CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #259: Flurries on the 58th Floor

I’m an operative infiltrating an office building. My enemies have seen me before and know my face, so I have to enter as stealthily as I can. I enter through some side entrance high up on a section of rooftop, and I have a vague memory of arriving by helicopter. There’s a huge “59” written on the wall -- this is the 59th floor.

I run up, but it’s a dead end that leads back out to another roof. Okay, down instead. As I arrive at the 58th floor, I hear a door open nearby and a security guard steps into view. He looks like an easygoing family man, black, mid-40s, naturally cheerful face. But I can’t let myself get found out. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I rush forward, punching him in the face and then kicking him in the chest.

He somehow bounces away down the hall and I lose track of him. I run down the hall after him, and it twists and turns confusingly as I go. This all seems so strange and I remember that I must be having a lucid dream. In preparation for this dream, I used Dreamer’s goal-chaining technique, and as I become lucid, the excitement of lucidity is followed by the sense of cold, and I remember my intent to summon snow for Dreamer. (She’s never seen snow in waking life!)

I walk through the hall, spending a little time examining my surroundings and narrating out loud that “this is a lucid dream.” Once I feel settled, I tell Dreamer that she’s here in this office building too. She doesn’t appear right away, though, so for now I focus on summoning some snow. I imagine myself smushing up snow in my hand to form a snowball, and as I do that, snow begins gently falling around me as well. The snowball is a little too small and rock-like to be fun, so I discard it.

I walk into an office enclosed by glass walls, and a group of 4 or 5 women follow closely behind me. One of them is Dreamer! She’s pushing a stroller! She looks like herself but older, maybe ten years older than she is now, and she’s wearing a purple head scarf like she came prepared for the cold.



The other women are close friends or relatives, and they’re all here on some kind of important business to do with the baby in the stroller. Amazingly, I don’t look to see who or what is inside the stroller! I say to Dreamer “You’re here!” and do a little ta-daaaa with my hands. “I’m having a lucid dream!”

She laughs like I’m joking and says no, she’s got to focus. This meeting is really important to her. I insist that this is a dream, saying something like: “I was infiltrating this place and then bam! Lucidity! I used your goal-chaining technique, just like the last lucid!”

“Ah,” she says, “like when I had the [???] series!” The other women nod and smile at the apparent memory. “We had some fun with that one!”

“Yeah!” I tell her. “I wanted to show you this!” And the snowfall begins again.

Dreamer looks up and smiles. “Is that snow?” She looks excited and torn between enjoying the snow and following through with the story behind the dream plot. She looks like she's toying with the idea of opening her mouth toward the ceiling and letting snowflakes fall onto her tongue.

I see a handful of people dressed in suits waiting at a desk for the meeting with Dreamer and her posse. I ignore the suits, focusing my energy on the snow, and hoping they’ll fade into the background. There’s a bit more quiet snowfall before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #248: Zed

I’m at the office at night, talking to my friend “Z” about the game we’re working on. Z says something about how he’s getting a special financial arrangement worked out with his “partner”. Then I realize that he’s talking about his wife, and it seems strange that he said it this way. Then I notice that Z has hair when he normally keeps his head shaved all the time, and now I become lucid.

“Hey Z, I’m dreaming right now,” I say, standing up. I make some comment to him about how now he has hair and he chuckles. I continue: “Was there anything else that you wanted to tell me before I go?”

“Yeah!” he says, and fires up a projector that’s sitting on his desk, pointing it at the wall, and beginning a presentation about video game art design.

Even though she hasn't physically appeared yet, I say to Dreamer, “Hey, this is cool! You’re finally getting to meet [Z]!” I make the motion of draping an arm over Dreamer’s shoulder, thinking this might result in a summon. It feels sort of correct for a second, but then there’s nothing. Instead I imagine that she’s standing behind me. I hear a small shuffle of feet behind me. I decide not to push my luck just yet and instead watch a little more of Z’s presentation.

