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[pwhodges]

Last night I dreamt that when I took my washing out into the garden, Trump was there, and he pulled up the posts holding the washing line to stop me.  Then he pulled down the garden fences and my dogs and the neighbour's got to fighting.  When I started ranting and yelling at him his acolytes (of whom there were many) started up a wordless chant to protect him from hearing me.  This was too dis-spiriting, so I woke up...

[Thrillho]

Gotta love a dream that feels like reality happening at a more heightened level.

[pwhodges]

I'm dreading having a Boris version...

[de_la_Nae]

it's fading away now, but a warning, a prophecy of sorts in the context of the dreaming story, that's still with me for now.

"1947 is coming. You can't stop it. Make your peace with it."

something like that, anyway

[Blue Kitty]

I dreamt that we got into Japan real late and everything was closing down and I couldn't help but feel really disappointed

[Is it cold in here?]

Last night I pulled wire by hand through conduit about fifteen miles long. I had pre-cut it and wound up with just enough at each and realized I should have left myself more safety margin.

[cesium133]

Last night I had a dream that I was at a physics conference in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

I need better dreams.

[BenRG]

Of late, my dreams have been telling me that I am a frustrated action movie director.

For example, Sunday night, I enjoyed a spectacular movie with Jason Statham as the protagonist and Don Cheadle as his sidekick - two prisoners in a maximum-security prison trying to survive a violent riot triggered by a group of prisoners who had deliberately allowed themselves to be imprisoned there so as to cause the riot and get to an important prisoner whom their employer wanted dead.

Statham's character was that action movie staple - the violent man with an unshakable (if quixotic) personal code of honour and finds himself fighting on the side of angels.

The twist? The characters were all based on the Grecio-Roman gods. Statham's violent ex-army prisoner was Ares. Cheadle's crippled technical genius was based on Hephestus and the two men had to get over the fact that Statham's beautiful but utterly unfaithful wife had an affair with Cheadle's character some time in the not-distant past. What's more (and this is my weird brain at work) as the plot progresses, it becomes increasingly unclear whether the characters are based on the Grecio-Roman gods or if they are the Grecio-Roman gods. There are SFX moments that may be 'miraculous powers' and the villains are 'Herc', 'Jason' and 'Percy', who are the bastard sons of some Mafia leadership figure known only as 'Jove'.

[Case]

Last night I had a dream that I was at a physics conference in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

I need better dreams.

Hmmmh - Most colleagues I know are avid hikers. Nunavut looks spectacularly suited to that purpose ... 

[cesium133]

Y'know, the conference I dreamed I was at does occasionally hold its meetings in Canada. In 2013 it was in Quebec City. Maybe I should suggest Nunavut as a future location.

[Morituri]

Last night I dreamed that I was drinking (hot spiced applejack!) at a bar called the Screaming Chicken, which was in some city I didn't know. 

There was a live band playing, named the Hopeful Monsters.  They were actually pretty good.

[LTK]

Well, there is a Screaming Chicken in San Bernadino, California, but the Hopeful Monsters seem to be local to Boston, so your dream accuracy leaves a bit to be desired.

[Morituri]

Huh.  I've spent a few weeks at each of those locations, so...  yeah, things get mashed up inside our heads.

Yes, those are definitely the same Hopeful Monsters.  I didn't remember them with my awake brain until listening to a couple tracks on their site just now, but I must have run into them on a trip to Boston.

That is definitely not the same Screaming Chicken though.  Weird.

How much of our dreams is stuff we imagine, and how much is things we remember?

[cybersmurf]

How much of our dreams is stuff we imagine, and how much is things we remember?

Well, it's a dream. Dreams are weird, you're familiar with people you've never met or reconstructed from memory about people you've seen in the street. Also, memories about dreams fade FAST, and memories tend to be inaccurate by default (I've read somewhere memories never are objective, always biased in a way it makes them inaccurate).


Couple weeks back I had a dream about a dear friend of mine, and our... "adventures" concerning a parking garage, including not finding our car, and some possible con men.

[TheEvilDog]

So putting this one in a spoiler because it ends up being gross.

