sanity is relative

(This is apparently what happens after I spend 3+ hours on Skype talking to someone I met via Cry's video game livestreams, before going to bed. That someone would be Hiro, who you will be seeing here shortly. O.o )


I was playing some kind of coop multiplayer Amnesia-like game with Hiro via both the game client and chatting with Skype, except that instead of normal Amnesia: The Dark Descent with its medieval castle interior, the concept was to run around a modern day mental hospital plagued with monsters (the zombie ones from the Amnesia game) and avoid being caught by them or the regular staff while looking for books. Hiro's character was an Asian boy in his early teens and I was a girl with long-ish blonde hair; I think I'd gone with Alice for my character's name.

The building's layout was bizarre for an actual hospital. Hallways were ridiculously skinny, had maze-like branches all over the place and interconnected rooms, and you couldn't do anything about the lights that were always on. Everything was painted white, so there was no real chance of hiding anywhere in the open. Not only would the monsters cause you to pass out if they caught you, but doctors and nurses also wandered the hall and any of them including the monsters catching you meant waking back up in your room. I can't remember if the rooms were locked by default, I just remember it being so much backtracking that you didn't want to get caught, plus there was a feeling of impending doom like something bad was going to happen if you couldn't escape the place in time.

The point of the books was that they somehow unlocked doors. The books were hardcover, red, and had gold filigree designs on the covers that were all the same. If I remember right, they all had a four digit number on the first page while the rest of the pages were blank, which had to do with how they opened the doors. Some books were fakes and only the right ones would actually open a door at all, and only the door they were meant to. The books could be found in closets or refrigerators that were otherwise empty of anything else, and if you had one that worked with you when you opened the right door, the door would just automatically unlock itself.

I remember being in a small room that had a fridge and two closets, and Hiro took a book out of the fridge while I grabbed one from a closet. At this point it was becoming real as opposed to a video game, although I still had some odd fuzzy concept of an inventory system so that I wasn't literally carrying the books around (I had several by now), they just vanished but I still "had them." I remember hearing a monster grumbling out in the hall right at that moment. The hall went around the room outside past two different doors on opposite ends. Hiro told me to go one way and he'd go the other and distract the monster.

I didn't like this idea but he was already out the one door so I ran through the other. I realized somehow that he'd been caught by the staff and I kept running, as for some reason they were assuming Hiro was the only patient not in his room. He'd bought me some time, but now I had to figure out how to put it to good use and if I stayed in the halls I still ran the risk of getting caught at random. I found a nurse's bathroom and hid under the sink. The idea was to burn some time so the staff would get complacent and maybe enough would go to sleep after-hours so I could finally escape.

Logic really started falling apart at this point (apparently if you stay in one place in a dream for too long, small constant changes start building up into ridiculousness). What started as a long counter with sinks in it and one big cupboard area underneath with several doors (my hiding spot was as far into the corner opposite the entry door by the far end of the sinks as possible), slowly turned into just a counter without the cupboard underneath, and then finally the counter had some kind of tablecloth which hid me better. I remember spending a lot of time trying to make sure I was as squeezed into the corner as it got, and that the white dress I was wearing was staying hidden with me instead of flared out partly so it was visible from beyond the counter.

This whole time I was dreading that someone would actually come into the bathroom, and yes, eventually a nurse and a nurse's assistant walked in, both women. For some reason, they had a bunch of dirty dishes on a two-tiered rolling metal cart. The assistant started shoving dishes under the counter and it was obvious she could see me, but I sat there and thought "You can't see me, you can't see me," over and over. At this point I vaguely understood that I was in a dream and that logic had broken enough she shouldn't have seen me right off the bat.