Z splashes up some cool screenshot with all of these effects that use additive blending. Then the next slide is some text, but it’s too unclear to read. Z starts hitting the side of the projector, trying to fix it. “Here, let me try,” I say. I make a square shape with the thumb and forefinger or each hand and “zoom” it in and out to focus the image. Now it’s sharp but the text is something odd that keeps changing.

I look out the window and notice that dawn is starting to break. My point-of-view moves out through the window, briefly flying over another part of the city before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #187: The Hybrid

I have a false awakening in a strange bedroom that I think is some kind of condominium. Wife is here along with my two young kids E and R. I wonder whether I can go back to sleep and try to have a lucid dream but then realize that I’m having one right now.

I charge toward the window but feel someone short grab onto my arm. “Who is that?” I ask, looking down to find my 2-year-old son R clutching me. “It’s [R], Daddy. I want to go with you. Daddy, let me go with you!” For a moment I consider it, but once I think about my Task of the Year goal (turning into a fish-man and acting out The Little Mermaid), I decide no way. I’m way too nervous about bringing one of my kids’ DCs into the ocean.

R’s grip slips off of me as I phase through the window. I feel a little guilty for a moment, but I remind myself that this isn’t really him. I’m wound up in my backyard during what looks like mid-morning. I jump up into the air, imagining that there will be an ocean where my eastern neighbor’s yard ought to be. But when I get up there, it still looks like waking life.

I have some momentary flight trouble, but I psych myself up with a few phrases until things are going the way I want them to. I fly west for a bit, slowly turning southward and expecting to see water until… I see the ocean just ahead of me!

I pop up into the air and then plunge straight downward into the water, happily swimming about beneath the waves. The water’s darker than I’d like, but I try not to get too nervous or worked about this. I imagine my lower body turning into that of a fish, swim around that way for a bit, then look down to check my handiwork. It’s close, but not quite right… each leg is still there but all scaly like a fish’s body with a fin on the end.

I look away again, swim around a bit more, trying to make it all feel natural. I check again and it’s looking better, just about right, but now I’m feeling paranoid about my breathing. I feel like I can’t breathe underwater and need to surface. Panicked that something is wrong with my breathing in waking life, I push for the surface and fall into the void. I keep doing repetitive swimming motions, though, trying to hold onto the dream. After a while of this, I wonder if I’m making swimming motions in bed. This finally transitions me into...

… a false awakening where I’m lying in a large bed next to Wife. The room’s not my own, though. I recognize this as the condominium from the beginning of the dream, and realize that I’m still dreaming. I roll over to Wife’s side of the bed and start getting frisky. She murmurs sleepily but when I tell her that “this is all a dream”, she becomes more engaged. We make out for a little bit, but the dream hits the void.

After a moment, though, there’s a transition into an office environment. Wife’s still here with me so we continue making out.

Spoiler for Sexytime:

I notice one of the office workers, an attractive Hispanic woman in her late 20s, holding a stack of papers and talking to another employee. I tell the woman that she wants to join us and she responds, "Okay, good idea," and begins to undress while still sort of continuing to work. I guess my attention wanders, though, because after a moment she walks off to do some work thing, still partially undressed.

After that Wife and I enjoy some sexytime before…

… the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #156: Split

I'm somewhere hazy, talking with IR, a friend from high school. She tells me that she feels like her physical fitness is stagnating and that she's getting old. I'm preparing to disagree when I suddenly become confused and worry that this will be misunderstood and taken as a flirtation. My brain feels stuck in slow motion, and when I wonder why, I realize that I'm dreaming.

IR is gone, and now I'm walking through a darkened hallway. I step through a door into an office with two desks in it. To my left is a window offering a nighttime view of the city. A woman, professional-looking and in her late 30s, walks toward me from the opposite end of the office.