(click to show/hide)

The dream starts off with me visiting the doctor, both for a check up and to get this new health patch. The doctor said that it was originally developed to help patients who were suffering from infections, speeding up their recovery. The patch was placed on the arm by the doctor and you left it for a week. It would draw all the toxins and such from vulnerable areas to the patch, then the doctor removes the patch and you felt better.

A week later, I go back to the doctor the get the patch removed...and as the doctor pulls the patch away, this solid, putrid ball of pus starts to get pulled out of my arm. And I start shouting that that can't be normal, what's wrong with me, call for an ambulance. Meanwhile the doctor is just quietly pulling the patch away from my body, not noticing the panic I'm in until I flail and catch him in the face with my arm and the now massive ball of pus...

And that's when I woke up.

[cesium133]

I was sent back in time by Doc Brown (who dragged me out of the shower, so I was wearing only a towel), to 1950, where I had to prevent something from happening (I'm not sure what). I wander around the control room of some big physics experiment until I find an elevator. This elevator brings me to a grand dining room, where everyone at the lab is having a fancy black-tie style dinner. Did I mention I was wearing nothing but a towel? 

[hedgie]

At least you knew where your towel was.

[cybersmurf]

The other day I woke myself because the dream was that weird:

I was at my parents place, with just the GM from my WH40k Rogue Trader RPG group. Which isn't that off. If it hadn't been at like 4:30am, and I was worried he'd wake my parents when going outside for a smoke. Then I realised it had snowed like half an inch to an inch over night.
This was the point the weirdness pulled me awake. Looking at the time I realised why I could remember the dream, and why I somehow woke myself: I woke three minutes short of my alarm.

[Gyrre]

Not sure if I've related this one before, but I just remembered it for some reason.

It was basically a crossover episode of Steven Universe and an unspecified Legend of Zelda game. Because reasons (either a Peridot invention, Steven's powers, or both), Ganondorf wound up coming out of the game and into the beach house. A confused fight breaks out, Steven helps everyone calm down, and they start talking. Being out of his home universe, Ganondorf is now separated from the curse of Demise and he and Pearl become trauma buddies. Pretty sure it was platonic, but not sure.

Since it was winter Ganondorf winds up in a yellow-orange sweater with reading glasses and basically becomes something of an uncle figure to Steven and Amethyst. There was something to do with replacing his jeweled crown, but I don't entirely recall what. And I'm not sure if he went back into the game or not, but he becomes a resident of Beach City in the end.

EDIT: Eeesh. Reading through this after posting sounds like the setup to some weird/bad fanfic.

[JoeCovenant]

I dreamt I went back in time, and the dream was just .. nothing... a normal, run of the mill, stuff going on dream.

But then my Dad walked into the room, and suddenly I was *aware* that I'd gone back in time and I ran to him to tell him to take care of himself because he'll die on his 65th birthday if he doesn't and that he had to look after his heart...

Just as I started to wake up, the dream became lucid, and I was fighting with myself to stay asleep, because I'd said "his heart" when it was actually a hidden weak blood vessel in his brain that ruptured and killed him... and I had to tell him.... I had to let him know what the REAL cause was.

Cos, you know, that would make a difference...

[Is it cold in here?]

Last night I explained to someone in detail how to patch a parachute. By "in detail", I mean I went as far as saying how many stitches per inch of what grade of thread.

I'm in my fourth decade of not doing parachute rigging. I cannot guess where that dream came from.

[Morituri]

Last night I was in some kind of dystopian sci-fi adventure, getting chased by some shiny gold-colored robots.

I didn't know why they were chasing me, or why I was running from them, but both of these were definitely true and very important.

Finally, I was cornered down a blind alley with nowhere left to go, but as they approached I realized I knew a way to just teleport out of there.

And opened my eyes.  In my bedroom.  It wasn't "teleporting" so much as "waking up."

I even remember wondering, just before I did it, what the creatures in my dreams would see - me just vanishing ? - when I went away back to my waking world. 

[Wingy]

I even remember wondering, just before I did it, what the creatures in my dreams would see - me just vanishing ? - when I went away back to my waking world.

Or did you just become rotoscoped you to them? 

