sanity is relative

(Please note this is a dream just in case it isn't obvious enough. This is in no way a review or actual event description of any Soom products, service, or shipping, nor does it reflect those aspects of any other doll company. I haven't had a doll dream in ages, and then suddenly this nonsense hits. O.o;; )


In reality, I run the Soom 2012 Teenie Gem free choice event waiting room list at the Den of Angels doll forum. This dream took that concept, but turned it into a huge group order, and apparently almost everyone in the group order lived in the same area I did. Also, it wasn't a mix and match MD event but some kind of very last Teenie Gem MD doll that came out just before Soom stopped doing monthly dolls. I remember the names of the two dolls (boy and girl versions) were something close to Trachy and Lami but that wasn't it.

The big day of the mass order arriving had come, and some of the girls who had ordered with me were there to open the boxes. It wasn't a typical box opening, like everyone figuring out whose doll box was whose. There weren't even individual doll boxes, just a bunch of dolls and clothes packed in generic square-ish shipping boxes. This didn't strike me as odd in the dream somehow.

There didn't seem to be any organization to the stuff in the boxes, dolls and fantasy parts and clothing strewn all over. The dolls and fantasy parts were at least wrapped in bubble wrap. When I unwrapped the bubble wrap from a random doll, I was shocked by the faceup. Mind you, the doll's face was vinyl instead of resin (and I didn't actually notice that as being wrong until after waking up), and looked like it might have been a sleeping or no-eyes version of a mini DDung doll, with just a smooth area where the eyes were meant to be painted on, and a small point for the nose.

The faceup looked like it had been drawn on with either permanent marker or generic felt-tipped pen. Not only that, but it was done in an extremely messy style, which one could either call "kindergartener" or "someone trying to be reeeally artsy and hoping it flies." One of the other girls was looking at the doll with me, I think she was supposed to be geishacookie from the forum (dream made up what she looked like xD ). I said, "This can't be right... I'm going to look up the faceups on the site." I was so shocked about receiving the doll like that, that I was starting to doubt my own memory of what we ordered, even though I vaguely remembered cute Soom faceups and open eyes.

This also got me thinking, as I was trying to navigate the dream version of Soom's site (which was pretty nuts and didn't make much sense), that the dolls had sleeping heads and normal, open-eyed heads. Why was the sleeping head on one of the dolls by default? Were there more like this? I finally found the right page for the dolls we'd ordered, except it was broken down into a menu system that was missing the main pictures page. I found that a bit fishy, but finally found one of the main pictures after a little more searching.

The dolls looked like proper dolls on the site (and what my dream-memory said they should look like). The boy one was light blue and the girl one was light pink. The doll I'd opened was pretty much white, but I didn't actually notice that problem at the time (just went "wtf" after waking up). The pictures also showed the clothes, which was good because the other girls were trying to sort through the boxes and match up clothing items for the fullsets. Each fullset doll had two outfits, and for some reason a couple of my own random Yo-SD doll clothes and some 1/6 Obitsu-type shoes had gotten mixed in with everything on the floor where the sorting was taking place.

I didn't seem to reach any sort of definite conclusion about the faceups yet, distracted by going over to help sort the doll stuff some more. I had a bad feeling we were missing dolls and probably clothing, and yet this was supposed to be the whole shipment. I remember picking a red sheer-fabric jacket out of the clothing mess that was one of my non-Soom pieces, and a black lacy shirt of some sort. My kid sister showed up out of the blue and made a joke about the 1/6 Obitsu shoes, which were mostly black boots now in a Ziplock bag (they hadn't been before). I don't remember what she said, only that it was funny and possibly sarcastic, considering the mess the group order was turning out to be.

Then I woke up.

I was Riddick in a prison on a world that seemed to be half futuristic technology and half medieval. The immediate prison area definitely looked ancient, floor and walls of old-style stone and some of the cells were open behind walls of black iron bars and some had wooden doors and proper stone walls. The lighting wasn't very good, and I had an almost modern-day Earth orange prisoner jump suit on. My cell had a wooden door, the cell to the right of me was larger and the more open-style. It also contained several prisoners, while I was alone.

I don't remember how I unlocked my door, but I do remember watching a guard who was taunting the prisoners in the next cell. The guard had punkish black leather clothes almost like he'd walked out of Mad Max. I had some kind of vaguely-sharp metal instrument and managed to get close enough to the guard before he noticed me, and slit his throat. Bad day to be a guard.

I looted his pockets first while the other prisoners made entirely too much noise congratulating me on my feat. I wanted to take the guard's clothes too but I was afraid there were more unfriendlies on the way, so I gathered up the miscellaneous stuff I'd found on him so far. But since no hacks showed up in the next few moments I pulled the guard's pants off as well while still holding the stuff (dream logic was failing very badly here, physics be damned). Somehow I also managed to get dressed at this point. Yeah. Oh, and I had this odd jacket thing on now, that was only like leather straps on the front in an X and on the back was the British flag embossed in color on leather. There was the thought that I'd already had that in my possession, though.

