non-lucid

Just what the title says. No, I haven't already quit. I just had to take some MORE time off from lucid dreaming unexpectedly thanks to getting sick. But now that I'm 99% better, I can start again with documenting my average dreams and work towards making them lucid once again.

I don't recall my dreams from last night, but I do recall an interesting dream from the night before, so I'll summarize it now.

The dream began as a false awakening. I got out of bed and was about to begin my daily routine when I decided to go back to sleep for a few more minutes. So that's just what I did; I got back in bed and lay my head down and I was out.

Now I was in a dream within a dream (notice the darker text indicating a deeper level?). I found myself standing on the edge of a vast canyon and exploring the surrounding area. Something didn't feel right, but I couldn't tell what. After about a half hour of looking around and finding nothing interesting, I decided to lie down and go to sleep.

Now in layer 3 of the dream, I found myself at a friend's dorm at the college he goes to...only the actual layout of the place was nothing like the real-world college. The dream explained it away as remodeling, and I never caught on that it was a dream. My friend was asking me about dreams, particularly lucid ones, and if it would be possible to share dreams.

"Sure it's possible, I've done it before." I said. "We could do it right now in fact, if I can manage a WILD."

"Well, want to give it a try?" He asked.

I agreed to try, so we lay down and went to sleep.

I was now in layer 4 of the dream, aware that I was dreaming, and in a white void. All around me all I saw was white. I couldn't move anywhere or speak, and when I tried, it simply woke me up into the previous layer of the dream.

"Did you do it?" My friend asked.

"Yeah, but I couldn't stay in for some reason."

In another moment, I woke up from that dream and into the layer before it. I was only at this one a split second before I shot up into the air as the dream faded out into the first layer, and I sat up in my bed.

"That was a crazy dream!" I said to myself as I climbed out of bed.

Then I woke up for real, and was totally disoriented from all the waking up

Ok, so I just woke up, and I think I finally discovered the perfect time for me to do a WBTB. Before, I was doing them at 5:20, because it had worked a couple times and gotten me great lucids, but the problem was, I often would just remain awake in my bed at that point rather than fall back asleep. It was just too late in the morning. So last night, I tried going to bed an hour earlier and getting up for WBTB at 4:00. Same amount of sleep beforehand, but it was still so early that I would fall back asleep easily.

Before I get around to those dreams, though, I want to mention something that happened at the beginning of the night. Now, when I first began to lucid dream, I would always see this eye staring at me when I'd close my eyes. I'm not sure when that stopped, but I just realized as I was going to bed that I hadn't seen it in a long while. So I closed my eyes and began to look for it. It didn't take long for it to appear. But what was weird this time was that it didn't stay just an eye forever. Pretty soon, it took on a 3D feel to it, and an entire face appeared around it.

"I am your dream guide. You have been looking for me."

Then the eyelashes on the first eye I'd seen began to grow longer and longer until they became almost plant-like vines extending out and encompassing me. Then the DG said:

"Embrace eternity!"

And all went black.

Then at 4:00 I woke up, went to the bathroom, and, as I said, fell back asleep easily. A bit too easily, perhaps. I had only started my mental preparation to get me ready to RC and recognize when I was dreaming when I fell asleep!

Dream 1: I was in a very rainy world. It looked as if it had been raining for quite some time, since there were floods everywhere. The only reason my house wasn't flooded was because I was living with several DC's in a house that was high up on a platform, just off to the side of an electrical tower.

Nowhere to go...pretty boring right? Well, it was, but then things started to get interesting. All of my DC friends and I were standing below the highest part of the tower where it was dry and we could see for miles, when we suddenly heard this deafening, sickening creak. It came from the structure we were standing on. And then...

*SNAP*!

*FZZT*!

We all looked in horror as to our left, a smaller tower that was connected to the main one fell down right on top of our little house! The house was not professionally made; it was just a bunch of plywood, really. The thing was totally smashed, and as if that weren't enough, the cord tied on to the top of fallen tower got enough of a tug (I guess it was caught on something under the water below) to pull it--and much of the house's remains--over the edge and out into the flood.

"That's...not good." Said one DC.

"We'll...we'll be ok." Another said, hopefully.

He spoke too soon. Another smaller tower in front of us snapped and splashed into the ocean next as well.

"We have to get out of here." I said. When they all looked at me with blank stares, I explained what I meant. "With those two towers taken down, there won't be any electrical charge running through the main power line up at the top of this station. We can ride it across to the next safe area, but we have to hurry! It won't be long before this whole place comes down, now."

We ascended for the top, I in the lead. Gathering up all my courage, I jumped, grabbed hold of the wire, and began flying through the rain on the high-speed zip-line. Then lightning flashed...

And I woke up. Even though it hadn't been lucid, the realism was simply incredible. All the rain hitting my face as I rode the zip-line, the sounds and sights of the smaller towers breaking...every detail was so accurate, and there were a LOT of details in this one, particularly with physics. So now I'm pretty confident that I've found when to lucid dream.

This knowledge in mind though, and it still being very early morning, I went back to sleep almost immediately, and the dream continued:

My DC friends and I had made our way to a kingdom which had also seen its share of damage (debris was everywhere), but at least it wasn't flooding...or raining at all, for that matter. In fact, the place was rather dry and desolate. We walked into the castle and explained our situation to the king, who was more than sympathetic.

"You may have noticed," he said, "that our own fair home has seen its last days. We've suffered many attacks from the ghouls, and I fear we must move to another location. The King of the West has agreed to take us in among his people, but we'll have no support in the transition. Join us if you wish, but be wary: it is a dangerous road that we travel."

"I don't think we have much of a choice." I said, as the unspoken leader of my little group.