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I have dreams where I've forgotten something - something dreadfully important - and I HAVE. TO. FIND. IT!  And while I'm trying to find it (whatever it is, and where ever it is, which seldom make any sense whatsoever related to anything going on in my actual life), all the evil movie villains I've ever hated are trying to find me.  And kill.  Slowly and painfully.  The closer they get, the more likely I'm going to wake up, then try to go back to sleep, only to reenter the same dream, often near the same spot, and then wake up again [repeat for rest of the night].  It's exhausting to wake up exhausted, sweating, and terrified. 

I've tried just giving up, leaving the bedroom, firing up my PC, and surfing/computing for the rest of the night, but that just makes the same cycle repeat the next night.

[LTK]

I had a very movie-like dream that featured a secret-agent-type man who, when gravely injured, would involuntarily split his skin open and reveal an entirely different man underneath. This guy was evil, and worked against whatever his counterpart would be trying to achieve, but when he got gravely injured, he'd split open and reveal the original man once again. Neither had any memory of what the other one had been doing while he was 'out', so they were locked in this struggle of trying to find out what the other was up to and thwarting it.

On top of that, the secret agent type was protecting a teenage boy who had this same - power? curse? - except under the boy's skin was a teenage girl who was also evil. Except, she hated the evil guy and did whatever she could to kill him, which made it easier for the secret agent to work against him but much harder to protect the boy, as he was just an innocent kid who kept appearing in dangerous situations because of the evil girl.

Well, who wants to buy the movie rights to this one?

[Morituri]

I dunno about movie rights, but that's actually got a hell of a potential for a truly fun (if messed-up) short story.  Or, you know, Stephen King would know how to embroider it into a killer novel. 

I remember a different story, which had in it a pair of suburban cannibals - basically a husband-wife serial-killing duo whose 'thing' apparently had been trapping and eating children.   They were cursed to spend eternity in Hell alternately starving, and eating each other.  I thought that their peculiar story was interesting and probably deserved more pages than it got, but they were largely incidental in the context of a larger story that was mostly about something else.

[cesium133]

I was in some sort of universal control room where you could see everything in the universe. Whoever was controlling the room was showing me things like, "here, this is your galaxy, and the local group around it." Then, "Hey, want to see something cool? I'll fast-forward to the extinction of all life on Earth!" Then I was in a weird movie scene narrated by Ryan Reynolds or someone with a similar voice, and it was apparently a movie about an alien invasion, where apparently he was the only human survivor, taken by the aliens as they destroyed Earth. The last part I remember as I was waking up was the narrator saying, as my point of view (which coincided with the narrator's) was hugging a dog in our final moments, "That was when they exploded the bomb that killed everyone... except me."

I don't know if the dog survived. 

[Tova]

I do hope that you remembered to feed the dog a cheese sandwich.

[Wingy]

My latest was just a scene, repeated over and over and over.  I was being chased by all the druggies from my high school in one of their cars (by the looks, a slightly banged up 1970s Plymouth Fury) around the parking lot of the gas station in my high school town.  They were all still high school age and looking pretty much like 1980's burnouts.  Meanwhile, I was my current age and riding a 1960's Schwinn Manta Ray bicycle complete with banana seat, shifter on the frame, tiny front tire, and large motorcycle-style front hub.  They were after me with intent to cause personal mayhem and, as usual, I was trying to find something - I have no idea what.  No matter how I drove that bike through the pumps and around the building, here came this car with people hanging out of it trying to grab me...

Aside from always kinda wanting one of those bicycles (since one of my middle-school rivals got an old, beat-up one), I have no idea what it all means.  One of the druggies in the car didn't live through the end of high school (killed himself), yet he was hanging out the window the furthest...

Feel free to add this to the movie.

[Morituri]

I belonged to an organization that had the duty of protecting the general populace from magical creatures and occurrences - some of which were quite dangerous.  Part of that was concealing these things from the people.  (It was the SCP foundation if anyone is into that).

I  had gotten called when someone else who belonged to the same organization had noticed a potentially anomalous theft in the police register.  Some art supplies - a few brushes, several tubes of oil paints, some solvents, and a few sundries - had gotten lifted from an art supply place, and whoever did it had executed a stunningly good trompe l'oeile painting of money directly on the tile counter of the store before leaving.  The owner of the store was happy about it.  She said the painting was well worth the supplies that had been taken, and had put a tempered-glass top on the counter to preserve it.  Okay, fine, that was weird but artists are weird people.  The anomalous part was on the store's security video. 