Now I needed to hide for a minute and found what seemed to be some kind of janitor's closet nearby, though it had a small window in it. I shut the door and dumped the stuff I'd acquired on a wooden counter. There were a couple more-useful knives, some odd almost surgical-looking knife things that had short round-ended blades with serrations along the ends as well, and other stuff that skipped my attention for the moment. There was a light in the room, a glass lantern with a bright candle-like flame in it, and I didn't want the light attracting attention so I opened the lantern and tried to blow out the flame. For some reason there remained a very slight, tiny blue luminescence where the flame had been, just floating there.

In the stuff the guard had, there was a small clear box about 2 inches wide by 2 inches tall by 1 inch deep. I was able to trap the light in the box, and then stepped out of the closet long enough to chuck the thing in the general direction of the other prisoners and said something to the effect of "Enjoy." I figured I was better off with the distracting light over by them, should other guards show up.

Back in the closet-room I was about to look through the stolen stuff better when I noticed the stupid light was back on again and just as bright as it had originally started.

Then I woke up.

(This was actually from several days ago... and I apparently didn't save the chat log I had hoped to use to remember more bits, but oh well.)

I had Riddick's baby, but Riddick didn't seem to be around. The dream started after the giving-birth part. The baby had normal eyes and as a newborn was already trying to keep its head up without help; I noticed because I was holding the baby upright and making sure to help with the head thing and it was like... okay wow, baby is strong! (Or stubborn.) Anyways, it was a girl, but I don't remember any name for it.

Then I knew, somehow, that Riddick was dead. And it didn't bother me at all. WTF. It was just like "okay, plot point, moving on." I also knew that aliens were supposedly coming to check on this baby at some point... a sort of friendly hello / checkup /whatever. (Did I mention this dream makes no sense? More so than normal...)

The next part I remember, it was past sunset on a beach and getting quite dark, and there were a lot of teenagers goofing off in the water. I was worried about them because the current was really strong and they didn't seem to be paying attention. Then there was suddenly this long metallic leg thing that went into the water, and I looked up and saw a big spindly metal creature with a small top bit that had a blue light coming out of it. The light was finely-focused, and it seemed to be looking around with it.

Well I figured this was one of the aliens that was supposed to come see how the baby was doing. I waved at the light as it went by me but it didn't seem to care. I was just kinda going, "Oh... that's odd..." and didn't really care either, sorta watching it. Then I got a bad feeling that maybe this was an evil alien, and it was actually here for the baby for some reason and just hadn't figured that out yet.

So I started walking off down the beach away from the alien and the other people as well. Then the blue light fixed on me and I knew this wasn't good. I ran as fast as I could but something happened and I fell forward. I was so worried I'd hurt the baby, but it seemed to be okay beyond crying. I couldn't really move, like I'd been stunned or shocked by the alien. Then the baby was gone, just gone, and I knew the alien had taken her. The alien was gone too.

There was a nondescript structure nearby and someone was hiding in the shadows next to it, some Hispanic teenager. Somehow I knew he had something to do with all this, that he was one of the bad guys. I started beating him up to get information out of him, I was so upset about losing the baby. Then some of the other people from down the beach started coming over to see what had happened, see if I was alright. I told the guy to stay in the shadows because I wasn't finished with him yet, then tried to go tell the people I was okay or something.

He didn't stay put, coming out where people could see he was all banged up. They were like, "Uh, what's going on?" He finally confessed that he had something to do with this, but all he knew was there were clues hidden back at my and Riddick's house. He said he'd show me where. I think I knew a couple of the people on the beach, but they were just kinda random dream-made friends. We went back to my house (random house of dream illogic) and the guy showed us a corner and said it was under the floorboards.

By this time it seems like I'd kinda forgotten about being upset over the baby. (Sort of like not caring about Riddick being dead??) We pulled up the floorboards without any delay and started pulling things out from a small hidden area that was probably a good 4 feet deep but not very wide. One bag that came out of a decent size, someone said was diamonds. That went nowhere, apparently... it just got set aside and the dream forgot about it. We were, after all, looking for clues, but WTF. xD

There were a bunch of screwdrivers, little ones, that were supposedly a puzzle. If we could solve it, we'd know more about the grander mystery. Again, logic failed and we also failed the puzzle just as badly. Meanwhile the evil teenager kid is just sorta sitting around and I really don't remember caring about the fact that he was there or what he did anymore. (Also, at this point, it seems like we were going through not Riddick's, but Vin Diesel's stuff, and I hadn't had his baby and I didn't know him and it was Vin's house... but yeah poor Vin was still dead. GAH.) Then I found some ziplock bags in the bottom of the hidden space that had what looked like SD cards in them (the little digital camera data storage cards). I figured there was probably data we could pull off them, something that would explain hopefully at least in part what was going on.

Then I woke up.

(Old dream notes are old. I just found this again, it was written November 4th, 2008. I'm going to transcribe it pretty much the way it was originally written.)

Movie like Lethal Weapon on TV, two cops find a girl witness, drive in bad weather. (Then I was the girl in the "movie" which was now reality.) There is deep water ahead, think they can cross but it looks so deep it's blue. Car is an old large convertible with the top down. They try, and even paddle the car with hands which sorta works but the deep water just seems to keep on going.

