sanity is relative

All I remember now was a black guy who I knew (in the dream, not outside of it, go fig) taking things out of a box that let you have anything you wanted. They were small, kinda normal-ish things that a person might wish for who was into electronic gadgets. The opening at the top of the box wasn't real big either, as logic was failing hard.

I looked at the box and thought, "hey, wait a minute," and reached in and pulled out none other than... Vin Diesel! It was a bit of a tight squeeze and he seemed kinda out of it. He was okay with it too though, as apparently getting pulled out of a magic box is a life-changing experience.

Then I woke up. Dammit.

I was Dominic Toretto from The Fast & The Furious universe. It was daylight, maybe heading for evening, very overcast and raining. Some Asian guy challenged me to a race. We picked a certain stretch of road that left from a freeway off-ramp and went into some smaller streets. He went first, it was supposed to be a timed run so I waited. He called in to the group of people now hanging out near my car when he was at the midway point, which he seemed to think was great progress and I knew he was slow.

When he finished I got the signal to go, and away I went. Someone else was keeping track of the time. The first corner on the offramp was insane, but I took it fast with drifting. I did a lot of drifting, and hit that area where the other guy had called in before very long at all. I knew I was way ahead, no problems at all, and then shit! Cops! I almost wondered if the other racer had gotten pissed already and called them on me.

With cops on my tail I shot through the underpass where a flare marking the race's end had been shoved aside. I wasn't about to leave the race unfinished and I'd definitely won, whatever was going on now. As the road straightened out I could see cops trying to cordon off the streets ahead. This left me with one option, a gravel parking lot I could see an entrance to on the right. I wasn't happy about being further boxed in, but it was the open choice at the moment and the lot was huge. Lots of cars. If I moved fast and the cops got overconfident... for one thing I'd be hard to find. Plus, it was suddenly the dead of night.

I'd lost my tail for a moment while pulling into the lot, but I knew the cops had a general idea of where I was. I looked for somewhere to park fairly deep in, wondering if I could get away with not being spotted indefinitely but nah... nor did I want to try this crap on foot. I found a space near a red race car whose make didn't matter to the dream for the moment. Now I could see the cars from the outside, as if from a movie camera perspective. The car Dom was in was orange and black, and I swear to Eris it looked like a cross between a Bugatti and a Prius. I have no idea what the dream actually thought it was.

As Dom bailed out of his car to go hotwire the red one, I became Chess, my original character created for the F&F universe and Dom's very gay boyfriend. I was now half-aware that this transition, as cool as it was, didn't fit the earlier plot, but already the dream was starting to accept that there had been a passenger with Dom the whole time, and that he'd won the race even with more weight in the car.

Dom had gotten the red car's doors unlocked somehow, and I hopped in the passenger side and asked him what sort of car this was, as it was unfamiliar to me. I asked if it was a Lamborghini, but that didn't quite seem right. He said, "It's a Corvette," and finished up hot-wiring the car, slamming the door and pulling the vehicle out of its spot. I was rather surprised at the answer, as the body kit seemed a far cry from a typical 'Vette. I made some comment about it having come a long way from the oldschool look. (And now that I think about it, the thing looked more like a Lamborghini crossed with a... you guessed it... Prius. I need to move somewhere where I can car-spot for real, dammit. The greater DC metro area is garbage for that.)

Now the trick was to get out of the lot without anyone recognizing Dom as the driver. I remember being worried about this momentarily, but we made it past the cops and drove off for freedom.

Then I woke up.

This dream was long and complex, involving an alien invasion of some sort at night and part of it I saw from the ground. I remember running around a building complex trying to find something, and seeing the goings-on from other's points of view, including a guy who was on a bus that crashed. He knew it wasn't safe to go outside the bus, but he did anyways and watched a strange alien form (that looked a bit like a dark red-brown werewolf without fur) go loping away along a street.