Suddenly, a bit of one of the stained-glass windows that lined the border of the castle walls shattered in, as if a rock had been thrown through it. Only pure white light shone through behind it. I could hear ghoul war-cries off in the distance. Soon, other holes started to appear in the shattering windows.

"What's going on!?" I asked the king.

"The dream is collapsing!" He said. "What you see beyond is the great void. You never created anything beyond this castle!"

Something clicked, then.

"Wait, you mean all this is my dream?" I asked.

"Yes!" The king pleaded. "Only you can change it! Only you can save us from this oncoming battle!"

Empowered by this thought, I marched straight up the stairs to the balcony, where I could see out the windows clearly. Then I held up a hand and ran it across my vision, intending to fill in each window that my hand passed with the proper scenery behind it. It worked. What was left of the windows stopped breaking, and behind them, off in the distance, I could see the silhouette of the other buildings in the kingdom. They too were broken down as badly as the castle, it seemed.

"What shall we do now?" I asked the king, knowing full well what he'd say.

"We must defend ourselves from the ghouls! Quick! I have swords and armor."

Suddenly every one of us was wearing a suit of armor and holding a sword. Being lucid, the armor didn't weigh me down or make me less agile. It was mostly for looks, honestly, since I couldn't be harmed anyway. We all then ran out of the castle, swords blazing, and began attacking the ghouls as they ran up to us. There were hundreds of the miserable, scrawny, gray things, but we took them all out, and not too cleanly, either. I jumped and flipped all over the place, first using just my own sword, but later using a second sword I spontaneously created. I hacked off the heads of the creatures, often multiple in a single swing. Before long, the battle was over.

Unfortunately, something about that battle had caused my mind to lose sight of the fact that it was a dream, and I returned to being non-lucid.

The king had been wounded in the battle, so everyone decided it was high time to leave for this other kingdom that was going to take in all the people. We put the king on a sort of bed that could be carried, and then started out on our trek.

I can't remember how, but somewhere along the way I got separated from the rest of the people, and as I tried to find my own way back to the path we'd been following, I came across Gollum, and asked him to lead me where I needed to go (even though I wasn't lucid at this point, something in me still knew I couldn't get hurt, so I wasn't afraid of Gollum attacking me or anything).

"This way!" Gollum said, leading me into another broken down castle. "We must follow the path of the Gol-Keep, yes we must."

"The Gol-Keep?" I asked.

"Yes! Yes! The Gol-Keep! This way!"

False memory told me the Gol-Keep had a reputation of being the most evil place in existence. Sounded scary...which sounded fun. Gollum lead me into a tunnel that had been dug through the old castle. It wasn't very scary, though. I was disappointed.

"This isn't so scary after all." I said. "Isn't there something better?"

"This tunnel avoids the worst." Explained Gollum. "We don't wants to go through the other tunnel!"

"Take me there."

He did, but then let me go in alone. This other tunnel was totally dark, wet, and the home of a thousand creepy voices all around me. I could hear movement and occasionally feel a hand brush up against me, but I just kept walking, enjoying my invincibility in the midst of something that usually would have freaked me out.

I made it through the tunnel quickly and came out right behind the rest of the people as they entered the second kingdom. The king had died en route, so they were looking for a new leader to represent them to the King of the West. When they discovered that I had survived going through the Gol-Keep, and without any fear, I was chosen.

When we met before the King of the West, however, he was less convinced about me.

"We must have a duel to prove your worthiness." He said. "If you succeed, I will grant you continued rulership over these people beneath my rule alone, and a place to stay in my kingdom. If you fail to best me, however, then I fear I must turn you all away."

"I'm ready." I said.

The king fetched his sword and gave me choice of my own weapon. I settled on four swords, two in each hand, and then the sparring began. We went back and forth for quite some time, but no one really gained on the other. Eventually, I flipped two of the swords around and held them backhanded, so I was essentially wielding two double-bladed swords at once. This was indeed too much for the king, and I quickly knocked his sword from his hand.

I woke up right about then.

Had bad recall from last night. I barely remember anything. The only thing that sticks in my mind is a fragment that began with me being flung through the air in some futuristic city. But this wasn't a clean, coldly-efficient kind of place. It was a big, cyber-scum heap...and by 'scum' I'm describing both the environment and the people there. As I continued through the air I passed by multiple Minority Report-esque advertisements, all of them sensual, furthering the feeling of the place being full of low-lives.

I can't remember what happened to me once I landed, but I know that at a certain point in the dream, it would restart at this point when I was flung through the city. Then it would all happen the same up to that one point, and restart again. It did this for a dozen times or more before I finally woke up.

Something about that dream messed with my mind today, too. In spite of all my reality checks and awareness boosters I still feel kind of like I'm still in that dream...like at any moment, everything could restart to an earlier point in time again. My sense of time in general has been distorted somewhat...ten minutes will go by in what seems like an instant, I have difficulty remembering what day of the week it is, etc.

I probably just didn't sleep that great last night. Maybe I can take a nap this afternoon and have another lucid dream and set everything right.

As expected, my re-establishment of a RC habit has not fully set in yet...officially my goal is just to have a single RC-induced lucid dream by this Saturday, which will be one full week of nights since my return to lucid dreaming, although I am quite open to the idea of having more LDs prior to that date

Well, anyway, for the sake of improving recall and looking for more dream signs, here's what I remember from last night (it would seem I'm getting pretty consistent with remembering 3 dreams, eh?)

Dream 1 - False memory and what I saw around me both said the same thing: I had done an absolutely awful job cleaning up at work the night before. The place was a mess...particularly the bathroom. All of the toilets had to be taped off due to...misuse, shall I say...or overuse...hmm. But anyway I was just waiting to really hear it from my boss, when he stepped inside and said, "You know what, great job on the cleanup last night. I never thought I'd say this, but I have absolutely no complaints; I can't think of anything that needs done better next time."