Get near an odd obstacle and a lady appears like a vision and says we are the chosen ones, and must help her world. She summons magic into her hand (warp stuff) that coalesces into three small teardrop stones. She gives them to us, then shows putting another on her forehead and vanishes.

I do what she did and it sticks like it won't come off. The others do it too; one of the guys puts it in a spot more like where an actual teardrop might go. He did it that way so it would seem less gay (AHAHAHA!! fail). My "marker" starts burning and it hurts, and then we're transported to the new world instantaneously and together. We're standing and it's dark. We're on grounds near a forest.

The evil bad guy has seen our entry in a crystal ball (or mirror?). Tells his three-headed dog and three wolves to go destroy the intruders. What he doesn't seem to know is that I can't be harmed by animals due to being the chosen one with the right combination of inner powers and the crystal. So the dogs cower and cannot follow their master's order, though they would have instantly otherwise. The protection the girl has extends to anyone she is near. Animals who intend to harm her or anyone near her can't get anywhere near her.

Then I woke up.

This started as a roleplay at the forum I've been playing at lately, and the RP in question was a Dungeons & Dragons style thing. You could navigate around the dungeon by following links to different threads, and each thread had a small picture in it (in shades of light blue and white) that showed what sort of area the passage looked like. Mostly it was just maze parts, passages, choices for corners, stuff like that.

We (the other players and I) got to a point where we knew the next area was important, and I think we must have been chatting via AIM because we said we better wait for the person who was in charge of the RP (Beastiewolf, apparently) to get online because we'd need her around to run the next bit.

Then it was like I was actually in the dungeon, transformed into my character for the RP, a human version of Shane who I think was supposed to be set up like a 4th Edition D&D rogue. (The problem with that is that I made her a Tiefling for that version, with some multiclass plans in the warlock direction, but dreams don't require logic anyways.) It was like we had gone ahead without the RP-running person (logic fails again) and decided to explore the area anyways. We found one area that extended over a large pit, and in the center of the room was a round area we could get to over a flat bridge. There was something really nasty out there, possibly a minotaur but I'm not sure now. We managed to upset it and it chased the warrior (who's perspective I had for a moment as he went after it with his kickass 2-handed sword) and then it chased him down the hall and I was now on the far side of it.

I decided to keep exploring since I wasn't entirely sure where the monster or my partymate had gotten to being as it was oddly foggy in the dungeon and a bit on the dark side (hmm, weren't there more people in my party?). Elsewhere in another cave I found a bunch of kobolds and evil dwarves guarding some chests. One of the chests happened to be partly behind a rock, and I snuck over and picked the lock and managed to loot the contents (clear gems) without anyone noticing me. I even walked right straight back through the bad guys and ran off, thinking in my head "Hide In Plain Sight FTW!" (4e rogue skill lol.)

I think I managed to find my party again but I'm not sure, logic was failing so badly by that point that things were starting to merge together into subconscious soup.

Then I woke up.

Most of this dream I'd rather not get into, but the parts that are worth posting are firstly that my kid sister had some sort of breathing problem, and had to get a magnet surgically installed in the back of her left lung that matched up with a magnet behind that in her back (yay dream logic). When walking beside her you could hear it snap together and pull apart, and she said you got used to it but I could imagine how it felt (and thus the dream logic helped me feel it). It was annoying and a bit painful.

The other part of the dream was later, in my kid sister's room (random dream creation version). She was on top of bunk beds she had (also random) and I was on the bottom one. I noticed and picked up a doll she had gotten a while ago from an obscure asian store or anime shop. Also with the doll was a sheet of stickers and stuff, and I was looking at this one piece of thin (yet fairly sturdy) plastic attached to the stickers with a paper clip. The plastic was probably about 3" by 4" at the most. I thought at first it was one of those stickers that changes depending on how you look at it. But I wasn't changing my view of the sticker...

I realized it was actually changing right before my eyes, but in a pattern. Three different screens merged in and out and repeated endlessly, with a pause to read or look at each screen. I realized this was the sort of technology I'd seen in the newspaper once (in real life), but the prototypes I saw were much thicker, larger, and only showed black and white (or well, black and clearish-aging-plastic-yellow). This thing was color (I remember blue and green the most), and it was small. There was no evidence of a computer chip either. The information on the sheet was some sort of detailed table like a statistics sheet for a toy related to a game (maybe Pokemon or something like Dungeons and Dragons), and the other two screens I think were either advertising or just art related to the toy. I don't think the doll had anything to do with the sheet or the stickers... so it was some other bonus from a toy. And I somehow knew the toy (and sheet/stickers) had cost almost nothing. They were junk, by Japan's standards.

I was amazed, and commented on this to my sister. She said, "Yeah, some of the labels do that too." I wasn't sure what she meant, but then I saw that some of the stickers on the sticker sheet changed as well. It was one particular set, with cute little messages in a font that reminded me of Harry Potter. The letters fuzzed out and reformed into a new message, so there were to messages for every sticker. And these were way tinier than the other plastic thing.