He saw another guy heading his way with a shotgun and a hunting dog, and got the distinct impression this older man was going to kill him, maybe thinking he was an alien or had been infected by something the aliens were spreading. That didn't happen though, and the hunter let the guy tag along as he went looking for something in half-looted stores. He didn't go into the stores, just kept running by them, and one of them that looked like a jewelry store he swore vehemently at because what he was looking for had been there before the attack: a detonator for a nuke. The other guy asked if stores actually kept stuff like that and the hunter said it had been on display. Meanwhile the tag-along was wondering exactly how crazy and dangerous this dude was.

Then the setting switched to the space station humankind had apparently set up in orbit around the planet. A modified version of myself was there, and that's the point of view I had for the rest of the dream (earlier had been split between the two chars and also some movie-like moments). Vin Diesel was a character there was well named Vin (how original, at least it was easy to remember). He was some kind of soldier who was also one of very few trained to do spacewalks. I had some sort of physical relationship with him but of course it wasn't supposed to come into play while we were on duty (...rats).

Something was wrong outside the space station, an air conduit had come loose (looked like a dryer hose with a sealing gasket on the end) and it affected some other major defense ability (I don't remember what... and if it had something to do with life-support, it doesn't seem like that was the only thing it affected). My commanding officer wanted one of the skinny tech guys to do it (he looked and acted like Jessie from The Fast & The Furious and I think had that name in the dream). Jessie was cleared for space walks but technically the hose/gasket issue wasn't his specialty. Vin was good at it.

I went with my orders, though, and once Jessie was out there he was having major problems and couldn't seem to do it. He was also getting flustered by the back-and-forth trade of energy beams between us and the bad guys. I asked Vin if he remembered a bunch of us back in training camp doing a mission that required this exact thing to be fixed and how long it took us to finish and how it'd made one of the girls cry, but he could do it perfectly every time. He did remember quite well, but meanwhile Jessie still wasn't getting anywhere. We were running out of time.

I walked over to Vin and told him to get out there and do it, regardless of the fact that I hadn't received that order and he knew it too. He got pissed and stormed off, angry that I hadn't let him go out in the first place. I followed him, begging him to stop and please not leave, and ended up chasing him around a short circular route through dark closets full of clothing and hallways and I couldn't catch up with him, he always stayed ahead of me.

I stopped, I was crying by now and crouched on the floor in one of the closets. I said I was sorry, that I should have ignored my orders and that I didn't want to lose him. I told him I loved him... and I don't think I'd done that before. I didn't want it to sound like a last-ditch effort to keep him from leaving completely... I meant every word. I didn't want to lose him. I hoped he'd stopped ahead of me to listen but I didn't know for sure, I was looking at the floor and wiping my eyes and wondering if it was really over and I'd lost him thanks to my bad decision. A few moments later he appeared behind me, having gone around the circuit again, and he stood there looking thoughtful and a touch wistful. He said, "Maybe I've been going about things the wrong way all this time. I always take off, make an impression..." I don't remember what else he said, but it was obvious he was going to stick around and we now had to find him his space suit.

The problem was that apparently if they weren't clean or had been worn by someone else, they got horribly dirty and smelly even in one use. If it had been Vin's from a previous run it wouldn't be quite so bad, but we couldn't seem to find any suits or even pieces of them. The area we were searching looked like an upper-class home, with several bathrooms and various other rooms. I finally found what the dream said was part of the suit, and I noticed that it looked cleaner than normal. What it was was a shirt, combat vest, and cargo pants in shades of khaki all set up nicely on a hangar held up on something on the wall. Vin grabbed it and said something like, "I'll see you on the flip side," and I knew he was heading for the showers which was apparently a necessary step in spacewalking.

Meanwhile I had to find the rest of the suit, y'know, like gloves, boots, and a helmet. This was failing miserably, as the space station still looked like an upper-class home and all I was finding in various closets were normal boots, shoes, gloves... eventually I heard Vin taping himself in preparation, post-shower, and wondered if he had any clothes on yet. Nevermind that it's really absurd to think that he was using masking tape on various parts of his body as another necessary pre-walk step. I kept looking for the suit pieces, getting frazzled at my total lack of finding them and knowing we were badly running out of time.