She didn't say anything to her superior who was blathering on about various gossip and directions for the next shift or something, and I realized it wasn't because I was desperately trying to insist in my head that she couldn't see me. The assistant wasn't evil, and knew this place was way more than just some honest asylum. She kept glancing at me but only crammed more dishes under the counter (I could hardly move for all the dishes). Suddenly the nurse in charge started saying really crazy things, like she was hallucinating and what she saw was no longer what anyone else in the room saw. The nurse stood still and started staring off at nothing as what she was saying rambled to a halt, and the assistant looked at me and mouthed the word, "Run."

I managed to extricate myself from the dishes without making any noise and ran out of the bathroom, not noticed at all by the crazy spaced-out nurse. I found a new hallway that led to a large closet, and inside the closet was a whole lot of hanging lab coats. I couldn't see the back of the closet, so I kept pushing through and the lab coats gave way to winter jackets and I found myself suddenly breaking out of a very thick display of such coats in a clothing store at a shopping mall.

There were tables just beyond, possibly for a cafe in this same store (logic, what is this concept? we don't do logic in dreams). There were randomly dream created family members there who recognized me and greeted me only like it was any old day, not like I'd been locked away in the funny farm. They didn't know, and I myself wasn't even sure how I'd gotten locked up there now. While they asked me mundane questions I said something to the effect of, "Listen, I've just escaped from a mental asylum up there on the hill," and pointed off in the general direction of where the hospital was (you couldn't see it from inside the mall).

They were all like, "Yeah right, very cute ha ha," and I said, "No, I'm serious, and I'm not even sure that I'm really out of there at all." I had a bad feeling that I was still somewhere in the asylum while hallucinating what I was seeing now, or somehow had my "spirit" split between the places and maybe I could actually tell these people something useful before waking back up in the asylum. I just hoped I was still hidden somewhere instead of stuck in my room again. I remember one dark-haired guy who was a random family friend looking off in the general direction of the hospital, he was starting to be convinced there was more to this.

Then I woke up.

(Possibly inspired by reading The Art Of The Matrix and a short conversation with my kid sister about stealing cars.)

I don't remember if I saw the actual invasion or if I just heard/knew about it happening. An alien race of high technology was taking over our planet. They were enslaving millions, killing those who would not surrender (and killing lots anyways). A few of us managed to hide, but we knew they were coming. There were two groups, I (as myself) was in the first group with my real-life mother and sister, and the group seemed to consist mostly of women and children. The second group was all men. We did not know at this point if the second group had survived. I figured if we waited around we'd get killed.

So I spoke to the people gathered around that we had to go to the source if we were going to have a remote chance in hell to fight the aliens. It was blatantly obvious that aliens existed, so that meant that our government really did have a crashed alien ship in their possession (viva la conspiracy theories!) and they were probably researching and even using the technology from it already. I told the people around me we were going to Area 51. (For some reason I thought it was in Arizona throughout the dream, though that doesn't make sense upon waking... but I guess the dream logic figured that was close enough. Plus, my group was located somewhere near Washington D.C. so Arizona was just as far away as New Mexico considering at the moment all we had was our feet to travel with.)

I looked out of the warehouse we were hiding in, and there was a car in the dusty parking lot, baking under the hot sun. I ran to it and found the keys in the ignition. It started and someone said it was wrong to steal and I said it was our only chance. The owner might be dead anyways. So everyone else piled in (there might have been two cars, I forget) and we drove off. It seems like we had to switch vehicles at some point when we ran out of gas, and it took us longer to find cars with keys. I remember thinking that if the human resistance lasted long enough, someone should set up usable car hubs for people fleeing but especially for resistance group members to move around the country. Take a car, drive it to the next hub, get a new one.

The next thing I knew I was suddenly a member of the second group, a random white male character. This was the all-guy group, and we were on foot. We knew the aliens were not far behind and tracking us somehow. It was somewhat snowy and we put logs and big sticks across our path at random points. It seems like we knew the aliens had trouble getting past these (or some metal-like alien-made machine did) so at first it was worth it. We heard the aliens making annoyed sounds at our previous roadblock (we were on a path though, not a road). This caused some satisfaction in our group but I figured they were too close for comfort now and we had better just run.