Then I woke up.

(The initial intro here is the built-in past that came with my dream self. The part of the dream I remember begins with the alien prison system.)

I was myself, but an ultimate future version. Apparently I'd overcome my difficulties and excelled even physically far enough to join the US military. I'm not sure how old I was, but it didn't seem like it mattered because I was in such good shape. I was respected in my unit and had done great things. I'd patterned myself after the military version of Vin Diesel's movie characters and considered him my role model, so much so that I probably thought almost like he did.

But then aliens had attacked earth. (They looked like Covenant Elite from Halo 2, which I played quite a bit of yesterday.) We fought back but it was a losing battle. So many died, but some of us were captured. Quite a few, in fact. The aliens shipped us all to another planet and stuck us in a prison made for slave labor.

Our first test was to climb down this very long strange grating that led eventually to the prison floor. The thing was probably at least fifteen stories high. Anybody who fell died and wasn't considered worthy of living or working for the aliens. This task was easy enough and I progressed downwards quicktly. Two guys by me were talking even while a loud PA system kept repeating rules like "Absolutely no talking." They tried to get me to talk too, I whispered a couple things and then decided it wasn't worth the risk and shut up. I didn't even look at them anymore, I wasn't gonna get in trouble. The other guys kept talking and I listened intently as they discussed a rumor about someone having escaped from this prison some time ago. The guy was legendary for having done it and it was supposed to be impossible, all the guards said so and denied the escape rumor. I latched onto this idea, believing it fully, and knew if anyone was getting out again, it'd be me.

It wasn't long before the guys near me got fried by flying alien-built robot things for talking. They fell and were probably already dead before they hit bottom; I didn't watch, I concentrated on my descent. I made it to the ground floor unscathed and stayed put in a courtyard where guards watched everyone coming down. The guards were human, but not earth human... I knew there was some sort of evil human race beyond our planet who was allied with the aliens. (There are in fact no more Halo-2-ish aliens visible from this point on in the dream.)

Once everyone in my group was down, the guards started dividing us into two groups. There were two guards in charge of this and one was female. She and I were the only females on the floor. The male guard asked my name and I told him "Tirsden." I figured there was no point in using my earth name (Kat/Katrina) and my online alias would be best now. If I had a choice about anything, they'd call me what I wanted them to call me. The guard pointed to the farther group and told me to join them. I was half way across the floor when the female guard said she had something important to tell him and he told me to stop. I did and stood there apparently just being obedient but I listened hard and could just make out the conversation (my hearing was very good, obviously better than they thought).

The woman said that she'd accidentally found one of the "eyes" that the higher ups used to see the "invisible ones" in the hallways. The male guard thought this was very interesting but told her to talk to him again later, they had work to do. Meanwhile I'm thinking this lady has an unscheduled date with me as soon as possible so I can snag this "eye." And now I knew there was some sort of secret backup security system. I could imagine floating monstrocities in prison barracks hallways silently killing inmates lucky enough to make it that far while trying to escape. It was an easy guess none of the prisoners knew about this... except the unlucky dead ones.

The male guard told me to continue on to my group and I obeyed. We were all marched through a passage to another smaller courtyard. There was a yellow line painted across the middle of it. The PA was still blaring repetative rules, "No talking... No fighting..." No this, no that. Be good little inmates. The guard ordered us to line up on the yellow line and face to the right (straight along the line). I did this and a few others complied just as quickly. Some others straggled. The guard didn't immediately react, he just watched, so one of them got particularly cocky. This mean, short, ugly guy wanted to pick a fight with me, hoping to get me in trouble. He told me I was in his spot; I ignored him. He tried various insults as I stood there being a good little inmate. He got really pissed at my continued indifference and shoved me. I kept my feet and remained where I was, didn't even turn to him.

The guard walked up to me and said, "Put him in his place." Before the idiot behind me knew what happened I'd spun around and he was on the ground beside the line, face pressed painfully into the ground and completely incapacitated. I'd broken a bone or two in key locations. He blubbered like a baby and wet himself. He wouldn't be moving within the next few minutes so I got right back up, performed a perfect military salute to the guard, and got back into my place in line as if nothing had happened. I wasn't even winded, just stood there calmly with rigid military posture.

The guard was obviously impressed. And that was the point of all this apparent obedience. I wanted to make it look like I was extremely adaptable and ready to prove my allegience to the new reigning power. If the people I worked for before couldn't keep control then they didn't deserve it and I was ready to be recruited by the other side. In reality though I was only going to play their game long enough to get them back big-time. But I shoved that thought deep down and made sure I kept in character. I was a good little inmate. I wanted to be more. But I didn't expect to be rewarded until I had proved my worth. So I was a good little inmate.

The guard ordered us all to move again and as we went down the next passage I heard other guards take care of the moron on the ground with precision that brought screams and the finality of silence. We passed some windows where we could see a gigantic, highly-mechanized assembly line creating strange looking robots and who-knows-what. We could see prisoners working the line and somebody died because they were stupid and didn't move fast enough; part of the machinery flattened them coldly. We continued on down more passages and soon found ourselves in a very earth-like locker room. The guard told us to change into uniforms readily available in the lockers. He also said we could talk to each other now if we wanted. He left and there were no other guards in the room. I reached for a uniform, they were all the same (in different sizes) and were mostly bright-yet-light yellow with similarly-shaded orange trim and some white too. They were simple yet semi-futuristicly cut one-piece jumpsuits. I couldn't help but think of the outfits from the XBox game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay except these looked better.