Then I woke up.

The entire first part of this dream was total crap and shall thus be ignored, but eventually I looked out a window in my mother's house (random dream house) and saw that a huge storm had approached, including several funnel clouds. I said something to her as she was elsewhere in the house about it, and how we were all in danger, and she said something about everybody getting to a safe spot in the house. And I was staring at this huge dark underside of the cloud and realizing how outlandish the whole thing was... and then said, "No, it's okay, this is a dream." She kept saying we needed to get safe, and I ignored her and climbed out the window.

I decided I was Riddick, and I had to find Stefan (the alternate universe 17-year-old version of Lord Recluse from City Of Villains that a friend of mine roleplays ♥ ). Stefan was out here somewhere and I had to find him. I kept calling out his name and running along the grass of a very large field that pretty much seemed to stretch to the horizon, except for maybe a forest somewhere to what felt like the west. It was a bit hazy out now, and I don't remember being worried about the weather anymore. I had too many clothes on for Riddick, technically, and I knew that was left over from the previous parts of the dream. I didn't care, I took some of it off (like a jacket) and threw it away and kept shouting and running. The problem now was that being lucid, I was too close to awake. I did wake up partly, and lost the dream, though I tried hard to get back to it or remember that I was trying to find Stefan should I enter a different dream.

I did the latter, managing to enter the next dream as Riddick properly (that's probably a first), and kept remembering what I had to do. I was now beside a house near a short cliff that led to a stream that emptied into the ocean; it was overcast. The beach wasn't one of those white-sand ones, more like... grey sand and a few scraggly plants. I kept looking for Stefan, going down a trail along the cliffside, but then I heard him call to me. He was back up the trail somewhere, up in the yard of the house? I called back, "Where are you?" and he said, "In the gazebo."

I went back up the trail and was worried I wouldn't see such a thing (as I didn't remember it being there before and I still partly knew this was a dream). But there it was, across the yard closer to the ocean. There were people in it, but as I approached I noticed it was two or three teenage girls, and the gazebo changed into some weird kind of similarly-shaped building made of metal with huge glass windows on my side, and an elevator inside. The girl closest to me was Asian and said something I don't remember anymore, and I decided the elevator was my best shot for finding Stefan.

I got in, and it seems like I knew this was a place I wasn't really allowed to go. I remember the controls only seemed to have one button (1st floor, which was where we were??). I was lost as to what to do for a moment, then a couple guys in suits with briefcases got in and used a key to start the elevator. I sorta just stood there like "yeah I'm supposed to be here, duh" and the elevator went down into the ground.

The floor I got off on opened into a cafeteria, and people were serving pizza there. I remember my real-life allergies suddenly seemed like an issue (poor Riddick ^^; ) and then I decided, what the heck, I'd eat some. I had no idea where Stefan was and I was hungry. (Dream logic was also sorta failing badly by this point.) There were other people getting a slice too, and the servers had said it was free because they'd made it and some gathering had canceled and they weren't going to waste it.

I sat down on a bench beside a wall near the food line and suddenly Stefan was there too! Right beside me. I was glad to have found him even if it didn't make much sense, and since we were right by the food, he got a slice too at my urging. I said we should eat before anything else happened as it seems like it'd been ages since we'd had any proper sort of meal. We sat together on the bench eating and I think I asked him what was going on or if he was okay.

Then I woke up.

I changed perspective a lot during this dream, between Riddick and Shane (a character I created for the Riddick universe, she's his daughter and this is quite possibly the first dream I've ever had of her and she was an adult or late teenager in this).