A woman(?) had stepped out of a mirror (!) inside the shop, taken the supplies, and executed a top-notch painting that would take the best of human artists at least three or four days, in a matter of minutes.  And then she had left again, going back into the same mirror she'd come out of. 

On examination,  this 'woman' wasn't all that Realistic.  She was something between Art-Nouveau and Art-Deco.  Her neck was longer and more slender than a human neck, and her expressive brown eyes were much bigger than human eyes.   Her waist was a bit too high - nearer her rib cage than her hips - and narrower than any human waists I've seen.  She had the enormous bosom of the Art-Nouveau style, reminding me that it was weird how Art-Nouveau painters managed to consistently do that without ever really drawing much attention to it or emphasizing it.  And she was wearing one of those billowy flowy dream-like dresses with the lace and ribbons everything, that only ever stay on anyone and stay in pleasant shapes in Art-Nouveau paintings. Her arms between elbow and wrist, and her legs between knee and ankle, were a bit too long, and I couldn't quite decide whether that was just the artist's stylistic choice or a perspective error.

A painting had just entered an art store after hours, to steal paint and brushes, and left a painting as payment.  And had come and gone through a mirror.  Yep, that qualified as a full-blown anomaly.  Didn't get much of anywhere investigating it though.

The following day we identified the painting she'd come from.  It was at the metropolitan art museum.  The night watchman was part of our organization.  We kept informants at most of the likely places for magical stuff to surface, and museums were pretty high on the list.  Anyway, he'd been in the 'Unknown Masters' Gallery and smelled *fresh* paint, which is not something that makes sense with paintings over a hundred years old.  And there's our paint thief, in that painting right there on the west wall.  Rendered in fresh, wet oil paint in the middle of what is otherwise a hundred-year-old painting.  And done so perfectly in the style of the original that you couldn't even tell the difference in a photograph.

The museum security tape is even more interesting than the art store's.  It shows her stepping out of the painting leaving a bare patch of canvas behind, leaving the gallery by stepping through a mirror, and reappearing a few minutes later with paint and brushes to paint a copy of herself back into the painting.  And then opening a door and stepping out onto the street.  Which is a neat trick because that door was locked at the time, and besides it opens on a stairwell, and the street is six floors below.   Our Uncanny Valley Girl is not executed in an entirely realistic style and doesn't seem to use entirely realistic means of moving around.

I'm supposed to find her, interview her to find out what she is and whether she's dangerous, and try to convince her not to freak people out with stunts like this.  It occurs to me that finding her might be very very difficult if she doesn't want to be found.

[Morituri]

This dream of chasing after something infinitely more mobile than I am is almost certainly related to my feeling of being cooped up and not able to do anything because of the current lockdown order.

[LTK]

I had some strange movie-like dreams for the past few days. Yesterday it was one that I felt certain was adapted from history, even after waking up. It was a WWII movie set in Nazi-occupied Europe, and the subject was an old underground theatre that was being demolished to make room for a railway station near the Dutch-German border. The Dutch laborers were free to cross the border to perform work on the station, but there were also some resistance members hiding out in the abandoned theatre. They arranged for the Dutch army to sneak into the station under the guise of the laborers, who then took over and blockaded it. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to have any lasting effect on the war, as they retreated back across the border not soon after, with no fighting having taken place.

Then today, the movie in question was a spy thriller full of intrigue and subterfuge, featuring a team of agents who were working towards obtaining the Philosopher's Stone. This involved heists, gadgets, clandestine meetings in exotic places, and so on, but in spite of their greatest efforts they were frequently thwarted by counter-espionage, and by the end of the movie they hadn't actually obtained their prize. However, they did obtain intelligence with which to identify their adversaries. Flashback to a time way before the start of the movie, and it is revealed that one person they owed one too many favors and risked their neck for to repay was a crucial actor among them. Then, there are dozens of flash cuts to scenes throughout the movie highlighting things that seemed irrelevant or coincidental at the time, but with this new information, suggest just how the protagonists were able to be so cleverly thwarted. It ends with "To be continued..."