I thought he was joking at first, but it became evident within moments that he was serious. "Sweet! I got off the hook!" I thought before the dream faded

Dream 2 - I was at the computer, trying to type something, and I noticed my keyboard wasn't working. (this occasionally happens IRL...I have a keyboard that isn't fully Windows 7 compatible, so I sometimes have to unplug it and plug it back in to make it work) I was about to re-plug the keyboard, when I thought about my old one. It was just as basic as you could get, but it worked. But I really needed the newer one for video editing, so I wasn't sure what to do. Then this little mental argument grew to a huge scale in my head to where I was losing focus in the dream and the keyboard in front of me flashed between the new and the old...the dream grew more unstable...then it ended.

Dream 3 - It was Christmas now, and someone got me an XBox 360 and a racing game to go along with it. At first it seemed really cool; the menus had great graphics and I was able to totally customize my car and all sorts of things. But then I actually got into the game and the FPS was really bad, not to mention the controller basically had no bearing on what happened in the game. Pushing buttons did things, but not always the same thing every time, and never what I wanted them to. Eventually I got frustrated and stopped, then took the XBox upstairs, opened it up, added some hardware (which conveniently appeared in my hand on the spot) and then tried it again. This time the controls were responsive, and the framerate was better, even though it still was a bit jerky.

I woke up wanting a PS3.

Not kidding. I know it was just a dream, but something in me really dislikes XBox now. Weird how that works...

So I've been heavily reality checking for a full day now, and I don't intend to stop yet. I've got a 'totem' (go see Inception if you don't know what it is) that I use to remind me to reality check and to provide another physical check for me as well, and I feel confident that it will work for getting me back into DILDs. But of course, in order for this to get into my dreams, it has to be a habit of mine, and habits take time to form, so last night I didn't go lucid, but I did notice myself observing my environment a bit more carefully in general, which is a start.

Dream 1: I was crouched in the mud with a full camo suit on. The air around me was dusty and the sky was a dim gray. No plant life grew anywhere. Everything about the place had 'Death' written all over it. After a short while, Scions began to approach with a couple of husks just a few steps behind. There was a gun in my hand, so I pulled the trigger. Turned out the weapon was fairly weak, but it had a very high rate of fire, so although it did little damage to the oncoming zombies, it was effective to tear apart their weak, dead flesh until they simply couldn't function anymore.

Suddenly I noticed two others, one to my left and one to my right, who were also shooting down the zombies. Rather than go lucid, my mind explained all this away by telling me that I was playing a video game, and these two others had just joined in. I wasn't fully convinced, and for sure, there was just something that didn't feel right about this explanation, but I didn't really have time to stop and think about it, so in the end I never caught wind of what was really going on.

Dream 2: This time I was engaging in something much more normal: a Skype conversation. And I was actually sitting at a computer rather than physically acting it out, too. I was only in a text chat, but I was talking and listening like it was an audio chat. Eventually, in a dream-daze, I wandered away from the computer and still I could talk even though I wasn't wearing a headset or anything like that. I never went lucid, but I did start to think that that was a bit odd, not to mention the person I was talking to was acting nothing like they do IRL.

Dream 3: Now I was at some social gathering, and a quick glance at my watch told me it was 7:00pm. I should have caught on to the fact that in the dream, one of the watch buttons that broke IRL was still there, but of course I didn't . Everyone that I know IRL was at the party, including those who I don't know personally, but whose faces I see regularly and would recognize. And then of course there were a few people there that were just complete fabrications of my mind.

Although the remembered details of what I did there are few, I do know that there were tons of other things throughout the night that I should have recognized in this one. For example, I quite clearly recall walking into a school building, but I walked out of a barn later on that night. Everyone talked about how good the food was, but I don't recall ever eating anything. And then the best part was when I tried to leave a couple hours later. False memory told me I had parked the car in one place, but it was simply not there (and of course false memory also told me I had driven there, even though I never did). There were about five parking lots to look through, though, so rather than reality check I just started looking through the different lots.

As I walked from one lot to another, I looked down at my watch and saw it was now 9:41pm. I had tried to leave at 9, so I'd been looking for my car for 41 minutes. I thought maybe I should just give someone a call and take a ride home, but I knew that wouldn't solve my problem, so I just kept on looking. However, I got stopped by a guy in a wheelchair that wanted to introduce himself. I didn't want to be rude, so I talked with him a couple minutes (during which time I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back, he was no longer crippled, and the wheelchair was nowhere in sight, not to mention it was suddenly daytime when it was night only a few moments ago). This guy was one of those complete fabrications of my mind, but the visual realism was amazing; easily as good as my memories of real people, if not better.

When I had finished talking to this guy I walked off to continue to look for my car, but instead I woke up.

Interesting to me how that last dream ended. Since this guy was my subconscious, maybe he began crippled because I was in SP, but then as I began to wake up, the SP was removed, and light began to register in my eyes, causing those other particular effects in the dream world.

Hopefully I'll pick up on these things better as time goes on. It is my goal to keep on doing these RC's every day and have a lucid dream by this day next week. Wish me luck!

Well, you might have noticed I haven't posted in this DJ for about a month...this is because I've been kind of taking a hiatus from attempting to lucid dream. My success rates were ridiculously low, and I had the feeling it was because I had so many different methods in my head that I couldn't stick with just one, and I probably wasn't doing any of them correctly anyway out of a lack of motivation.

Basically, I'd lost my appreciation for lucid dreams because all of mine were a bunch of very hard-earned crap. I read back through some of the earlier entries of my DJ, when the concept of LDing was new to me, and I was kind of inspired by my enthusiasm from back then, so I figured I should just start over.

I had no real 'return date', just whenever felt right...and I guess that would be now, since I had a lucid dream after relearning MILD and focusing only on that method for a bit. However, it didn't quite succeed the first time, so I'll put down that non-lucid dream as well, for the sake of recall and finding more dream signs.