The dream took place in a futuristic storage facility with a lot of boxes and crates and various doorways and large rooms. I was Shane at first, following Riddick as we ran from the enemy, a whole bunch of clones who looked like Sebastian from Babylon 5 except they were wearing dark FBI / Men In Black suits (if you don't know the character, the actor would make a good Sherlock Holmes based on his looks). I had to stop to thin out the ranks. and started sniping them from as far off as I could with a gun that seemed like a mix of assault rifle and sniper rifle. This worked okay until the clones started multiplying here and there. (Sort of like Agent Smith from the Matrix sequels but without actually needing another body around to take over.)

I told Riddick to run on ahead while I covered him so he could see if there was a way out on our current path. I switched between Riddick and Shane's POV a bit as he headed through a door and along a suspended walkway over a large open area that led to darkening sky on the left and more of the complex ahead and to the right. The walkway made a T intersection ahead. Meanwhile Shane saw one of the clones throw a very bright flare past her, and hoped Riddick had his goggles on at that moment. Riddick had just slipped them back on, in fact. (I think dream logic kinda cheated.) The flare lit the area up very brightly and as Shane I decided to bail and catch up to Riddick.

I did, and I'm not sure what all happened next except that we split up again en route to an excape elevator (apparently this place was partly underground or wherever the exit was, it was up). As Shane I ran across an ally of some sort who tagged along, and as Riddick I took out an important woman character belonging to the enemy; she'd been guarding the elevator. I killed her and hid the body in shadow as Shane appeared with the other person.

Then I woke up.

And that's literally about all I remember of what was essentially one of those epic dreams I haven't had much of lately (or can't remember after waking). But anyways, at the end of the dream I was on an unrealistically large elevator with Riddick, as Shane (my OC char, Riddick's daughter). I think there was a fight, against random enemy types, and at times I was probably Riddick as well. Then Riddick said something about a plan to get back at... the company who owned the building? I think? And Malfoy (one of my AD&D chars) was there and voiced his approved of this idea.

Then I woke up (for like the 10th time that night, and the dream actually survived through several of those awakenings, but it modified every time... wish I could remember it better!).

(Shane is my original character created for a bad-fanfiction-waiting-to-happen based on the universe of the movie The Chronicles of Riddick. Shane is Richard B. Riddick's daughter and looks about 12 years old.)

I started this dream as Riddick, let loose in a large prison environment containing some sort of haphazard structure in the center of a gargantuan "room" that had a dirt floor and extremely sparse plants scattered around, almost like an enclosed biosphere, except square and surrounded by walls and a ceiling. I was closest to the central structure so I climbed to the top, killing everyone on the way, and becoming "king of the hill." More prisoners were drawn to the fracas and were going to attempt to take me out.

Then the powers that be released zombies into the grounds. As Riddick found his own way to escape, I became Shane who was busy running from zombie death. Toombs was right behind her, apparently the bounty hunter had managed to land himself a prison sentence. I ran to the nearest edge of the building (it felt like the east side) and saw a hose in the corner (south-east side). I turned it on and was quite happy to see it actually worked at all. It worked well, and I was able to fend off some zombies with the jet of water as they didn't like it for some reason.

There was a line of windows above me, and I could see that the closest one was open but not normally reachable by one person (great prison security, eh?). Toombs was asking how anything I was doing was helping either of us get out as I wrapped the end of the hose around my waist. I told him to watch me and do what I did after I got up to the window. I turned the water on real hard, and the force of the water in the hose lifted me up. I was able to guide the direction in which the hose lifted me and was soon up on the window ledge. Toombs turned the water down enough that I could throw him the hose, and then had some trouble getting the hose concept to work for himself until he realized he was heavier than I was, and needed to turn the water up higher.

Meanwhile I jumped out of the window, a little afraid I might hurt myself on the way down but at this point it was better than being eaten by zombies, or staying in prison at all. I made it okay and started running away from the prison into the semi-darkness before morning. I looked back to see Toombs reach the window's edge; he was too large to fit through the gap I'd just left through, so he just kicked the whole window out and dropped to the ground to follow me.

