task of the year

22.02.2012

Nuke myself... and as many bastard zombies as possible. (DEILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID



I haven't been remembering my dreams as much recently. It could be due to focusing more on university and taking less naps. However, today I was exhausted after class, and hit my bed like free willy not clearing the wall. I was asleep in under five minutes.

I had a short, strange dream about walking the queen of England through a busy city centre and helping her onto a submarine which was docked in a canal. I woke up after the dream, but didn't move or open my eyes. Instead I "looked around" with my eyes, just to see what would pop up. A table solidified in front of me. I was sitting at it. A few seconds more and it became clear that I was in a booth at an american-style diner. I drummed my knuckles on the table and looked around. I was sitting beside the window, and it was pitch black outside. The only light came from small oil lamps scattered around the diner. The diner itself was bare and run-down. I remembered that part of the task of the year was to survive the Trinity Test of the first nuclear bomb, and it struck me that the diner could be part of a purpose-built "nuke town"- built cheap and designed to be blown up. In thinking this, I made it so.

A man approached my table from the right. He appeared to be a sheriff, and looked almost exactly like the sheriff from the start of Kill Bill. He said something to me in his southern-american drawl, adjusted his belt, and walked out of the diner into the dark. I can't remember what he said, but I inferred from it that a nuclear test was about to take place, and I should make myself scarce. Standing up from the booth, I noticed a huge, bright red metal cylinder in front of the till. It was about a metre and a half in diameter, and went from the floor all the way up through the ceiling. I assumed the first nuclear bomb must be inside at the top, waiting to be dropped.

With this in mind, I went behind the counter and into the kitchen, where I found a ladder and trapdoor leading to the roof. The wind on the roof was incredible. It roared past me, and I could see the changing course of the streams of air all around the building. It was very dark in the streets below, but the occasional light was on outside buildings. In the gloom I noticed strange dark figures running back and forth. They were jagged-looking, like they were crudely-cast shadows. A little curious, I turned to the top of the bomb container. There were still two army grunts working frantically on a complicated control panel. Their sense of urgency was compounded by the howling of the wind, and every so often they would make reference to "zombies". I wondered then, whether this nuclear test could have an alterior motive- the eradication of a population of zombies. As most people know, I am a firm supporter of zombie rights. Namely, the right to a swift and comically violent death. To attract as many of these shadowy zombies into the kill zone as possible, I ran to all four sides of the roof, shouting like a maniac. Dark shapes in the street below darted through patches of light towards the diner. They were quick and waif-like. Some even started hopping up the side of the buildings nearby. I looked over my shoulder at the army guys and motioned for them to hurry it along. I turned my back on them and saw a dark figure peering up over the edge of the roof. He jumped up, and everything froze.

The wind stopped howling and everything fell silent at once. Within a split second, a white-hot, orange light expanded from behind me. It was hot, and covered everything in my field of view in an instant. All I could hear was a high-pitched whine, and I could feel the blast burning. I roared as loud and long as I could -which I noted felt a lot longer than I could have done on a normal lungful of air- and the roar became part of the noise of the explosion. By the time the roar was finished, I had lost touch with any kind of physical body. My point-of-view had zoomed out beyond the town, which I could now see was on a narrow penninsula. The explosion obliterated it entirely.

In what seemed like only a few seconds later, I zoomed back in and found myself in a body again. I was deep underground, beneath where the town had been. I had a pickaxe in my hand, and was listlessly tapping on some loose rock. From there, the dream became a bit like Minecraft, -which I have tragically never played- and I lost lucidity.

27.02.2011

Shark Hunt (DEILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was waking up from an unstable dream. I was almost completely awake, but didn't move. I ignored all input from my body (which was too warm) and concentrated on whatever I could visualise. I found a beach came easily. It was a beach I used to spend a lot of time at as a kid. It occurred to me that this could be a good opportunity to do the Jaws part of the task of the year- kill the shark. But first I had to struggle back into a dream. I imagined that I was barefoot. That way I could feel the sand on my feet, and could dig in with each step- giving great sensory input with which to fool my brain into a dream.

I got to the huge concrete pier at the end of the shore and climbed onto it. I paid close attention to how hard the concrete felt, and jumped around on it for a few seconds to anchor myself. The dream wasn't quite solidified yet, so I was able to force a boat to appear in the water beside the pier. More anchoring techniques. The boat was roughly the same size as the Orca, but was in slightly better condition. As I got close to it, I saw that it was captained by none other than Samuel L. Jackson. His first mate was one of my lecturers, Prof. O'Hare. I put the presence of SLJ down to having seen a particular .GIF which I'll link here if possible, but I couldn't figure out why O'Hare was here.