I was the only woman still but changing out of my clothes and into the new ones didn't phase me, I was used to it from military days. Plus I knew our captors were watching on what looked like closed circuit cameras in the ceilings but I guessed they probably had far more advanced technology spying on us as well. Everyone's conversation was rather guarded because of the cameras. I'd just finished suiting up and was talking to a black guy with crazy hair when all of a sudden Candy shows up. (My real-life family's cat! Geez she's been showing up in dreams a lot lately lol.) I was very surprised to see her at this point... how'd she manage that? Since she was there I wanted to be sure she remained safe and I figured the alien guys wouldn't like her at all and would probably kill her since she was virtually useless. (If I reference aliens from now on I'm really meaning the human version; I thought of them all as aliens.)

I held Candy and she was very cuddly and obviously scared but happy to be with me. A moment later the male guard came back into the room and walked over, saying I was to come with him. I asked him if my black friend could look after Candy and the guard said yes. Apparently I'd impressed him enough that he'd let the cat live at least as well as it could with a random inmate. Since I was being singled out I had a feeling I wasn't coming back here. I handed the kitty to the black guy and followed the guard out of the room. Good luck, Candy...

The guard directed me down hallways, keeping me in the lead. (At this point I became Richard B. Riddick, yay! I love being him in dreams. And dream logic didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with this; it's like I'd been him the whole time. Even back when I was in the military and then fighting aliens on earth.) The guard was following me with his gun trained on my back. He wasn't stupid even if he was impressed with me. I ended up in a round room with a lighted floor and ceiling. Windows were set into the walls and the only places that had no windows were where the doors were. There were about four doors total. The room was quite bright but it was hard to see past the windows; they were tinted to look darker.

The guard handed me a golden bracelet with a shiny red stone in the middle of it. It was thick in the middle and had one straight edge on the bottom and the other side was pointed out like an upside-down "V." He told me how to put it on and I placed it on my right wrist as directed. The pointed part came up over the back of my hand some. The entire thing was rather beautiful if simplistic and very shiny. The stone was not facetted but smooth, set so far in that its top rounded surface was raised just slightly above the rest of the bracelet. The stone was somewhat tear-shaped and longer than rounder. The point of it was set the same direction as the point of the bracelet (straight out) and in roughly the center of the top area.

The guard told me to stay there and I stood still in the middle of the room looking at the bracelet. He left and the door hissed shut. I saw him enter a control room on the far side of the windows and then the room got even brighter. I looked back at the bracelet and it was melting, moving, like mercury; like the stuff Neo gets on his hand when he touches the mirror in The Matrix. Even the red stone was running and merging with the gold stuff. It covered my hand but didn't move up my arm. It started to hurt. It was melting into my skin! Merging with me.

I tried to keep calm but nausea threatened to overwhelm me. The pain was becoming intense and it was moving through my body now, like the gold stuff was in my bloodstream. I found myself on my knees. I didn't want to freak out... I wanted to continue to impress the guard. I could deal with this. I could. I... I fell over and curled up, just living through the pain, the only outward signs that I was hurting were the grimace on my face and my rapid breathing. I couldn't move anymore. I passed out.

* * *

I'm not sure how long I'd been asleep when I woke up. I felt terribly groggy and had the impression I'd woken up a few times before but not with any real lucidity. I was able to get to my knees and there was no sound, the room was back to its original brightness before the whole bracelet thing. The bracelet! I looked at my wrist and it was there but it was different now, the red stone was visible but it was like the whole thing had become a permanent part of my hand. It was solid metal yet didn't interfere with my wrist movement. I wondered if it had replaced some of my wrist bones with metal or biomechanics. I couldn't tell, it just looked... kinda pretty. But manly pretty. (LMAO the things I think in dreams, eh? I was thinking it looked like something He-Man or Conan the Barbarian would wear.)

Nothing had happened so far, it was silent and I couldn't see the guard or anyone else in the control room. I couldn't really see through the windows at all, it was very dark behind them. Maybe someone was there. But there was something weirder much closer to me. There was blue slimy stuff on the floor. It was spread out like I'd been thrashing in it. I had a feeling it had something to do with what the bracelet had done. The word that came to mind was "transformation." I touched the blue stuff, it reminded me of shampoo in texture. It didn't seem harmful. I had a feeling it had come out of me somehow; apparently I didn't need it anymore.

Then there was a voice in my head. It was Cortana!

(And now I must take a moment to explain what the dream logic was doing at this point. Cortana is a female computer AI system from the game Halo 2, she speaks to the character you play through his helmet system. She can be transferred to other computer systems by touch through your suit and she provides information, witty comments, and sometimes unlocks doors. In the dream it appears Cortana was being used to guide people in the military during the battle against the aliens. I knew now that she'd been there "in my head" in an implant that communicated her words directly to my brain. She could also see anything I could see and had very limited control of my muscles if needed. She'd lost contact with me when I'd been captured by the aliens and was only now able to reestablish contact.)