There was a problem with the landscape now: further east was a sheer cliff going upwards that joined with a mountain range to the northeast, to the south was an impassable ravine, and to the north and west the country was flat red clay and dust with no cover for quite some distance. It would take much too long to run anywhere and surely the prison guards would recapture us out there. But to the northeast was a cave that went into the cliffside, so I headed for that even though I wasn't happy with the lack of choices. I had a feeling this was the way Riddick had gone, but I couldn't see him anywhere and put that thought aside as there were more pressing matters to attend to.

At the entrance to the cave was a skeleton sitting in front of a campfire that was currently in full-flamey-swing. The formerly-living looked as if it had starved to death or something, and in its bony fingers it held a tea candle in a candle holder. The candle was lit (yet its owner was long dead, go figure) and now I became Toombs as Shane took the candle and ventured into the cave ahead of me. It was a poor light source but better than nothing, as I had a feeling we'd need it (I somehow knew there might be light-fearing aliens on this planet like the ones in the movie Pitch Black).

The spaces we crawled through were rather cramped, and in a larger area the ceiling was still so low that Shane had to duck. She stopped for a moment, and I warned her just in time before she moved again; I grabbed her shoulder, there was a flock of those nasty tiny creatures right over her head. She ducked further to avoid them, as somehow they hadn't noticed us (yay alien sleep?) and we entered another room barely larger than the last.

Here there were two dog-like creatures, each about the size of a large housecat. We both knew they were vicious, insane creatures who would eat anything that wasn't one of them. I became Shane again (which put me closer to the dogs), and at this point we couldn't turn back so I pressed forward, slowly, trying to exude the feeling that I belonged here, that I was actually one of the crazy doggies and everything was cool. The problem was, they'd acquired a large chunk of meat that was some poor hapless thing's former body. It was in the way, considering the two dogs were on either side of it. And on the far side was the exit from the cave, I could see daylight beyond.

One of the dogs was snoozing while the other munched half-asleep on the body. All I could really do was move into the corpse, and unfortunately the end that moved was the end the awake-dog was eating. The dog whined in sleepy annoyance and I tried to make generic "I belong here too, hello doggy family" noises. Amazingly, this worked, and I was able to get past the dogs with Toombs following right behind.

It was a massive relief to get out of the caves finally, and we found ourselves in a small, meandering canyon of the red clay stuff prevalent to the area.

Then the dream logic bailed on me and I'm not gonna get into the rest.

(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.

(From two night ago?)

I was some random Antonio Banderas character. I'd been captured by a weird group of people who would only let me go if I fought a chicken. In a small arena. Oookay. At any rate, I wasn't scared, I knew I'd kick the chicken's butt but the other people seemed to think I'd die.

I went into a dark area where they said I could prepare for the fight, but a bunch of people tried to beat me up. I remember a girl character suddenly being around who was a friend (or at least not an enemy) so I was half protecting her and half trying to hold my own in the dark versus a dozen strong men. I won in the end and went back out to find myself in the arena. (It didn't really look like a real arena but that's what it was meant to be in the dream.)

I told them to hurry up and bring on the chicken. A conveyer belt started in one corner of the arena and out came... a large wild cat?? It was sort of orange in color with very thick bristly fur. The bad guys were cheating and didn't even bother with their stupid chicken apparently.

The cat rushed forward to attack and bit me on the arm but it was sort of half-hearted, like it knew it was trained to do this but I hadn't specifically done anything to piss it off. I looked into its eyes and did my best to feel like I really loved this animal and wanted it to be my friend. I petted it and it decided I was cool, which really annoyed the bad guys. But I told them I'd won their stupid challenge and I was leaving. Preferably with the cat.

At this point I was turning into Riddick (refrence to him taming that wild alien animal in the prison on Crematoria). Dame Vako shows up and tries to convince me not to leave. Everyone else has turned into Necromongers. Apparently I'd had some sort of vaguely romantic past with her while ruling the Necromongers but as far as I was concerned, it was over.