Dream 1: I was at work. It was a pretty normal day, except for a lot of little behavioral abnormalities in all my coworkers. The differences weren't big enough to make me realize I was dreaming, but they did get me thinking.

Then I went to stock some music that had just come in, and I noticed a poster that had a rather big difference: the band name didn't seem familiar at all. I recognized the album cover, but the name just wasn't right...although...I couldn't really...remember what the right name was anyway.

Suddenly this fact became like taking a blow to the head. I stumbled back, my vision suddenly fuzzy and dizzy. After a bit my confusion grew to the point where I couldn't remember that I was confused, and so all this ceased and I came back to.

Once my vision had cleared, I still couldn't recall the proper name for the band, but this time the name I was seeing sank in. The poster read: "The Lucid Dreamers"

Next thing I know, the dream has gone to me being on a train with a bunch of other people, and eating Pizza. I was annoyed that my sense of taste was so weak. I could taste the Canadian Bacon, but everything else was very bland, like a distant sound is to an ear.

Then I woke up.

Of course technically my MILD hadn't yet worked, but it sure had gotten me a long ways. I had seen and recognized differences in multiple senses and circumstances, and my mind was obviously thinking about lucid dreaming due to the poster. It happened to be early enough in the morning for me to go back to sleep and try again, so I wasted no time. I repeated my MILD a couple more times and was out once again.

Dream 2: The dream began with me as a soldier in a futuristic city that strongly resembled what you see in the movie Minority Report. I was part of a squad that was taking down a group of Koreans that had invaded the place. (no offense if you're reading this and you're Korean, of course, I just play Crysis from time to time) Suddenly, however, I realized something...I was in a sci-fi city, firing a weapon, and wearing a suit of armor. All of this was cited in my MILD as dream signs to watch out for.

I smiled to myself then, looked through the scope on my weapon, and picked off all of the remaining enemies as if I were an aimbot. Precision and accuracy was 100% all the way. I threw down my weapon then and flew up into the air to get a good look at the place. The thought occurred to me that I should reality check, but I decided against it.

"I already know that I'm dreaming, and usually if I nose-plug RC when I'm like this it wakes me up." I told myself as I glided over the vast expanse of the world.

Below me, everywhere I looked I saw cars speeding along multi-level highways, rotating 90 degrees and then plunging straight down to reach other levels when need be. All of the buildings they rushed in between were shiny and steel; cold, clean, and sophisticated.

It was also all fading away.

"No, this dream can NOT end now!"

I rubbed my hands together furiously, but things were still fading out. So I tried spinning then, still rubbing my hands together. The city only spun about me as it finally faded into blackness.

"Rats...I failed." I thought.

But after a few more moments, I still hadn't woken up. I looked around me again, and now I saw a grid of white dots everywhere in the blackness, increasing in clarity every second. I rubbed my hands together again, and one by one each of the white dots became a building, every one more detailed and clear than before. It wasn't long until the whole city was back, and I was ready to head out on an adventure.

Unfortunately, this is where my memory begins to fail me, thanks to the unpleasant way the dream ended. I just know that I did go on many adventures and they were thrilling and satisfying to say the least. The dream tried to fade out multiple times, but I was always able to bring it back without problem. Somewhere along the way, that girl from multiple previous dreams was back again and we went on a lot of the adventures together. It was great.

But then the dream transitioned, and although I was still lucid, I decided I was done for the night because those adventures had ended so well and I didn't want to mess up such a great ending by doing something else, so I allowed myself to become non-lucid again and just watch the last few minutes of the dream.

What a mistake that was!

I was still in the same city, but I walked home, and everything there was still normal, further convincing me I was not dreaming any more. Then I got a phone call from that girl I mentioned, and she said she had to see me. I told her to come on over, but it turned out she was already just outside my door .

"What is it?" I asked as I let her in.

"I just had my first lucid dream!" She exclaimed. "It was amazing...I know you've told me about them before, but I didn't realize how incredible it really is! I even wrote it down in a dream journal just like you said you do. Here, look!"

She handed me her dream journal and I read it. It was the lucid dream I had just been through, but all from her perspective.

"I know." I said, handing the journal back. "I had this same lucid dream!"

That really blew her away. She was so excited she hugged me, and I thought I'd never let go. But...then I got another phone call. It was another friend of mine, asking if he could talk to this girl. She took the phone, but I could hear the voice on the other side saying:

"That guy is a moron! I know you care about him, but I just need to warn you. He's seriously messed up. I've got his dream journal open on my computer right now; he talks about a lot of really weird stuff and he actually believes it. I'm telling you, he says he found a Dream Room and can enter other people's dreams, and there's even these posts about using self-hypnosis for lucid dreams, or the theory that ghosts are lucid dreamers..."

I couldn't have been more annoyed. Or scared. I saw tears enter the girl's eyes as she slowly sank against the wall and slid down to sitting on the floor, and I thought she might try to run away, so I sat down as well and put my hands on her shoulders so she'd look me in the eyes.

"I can explain everything!" I said. "He's twisting the truth to make me sound crazy! I promise!"

The tears receded, but she didn't seem fully convinced, since she kept listening to this guy verbally murder every aspect of my reputation.

I woke up in a sweat and with my heart pounding...for a moment I still was afraid that that relationship was in danger, but of course I quickly realized I had woken up and all of it was not a real problem.

But aside from the unpleasant awakening, I'm quite happy with this MILD technique! I think I'll focus on it for a while longer now and see what I can do

<Click here to read Part 2>

I had the sensation of time passing, although it was an instantaneous transition from the zombie attack to what was presumably days later. My friends and I were gathered around in the apartment building to discuss what had happened. The closet door was still shut and had remained so since the zombie attack because we knew that the portal to the zombie homeworld was still open behind us. Something had to be done about that, and I also mentioned the little girl that had tried to escape them.