I told the guys to be careful so they didn't fall, to run steady and not too fast. I was in the lead and made my way over some wet, potentially slippery rocks, and beyond. I remember thinking we were trying to catch up to the first group, and I remember something about the first group trying to figure out how to leave behind some sign of where they were going without giving the whole thing away to the aliens.

Then I saw a black guy in a car (seen from like a camera angle or perhaps from the perspective of one of the second group members). He'd stolen the car and it seems like he was a key resistance leader, maybe even the top guy. He looked like Samuel L. Jackson but a little younger. He was pulling up to a corner to turn left.

Then I was him. I don't think I was going anywhere specific, probably just on the run. I was driving casually and this seemed to be fairly normal, other people were driving along like there wasn't some huge alien invasion going on. I saw up ahead a bunch of cars driving closely together, and too slow. I felt like it was a trap, they wanted me to pass and the aliens must know where I was. There was a dirt road up ahead on the right and I took that instead (still driving somewhat casually). As I took the turn I noticed a huge semitruck come up into opposing traffic in the space I would have been in if I'd tried to pass the cars. As if in a movie, I heard the aliens or some people working for them (or the aliens could shapeshift to look human) saying over the radio "He didn't take it."

Now I was driving down the dirt road with an open field on the right and a dead-looking corn field on the left. I knew I was in potential danger but figured the aliens hadn't planned on me going this way, so I had some time. But then up ahead I saw an ambulance, two cars right behind it, and another ambulance following right behind the lot. Damn radios, they were able to move fast because of the communication. I think they might have been hoping that I'd think they were real ambulances and pull over to clear the road. I was definitely not stopping for that. They pulled into my lane, heading straight for me, and as I slowed down they stopped completely. I could see a big (red?) pickup truck coming up behind them fast, essentially blocking the opposing lane of traffic and there wasn't any more room to drive past the cars and ambulances.

A woman who might not actually know what's going on at this moment was now beside the closest ambulance. There was a big, somewhat-evil looking man near her. The pickup almost hit the woman but the man pulled her out of the way at the last second. I'm not sure what happened to the pickup after that (although it's angle would have put it in the field to the right).

Meanwhile, the road was thoroughly blocked now by even more vehicles. Well, I wasn't going down here. I opened the car door and bailed into the cornfield. The corn stalks didn't even have much in the way of corn on them, and they were tall, dried up spindly things that didn't give much cover unless I had a lot of distance between me and my attackers. The aliens chased me, except they were human looking or humans in league with them. I have a feeling some of them were actual aliens, some were converted humans (mind control?) and some just hired people, maybe even innocent and thinking they were working for honest humans, not aliens.

Several times various people got close and each time I sprayed bullets their way (yay for instant dream uzi's... maybe I got one off a soldier, some of the people chasing me appeared to be in the National Guard). I realized too many of my pursuers were too close and I dove to the ground trying to hide. Some part of me knew that the cover here was too scant but I thought as hard as I could "they can't see me" and it worked. I was able to move ahead slowly, barely crawling along.

Ahead were two people arguing about trying to find me. One was a white woman, she had a uniform on and seemed to be in charge. The other was a black woman, a hireling of some sort, maybe a mercenary type, and she was saying that I'd "just... vanished." The black woman was scared. She thought I might be some sort of legendary evil spirit or something. She said "Naga" like she was even afraid of saying the word. She refused to keep searching even though the woman threatened her, and walked off. (Maybe the white woman killed her for such insubordination, maybe the black lady managed her own vanishing act, I don't know.)

I couldn't keep hiding forever and on a mad dash they spotted me and shot me with some sort of tranquilizer. As I fell I rolled into a clearing in the cornfield. I fought the drug in order to stay conscious, but I didn't move. I lay still with my eyes closed so they wouldn't know I was still awake. I was lying on my chest and felt horribly heavy from the drug but I figured if I had one chance now, it was to keep hold of reality. Maybe I could find the right moment to run... if I could still run...