As I prepare to tell her that this is all a dream, the scene "rewinds" a few seconds, and now I'm walking through the door again, and just as before, the woman is at the opposite end of the room. I walk toward her as before, and again the scene resets, placing me back at the door.

Confusion is starting to get the best of me, so from the door I blurt to her (and to me) "I'm having a lucid dream!" She approaches and we exchange a few sentences related to a project that I'm working on, but I can't remember what was said. (I didn't write this dream down until several hours later.)

The scene starts hazing out as she's talking to me, so I move toward her and start kissing her. This seems to keep things on an even keel for a bit, but as things take a shift toward sexytime, it quits working and I wind up in the void.

I rub my hands together for a while, holding things together. My brain feels very foggy and I'm aware that I'm having real trouble thinking clearly in this dream. I just keep rubbing my hands together, hoping that the answer will come to me, but eventually I find myself aware of my physical body.

The amazing part is that when I concentrate, I realize that I can still feel the experience of my dream hands rubbing together. I start getting mixed up about which set of hands is real and which is fake. Sensing the opportunity to "roll out" of the situation and have an OBE-style lucid dream, I try to imagine myself pulling away from my body. It feels like it's working, but the dream takes one last lurch toward instability and collapses.

I was really going for the "sand" trick that I used in The Sands of the Colosseum but I never could figure out how to capitalize on it. I need to learn to be a bit more flexible and much less fearful of the dark. Given what I've learned, all of that concern about the dark is nothing but a bad habit. This was a good learning experience though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #82: Afraid of the Dark

I believe that this was a DILD, but my first memory is of being lucid in a huge, empty office space with plain white walls, harsh fluorescent lighting, and blue-gray industrial carpet. It looks like a place where there'd normally be a cubicle farm, but the floor is totally clear.

I'm happy to be lucid, but I want a new location. I want to perform the "sand trick", which involves focusing on the floor and rubbing it until I'm convinced that my hands are digging through sand. I start crawling around on the floor, find myself a spot, and start rubbing.

Nothing happens at first, so I focus harder on the thought that this is sand. Unfortunately, I'm looking right at industrial carpet and the thought won't go away. Finally a bunch of disgusting dust and dirt puffs up from the carpet and blows around, but it's not what I'm looking for. I try for a while longer but I feel myself becoming obsessed.

I get up and notice a set of doors in a far-off wall. I run over to it, place my hand on the doorknob, and imagine that the Colosseum is on the other side. I throw the doors open and instead of the Colosseum I see a darkened warehouse. I can't see in too far but I do make out a few scattered cardboard boxes.

"Too dark", I think. "Not going in there." I close the door, think about the Colosseum, and open it again. This time the boxes are gone and the room looks even darker.

I give up, close the door, and follow the wall to a closet-like cubby hole. I crawl around in here and again try to produce sand from the carpet. Even though this cubby is set off to the side, the lighting is unbearably harsh and I just produce more puffs of dust, like the carpet needs a good vacuuming. I try to close my eyes but they won't comply. It seems like this office scene is burned into my brain.

I jump to my feet and run around a bit, doing a quick dive-roll just for kicks. I round a corner and find one of my Siberian Huskies locked in a big cage. He whimpers and paws at the door. I fumble around for a latch but don't see anything.



I'm preparing to open the crate via telekenesis when Wife appears from behind me and says, "Oh here, let me take care of that!" I almost tell her that I'm having a lucid dream but I figure that she already knows. She crouches down and starts working the lock. I make the mistake of waiting around and lose lucidity.

The lock pops open and our dog comes bounding out. He runs past us and buries his face into a used-up paint can that's nearby. I look to see what he's doing and am horrified to see that he's happily chowing down on a couple of dead roaches. I'm about to tell him to stop but Wife hugs him around the neck and says, "Oh, such a good boy!!" I feel ill. Still, I decide to let it go because he's probably hungry.