Then I walked into my room to pack up my things and suddenly I was the real me. And my belongings were stuff I'd own (as opposed to Riddick). So I started packing and thinking I should be sure I got that big cat to leave with me... and suddenly Candy is laying curled up on the floor like she was napping there. (Candy is my real-life family's cat.) I think I decided the other big cat would be okay on it's own and I'd better take Candy with me. I was trying to figure out how I was gonna carry all my stuff (there was too much) AND the cat... without losing hold of her as I figured she'd probably try to get out of my arms and explore once we got outside... not to mention HOW I was gonna travel in the first place, or where I was going... and then the dream got really stupid so I won't bother writing the rest out and it ended shortly thereafter anyways.

Then I woke up.

( dream symbol analysis and thoughts )

It was night time and I was myself, standing in a park by some rocks that my friends were digging around in. I don't know who the people were supposed to be in the dream beyond friends or aquaintances, but we had found the location to some sort of treasure and they were digging for it. Just as some other people approached, I found what I knew was the treasure, it was a bunch of small dirty rocks and I quickly stuck them in my pockets.

The people approaching us were going to take the treasure away from me, I somehow knew this. I also knew that they had some sort of other treasure (it seems like I visualized a weird system of small metal cubes that the rocks could be put into), and that they could use their treasure to figure out some hidden message or clue in my treasure. So I started yelling at the top of my lungs that the bad guys were part of some gang (I yelled a specific name in my dream but don't remember it now). And we were in the territory of another gang and they'd be really unhappy to find out that these other people were on their turf. Mind you, the bad guys weren't really in the rival gang, I just made that up.

They were hesitating so I walked out of the park and into a parking lot, and stopped yelling as I came up to my car. It was a very sporty car, and it was either blue or green. I had a remote to unlock it and got in quickly because one of the bad guys had actually followed me that far. He was trying to get into the car with me but I sped off and left him rolling across the pavement cursing at me.

The design of the car changed from a super sporty thing to a very futuristic concept car type of thing. It was a one-seater now, and I sort of reclined in it, my right foot going into a recess on one side that had the gas pedal, and my left foot in a matching recess on the other side that had the break pedal. There was no gearshift and I have a feeling it was using some type of new technology, not a normal automatic transmission. And the car was really fast. The steering wheel was really cool, it was kind of like a slightly flattened half sphere with two smoothed out holes in each side. If you wanted to spin the steering wheel really quicky, you could use one of those holes and put your finger in it and rotate the whole wheel very quickly because there was almost no friction in the whole system. And the way you got into and out of the car was to pull down this clear rounded glass windshield thing over yourself that went down to where your feet was and attached to the back of the car behind your seat. And the way the gas and break pedals worked, you could really slide around a corner fast. And I was an excellent driver, racing along the nighttime streets.

And now I was Vin Diesel. I might have been something similar to his character in the movie XXX, but I'm not sure. Either way, one of the bad guys was managing to catch up to me in another car, even though I was able to take my interesting little vehicle onto sidewalks and stuff. I ended up driving the thing into a store, it fit through the doorway. There was a cop in the store but he didn't try to stop me, I think he knew I was a good guy (so I guess I was some sort of good guy at this point in the dream plot). As I was going out the back door of the store, the car changed into a motorcycle. And there were two back doors in the store, one set right after the other (no it didn't make a whole lot of sense), and they were supposed to open automatically but seemed to be having trouble recognizing that I wanted to go through them. I waved my arm to set off the motion detectors and was able to get out of there even though I basically had to hold the doors open so I didn't scratch the bike.

I found myself on a sideroad by the main drag and for some reason I couldn't get much speed. I realized I was almost out of gas. Conveniently, there was a gas station right near me so I pulled in. I had some sort of card that would let me get free gas forever (or for as long as I worked for whatever good-guy organization I was working for, thinking the feds). I was filling up the tank using this odd little hose thing and someone else was filling up their car. I think we talked about something, maybe the bike.

Then I woke up.


( dream symbol analysis and thoughts )