[Tova]

Most of what I remember from dreams is only small vivid moments. Most recently, I dreamed I was on a bicycle and stopped at a set of traffic lights where I was quickly surrounded by a large number of cyclists, sending me into a mild panic about being us all packed in so closely together.

[cesium133]

I was moving into a new apartment in another city (presumably I got a new job?), and when I got there, I started unpacking all my stuff, and started realizing things were wrong. First, I left behind all my furniture in my old apartment when I moved out. Second, someone else's stuff was in the new apartment. I realize I've been given keys to the wrong apartment just as the people still living in that apartment show up. Rather than being pissed off at someone who obviously shouldn't be there, they decide to throw a party, as I'm trying to find all the stuff I had already unpacked. Meanwhile their kids find a notebook from when I was in school and critique my handwriting. 

Back in the real world, I've noticed that my recent rearrangement of my bedroom has put my bed in a location that gets lots of sunlight at 6 AM this time of year. Being awoken by the sun instead of my alarm has caused me to remember more of my dreams. I may have to move things back to where they were.

[cesium133]

I think the dream I just woke up from qualifies as weird...

I was in a town several miles from my hometown (the town where I grew up, not where I live now) and realized I needed to get to a church in my hometown for some event for some reason (unknown to me as far as I remember). So I went outside and caught the bus. Now, there is almost no public transportation in my hometown, so the bus that pulled up was instead a school bus. I got on, and all the people on the bus turned out to be people I knew when I was in school, but older, because it's been almost 20 years since we graduated. My brain presumably made up some details, considering I haven't met any of the people on that bus since graduation.

I was late for the event that I was trying to get to, but that was okay, because the bus driver was the same one who drove the bus when I was in school, and she got us there by driving 20 mph over the speed limit (for some reason a guy in the seat next to me was timing the trip on his smartphone).

I finally get to the bus stop, and walk from the stop to the church. It was at that point that I find out the event is a Trump rally. 

[Tova]

That makes me feel better about the recurring dreams I have of reaching my destination and realising that I left something important thing behind (which varies from dream to dream) and I have to go back a long way to get it.

[Case]

That makes me feel better about the recurring dreams I have of reaching my destination and realising that I left something important thing behind (which varies from dream to dream) and I have to go back a long way to get it.

I know that one. Only the 'something' is my facemask and it's not a dream. 

"Was man nicht im Kopf hat, muss man in den Beinen haben"

(click to show/hide)

German proverb - lit. "What you don't have on your mind, you're going to have in your legs"

[cybersmurf]

You know how around falling asleep and waking up you can have lucid dreams? Last week, falling asleep, my thoughts started drifting into some storyline, only to jerk me awake again erasing those thoughts. Happened two or three nights. The weird thing is: my brain seems to have gone into dreamless mode. I've been barely functioning without considerable amounts of caffeine, and permanently tired. I'm just waiting for my brain to cook up some really weird coping mechanism of a dream.

[Is it cold in here?]

A bit of topic drift, talking about weird dreams that fictional characters had, but I think it's worth it.

https://foxtrot.com/2020/07/05/impossible-dream/

[Morituri]

Memories of Medusa.

It's weird how, in dreams, something completely out of left field can happen, but you have dream-memories that give it context. 

In my dream, I was walking with Ms. NameRedacted, who was my girlfriend years ago, and she said, "Oh, by the way, I was talking to Medusa and I guess she looked in on you the other night; she says she's figured out a way to stop you from snoring without even coming into your house; she just slams the car door outside."  and then I woke up.  But that's not really the interesting or weird part.

And, in the dream, I actually remembered Medusa:  Nice lady, actually very pretty if you can get over that her hair, and her body below the waist, is all snakey.  Apparently the 'turn to stone' thing was only if you saw her in person, and I'd only ever seen her in second-sight.  She'd been assigned as my psychopomp years before.  I'd met her when I was seventeen and crashed a truck. She had showed up to ask if I wanted out of there, and I said, thanks, but no, I think I can handle it.   Since then she'd been coming by to chat every so often, because she didn't meet very many people who didn't freak out when they saw her and thought I was kind of nice.  She said she and Eurayle had both taken up psychopomping since Zeus got overthrown, but I never met Eurayle.  And after I declined her offer with the truck thing, she hadn't been reassigned as my psychopomp again - that was up to Persephone now.  I had never met Persephone either. 