Cortana sounded extremely surprised to find me alive and said so. She was glad, but where was I? What was going on? Was I okay? ...Why was I not responding? All she could tell right now was that I was still looking at the blue stuff on the floor. I had to think fast through the grogginess that still plagued me. If I didn't respond somehow she might think I'd been brainwashed or was unsavable and she would then cut off all contact with me forever for security reasons. But if I talked, and there was someone in the control room, they would know something was up. I couldn't let them know Cortana was talking to me and it was pretty obvious they didn't know or they'd be in here now. They'd probably kill me. I ran my fingers through the goop on the floor in frustration... and then I knew what to do.

I drew a happy face very quickly, staring at it intently, and whiped it out of existence. Cortana realized what I was trying to say... that I was okay but couldn't talk and/or was being watched. I don't remember the conversation very well now (writing and reading in dreams is hard) but it seems like my limited method of communication had only limited success. I wrote someone's name, a higher-up, wondering if they were alive and hadn't been captured. Cortana made me whipe the name away very quickly. Apparently it was crucial that name not be seen at all. I got the hint. Maybe they had been captured but the aliens didn't really know who they were looking for and the person had remained anonymous so far. I wrote "President?" as well and Cortana made me whipe it out again. Then she cut out in mid-sentence. I'd lost the signal again... and the lights got brighter in the room. The guards were apparently noticing I was awake. That was all, it seems.

I could now see the male guard from before on the other side of the control room windows. He spoke into the PA and said I was going to be tested. They wanted to see how well my conversion had gone. I realized that while I was asleep, some built-in system in the technology on my wrist had trained me in it's proper use. (I think this is a random reference to a similar concept in the game Morrowind when you get the wristguard you need to beat the game.) I was feeling better now, in fact I felt just fine.

The room changed, it reminded me of the holodecks on Star Trek. The walls got wider, making the room bigger, and dirt and rocks appeared on the ground. The doors hissed open and a dozen zombie-like crazy humans stumbled in. They took one look at me and charged. They were not slow/stupid zombies but fast/smart zombies. Eh oh. Oh well, bring it on! In top shape this would be a challenge but doable. But now... I kicked serious ass and I kicked it fast. I was thoroughly surprised at my improved strength, stamina, and speed. I could even think faster, and fighting a dozen crazy things was actually easy. They were all dead before five minutes had passed. The zombies faded as if transported somewhere else and I stood there waiting, barely even winded and pretty psyched up.

The guard voiced his approval and congratulations, and then one door hissed open again. In came a very big, strong, pissed-off looking guy. He came after me and this fight was much tougher than the last even though it was only one guy. It was hard to do any damage to him and I spent most of my time avoiding his fists because I had a bad feeling one solid hit would spell doom. In the end I used all my fighting expertise and agility to take him out with one deft hit to a specific spot in his neck. He fell like a ton of lead and I snapped his neck. Sucked to be him. He too disappeared into thin air. Somebody had a nasty clean-up job wherever all these bodies were going. I waited again, I was feeling some wear now but still ready for anything.

I was on the far side of the room from the windows with the guard at this point. The guard voiced his approval again and said my final test was next. There was a slanted rock over near the control room. Someone began to materialize there, instead of walking in through the doors. Oh god no... it was my best buddy from the military, the guy I'd fought alongside against the aliens. I thought he was dead... and yet, I knew this was him. It wasn't some illusion or hologram or lookalike. This was real. They expected me to kill my own buddy and thereby leave behind everything from my old life. In fact, if I didn't kill him fast, my hesitation would clue them in that I wasn't already completely loyal to them.

As I moved towards him I could see that he was lying there very awkwardly; he was paralyzed, his back was probably broken. He was staring at me, confused and afraid but glad to see me. I'm not even sure he could move or talk at all, just look at me. He thought... maybe I was going to save him.

(At this point my brain replayed the following moments until it was happy with the end results, like loading and reloading a saved game in a computer game.)

(First time)

I walked up to him and looked down at him. His look of hope turned to a look of haunting disbelief as I reached down and started to strangle him. He eventually stopped breathing but it felt like an eternity to me as he stared up at me with that heartbreaking look on his face. I knew exactly when to let go so that maybe his body would force him to breathe again after a few minutes, or if he was lucky someone would find him soon enough to resuscitate him. I let go and stood up. He was technically dead. But no, I didn't like this version...

(Second time)

I walked up more quickly this time as if this wasn't even an issue to me. I started the strangling thing again but a moment later realized how hard it must be to die this way... so I snapped his neck and he died instantly. I wasn't really all that happy with this version either...

(Third and last time)

He looked at me as I approached and I saw a different look this time. It said so many things... like, he knew he was a goner, he knew the aliens were testing me and I'd win their trust if I killed him. He was in pain and dying anyways. He'd much rather I killed him than these alien bastards. I walked straight up to him and snapped his neck. I believed he felt no pain and was finally at rest where the aliens could never hurt him again.