Wife wanders over to a nearby window and I follow her. There are a pair of laser gun emplacements on the window sill. We each take one and she points across the dark city to a tall office building. Wooden boxes float silently out of the office building, flying off to destinations unknown. Wife explains: "Those boxes have dangerous cell phones in them that will give people cancer." We start firing our laser cannons at the evil cell phones, destroying as many boxes as we can. We get most of them but, I'm sorry to say, many get through. The dream ends...

This was easily my wildest, trippiest lucid dream of all time. A big first from this one was meeting my doppelganger. Confusion, chaos and questions of identity reigned in this LD and what little control I had amounted to very little in the end. Very different from my usual LD fare but fun nonetheless.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #21: Technicolor Thomas Jefferson

It's nighttime and I'm standing in the shadow of a deserted overpass, talking on a cellphone. I'm some sort of drug dealer or smuggler, talking to one of my scumbag smuggling associates about when and where our next deal will go down. The conversation ends, and I start walking back across a parking lot to my car, a silver Mercedes Benz.

As I'm walking, I get that familiar feeling of recognition and think, "This isn't me. I'm not a criminal. Am I just dreaming this?" I become lucid and look for the nearest piece of usable scenery. Before I can get anywhere, though, darkness begins pressing down on me and I feel the dream fading. I look at my hands but they're vague and insubstantial, with wispy ribbons of skin hanging off of them.

My vision goes completely black but I keep repeating, "I'm still dreaming" and refuse to wake up. Jumbles of random letters fall slowly from the top to the bottom of my field of vision. I reach for the letters, trying to feel them, turn them into some kind of new dream scene. Even though I can't see my hands, I finally manage to grab a letter and squeeze it. It feels like a squishy piece of felt. The letter suddenly squirts out of my hands and floats away. I flail for a new letter.

Now I'm back in bed and my hands are thrashing in front of me. Out loud, I'm saying "I'm still dreaming", although I no longer believe it. Wife rolls over and says, "What are you doing?" I look over at the alarm clock and see that the numbers are flashing at random. Still dreaming, indeed. "It's okay," I tell her. "Go back to sleep." I get out of bed and walk toward the bathroom, planning to go for the "pumpkinhead" Task of the Month using the bathroom mirror.

Before I make it to the bathroom, the image of a huge, hissing black cat is stamped across my vision. Behind this cat I still see my first-person perspective but much of it is now obscured. Then another stamped image over that, this time of a woodworking bench covered with tools. Then an old woman pushing a cart. Then another, and another, and another each new image papering over the last.

Finally, things settle onto an image of Thomas Jefferson reading in a comfortable-looking chair. He's super-saturated with color, just like the boldest Technicolor films. Think Wizard of Oz but with the saturation even more intense. I remind myself, "I'm dreaming" and a banner reading "I'M DREAMING!!!" appears over Thomas Jefferson's head. He glances up from his book, sees the banner, then stares straight at me in surprise.

Suddenly, I'm in the passenger seat of a car, heading west on a road near my office. It feels strange, so I try to remember how I got there. I remember Technicolor Thomas Jefferson and I'm immediately lucid again. I look over at the driver of the car and I realize that the driver is me. Only it's not really me but a Dream Character version of myself. I can hear my double's thoughts but I can't influence him and I see that I'm a disembodied observer with no dream body of my own.

I hear my double think, "I've got to go back to where it started. Back to where I became lucid. I have to make it happen again." My double pulls into a parking garage and we're soon wandering the halls of an office building. My double visits each office that he finds, and in every one we see friends and old coworkers. Finally, my doppelganger steps into an office shared by two female twins (IWL friends of mine) and a woman who calls herself Susan.

The twins greet my double and welcome him to their office but Susan isn't buying it. She shakes her head and says, "That isn't your friend. I don't know what that is, but your friend is there." Susan points, not at my double but at me, the spot from which I am observing with no dream body. The twins turn to look, not comprehending and I wake up.