"We don't know how many prisoners they're keeping or why," I told everyone, "but it's up to us to get them the heck out of there. We've got to take the fight to the zombies and wipe them out once and for all."

Jane Doe looked up at me with a hint of admiration in her eye. I suddenly had the sensation that our relationship had grown over the past few days as well.

As it turned out, this would become more than just a sensation. The closet room had been converted into our battle station where we could enter and exit the battle zone at will as long as we controlled the door (which was guaranteed since the room was outfitted with other defenses now, as well). There were a few tiny rooms (just a bunk and a wall in a metal box for protection, nothing more) that we could rest in, and we did so every night to keep ourselves sharp for the next day's warfare. Even though we had proper weapons this time, it was slow going to raid the zombies since we had to filter out who was dead and who was alive, because there was no external difference that we could perceive.

Anyway, one night after about (what false memory said was) a week or so of battle, Jane and I had a little talk in one of those rooms. We'd been growing closer that whole time, and although I don't remember exactly what transpired, but we concluded that we loved each other and had to be together. So rather than sleep that night, we simply stayed inside that little room and talked or just sat in silence with our arms around each other.

But the night always has to end eventually. In the morning was another day of battle. When it was time for everyone to get up, Jane and I went out to brief everyone on the day's mission. We sat next to each other in the circle of our friends, and I moved up close and put my arm around her. The relief of being able to do that instead of refrain from it in order not to offend Jane (as would have been the case back when we were just friends) was phenomenal. I'd never felt like that before.

"Thanks." she said, as if to say 'it's nice to feel secure and have something happy for once in this bad situation.'

I briefed everyone and then we all started to head through the closet door. However, I stopped Jane before she could get through, pulled her around, and gave her a long kiss.

"I love you." I said (intended connotation: 'be careful out there')

"I will." Came the reply (intended connotation: 'I get your connotation')

And then we went out to battle. Since by now this is incredibly long, I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say we won with heavy casualties, and those who were alive were beaten and worn out. We had freed as many prisoners as we could, but some were killed in the action. However, most of all, I was just glad the fight was over. Still...there was one last problem that found its way to me right after I killed the last zombie. A baby that had been imprisoned there lay on the ground, crying. I picked it up and ran out of the portal back to the closet room just before the portal closed up, sealing us off forever from that dreaded zombie world.

Next thing I know, I'm in the streets of the steampunk city again, several areas in ruins from the zombie attack of a few days ago. My little army of friends passed by me in line as they exited the apartment, all of them dirty and bruised. I waited anxiously for Jane, as I intended to give the baby into her care, but she never came through the line. Frantically I ran to find someone in her squad.

"What about Jane? Where is she?" I asked.

"Jane?" They replied. "I...well...she...I never saw her come out. I'm sorry."

"No." I said firmly. "She's alive. Where is she?"

"I can't help you there."

Determined, I walked back to see if I could find her myself. But just as I did, down the stairs walked none other than a very beat up Jane Doe. I ran up to her, put the baby in her arms, then let her collapse against me as we kissed and I supported her. I knew people were watching, but I didn't care. This was my Jane; nothing was going to stop me from being with her now.

"We have to go now." She said after a long while and lots of 'I love you''s were exchanged between us.

"Go where?" I asked (intended connotation: 'I don't care where as long as we're together')

"No, I mean we have to wake up. We're all dreamers here, remember? Now just...wake up."

And I did wake up. I know that doesn't seem all that exciting now that it's written down, but trust me, the love in that dream was real and strong enough to make it incredible a thousand times over. The cool steampunk/sci-fi environment was just a bonus. And the intense battles were neat, too. Unfortunately, all that doesn't translate into plain text very well...oh well. This is an experience I know I shall not forget.

<Click here to read part 1>

Once inside the upstairs room with the closet, I reached over to the nearest lamp and hit the switch. The lights didn't come on. I hit the switch again. No good. So I went to a different light and tried it, but got the same result. "Oh, that means it's a dream!"

Now if you know me, you know that I like to use doors to teleport places in lucid dreams. But my lucidity was not strong even now, and so when I opened the closet door, I did nothing but shatter everything...and lose lucidity.

All the lights and lamps in the room (which were many) flickered strange colors, as if there was an electrical issue. I didn't know what was going on, so I decided to just grab the gift boxes and go. There was an eerie blue light inside the closet that was good enough for me to just barely be able to make out what was inside. However, one step further inside, and the whole place shook as if from an earthquake. I stumbled and fell, expecting to hit the back of the closet...but instead I fell right through where the back wall should have been.

When I looked up, I was flat on the ground of a vast mass of red, mars-like sand. It was dark in the sky, so I couldn't see far, but I could feel in the air that something was wrong about this place. My feelings were confirmed when a little kid ran up to me screaming for help as she apparently fled from something...just before hands reached out of the darkness, grabbed her, pulled her into the darkness, and then...instant silence.

And now all the attention was on me.

"The portal!" A rough voice shouted from the distance. "It's open! Move, now, let's GO!"

I tried to get up and run, but I ended up being carried back through the closet by the oncoming flood of bodies that rushed through it. Once they'd gotten through and changed their course, momentum flung me into the air and into the middle of the forest of lamps that stood in the closet room. Because it was dark and there were too many lamps to comfortably navigate, nobody paid attention to me, and I watched in horror as dozens of 7-foot tall, burly, rough men rushed into the room and down the hallway right to where my friends were. Many of them brandished weapons...I knew that no one would stand a chance against them.