And I knew I'd impressed hell out of the guard and whoever else was watching. I was headed for big things under their wing... and when the moment was right, vengeance. They would pay. Oh yes, they would pay.

Then I woke up.

It was night time. I was with my family unit in a well-lighted room, I think the living room of a big house. The family wasn't my real-life family, same with the house, but I guess they were symbolic/generic. I realized somehow that there was a vampire in the house. I don't think anyone else knew. I didn't tell them... instead I walked down the long hall to my bedroom.

It was dark in my room except for a little blue-ish moonlight. I shut and locked the door, never touching the lights. I think I sorta floated gracefully around for a moment; I was wearing this semi-Victorian flowy white dress with long sleeves and a wide neckline. (I believe the dream's timeframe was Victorian era.) Then I sat down on my bed and leaned over until I was laying sideways on it. I shut my eyes and waited for the vampire to bite me.

Finally he did, from somewhere above/behind me... but he wasn't being very nice about it. I realized he might not even intend to turn me into a vampire at all, that he was probably here for a snack. I said, "Wait! No! I want to become a vampire. Please?" He agreed and I remember part of the transformation was becoming thinner for some reason, as I was "well built" in the dream.

That's all I remember.

This dream was set around the Great Depression but not during it. Probably either just before, or a little after. Anyways, there was a husband and wife, and the husband went to work and the wife was washing the dishes. But there was something wrong, she was losing it, going crazy a little at a time and this was one of those moments where she was finally truly going insane. There was a crash, had she thrown a glass at a wall or something? But all I could see was the plastic tub of water she'd had the dishes sitting in to be rinsed (it was full of clean water)... it was on the floor where she'd apparently dropped it. Nothing was broken from what I could see, but the wife didn't seem to care about what she'd done.

Here's where I come in, at least, as more than a bodiless observer. I'm the child of this couple, about eight or nine years old, a fairly good little girl. Mommy is making me porridge, but she's still working on the dishes (I think she's gotten that tub off the floor before anyone could see it) and she spills some dish soap. She gets mad at herself and cleans it up but then puts a little in the bowl she's going to serve my breakfast in. She mixes it up and gives it to me and it tastes funny and I spit it out. I say I don't want to eat it, and I have realized that she is trying to kill me but I play along like I don't know this and I beg to play outside. She's trying to get me to eat more but I go out the back door (it's a sliding glass door) and skip across the yard trying not to go too fast so she'll still think I'm oblivious to what she's doing. I'm actually quite afraid that she'll try and kill me in a more direct and physical way, a battle I will surely lose.

"I want to go swimming in the creek Mommy!" I keep saying over and over as I skip towards the water running along the back line of our property. It's just deep enough that my good swimming skills will give me the edge and let me get away from her by swimming down the creek. The current is fast, too, plus I'm hoping it dawns on her that she could say, "Oh, alright, let's go swimming," and think she can drown me or something, and then tell Daddy it was a horrible accident. As I reach the creek, this does occurr to her. But this is my moment to escape, and so off down the creek I swim, although some of it is not really deep enough to suit my needs but either way, there's no stopping now, I'm running/swimming for my life.

The creek goes by the park I play in sometimes and I get out there, tearing across the grass past the swingsets and there's a ballpark there too. I'm screaming for help, but inside I know I'm a child with a mother who's got a false reputation for being a decent person (or nobody here knows and would assume wouldn't really be trying to kill me). Who's going to believe me? I can't stop and talk to anyone really, because if I do that, Mommy will catch up and say something like, "Oh she's just throwing a fit because I wouldn't let her do something," and I'll be as good as dead. I keep running and screaming although I know if I scream too much I might run out of energy, so I time my shouts for help a few moments apart.

I've made it to the streets of town, and I'm trying to find a police man. I see one but he drives off before I can reach him. Then I'm on one of the main streets and there is a bank that was apparently just robbed, so this is where all the police are but they are busy with the crime that just happened and ignore me because I'm just some annoying brat. But then I find this guy who is a private detective and I tell him what's happening and he believes me! He helps me to run away, picking me up and running down the sidewalk away from the bank, away from Mommy. It's getting dark now and the detective has to put me down for some reason and we are both running and I look back and right behind us is a big man who looks very angry and is chasing us. And somehow I know Mommy has hired him. I get this sure feeling she's pulling out all the stops now, she just wants me dead and doesn't care how it's done.

I run out into the street, and there is a car coming up behind me. I keep running along the street right in front of the car, too scared to think properly anymore. A view inside the car: it's police men! And for a surreal moment they are just staring at my back as I run along just in front of them, unaware that the headlights behind me are anybody helpful, I think it's just a car. Then they turn the lights on, blue and strawberry red, and I remember that I have candy in my pocket. I stop in front of the police car and they stop too. I eat the red candy first because somehow it's important, and it tastes so good. Then I eat the next one under it (they're lined up kind of like Mentos or Lifesavers, but this is a gummy candy) because it's blue, but I don't eat the last one because it's not a color of the police lights. And then I faint. I know that because I fainted, the police will keep me safe because something that was physically and emotionally demanding enough on me to make me faint must surely be worth investigating.