I stepped on board and the boat rocked dangerously. I sat down in a small tin bathtub which I judged to be near the centre of the deck and waited. Samuel L. Jackson unhitched the boat from the pier and started the engine. O'Hare offered me a dry cracker from a packet he had been munching from, which I accepted. We sailed out to sea, and the sky quickly got dark. It started to rain, then became cold. Next thing I knew, SLJ was shouting something (containing "motherfucker") and backing away from the side of the boat. O'Hare shouted for me to get "on the gun", and indicated a large harpoon-turret on top of the cabin, which I was sure hadn't been there earlier. I climbed up on the roof and looked down the sight of the turret just as an enormous shark reared its ugly head above the water. It was gargantuan. The mouth alone was about three metres across, and it wasted no time in chomping down on the front of the boat. I lined up a shot and pulled the trigger. There was a whoosh noise, the sound of something being hit and a shout of "Aaaaaarrghh!" I looked up from the turret and saw that the harpoon had gone disastrously off course, and was now stuck halfway through O'Hare's upper arm!

The boat turned violently, and I was thrown off the roof of the cabin into the water. As I fell, I saw Samuel L. Jackson at the wheel, dripping with sweat, trying to get the boat to speed up. It sped off, and the shark began to follow. I grabbed its fin as it passed. Strangely, the shark was oblivious to me, an easy meal, clinging on quite close to the side of its mouth.

Some frantic music started to play as the shark persued the boat at high speed. I looked around under the water and was amazed. We were in an area I knew. It was a coastal town, but it was now completely submerged. We were swimming around shops and houses I knew well. I tried to mess with the shark, and tugged its fin. This sent it off-course dramatically, and several times I was able to steer it directly into buildings and archways. This chase (with me as shark-saboteur) went on for a while, then the music stopped. I worried, thinking this might signal the end of the dream, and I hadn't yet killed the shark! I let go of its fin and rose quickly to the surface. I held out my arms and telekinetically brought the shark with me- pulling on the dorsal fin. When we rose above the water into the air, I threw my arms wide apart and the shark exploded into a thick red mist. I looked around and heard a buzzer. It was my alarm, waking me up in time for a driving lesson.

Or so I thought. I woke up, but my body barely worked. It was like all energy had been drained from my muscles. The feeling was familiar from older dreams, so I checked my hand. But my vision was so blurry in general that I could barely see it!

03.02.2011

Try Jaws (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was exhausted and had the oportunity for a WILD, so I went for it. I lay on my back, head to one side, with my hands on my front. Before I drifted off I reminded myself of the task of the year. The part I wanted to try was to kill the shark from Jaws.

There were a few strange noises as I lay there. Bangs and whispers that were far too close to have been real. Sleep paralysis came on from my legs. It spread out in a wave over my whole body and receeded a few times before it stuck. My head felt like it leant back an inch or so, my right leg lifted of its own accord. I feared I might wake up because my left arm slid off my body. However I suspected it was just a very real hallucination. It was. The hand was still on my stomach when I woke up again later.

I "woke up" at the top of a street near my house. It was night, but the roads were busy. Looking downhill, I could see Belfast Lough. The first thing to do, I reasoned, would be to find a boat with which to go shark hunting. I jumped into the air and flew down the street hoping to find one. I did. It was attached to the towbar of a big 4x4. Unsure how to get the boat to the water (about a mile away), I got on board to look around. I tried to levitate it, or push it in the right direction, but nothing was working. Looking back now, I think I know what went wrong. I was too lucid, and being too ambitious. I knew too well that nothing around me was real, which caused it to take on a blurred quality. From there, my stability and control went down the shitter. I should've taken it more slowly and done some stabilising techniques.

The dream went on for much longer, punctuated by several false awakenings. I tried to get to water or find a boat many times, but always ended up having the same problem.

When I was exasperated for the last time, I very deliberately looked right and left a few times to try and replicate LaBerge's signalling from within the dream experiment. Although, I had to way to measure to see if it worked.

30.01.2011

Taxi Driver (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was having a lucid dream during which I went to a party in a hotel, hosted by some mob boss. I gradually lost lucidity as I downed shots at the bar, and soon found myself face down in a urinal in the men's toilet. I tried to get up but couldn't. I was far too drunk. A huge, suited, mafia bodyguard-type was standing in the doorway of the toilet looking at me with disgust. I was afraid he was going to beat me up or something, so I said,
"Dude, can you help me up here, I fell." This instantly reminded me of many previous WILD attemps. Usually there's some kind of threatening figure standing over me as I'm paralysed in bed. To make the most of the situation, I nod at my arm and ask the apparition to help me out of bed. This has the dual benefit of getting me moving and reducing my percieved fear of the thing through identification. The mafia guy helped me up with one tug of his foot-thick arm. I was still swaying dangerously. Before he let me go, he pulled me close to whisper in my ear.
"Remember you're dreaming, kid," he said. Immediately I stood still and looked down at my right hand. It had six definable fingers, and was blurry. I threw my arms in the air and whooped. It reverberated around the inside of the tiled bathroom.