As soon as I found my footing, I got out of the lamps and threw myself at the closet door. I managed to shut it, but in the process cut off the finger of one of the tall men as he stuck out his hand to try and stop the door from closing. I was surprised at first to see that there was no blood...it was just a skeleton and dried up, gray insides in that finger. But then it all made sense. These were the living zombies I had heard about; those who were internally dead but externally still strong as ever. Fully mindless, ruthless bodies.

Jane Doe was the first thing to come to my mind. No matter what happened, I just couldn't let the living zombies get to her. She didn't know how I felt about her, but our relationship had a lot of potential that I intended to take advantage of when the right time came, and I wasn't about to lose my chances now.

Suddenly I had knives on my belt, so I pulled them out, ran for the stairs (which was where the zombies were by now) and with expert handling began to lodge the blades into the zombies' dead bodies. It wasn't exactly one knife = one kill, but it distracted the zombies long enough for my friends to get weapons of their own.

The battle raged for what seemed like hours. It was not an easy victory, but we did eventually destroy the zombies' bodies bad enough that they really and truly died. I remember the last zombie's death in particular...I was running out of knives, when I had gotten backed into the closet room by one final zombie. I had a couple minor wounds, so I was being cautious--not to mention this thing was huge and mighty and had brass knuckles. I landed one knife into the zombie's shirtless chest, but it merely groaned in pain and kept coming my way. I threw another one and it landed right next to the first knife, but still it didn't bleed and it got close enough to land a blow that threw me back several feet.

I was out of knives. Frantically I searched my belt, but there was none. However, after a glance behind me, I saw a blade sticking out of a dead zombie's back, grabbed it, and hurled it towards the live zombie, expecting a triumphal, last-minute kill.

It didn't happen. Despite three knives in its chest, the beast was still as alive as ever, and heading my way. I really thought this was the end...

**BANG!**

A bullet shot echoed through the halls. The zombie collapsed onto its knees, two holes through it in addition to my knives. It cussed and swore in pain, but still didn't die.

"Finish him off!" I called to the one with the gun (who was on my side, obviously).

He emptied out his clip on the zombie, but it wasn't until easily two-dozen bullets later that the thing finally died. Still...it was over. We'd fought off the zombies.

<Continue to Part 3>

^(yep, I started a new, more descriptive title format )^

(Ok, I noticed that this one is going to be really freaking long, so I split it up to make things easier for you all)

Last night was one of the best dream nights I have had in a loooong time. It was one of those dreams that you wake up from and you just lie there and don't know what to say but..."woah." I mean this was a truly awesome experience. The level of detail throughout the whole dream was so intense that it was my biggest obstacle to lucidity. There were other things that should have convinced me of my dreaming state, but I'm actually rather glad I only stayed semi-lucid the whole time, with short bursts of true lucidity at key moments. I think things wouldn't have been as imaginative had I just tried to think things up on my own, but I had a good enough idea that I was dreaming to not be afraid of anything.

Anyway, enough rambling about the dream; I'll start from the beginning. Pretty much the whole thing will be teal this time, instead of trying to figure out everywhere I wasn't lucid and everywhere I was and where I was in-between.

Remember that girl from my first great WILD, and that rather romantic flying dream, not to mention some others? Well, she's back, and was in an apartment building with me and a ton of my other friends from real life when the dream began. (Actually, she's been in every dream I've had this past week, though none of them were so memorable as this one) I'm not exactly sure what we were doing all gathered together there, but it sure was a cool place to have a party. The apartment building itself was a very sci-fi-looking place; everything about the building spoke of sophisticated technology. The walls were metal and doors were automatic, etc.

However, once outside this building, the world transitioned into a very steampunk environment. In sharp contrast to the bright interior of the apartment, things trended towards darkness except for all the lights of the city, which was large, but mostly inside one big structure of glass that sheltered everyone from the continually harsh weather outside. The atmosphere of walking through that city was incredible.

At first in the dream, that's about all I did...just walk through the city and explore. There were certainly plenty of things to see and places to go. I started out a couple stories up (walkways wound all through the city) and walked down a blue-lit spiral staircase to the ground level. Along each side of this walkway were lines of businesses--major and personal and everything in between. It resembled a street, except no cars drove on it. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing a car anywhere.

As I first began my walk through the amazing city, my awe was interrupted by a merchant lady running a personal business about ten feet away from me.

"Excuse me, sir." She said. "Would you like to buy some cupcakes?"

"Hm? What?" I replied as I turned around to see where the voice came from. "Oh. No thank you."

And I proceeded onward, putting on a steampunk-ish cloak to avoid drawing more attention. The city was amazing, but darkness still was its most prominent feature, and you could either be in constant fear of it or use it to your advantage. I chose to do the latter.

The first place I stopped at and went inside was some kind of nightclub-ish restaurant. The walls were illuminated an ominous red, but other than that, the whole place was dark. I could see only silhouettes around me. I got a drink (nothing alcoholic, mind you ) but while I was sitting there listening to the techno music playing I overheard two rough-sounding men discussing rumors that some people in the city were not actually alive.

That got my attention.

As I listened, I gathered that there were zombies that were totally dead on the inside, but still animated and un-decayed externally, appearing to have life. They were also rumored to be the most dangerous creatures in existence.

"And the worst part," the man on the right concluded, "is that you never know which they are--dead or alive--until it's far too late."

I left in silence, as undetected on my way out as I had been on my way in, and returned to the apartment. Of course, when I passed the cupcake stand, the lady again spoke up.

"Excuse me sir, would you like to buy some cupcakes?"

"No."

However, no sooner had I gotten back into the apartment than my friends (and that girl I mentioned earlier, in particular, who will now be referred to as Jane Doe) asked me to go buy some supplies for the party that we were having the next day. False memory told me I remembered what they were talking about, and I agreed to go back out.

Again I passed the cupcake lady, and again she asked:

"Excuse me sir, would you like to buy some cupcakes?"