Then I woke up.

I was Frodo trying to steal the ring from Gollum (yeah I know Bilbo stole the ring but that seemed unimportant in the dream). It felt like being in a video game, like I knew what I needed to do ahead of time, maybe I'd played this bit before. So anyways I'm deep underground in a tunnel system with various rooms branching off here and there, all quite dark and made of dirt. I had the Light of Galadriel but it didn't work very well. I found the room with the ring (apparently he kept it in a room) but there wasn't just one ring, there were two. Which one was the right one?

The other thing was these rings were not gold, they were very thin silver, kinda like cheap 25 cent machine rings. They were even cut on one side to be adjustable for any finger. Yeah I know, crappy magic rings eh? I put one on, trying to see if I turned invisible. It didn't work. I put the other one on, and got about the same effect. So I put both on and I felt like they might work if they were on together. Gollum showed up right then and apparently he couldn't see me. He started throwing a fit because the rings were missing and I took off down the nearest tunnel.

I found a wooden bucket suspended by rope over a deep pit. The rope was looped over something in the darkness above and tied back down near the bucket's handle. I untied it and put my feet in the bucket, and the rope was so long I was able to lower myself all the way to the bottom. I knew Gollum would find the bucket missing and see that it had been used, but now I had worse problems to deal with. In the huge cavern I'd arrived in there was a giant praying mantis bug thing (kinda like the bug in the arena in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones). The side of the cavern I was on had a smooth surface, so I ran to the other side which was all convoluted weathered stone. Unfortunately the critter spotted me, but its eyesight was so bad that it lost me as soon as I stopped moving. It was sniffing around though, trying to find me... and coming closer.

At this point I changed into my real life self (more or less) and the giant bug morphed into a camel. I realized that I would get through this okay, that I knew what to do to make the camel like me. It was very close now and I reached out and petted it while talking to it. It worked, I didn't get eaten or camel-mauled. (Hehee...)

I think I woke up at this point, but fell back to sleep. I think I was going to redo this whole part of the "game" but again it was like it was all around me, like it was real life but not. I was stocking up on weapons, figuring if I could actually kill Gollum it'd make things a lot easier. I kept wondering if the game plot would let me do that... considering it'd destroy most of the plot of The Lord of the Rings (like it wasn't already screwed in the dream). But I wasn't stockpiling fantasy/medieval weapons. I was stockpiling things like battery powered flashlights and pens that could shoot bullets.

The dream shifted to become some sort of Splinter Cell-feeling mission. Except I think I was an officer in the NAVY or some weird thing, and I was a guy again. I was now in a white room near the window on the opposite side of the one door into the room. A uniformed guard came in the door and I shot him. And then somehow tore a hole in the ceiling above me and climbed into the room above me. Here I found another guard, but someone else had already shot him. I was worried about rescuing a friend who I knew had been captured by whoever was running this place. Now it seemed like more than one group was infiltrating the complex, and I had a bad feeling that this rival group wasn't there to be helpful, but might actually want to see my friend dead.

I questioned the guard, asking who'd shot him. I don't really remember much of this other than his blood looked like jelly donut filling. The slightly pinkish purple kind. He was dressed like a cop... so... well who knows. Anyways I left the room because I knew I didn't have much time (and I don't think I got much useful information out of the cop). I found myself in a hallway, and the room next to the one I'd left had my friend in it, as well as at least two bad guys. I think there was a girl too. Everybody was wearing dark uniforms. I grabbed one guard/bad guy from behind and pointed a pen at his head. The bad guys knew that I had a pen that shot bullets, but what they didn't realize was I'd lost it. What I was pointing at my hostage's head was a regular ball-point pen!

Anyways I demanded the release of my friend and myself and they let my buddy go. I shoved the guy I was holding away and ran after my friend. We went down the hall and out the front door (the irony is this floor was laid out like the main floor in a house I used to live in over in Oregon before going to college). But the last thing I saw leaving the place was a very high-ranking official in one of the armed forces (Military, parhaps?) and he yelled after me something about how this was futile and this went much higher than I could possibly do anything about.

Now I was hurt for some reason, like escaping from the place had taken much more than I thought it had (reality shift alert!). Someone was helping me walk along the sidewalk to get to the driveway/road that ran past the place. I knew that we were okay, we'd made it out, but I think my buddy had been recaptured or I had failed to rescue him (the details here are very fuzzy). I was wearing a white full-dress uniform and I know I looked a little bit like the main character in Quantum Leap. The person helping me along was a lady and I think she was also in white full-dress uniform. I think I was a NAVY captain. And I remember it being sunny with blue sky overhead.

As we made it to the street, a black guy who apparently had been with me inside the buildling said he was going back in for the guy we couldn't rescue. He vanished off into some brush and I knew there was a hatch or sewer opening over there that he'd use to try and go back. I knew that anyone who tried to go back in there would be killed if they were caught, no second chances this time. I was too hurt to continue though, so I stayed with the lady.

Then I woke up.