I knew it was late morning in the real world, and I doubted that I had much dreaming time left. I opened a window in the bathroom and climbed out into the car park. A limosine pulled up, and out stepped Ricky Gervais. I wondered why he would be doing such a small gig, but remembered it was for the mob- they probably paid handsomely. As I ran towards the wall at the edge of the parking lot (with a few people running with my of whose identities I am no longer sure), I tried to remember one of the easier parts of the task of the year. I knew it was all to do with famous movies, and a lot of them would require a serious scene change. I was nowhere near water (Jaws), or space (Star wars), or Greece (300). I jumped the wall and found myself on a busy road.
"Aha!," I thought. "There's one part to get myself hit by the taxi from Taxi Driver!" Turns out there isn't, and I don't know where on earth I got that from! So I ran out onto the road and jumped in front of the first yellow taxi I saw. I shut my eyes for the impact, which wasn't painful. However I was thrown through the air, and bounced off several other cars moving at high speed. When I opened my eyes again, I was on the roof of the original taxi, somehow. It was still driving along merrily. I swung through the driver-side window, and booted the driver out the passenger side. Then I put my boot down and took off. After a few minutes, it became clear that I wasn't the only one driving the car. I looked to my right, and there was DeNiro at a steering wheel and pedals on the other side! I put this down to living in the UK, where the driver's seat is on the right side of the car, not the left, where I was sitting now.

14.01.2011

Killing Freddy Kruger (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I think going to bed so wasted killed any chance of dreams during the night, but when I went back to bed again in early morning they were more vivid than ever.

I woke up in my friend Hugh's house. It was a dark, late winter afternoon, and there was loads of melting snow outside. I went to the window and stretched. Something felt a bit off, perhaps it was the snow looking like clouds, or the fact that I'd woken up there at all. I checked my hand just in case. The hand itself looked solid enough, but on closer inspection it had exactly seven fingers.

I was surprised to say the least. I genuinely thought I'd been awake. My thoughts were as clear as they ever are when I'm awake, and the dream itself was totally stable. I opened the window and climbed out onto the ledge, before dropping to the ground. I landed on some crunchy wet snow. Rather than waste my time, I decided to do part of the task of the year. I really wanted to take on the Persian army with the 300 Spartans, but I didn't feel up to the necessary change in setting. Instead, I turned to face the house and thought about Freddy Krueger. I'd had a couple of dreams about him before, but never lucid enough to take him on. I turned back around.



Freddy was charging at me across a field with his claws raised above his head. The most bizzare thing was that a sizable crowd of young children were running with him. I wasn't expecting that, and for a few seconds I just stared at the scene, half laughing. As he got closer to me, I helf up my hand and tried to telekinetically grab him, but it didn't work. Now he was close, he actually looked a bit scary. Nobody could look good in that skin. He swung his finger-blades down on me, cutting the side of my face. But at the same time I grabbed his arm and locked it in position under mine. I wrestled off the glove and kicked Freddy away. While he was temporarily incapacitated I put the glove on. It fitted my hand exactly. It ended up just feeeling like I had blades for fingers, they were very sturdy. Freddy got up and ran at me again, making a "screamy/gurgling" noise. I thrust my bladed fingers up through his chest, which ended up going through the base of his skull. A quick tug, and his head came off. It was stuck to the blades, so I shook the whole glove off.

This led into another dream I now barely remember, in which I tried to save a town from an alien infestation.

08.01.2011

Going to see the Pyramids (DEILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Somewhere between dreams this morning, I remembered the task of the year I'd been neglecting. Unfortunately I didn't remember that it was in fact next year, and there were new tasks I hadn't seen yet. Oh well, it was fun anyway!

After my previous dream about Cheryl Cole, I woke up into some kind of recording studio. I was lying on a comfy chair, in a circle with about ten other people. One of them was my friend Kay from work. We were all hooked up to one of those dream-sharing devices from Inception. Kay said something, but I ignored him, thinking about my last dream and how awesome it was. I tried to do a DEILD back into it, and a little loading icon appeared at the bottom of my vision. I paused, thinking of something more worthwhile I could be doing, like the task of the year on Dreamviews. I strained to remember what they were, and recalled that Egypt was definitely involved. Then it came to me. There were two related to Egypt- finding out how the pyramids were built, and watching the Exodus. I snapped awake back into the studio and stood up. After telling Kay of my plan, I went outside to the street. It was a huge crossroads, filled with people and the occasional car. I kneeled down in a patch of gravel and sketched out a (very) rough drawing of two pyramids and the Nile using my fingers. I looked at it very intently, visualising it in front of me. I lost touch with the crossroads, but felt Kay coming up behind me.
"Good luck," he said calmly.

By now I had a cartoon-ish picture of Egypt in my mind, and was trying to insert myself. I realised it would be hard to insert myself at the P.O.V. I had drawn, because I usually needed some sort of tactile sensation to pull myself into a scenario. The P.O.V. was in the sky. My vision zoomed down to the ground, on a sand dune. There was a tall wire fence along the top of it, separating me from Egypt. I wondered what it could be doing there, but used it anyway. I moved towards the fence and grasped it tightly. I got my whole body involved in climbing up and over the fence, and my surroundings got a lot clearer. When I was on the ground on the other side, I jumped up and down for a few seconds to make sure there was no chance I was going to lose touch with the dream from poor integration.