In response to the news that she'd looked in and hadn't woken me up to chat, but just slammed a car door to stop my snoring,  I was a bit disappointed, because I'd like to have seen her again.  Not, you know, in her professional capacity, but just coming by for another visit.  And I didn't have to worry about her in her professional capacity any more, because I'd been reassigned. I was even a bit worried for her, because slamming a car door sounds like something somebody does when they're angry or frustrated, and I hoped she was all right.

So, all these memories, of things that never happened, and a person/monster/spirit/whatever that I haven't actually ever known, whirled around in my head when my companion mentioned that she had been by to see me but I'd been asleep at the time.

And then I woke up, with all these bogus memories still kicking around in my head.

[Gyrre]

I've copied this from the social media post I made about the dream earlier when I was still groggy. I've made a few tweaks, but if anything doesn't make any sense, I should have been back to bed about 2 hours ago.

I had a dream where there were ‘biological computing organisms’ called either 'hseishenko’ or 'cheshenko’ [1] and called “shenko” for short. They looked like themed gijinka anime girls[2] and acted like not quite human A.I. (think ODIN from Tacoma). And they went about assisting humans and subservient to them at the research station my dream took place in.

Towards the end of the dream, is was revealed to be a dystopic near-future setting. The shenko were just humans with the extra bits being worn or grafted to them and not only modifying their abilities and appearance, but also their cognition and behavior.

None of the staff knew and several of them started trying to figure out how to free the people that had been subjected to the alterations without hurting them.

Similar to the aforementioned game Tacoma, the shenkos had a 'Heshenko score' that measured the individual's level of aptitude, ability, and modification. Which is how the characters in the dream discovered that the injured shenko lady they were helping was in fact a human with a compact computer and drugs modifying her behavior and cognition.[3]

Annoyingly, I woke up before the research station’s staff could fully complete their goal. They at least got some proper clothing for the poor 'shenkos’ that only wore their mods. None of their bits were on display, but some were damn close.

[1] I've forgotten the spelling since waking up. Not sure if my brain was trying to parse out Hsein-Ko's name from Darkstalkers or referencing Dr. Natalia Cheshenko's molecular virology work.
[2] There were presumably also anime boy gijinka elsewhere, but I don't recall seeing any.
[3] Some of them had headbands that could be removed, others had half-spheres or other head accessories attached to the sides of their heads. I think the forehead gems were purely decorational.

[Gyrre]

it's fading away now, but a warning, a prophecy of sorts in the context of the dreaming story, that's still with me for now.

"1947 is coming. You can't stop it. Make your peace with it."

something like that, anyway

George Orwell probably: 'Close enough. Please pay attention to what happens next.'

[PrestigiaPrestigiatortor]

I had a dream of having all my toilets all made by gold, quite a strange dream.

[cybersmurf]

 Well, dreams of the Golden Throne kinda look different in my mind... Anyways, all toikets golden? That is indeed unusual.

[Gyrre]

Well, dreams of the Golden Throne kinda look different in my mind... Anyways, all toikets golden? That is indeed unusual.

Ugh. Just remembered That recurring nightmare. The one where the toilets are hidden as weird things like regular chairs or fancy padded bar stools or frikkin' kiche cabinets. I almost always have to go to the bathroom IRL when having one of those nightmares. Though, it's preferable to the labyrinth of toilets stalls, each getting prgressively more decrepit and grody and constantly being interrupted nightmare.