The bad guys came and one of them held me down with his knee in my back while the others surrounded me with guns pointed down at me. Someone came up and lifted my head a little. I felt fingers opening my left eyelid and I saw a nurse (a very stereotypical, outdated looking nurse, who was probably a shapeshifted alien who'd watched a little too much 1940's earth television). She used the little finger on her left hand to poke lightly at my eyeball. I remember being worried about her fingernail. I moved my eye only a little but still thought she might notice I was awake. But she seemed satisfied after a few pokes and let go of my eye. Just as I was thinking I'd succeeded in keeping at least one small advantage I felt a prick somewhere in my back and a very powerful dose of some drug sent me to unconsciousness.

I was instantly dreaming, I knew it, but it was unlike any other dream I'd ever had. The world was in shades of black and white, and even the sound in the air around me seemed foreign. I was breathing and could hear it like a controlled rush as I stared out what must have been some sort of helmet. I was looking at the corn field, the clearing I'd fallen into, but the scene had been surreally transformed into perfect right angles. The corn was no longer a mass of spindly stalks but featureless flat hedge-looking things. I was standing in the clearing, and it made a hallway between these odd flat wall-hedges that stretched out in front of me, before it ended in a T junction that led to thinner passages to the left and right. I felt rather than saw tubes coming from my helmet into my suit (some sort of space suit?) The helmet must have been large, because all I could see was the glass/clear protective surface before me that curved the secenery at the very edges of my vision. I realized that I was an alien now, a real alien, somehow connected to it, but I honestly felt like I was the alien. The end result was frighteningly realistic, but in effect redefining "real" because I wasn't human anymore.

There was nobody in the clearing ahead of me. I turned and saw someone behind me... it was the old me! The me I had been before this terrible dream. He was just standing there with an odd, somewhat stupid smile on his face. I felt such an intense and complete hatred for this man that I immediately reached out and grabbed the human face and head in my hands. (The alien hands were suited up almost like a typical astronaut in a space suit, only less bulky, and the gloved fingers and hands were human shaped.) I squeezed the man's head and crushed it, killing him. I dropped the body and turned back the way I'd originally been facing. I walked to the end of the corridor, all the time hearing the terrible breathing... my breathing...

There was bright light above me and I looked up, raising my arms in the glare and feeling a strange mix of familiarity and total exaltation. I felt my body being sucked up into the transporter of the alien vessel not far above me, like I became a digital painting that streaked upwards, first from my fingers and helmet and continuing quickly down until I was completely transferred to the receiving pod inside the ship.

The next thing I remember is a great, dark space, like the interior of a huge ship. A sinking feeling that I'd been asleep all this time and woken up who-knows-where under complete alien control told me that I was myself again... at least. But I wasn't sure how I was seeing what was before my eyes. It was like the ship I was in was transparent or at least the bulk of it seemed to be to my right and a little above me. Ahead of the alien ship was a pulsing beam of light that flexed a little like a frequency wave turned 3D. The ship was travelling along the light beam like it was a travel route; it disappeared into the front of the ship somewhere and I'm not sure if it continued out the back of the ship... it may not have.

The ship was going slowly and the whole time I could hear a loud, metallic, and vaguely deep voice saying over and over, "You are here. You are here. You are here." This vision didn't last long, as I moved almost involuntarily, trying to figure out if I could move at all, or where I was in all this. I felt sheets, the solidness of a bed below me, a very human feeling after such an alien experience. I was sure I'd seen the previous scenes, but had I been asleep and only just now woken? Had I been able to unwittingly access some sort of alien viewing system with my mind? Had I connected telepathically with the alien who I'd envisioned... killing me in the corn field? Had my death only been some wish or delusion on the part of the alien? I was obviously still alive... and in a bed somewhere... in alien custody, right?

Then I realized I was awake, truly awake, and this had all been just a dream.

( dream symbol analysis and thoughts )