I found myself in a quarry. It was a huge hole in the ground, but nothing was happening. It was eerily quiet. I took off and flew downhill in the direction I assumed the pyramids were. I ended up following a wooden train track, which I thought must be for the transport of big blocks of stone for building work. After clearing one last tall sand dune, I saw an Egyptian city. There was one small pyramid, with a much larger one in the early stages of construction. I landed on a ridge overlooking the scene. Around me were a number of large stone blocks, each about the size of a car. It looked like they had been abandoned here. I went over for a closer look and laid my hands on one. It immediately turned a bright bronze-like colour, and looked a lot like metal. Many of the nearby blocks did the same. I flew off the edge of the ridge, and down into the city. I landed at the edge of the unfinished pyramid building site. Nothing seemed to be going on, again. I was curious for an explanation. There were people staring down at me from balconies and rooftops. I shouted,
"Pharaoh!" A man on the roof of a large building raised his arm. I jumped and flew over to him. He was very old, and wearing a ceremonial headress/crown thing. He didn't seem to want to communicate with me at all anymore. Another man on a different rooftop gestured for me to come over. I ran and hopped to his building. I had a long conversation with this man, who turned out to be the Pharaoh's son. He explained that production had halted on the pyramids, and that his father wouldn't allow him to go to university until it had resumed. I remember he said,
"What does he know anyway, he's basically mummified already!" I laughed. But down to business.
"How are the pyramids made?" I asked.
"Come and see," said the prince, and showed me to the edge of the rooftop. There were lights coming down from the sky through the clouds. Spotlights, which seemed to be scanning the blocks in the area. On finally stopped to scan a block I had turned into bronze earlier. The block then transformed into a bronze golem, which immediately got to work stacking blocks on the base of the unfinished pyramid. A voice boomed down from the sky,
"He has repaired our equipment. Construction can recommence." The people on rooftops and balconies all around me cheered. The prince turned to me and asked if I could fix a few more blocks before I left. I agreed, and jumped down to the building site. I placed my hands on a huge pile of blocks. They all turned bronze and transformed into golems. After a few seconds, the whole area was buzzing. The golems were lifting, pushing and hammering the blocks of the new pyramid into place.

I stood back, satisfied. I thought then of waking up into the previous dream level and going back into the gameshow for another round with Cheryl Cole, but I wanted to wake up and remember this dream accurately. I turned and waved. The Pharaoh and prince waved back. I closed my eyes and roughly three seconds later, I woke up.

12.12.2010

This Couldn't Be a Dream (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had lived out a whole day chronologically. Been to the shops to get food, met my friends for a beer in the student's union building and gone shopping for clothes. Being in a dream was pretty far from my thoughts.

It was in the clothes shop in the evening that I began to get frustrated with the inconsistencies I was encountering. I was walking around shelves with my brother Michael. He was playing a game on his phone and not really paying attention to any of the clothes. I spotted a t-shirt I liked the look of on one of the higher shelves. It was a bit out of reach, so I went to look for something to stand on, or a shop assistant who could help. It was getting a bit dark outside, and nobody had switched on the lights in the shop, so I took it upon myself and flicked a switch beside the door. The lights flickered on. With no shop assistants in sight, I went back to the t-shirt. The shelf it was on had become a magazine rack. I screwed up my face into a "WTF" expression and turned around to find Michael where I had left him.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Wha? I dunno," he replied without looking up. I shook my head and tried to find FHM among the magazines. I thought I caught a glimpse of it, but when I did a double-take it was gone. Suddenly I wasn't sure whether I was indoors or outoors. The light had diminished, and there seemed to be woodland at the opposite end of the shop. It was getting a bit too weird. I said to my brother,
"This is exactly the sort of situation I would suspect is a dream, what the hell's going on?" After looking around a bit more I thought it couldn't hurt to reality-check. Six fingers. "Nooo way," I thought. I couldn't believe I'd been wandering around all day, going about my business and getting things done- and none of it was real. I double checked. There were now an indeterminate number of fingers on my hand.

I asked Michael how many fingers he saw on my hand, but he refused to give a decent answer. We exited the shop through the automatic door at the front, and found ourselves in an underground tube station. There was a train on the platform, which I jumped and glided over to the far side. I paused then, to try and remember some of the tasks of the year. The only one I could recall at the time was the end of the world- which I'd already done. I'm not sure what happened next, I may have woken up.

06.05.2010

Very Lifelike (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I can't remember the start of this one, so I'm just going to assume it was a DILD.

I was standing in a residential street at night. It was raining very heavily. Thinking about it, I might have figured out I was dreaming from being "floaty". As in, gravity wasn't working how it should, and I was gliding a bit with every step. It's always a fun way to catch a dreamsign- "Hey I'm flying a bit! Oh, dream!" Anyway, I thought about doing the task of the year, and I really thought it was within my reach this time. It was a really stable dream, and I reckoned it would last a good while. I wondered about how to time travel. There were no DeLoreans in sight, and I couldn't be bothered asking random people if I could use their time machine again.