At first I was annoyed, but then I realized that would actually make my trip shorter to just buy from her--and maybe it would get her to shut up whenever she saw me next.

"Yes, actually, I would." I replied.

She showed me the flavors and toppings and all that and I made my decisions and told her what quantities I needed.

"Ok, I'll have to make a special batch for that many," she said, "but they'll be ready tomorrow morning. If I can just get the phone number of the person the party is for I'll get started on it right away."

That kind of flustered me. I wasn't sure of the phone number for several reasons. One: I didn't really know who the party was for now that I thought about it, and two: I didn't recall seeing any phones in the city or in the apartment. I had very nearly figured out it was a dream when the DC interrupted:

"Oh, I gotcha. You don't know the phone number. Well, I'll tell you what. I'll go ahead and make the cupcakes and you can get the phone number from your friend and when you pick them up tomorrow morning you can get the number to me. Sound good?"

"Oh. Yeah, that works."

"Ok, well I'll see you tomorrow morning, then!"

"Yeah. Thanks." I replied as I walked off, still slightly confused at what transpired.

I went right back to the apartment to inform everybody of the cupcake situation. I felt like I had kind of failed, coming back empty-handed like that, but nobody else thought so.

"I can go pick them up while I'm out tomorrow morning." Jane Doe told me. "That will work perfectly! Now, would you mind going upstairs and getting some gift boxes for me?"

"Sure." I replied.

<Continue to Part 2>

AUDIO-INDUCED LUCID DREAM EXPERIMENT ENTRY #6

Day #7 (NO LUCID):

~Tried a later time for the MP3 to go off in hopes that it would hit me during a clearer dream, but it wasn't late enough...I naturally awoke before the MP3 started playing, however, I fell asleep with it still running, and although I didn't go lucid, I had more control in my dream than normal.

The dream began with me on facebook, looking at a post from a friend asking if anyone would be willing to do logo design for him (a real life memory that spread into the dream). I said I could do it and asked what the logo was for. When I got the reply, said friend told me: "Oh...just BLACK MESA!"

Next thing I know, I'm in City 17, and the place is under attack. Both zombies and Metro Cops are trying to take me out, and I'm freerunning the heck out of there. I make it--barely--after leaving behind a grenade that I found on my belt to slow down my pursuers. I didn't stop, though. My brain told me to run through the 'underground railroad' that would get me to Eli, just like in the real life Half-life 2 game.

The dream basically threw me into my memories from Half-Life 2, then. I did everything on the underground railroad just like in the game, only I was actually all there, and I felt the fatigue of always running and the danger of fighting off enemies. Eventually, I made it to a half-way point; a safehouse hidden off to the side of the canal I was taking the airboat through. Only...there was nobody there to tell me where to go next. Unsure of what to do, I found my way to a bed and collapsed on it. I couldn't rest though...not with the ever-present feeling of being watched. So instead, I got beneath the bed where no one could see me and tried to go to sleep there.

I never got the chance. Within a few minutes I heard the distant radios of Metro Cops heading my way. They were giving instructions on where to search...and two of them were coming right into my room. I looked around from beneath the bed, but there was no way out. I'd just have to be silent and hope they never found me.

Their shadows were on the wall...and then, the ominous figure of one of them stood in the doorway. The wooden floor thudded dully with each step of the cop. He looked all around the room, and then turned to the bed. The cop slowly leaned over and peered beneath, staring me right in the eye...but in desperation to not be found, I convinced myself to be invisible.

"All clear."

The cop left, and I returned to visibility with a sigh of relief. As soon as the cops were gone, I got up and left to try and complete the railroad myself. But something weird happened, then. The dream went into 3D. I mean, like the red and blue 3D. And in the dream, I put on red and blue 3D glasses and I saw everything in 3D! Like, it actually popped out at me and had depth like I rarely see in dreams! And of course, since it was a dream, the colors looked correct unlike real red/blue 3D.

That's about all I remember. It was a pretty enjoyable dream, actually...I've really got to be more creative with my lucids to beat these kinds of things!

My first CAN-WILD attempt...

Alright. It's official: my sleep schedule is just too inconsistent these days to be able to keep up with LD's the way I used to. It's time to figure out new ways of going lucid that don't require attention from all my waking hours, since those have become filled with other matters. It's time...for CAN-WILD!

I'm going to be putting all of my lucid dreaming effort into this one, and documenting what I can in this DJ. Entries will be inconsistent depending on what days I work early in the mornings (which I can't use to LD) and days that I work later on in the day (which I can use to LD). So bear with me.

I tried the method using the flash-based timer found on this tutorial. I'm definitely on the right track, but no lucids yet. I just need to tweak my timer settings...but I can do that beneficially now, thanks to some things that I learned/observed over the past night.

First thing: It takes me much longer than 10 minutes to fall asleep after I've already gotten about 5 hours in. Therefore, the first timer beeped while I was still very much awake. I think I should kill off the WBTB which was used to set/start the timer and instead set the first timer to go off automatically after about 5 hours, so I don't have to get up and do anything. This way I can fall back asleep very quickly.

Second thing: The first dream I did have was very vivid and coherent, never mind it was far from realistic, and the clarity and coherence decreased with each dream that followed. I was part of a human settlement on a distant planet where aliens were trying to eradicate us. We could hear them coming...all of our houses were fragile, as we'd been forced to construct them ourselves. There was no way we'd be protected from the oncoming attack. Everyone grabbed what weapons they had and I organized as good of a defense grid as I could (I guess I was their leader or something). Then, when I went to look for my own weapon, all that was left was a sniper rifle.

"I don't know how to use this! Oh, great..."

There was no time to figure something else out, though. Just then, against the red sky, we saw the first wave of aliens flying in towards us.

