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Weird dreams you've had
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:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 03 Apr 2021, 08:05 ---I had a dream where I isolated the luck gene and found that it coded for a protein that folds itself into a talisman.
--- End quote ---
This is a fucking awesome concept for a techno-magical/sci-fi-fantasy story.
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