I ended up having a false awakening- in the very same street! I caught it, and started talking to a girl who sat down on the pavement beside me. I don't know what she said, but I remember thinking that her reactions and conversationalism were very lifelike -in a way which made me slightly doubt I was dreaming. How could a construct of my own mind seem to have independent thought? I kept trying to predict what she was going to say next, or figure out what part of me her words came from, but I couldn't make any sense of it.

It's a bit strange to me that people talking on their own fascinated me so much when they have always done it in my non-lucids and I've never wondered about it. I suppose being lucid opened my eyes to the curious nature of it.

13.03.2010

Sprinting (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

It's weird typing this now. A minute ago I was sprinting continuously for about ten minutes. I can't actually believe I managed to WILD this morning. Conditions were less than perfect. I'd already had a good night's sleep, my blinds were open (letting in bright light), and my bedroom door was open (letting in a loud conversation and piano playing).

One thing going my way though was extreme drowsiness. For the third time in my life, I got trapped in sleep paralysis as I woke up. I wrote about my last waking episode in my very first post on Dreamviews (it was what led me here). I knew where I was, and the position I was lying in, and basic things like light levels in the room. I could also hear a conversation going on downstairs. -I've written down the main points of this conversation and I'll go check if what I heard was real or imagined after I type this up. It just felt like I couldn't force myself to emerge to full wakefulness, like forced laziness is the only way I can describe it. Mentally, I was trying to move, but all my limbs seemed to have lost their juice. Anyway, having missed out on lucidity in countless dreams last night, I thought I might as well use it to my advantage.

On my first attempt, I could gradually see the inside of a car. I was in the back seat, and it was driving along a road I know well. The funny thing was, I could still feel my body, and I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed. I opened my eyes a bit and could see slightly clearer, but I'm almost sure my real eyes opened too- they just weren't sending any input to my brain.

I woke up and the sleep paralysis broke. I rolled over and tried again. Quite quickly this time, I had a false awakening in my own bed. I can't be sure if I was still hearing conversations from downstairs, or my mind just invented a likely conversation to go along with the "awakening". I went downstairs and left through the front door as my mum was letting out whatever visitors were in the house. I'd love to know if their actual departure and my dream line up. I started running down the street, doing long floating jumps over bushes, people and cars. I thought about the task of the year, but the only one I could remember off the top of my head was "Give fire to Early Man". I didn't think I could hold the dream together long enough to do anything that complex, so I decided instead to just do some random exploration. When I got to the bottom of my street I turned right onto the larger road. But instead of the road I expected, I was surprised to find myself back on my own street- about a mile back along the road.
"Oh well," I said. My mouth still wasn't cooperating fully. I took off sprinting. The exertion really helped anchor me in the dream and made things around me clearer. I saw some unidentifiable roadkill at the side of the road, and then a Tesco supermarket which definitely isn't there in real life. It was in the position of an old industrial site. I was still sprinting, and actually taking deep breaths. I'm not sure what the point of that was, maybe to make the scenario more realistic, or to keep my heart rate down or something.



I got stuck behind a crowd of people outside Tesco. During that time, I decided to get out my phone. In my dream, I was wearing my dressing gown (which I guess I assumed I was wearing in real life, but wasn't), but I reached beneath it expecting to find my jeans- which I did. I felt inside the pocket, and pulled something out. I actually laughed out loud at the result. It looked like some kid had crudely nailed together several pieces of wood to make a giant replica of a phone. There were no buttons or a screen. However, there was a hole in the middle of it. I poked about inside and thought I felt something. I whacked the side of the big phone, and my ancient Nokia 3310 dropped out. It still had the green cover I put on it the last time I had it (in like 2002). When I tried to use it I woke up.

These are the subjects of the conversations I heard. I'll check if they were real and report back.
green lights
fireplace
Scott Joplin (composer)
orange

EDIT: Turns out they were talking about Scott Joplin, but the others were my imagination. Thinking about it, there were definitely some images associated with the others, I should have guessed they were made up.

05.03.2010

Supernatural Investigation and Searching for a Time Machine (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Lately, I've been watching a lot of the TV show "Supernatural" online. This dream was structured not unlike an episode! I might not have been lucid from the very start of this dream, but I can't remember that far back, or the transition into the dream.

I had teamed up with Sam and Dean Winchester, and we were conducting an investigation in a small rural town. Whatever/whoever we were hunting was holed up in a petrol station, and we were on the roof- ready to enter through a vent and kick some ass. It was a cloudy, drizzly day, and as I silently opened a hatch, I was glad to be getting inside. I lowered myself carefully into the vent with both hands, and positioned myself on my knees, hunched over and gun ready. As soon as my full weight was settled, the vent collapsed around me and fell into the shop. I ended up sprawled on my back on top of a counter, surrounded by men with guns. Luckily Sam and Dean immediately opened fire from above, distracting the guys who would otherwise have plugged me. I did a backwards roll off the counter and took shelter. I had lost my gun in the fall. Bullets whizzed past my head in all directions, and the blasting of gunfire so close to me was disorienting. Finally, the shooting stopped and I poked my head up.

