an official meeting, although there was some social pressure to show up within reasonable time frames each morning in order to get work done, and not to stay out too late for other things. But overall, we all worked and ate on our own time.

Me, I was a night owl and often did much of my work late at night. And so was that genius guy down the hall, which is probably why I ended up talking to him more than most. Oh well, he wasn't a bad guy after all, just misunderstood. And he worked hard, that was good. Everyone respected him for that at least.

Then one day, I was in the hall and calamity struck. The floor lurched violently. I had a vision in my mind of what looked like a vast area of boiling mud. I don't know where or what that means, but at the time this information was significant and very very bad. It was worst case scenario.

We all ran. We had to get to the escape hatches. Many of us made it because we were so organized. We knew what to do, but all our of machines and materials and supplies were lost which was also a calamity, a huge setback. We could never get those things back now. Supplies and even some of us people were left behind. But only a few of us died, a very unlucky few where were caught in the immediate destruction and instantly crushed.

With one exception. The genius man had stayed behind. Somehow, I could feel his intense sadness. He could still leave now if he wanted, but he stubbornly chose not to go. For some reason I could not understand, he wanted to stay and die there even though it didn't make any sense. He told us his decision over the visual intercom after the rest of us were all already outside. He was solemn and he was sure he wanted to stay. None of us knew what to say. Perhaps he was just too sad. Maybe he was disappointed in himself or maybe he was disappointed in us that we did not listen to him. I felt guilty for that, because I had not listened to him. But that memory was painful and not one that I wanted to linger on. Maybe it was just too hard from him to have turned out to be right. It was better for him to just be disgruntled and crabby all the time than to have turned out to be all too horribly right. Maybe he felt there was more that he should have tried to do but didn't. Now he just didn't want to go on. And so he stayed. And he died.

We all went on with our lives of course. Now living on the surface again for a while, someone from far away was asking me about our life here and our complexes. I had an image in my mind of our systems, one living complex near the surface, another just below that connected by a small tubelike pathway, and then another below that, four in all, all huge of course and each a different shape according to the geology around us.

Except the fifth one was damaged and some damage at the lower part of the fourth one as well. We had some problems, but I I was still proud of all we had. You can't win them all and sometimes there are problems, minor setbacks, but we would overcome and move on. That's why I was up here now for a while. But they would work it out, they would fix it, because they knew what they were doing. They had told us so and I believed them. Because why would I not? They had done all this much for us already, things beyond my understanding but things I respected. I would go on doing my job as always of course. And things would work out. I was proud of my job and my people and our complexes, the decisions we had made and the bravery we had shown. We were all highly organized of course, and resilient, and that was something to be proud of.

But somewhere else in my mind, far away, another consciousness realized this pride was built on lack of understanding. And that nothing had been learned from the past tragedy and horror. Nothing would improve because the same flawed system was still in place. The man who had died in the damaged complex had died for nothing. Everything would go on the same as it always had. And this truly was sad.

I was at work in one of the large rooms covered in dark grey tar paper. Someone was pulling down the tar paper and exposing the wooden 2 by 4s behind it. I walked forward to help when suddenly I realized that this was not what my work place actually looked like. This was a dream and now I was lucid within it. But what to do now that I was here? Surely I didn't want to waste this opportunity. I pondered frantically for a few seconds and then I remembered I wanted to meet my guides. I looked around quickly and saw a female dressed in white standing by a hallway wall.

I went up to her and asked, "Are you real?"

"No," she answered.

I was taken aback. She did not look plasticlike and she had spoken, two things that set her apart from regular thought forms. But yet I could sense no emotion or personality from her. Finally I decided she was real but testing me. Had I detected maybe a note of sarcasm in her answer or was that in my imagination? I wasn't sure.

"Are you one of the ones that guides my life?" I then asked her. As I said it, I pondered life's trials and wondered what kind of hard advice she might have for me. She was walking now with her back turned to me, but briefly she turned her head to look at me and said, "I am also responsible for the good things." At first I was suprised, but then I realized that I had been thinking only of negative hard things in my life, as if all learning must be hard.

A split second passed and I found her sitting at a desk typing on a computer. She had an air of concentration about her. I wondered is she was looking at my life on her computer. Then the dream ended.

How Not to Get Sleep

I've been so tired this last week or more. I am trying to get more sleep, but the sleep has not been fulfilling. Last night, I decided to go to bed very early in hopes of breaking the cycle and catching up on some sleep, but instead, I ended up just laying there bored. As tired as I was, sleep would just not come. And my body felt hot and sticky, even though the air was cold. I have learned from experience that when my body feels hot for no good reason, sleep will never come. So finally, I got up again and read a book for another hour and a half until my body began to feel the cold air again.

I slept for maybe an hour before waking to feel a nagging energy moving along my spine. Sometimes, energy there feels good but other times, like last night, it just feels irritating and exhausting. I lay awake for another half hour and then tried something that sometimes works. I don't know why, but sometimes if I turn around in the bed so my feet and head have reversed position, then I can get some sleep.