[N.N. Marf]

For some reason, toilets are always really weird in my dreams. Often, there's insufficient privacy (not that public toilets in this our reality are especially private---the one's in my dreams are less so). Sometimes, the seat is about half as tall, or it's in a recess around a corner, parallel to the main wall, so that there's no room in front of it for the legs. Just last night, I dreamt needing to bathe, covered in mud or some sludge, from the street into my neighbor's home---quite swanky, yet garden level---for some reason, the entire bathroom, abutting their (yet empty, crisp as hotel bedsheets) bedroom flowing doorless from the kitchen, had glass walls. Not only the internal partitions---all the walls between the bathroom and bedroom. (Who am I to kinkshame?) For some reason, despite telling me that, yes, it was quite OK to use the bath, he neglected to tell me about the lack of means for privacy---which would have been fine, trusting the gracious host to not peep, if not for the other fact that, right after I finished inspecting the bathroom, a party, just beginning, a probably half-century of gregarious personalities none affected by the nude sludgčd of my stature examining the glasswall bathroom from in their host's bedroom, started streaming in and through, out the kitchen vomitorium.

[Is it cold in here?]

This was a doozy.

The background is that Larry Niven's "Known Space" sf stories featured population control by government mandate, with several safety valves not involving government discretion to give people hope.

One of those was a lottery.

The result was to breed a strain of lucky humans, since reproductive success was down to pure luck.

This ruined his whole literary universe. As Niven put it, stories involving lucky people are really boring.

That's the background, but my subconscious just had to know how something like that could possibly work.

I had discovered that the luck gene encoded a protein that folded into a talisman. I was experimenting with whether paper printouts of the protein structure had the same effect when the alarm went off.

[Dock Braun]

I had a dream last night. A nightmare, I mean---I hope it was a dream; Sometimes I wonder.
My nightmares are only ever scary after I wake up. This was no exception.

I was with some friends. I say friends---that's what they were, it seems, in the dream. They were my friends, some time ago. A long time ago. One of them, not so long ago, but they're all of the same group.
They're Nazis. Not as much when we were friends. Literal Nazis, now. That's what they call themselves, that's how they do... Except the one---we cut ties sometime this past year. I thought he was alright---he'd always reject, and continued rejecting, harmful ideals. And I had no reason to doubt; And I'd known him since ages. His actions, though, started seeming... degrading. Self-degrading, mostly, but that affects their environs. I still don't know if he's a Nazi, but his friends. Close enough? I dunno...
In the dream, I wasn't much his friend, though. He was in the background, passing by, I mostly ignored. His friend, instead---who had pushed my boundaries, now I see, too far---too too far---was much closer with me. Almost friends, it felt.
I was eating an apple. They were congratulating me. (A cultivar I hate.) It was something I did, it seems. (Not yet eating, but picking up---smelled good.) I had no memory of it, what I had done---I felt like I provided them with something. (Like a stock of apples.) Maybe.
They called me based. I felt good. Warm. Glowing. I don't know if I've ever felt that, except perhaps in childhood. Or high.

What did I do?---in the dream, before, that I'd forgotten. Who did I kill?---my first thought, after waking, lying stupefied.

I think I might have been my friend, though. The most-recently estranged. His alternate personalities (or what's the proper term for it?), are much further disjoint than any mine. I wonder if that's how he feels, how they---his friends---let him feel, that no-one else can, or rather, no-one else does...

I feel like I abandoned him, but I tried? I can't force him---couldn't, or rather, wouldn't.

Or maybe we're alternate personalities, of each other. How would I know? Maybe my hazy memory, is just the half-assery of a subconscious, for misdirection, to a feeling as though I have always been aware of all our memories. Idle musing---how would I know? if I've never pushed it here nor there. What if that's why I'm so unproductive? so often too tired to start. What if I'm just too busy, with his work? Or just wishful thinking: An easy scapegoat, for my own laziness. But then, what it this wasn't a dream? My dreams oft feel too real---a stable unto itself reality. What if that dream-world, is this world, but of a different person, living a different life?

[Morituri]

I generally skip talking about nightmares.  I mean -- they come, they go, in most cases it's pretty obvious to waking mind what they're about, and I just think they're not something it would do any good to talk about with anyone.  And, well, some of them would make people worry.  A lot.

Last night I didn't have any nightmares, but I was dreaming pretty vividly.  I remember three.

In the first one I was waiting at a bus stop, and somebody threw a milk crate hard, off a bus about thirty feet away.  I just glimpsed the person who threw it - a shoulder and about half a silhouette anyway.  The crate flew across the platform in a low swift arc, bouncing off the concrete next to my feet and then smacking into the bare shoulder of a woman who was standing about five feet away, looking the other direction and talking on her phone.  It almost knocked her over.  She immediately turned around to see what hit her, and I stepped over to the milk crate and picked it up before it came to a stop.  "This came off that bus, ma'am."  I said helpfully, pointing at the vehicle as it reached the end of the platform as I handed it to her. 