Sam and Dean were now downstairs with me, pointing their guns at a pile of rubble next to a freezer, where the last guy was hiding. I got up and picked up a sawnoff shotgun from the floor.
"Come on out!" I said. The guy nervously stood up with his hands in the air. He then treated us to a whole monologue about not measuring up, and finished by telling us he was going to kill himself by lethal injection. He produced from his pocket an injector-gun, which had about seven capsules attached to the side. He shot himself up three times before I wrestled the injector off him. After a quick examination, I somehow inferred that it was "Hulk Juice". One dose was apparently enough to turn you into The Hulk! I could see the dude was already bulking up and turning green, and by the time he reached nine feet tall, I decided on the only possible form of defense. I shot the remaining four doses directly into my chest. I reasoned that, having taken more, I would be a stronger Hulk. Right away I felt the serum reacting with my body. My chest felt tight, but I could see that it was in fact bulking up at an alarming rate. It felt like I was made of rocks. The feeling quickly spread to my arms and legs, all the way to my fingertips- which ended up the size of baseball bats. I realised I had an enormous armspan, like four metres- and I could stretch even farther. I punched the slightly smaller Hulk in the top of the head to begin the fight. I can't remember much about what happened next, we broke through the wall of the petrol station and I remember chasing him up a narrow street.



The next section of the dream played out like another investigation. This time I was on my own in suburbia, investigating a case of a dog which was actually a human in disguise. There was one particualar chihuahua which I reckoned looked particularly human-like, so I kept an eye on it. I was sitting at a kitchen table talking to a homeowner who was making me tea, staring at the dog. It noticed me and ran out the back door.
"Hold that thought," I said to the woman and ran after it. It ran along the street and jumped over a very noticable pothole, filled with water. I made a point to stand right in it. The water disappeared to reveal a bottomless hole. I deduced that the dog was leading people to their deaths by making them fall in. I became lucid after doing a hand reality-check out of the blue. I was extremely aware, and even remembered the task of the year on Dreamviews. The remaining six parts would all be much easier if I had access to a time machine. It's really hard for me to teleport or change scene on my own, so I reasoned that letting the dream do the work might work better for me.

I took a running jump and glided up onto the roof terrace of the first house I saw. The residents were having a barbecue with some neighbours. I landed among them, and was tempted to just sit down and enjoy some ribs (they smelt fantastic), but I'd been neglecting the tasks lately. I greeted the guy I assumed to be the host, and asked him straight out,
"Have you got a working time machine I could use?" I asked him in a serious manner, in a way that showed I expected it to be a realistic request. He said,
"No, sorry, I don't. But my nextdoor neighbour does, why don't you go ask him?" I was pleased with this response. I hopped off the roof and into next door's back garden, where I saw the neighbour in question. He was an old man tending his garden. I asked about the time machine, and he seemed very pleased that it was going to get some use. He explained that his family rarely made use of it. He led me to the garden shed, against the back fence.
"Go ahead, knock yourself out," he said, gesturing at the door. I opened the door and stepped inside. It was very small, and what little floor space it had was taken up by a thick green armchair, sitting at a desk. Below the desk was an enormous old desktop computer. It had a few purple lights on it, and was connected to a dusty monitor on top of the desk. I pressed the only button I could find, the main "power" button on the computer. It booted up instantly and started to work.
"Where or when do you wanna go?" the man asked from behind.
"Back," I said. "I want to go back 65 million years."
"Say whaaat??"
"Don't ask," I chuckled.
"Okay, input here," said the old man, handing me a number pad. I pressed the "minus" button at the top, then six, five, zero zero zero, zero zero zero, enter.
"Good luck!" he shouted, and shut the door. The screen came to life. It displayed a weird animation I can only describe as several coloured balls rolling through a black tunnel. It looked a bit like guitar hero in reverse. I concentrated intently on the visualization, but sadly I woke up!

10.02.2010

Attempted Astronaut (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

My very first evening-WILD! The only reason it worked (I reckon) was because I was sleep-deprived from the night before.

I had a false awakening in a graveyard, weirdly. I stood up and checked my hand to find several extra fingers. I nodded to myself, satisfied. There was a tall, black metal fence surrounding the graveyard, and I wanted to get outside of it. I could see a city with skyscrapers in the distance, and fancied exploring. I took a running jump and glided up over the fence, landing on top of a bus shelter outside. I stopped and thought for a second, and remembered the task of the year. The city seemed like the kind of place I might be able to hitch a ride to space from, with the view to beating Neill Armstrong down the ladder to be first on the moon. The city centre was definately uphill from my position, so I flew at waist-height up the steepest street I could find, going in the right direction. I flew through a massive crowd of people, all heading the same way. I noticed my youngest brother among the crowd. He seemed to be getting overwhelmed by the masses, so I picked him up and put him on my back. The crowd was getting thicker and thicker as I came close to the building at the top of the street, and I eventually found them all trying to cram into an elevator at the base of a tower. I looked at it, and thought it looked like it could be the kind of elevator that lifts astronauts up to the door of their rocket, so I decided to get on it.
"Stand back!" I shouted. "Astronauts only!" Smirking to myself, I wondered if this ridiculous authoritative strategy would work.