It worked for a while. I slept for another hour, until I heard a beep beep beep noise coming from the storage room that shares a door with my bedroom. My mother had piled all manner of storage items on shelves in that room and for the last month, something occasionally omitted beeping noises from there late at night. The beeping was short lived and always occurs late at night when I was sleeping, and each time, by the time I raced in there to find the noisemaker, the sound had already shut off before I could decipher what was making it. But over time, I had at least narrowed it down to a general location and this night, I raced into the room with renewed determination. And at long last I found it! Tucked into a corner behind some spray cans was a tiny portable battery operated alarm clock that was no bigger than the size of a large thumb. Victory! I had located the late night noise maker. I turned the alarm option to 'off' and waltzed back into my room plenty pleased to have finally solved that problem. Finally, I would get some sleep!

Then I lay for another half hour bored but no sleep. I almost decided to try my most desperate strategy, which is to lay on the hard floor. For some reason, which I fathom not, when I feel hot for no good reason and cannot sleep, I have found that if I lay on the hard floor for about 30 minutes, I can usually sleep after that. But who wants to lay on a hard floor for 30 minutes! Not me, that is for sure. And luckily, I finally drifted off before having to exercise that option.

Except that several hours later, I was suddenly jarred awake when my right hand and arm, apparently for no good reason, shot out from under the covers and clutched at the air violently, as if to catch an invisible fly or something. I didn't even know that my arm could move that fast! And why had I done that? I was not aware of having been dreaming and I am very good at remembering recent dreams. Now I was somewhat unnerved by the apparently illogical and alien actions of my own hand. In fact, I had clenched my hand so roughly and quickly that the ring finger nail had gouged itself into the flesh on the outside of my thumb, and now as I lay there not sleeping and feeling a bit freaked out, I could feel the top of the thumb throbbing from where I had gouged myself.

But by this time, I was oh so very tired and despite the weirdness, I managed to drift off again. I dreamt about a place where 10 foot tall brown plywood walls had been erected all around for the sole purpose of displaying artworks. The walls had been set up as if to form roads and allyways, but all the traffic was foot traffic and there was plenty of it! This was a culteral meeting place where many people would walk and discuss the art that had been given by volunteers. Theft was not an issue and neither was money. Surely, this must have been in another kind of world, but all the people looked human and I felt that this was a place I had visited countless times before. Ironically, I was not much interested in the art itself, but I loved the place for it's happy ambiance and good memories. I dallied here for a while until, in a semiconscious state, I knew it would soon be time to wake up and go to work. But now I was so tired that I did not want to face waking up!

I considered other options. Maybe I could just open one eye for a while and work my way up to two eyes. I tried this and it seemed easier. I opened the one eye and saw through a small round aperature the sight of several people walking around in the front part of a store. This one eyed seeing seemed relaxing until a part of me realized that eyesight does not involve little round aperatures and my bedroom is not in a store. Therefore, I must not actually be seeing with my eyes!

I was starting to become lucid and determined to see more so I opened both my 'eyes' and watched as people came through the swinging glass doors of this place. First came several black guys in their 20s dressed in casual clothes. They were my homies and I was glad to see them but despite that, we all remained subdued in our greeting. Behind them came a powerful figure of a black woman, tall and trim and looking to be in her 40s. Her hair was set into some kind of ultra refined dreadlock type style like thin cords of hair, that balanced beautifully with her handsome face and high cheakbones. This was a powerful and stately woman both in appearance and in demeanor. SHe commanded respect and was accustomed to getting it. And by the stern look on her face, she was not happy with me.

I smiled tightly and followed them all to a long rectangular table where we all sat down. She began to lecture me about being irresponsible. She spoke of some trouble that "Tony" had gotten into and talked about how it related to me, and I heard myself respectfully saying "Yes Ma." I had been gone away from them for a while and had not told them before I left. Even now, I had told them very little of what I had been doing and most of this meeting would be about me telling her as little as possible. She was angry but as the night wore on, I expected she would loosen up. I would just have to listen and do my best until the mood lightened. Even now, I longed to make a joke about sweet and sour sauce that someone's comment had triggered, but I knew it was too soon. Joking now would only anger my mother, but hopefully later, we could turn to a lighter mood. Meanwhile, all of us would wait patiently.

A part of me that was still me and not the black man was listening and trying to take notes. I jumped on the name "Tony" and vowed to remember it, but much of the rest was gone moments after waking. And waking I did, this time for real, as that day's work still demanded my attention. I crawled out of bed and considered the nights fitful events. Wondering about the incident with the grabbing hand, I inspected the back of my right thumb and found the stabbing imprint still there and sore, so I knew the whole thing had not been a dream. I had really grabbed out into the air for some reason and I had really stabbed into my own thumb. But why? Now my eyes were blurred from grogginess and a light pain between my eyes would be slow to resolve itself. My thumb hurt and so did my shoulder, perhaps also from the violent flailing motion of the grab. Looks like it would be another day of tired exhaustion.

Maybe tomorrow I would get to bed early and catch up on some sleep!