She said, "I'm going to go report this," and took it off to the security booth.  She came back with the bus number and drivers' name and some other information on a piece of paper.  I looked at it and realized I knew who the driver was, but didn't know much more than his name and face.  She asked if I knew any good lawyers, and I said no.  Then she asked, "Do you think I should take it to Bill Barr's office?" 

My dream-self knew Barr as a local lawyer that ran a lot of TV ads.  I just thought of him as a predatory two-bit shyster though, not as anybody political.  I told her, "Naw, he'd probably charge more than you'd ever recover.  If you wanna press charges I think you ought to just take it to small claims court."  She didn't know where the courthouse was though, and since it was just two blocks away, I walked her there. 

On the way, she said, 'My shoulder really hurts.  Do you think I'm hurt bad?" 

I asked her permission, then put my hand on her shoulder.  It wasn't showing a surface bruise yet, but I could feel it turning hot.  Nothing was out of place or moving in wrong directions though.  "You're going to have a nasty bruise for a week or so, but that's about it, I think,"  I told her.  "But if you want to file a claim you'll want a doctor's opinion, and you'll want it in writing.  My opinion is you should ice that down as soon as you can."  While we were talking we walked past the courthouse.  I realized this half a block later and turned us around.  And that's about where that dream trailed off.

In my next dream, there was a software demo at work, that required us to create accounts on the new system and log in.  I wound up trying to type a complicated password for the new account on a Dvorak waffle, and it was giving me some trouble.  For reasons unknown, the breakfast pastry was a standard text entry device in this dream.  And of course it had to be one of those pretentious Das Waffles(tm), where the squares weren't even marked.  I kept trying, and kept messing up, and I was delaying the demo, and everybody was getting annoyed at me....  And then my brain moved on.

And then there was one where I was working in a church, carefully removing some stained glass windows that, many years ago, had been installed wrong, in the same panels with regular glass windows.  And in a couple of places, installed between rooms, where sunlight would never reach them.   It was finicky work, but eventually, aside from a few tiny chips and shards around the edges, successful.  I got them all out with the beautiful stained glass artwork over 99% intact.  But as I lifted the last one out of its place I realized I had never before seen the room beyond it. 

I picked up one particular shard that seemed remarkable, or portentious, or dangerous, or something - it was a chunk of glass nearly a foot long and about as wide as a sewing needle, that had stayed stuck in the window putty at the edge when I removed the window. But then I went wandering through the building looking for the mysterious room.  I opened several doors that seemed like they'd be in the right place, but I couldn't find the room.  Finally I opened what turned out to be a side door to the sanctuary, where a sermon was in progress, and found myself, all sweat-stained and dirty and in work clothes, staring like a deer caught in the headlights out at a roomful of strangers dressed in their finest, who were staring back at me looking bewildered.  The minister introduced me, and everybody seemed relieved, and I explained lamely that I'd been looking for the other side of a window....  And that's about when I woke up.

I woke up feeling rested and refreshed.  Vivid dreams, unthreatening and nowhere near as strange as most, except for the Das Waffle with a Dvorak layout.  And even the Dvorak Waffle was an amusing notion that was worth a smile.

[Is it cold in here?]

The background for mine is Larry Niven's Known Space sf series. One premise is that population control is government enforced, but to give the masses hope and provide a safety valve, one way to get a child permit is by winning a lottery.

After a few generations of reproduction depending on luck, new humans have evolved who are just plain lucky.

My subconscious just had to figure out what mechanism could make that happen.

I had a dream where I isolated the luck gene and found that it coded for a protein that folds itself into a talisman.

When the alarm went off I was making paper replicas of the protein structure to test them for effectiveness.

Sometimes I suspect I am a nerd.

[LTK]

I had a dream where I isolated the luck gene and found that it coded for a protein that folds itself into a talisman.

This is a fucking awesome concept for a techno-magical/sci-fi-fantasy story.