I never had a chance to find out, as I had a false awakening. I honestly thought it was for real, until I looked around. Turns out, I was lying on a sofa, under a blanket, cuddling a girl I hadn't seen in years. I tried to get up to see where I was, but she wrapped her arms around me very tightly and I couldn't escape.

I struggled for a bit, and had another couple of false awakenings in exactly the same situation. It got a bit scary. The room was dark, but there was a spooky red glow. I was panicking a little, recognising a familiar feeling of dread which sometimes sneaks into my LDs- only the ones where I have lots of FAs. I knew how the dance usually went, I'd get countless more FA's, then wake up for real, wasting my lucidity. I pondered for a moment, and decided this would be a tragic waste of time. So I stopped and tried to look at the situation objectively. I wouldn't be able to wake myself up easily, so I might as well make the most of being lucid in my dream. By the time I had gone through this thought process, I no longer had the foreboding feeling, and could start to take back some control. I punched the girl holding me in the top of the head and she let me go.

The room was still pretty dark, but I could see that there were some people I knew sitting around a table in what looked like a kitchen area. I walked over and instinctively flicked a lightswitch, which turned on a light above the table. I could now see that I was in what some people call a "sun room". A cross between a conservatory and a living room. No sooner had I taken in my surroundings, than a girl walked over to me with no top on. She asked me to give her a ball that was sitting on the window sill. I cunningly threw it in the air so she would have to jump to catch it. Then I became involved in a conversation about a video someone had on their phone. It looked like it could have been one of the challenges on Takeshi's Castle. I feared that I was starting to lose lucidity, so I did the hand RC. I really wanted to count how many fingers I had, so I spread them out as far as possible. Somehow, this circumvented sleep paralysis, and I moved my actual fingers. Since I had fallen asleep with my head on top of my hand, I felt it and woke up.

10.02.2010

End of The World (MILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was thinking about the task of the year before I went to sleep, particularly the "End of the World" part. I wondered how I could logistically get to the future and have the world end. This caused my first (uninentional) MILD. I couldn't think of anything lying in bed, but luckily my subconscious did the work for me.
The earliest part of the dream I remember is watching the planets revolving around the sun. They were nowhere near to scale- all the planets were far too big and far too close to the sun, but what the hell. I looked at the Earth, and out of the corner of my eye (if I had eyes, I can't recall any sort of body), saw a huge chunk of rock drifting closer and closer. It wasn't a conventional comet- what it reminded me of was a shot of a Star Destroyer from the start of one of the older Star Wars movies. It was that kind of flat-ish shape and very long. Far larger than the Earth. I became very alarmed.
"Didn't the people on Earth know about this? How could they miss it? Ohhhhh..." I became lucid when I realised what was about to happen and remembered the task. From my vantage point, I watched with a kind of morbid interest crossed with dread. To my surprise, instead of obliterating my beloved planet, the Star Destroyer-shaped comet glanced off the Earth's atmosphere. It hit the atmosphere at an angle of about 10 degrees, and just "bounced off", now floating in the direction of the sun. A strange side-effect of the near miss was to knock the Earth out of its normal orbit. The "bounce" effect had some sort of recoil. It didn't make an enormous difference to the Earth's orbit, it was now just circling a bit closer to the sun.

I vaugely wondered,
"If this is the end of the world, what's going on?" I glanced over at the sun just in time to see it envelop the comet. I felt that something awful was about to happen, and right then, a solar flare started to form. Its arc covered the entire face of the sun on the side the comet had just entered, and built in intensity until it formed a circular shape larger than the sun itself. Then it was released. The wave of orange light flew directly at the Earth in its new orbit. As it hit, my POV zoomed in on Australia, of all places. I could see Sydney's distincive opera house, and the sea beyond. The wall of orange light blasted into the sea in sections. One blast would hit the sea, instantly vaporize all the water, leaving a gaping chasm surrounded by water. These chasms were only visible for a split second before the surrounding water filled them in. On land, it was a similar story. Buildings, roads and uninhabited areas were obliterated, entirely burning off the outer layer of the Earth's crust, bit by bit.



For the rest of the dream, I lost lucidity and became one of the few people left alive on a deserted island East of Australia.

08.02.2010

Gladiatores Pugnant! (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

This one was actually made up of the initial WILD, then countless DEILDs, but for the sake of neatness I'll keep them all in the same entry.

I was sleepy this morning, so I tried to WILD. I lay on my back for, I'd say, 25 minutes before switching to my right side. It was only about 5 more minutes after that before I got into a dream.

I had a FA in my old house. It was a sunny day, and the curtains were open in my bedroom. I went straight to the window, opened it, and climbed out. Standing on the roof, I looked up and down the street, just taking everything in. It really amazes me sometimes. I was still wearing my dressing gown, so I took it off, then floated down to my front garden. I got distracted by taking a detour round the side of the house, finding it strange that the side gate was open. I floated back onto the roof, and sat down with my back against the chimney. I could feel the rough bricks against my back very clearly. After some pondering, I remembered the task of the year. I had been thinking about it before I got to SP. With a gladiator fight in mind, I thought about a way to change scene to Ancient Rome. I jumped off the roof and landed in the back garden. A big red plastic bucket (about 3 feet in diameter) I used to own was sitting in the long grass near the back fence. I approached it, trying to convince myself it was one of the pipes from Super Mario which would drop me out in the sky above the Colloseum. There was water in the bucket. Without hesitation I dunked my head in, and the rest of my body followed. It was (as always) a bit surprising to find I could breathe underwater. On the bottom of the bucket were some stones. I focused on one which was vaugely Colosseum-shaped lol and tried to imagine that it was the Colosseum- I was just far above it. I tried to think of all the other stones as buildings and the spaces between them as roads. I wasn't getting anywhere, so I shut my eyes and did a somersault, hoping that when I opened my eyes, I would be falling towards the Colosseum. As I did this, I shouted,
"Rome!" Unfortunately, I woke myself up.

I wasn't quite awake, but was back in my body seeing nothing but blackness and feeling SP. This has come up a few times before- I like to think of it as the "loading program" for DEILD's, like from The Matrix.

I had a view of a scene for a second, like I was looking through a peephole. I concentrated on the sand on the floor of the Colosseum (think Gladiator), rubbed my hands in it, and soon felt integrated enough to stand up. I was in the Colosseum all right, but it was night time, and the floor area was slightly smaller than I expected. There were people standing all around me, looking up at the crowd. They were all carrying weapons of some kind, but not much armour. The most anyone had was a helmet.



Suddenly, a klaxon sounded. It was a really horrific noise, lasting two seconds, coming from some unearthly instrument. At its sound, the gladiators in the arena drew their weapons and charged at each other. The crowd roared. I reached down by my sides and pulled out two scimitars.
"Haah!" I laughed. I was still in my dressing gown. I ran forward into the nearest bunch of fighters, slashing wildly. I don't even know if I got anybody, but after a minute the survivors ran off.

I paused to indulge in some victorious sword-twirling, but dropped one. I sheepishly threw the other one down beside it, hoping the crowd would think it was deliberate.

I had a FA then, in my bedroom. My TV was switched on, which is unusual becuase it has no aerial input, and the DVD player doesn't work. I sat up in bed, too aware of this oddity to be fooled into non-lucidity. I wanted to examine what was on carefully, to determine whether or not I was hearing the TV from downstairs or something. The first thing was an ad for PKR. The ad's audio claimed that it was PokerStars, but I recognised the sims-like graphics of PKR. It was one of those ads which makes online-poker look really cool. One female player put in a big raise, and the grey-haired dude to her left raised his eyebrow suspiciously before confidently calling her bluff to win the hand. Then Glee came on, a show I've never really been interested in. One of the main characters was sleeping on a pile of bedclothes on the floor. Her friend came in and woke her up. What convinced me that I was not in fact hearing the TV from downstairs, was that she called the main main character "Glee". I knew this to be bullshit, since the name "Glee" comes from "Glee Club"- which I understand to be a nerdy persuit in High Shool. (Thanks to Weird Al)



I half-woke up again, and visualised being back in front of the TV, drumming on the stand. I ended up a few feet back from the TV, with an awesome redhead sitting on my lap. She showed me a good time.

After another DEILD, I found myself lounging on my bed talking to some friends. Well, I tried to talk but couldn't make any noise without (I reckoned) waking myself up. The curtains were closed, giving the room an orangey glow. I skipped forward and wound up in the back seat of a car with three of my friends. I tried to get a certain hot girl I know to appear beside me, but I only managed to spawn an ugly 15 yr old girl. :S I don't think I was 100% lucid here, because I got a "false memory" implanted somehow. Apparently I had just been camping with this group of friends.

I woke up yet again, and my whole body felt seriously heavy, like it was made of stone. I think I'm getting better at holding on to dreams. To get back in again, I "felt" myself typing random words, which just formed up in my subconsious. Some of them were complete jibberish, and they certainly didn't make any sense as a sentence. However I distinctly remember typing the word "Personality".

In another DEILD, I heard a very distinctive, high-pitched whine. It seemed to be coming from my brain itself, and felt like a vibration. Hard to describe. I focused on it until it became almost deafening, and made me extremely dizzy. I found myself in the living room, and decided to go visit my friend Lucy from down the street. I ran and headbutt-dived through the front window as I did once before, and headed out of the driveway. I accidentally knocked my shin against the wall on the way out which actually hurt a bit!

I was eventually woken up by someone knocking the door downstairs. I heard it from within the dream, which made me focus too much on the waking world. When I awoke, I found a massive pool of drool under my face.