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

My vision went blurry a second and I lost balance. Then a blast went off somewhere and I was drawn back into the dream. Only something was different now...I wasn't sure why, but I knew I had total control over things. So with a grin I looked through that sniper scope and began to take down aliens with perfect precision. Some where barely visible in the distance, and yet I still would hit them square in the head.

The battle was long and intense, and eventually I had to put down the sniper and switch to hand-to-hand combat, but of course I dominated all opponents who dared get close to me then. When the battle was over, and we'd only lost two people as compared to the 10,000 aliens, I was considered a war-hero.

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

This time I woke all the way up, but it was momentary. Before long, I was in another dream. But after a few minutes, the alarm went off again and I woke up. Then back into another dream. And so on this went for about 5 different dreams.

Third thing: Each of these was basically a DEILD, only I was not lucid, so there was very little coherence by the end of all this. My dreams were mixing together in odd ways which resulted in one totally bizarre mish-mash of weirdness and people and places and things to the point that even if I had gone lucid, the dream probably would have just shattered, because it was not stable as it was.

Conclusions: The alarm should go off automatically from the start, and trend towards increasing time between alarms as time goes on rather than decrease the time between alarms.

Should be interesting to see how this works out

Wow...I really don't know why that WILD didn't work. Everything was set up right, I woke up to the alarm and did a WBTB that felt like exactly the right amount of time, and then I went through the WILD just as I had when it succeeded last...only this time, rather than envelope me and pull me into the dream, all the HI and sensations and all that just faded away all of a sudden. I tried just shifting positions and then going back through the process, but that still didn't work. After an hour or so of trying I just decided to get some sleep and not worry about the dream...but it was really strange that it didn't work that time, seeing as everything was in place.

However, I do recall one normal dream from last night, and in the spirit of maintaining good recall, I'll write it here.

My brother-in-law and I were assigned to run the projectors in a theater for the re-release of Avatar. Not all was normal, though...the projectors were two trucks, and we were using computers, not film, as the source media, not to mention we were stationed close up to the screen, off to the left, rather than from the very back in our own little projector room.

About half-way through the movie, both computers froze up. We couldn't get them to do anything. My brother-in-law went to look for help from someone in the theater building, and I went to look for help by driving around outside. This actually was the majority of the dream; me just driving around, looking for help, when the traffic was absolutely insane. No one followed the road rules, and when there was construction on the road, sometimes the road would be closed and I'd offroad to go around it, only to look back and see that the road had been opened the whole time! It was the most frustrating drive ever...eventually I had to give up and head back, only I couldn't find a freaking parking spot! Someone had taken mine while I was out...and of course for the re-release of Avatar, the lot was full anyway. I ended up taking down a 'No Parking: Fire Lane' sign and parking there ()

On my way back inside, I ran into several people that I know. I don't remember what all they asked me about--just random things about real life--but I tried to answer fast and get back inside.

I got back in to discover that the computers still weren't fixed, and no one was able to help us fix it. The audience was starting to get angry, so we went at the computers ourselves this time...by opening up the hoods of the trucks and messing around with the engines.

I don't remember ever actually getting the darned things fixed, but oh well. I won't have to run any more theater projectors any time soon

Fail.

I remembered to set my WBTB alarm...but I forgot to actually turn it on...so of course I didn't wake up at the appropriate time to make a WILD attempt. Oh well...at least I was able to remember a couple dreams, and this time after I had already gotten up and things were against me remembering them at all!

Dream 1: I was in a mix of Bioshock and Mass Effect. Geth were attacking (I guess I should be giving them more validity as a dream sign if the buggers are going to keep showing up...I haven't even played Mass Effect in a while, but for some reason Geth have been everywhere lately!) and everyone in the facility was defenseless. I was being chased by one of the machines when I dove around a corner and hid behind a pile of crates. The Geth fired at me as I fled, but missed and instead took out one of the crates on the top of the pile. I covered my head as debris and the objects inside the crate came crashing down, but managed to remain silent, so the Geth moved on down the hallway without noticing my hiding place.

Once I had opened my eyes again, I saw what had fallen out of the broken crate: plasmids. I picked up the first one and saw the Electro Bolt symbol on it, then took a deep breath and injected it into my arm. It felt very realistic...and the DNA re-writing process felt weird, too. A rush of body heat, increased clarity of vision...and finally, a lot of little lightning bolts coming from my left hand. Encouraged, I also grabbed an Incinerate and stuck it in my pocket, but didn't inject it.

The Geth that had tried to kill me was still in sight down the hall a ways, so I jumped out of my hiding place and with a yell I let out a bolt of lightning right on the blasted thing. Being mechanical, the electricity instantly shorted out the Geth's hardware and made it fall to the ground, useless.

Unfortunately, I had been a bit too quick to jump out and attack. Now everyone knew where I was, and a million Geth began slowly advancing down the hallway from the opposite direction. I tried to shoot out lightning once again, but this time it only flickered faintly in my hand; I couldn't produce a real bolt. I desperately pulled out the Incinerate plasmid as I backed down the hallway one step at a time. I tried to use pyrokinesis, but I barely generated enough heat to create viscosity in the air.

"Uh oh."

I turned and ran back for the crates then as a million bullets flew at me. Somehow I managed to reach safety before any of them hit.

"Hypo, hypo, where's an EVE hypo?!" I said to myself as I searched through the other crates.

Finally I found one, stuck it in my arm, and I was able to emit a burst of flames from my hand. I jumped out from hiding and began spraying fire at every Geth I could see. The realism of the fire was awesome; the hallway and Geth were all made of metal, and they appropriately blackened or glowed orange-hot, not to mention the light simply reflected in a very accurate and detailed way.

I woke up sometime around then.

Dream 2: I'm low on time, so I'll have to keep this one short. I was basically seeing a replay of a memory from one of my filming jobs. At first things were accurate, but then the wrong music started to play in the background.

"Wait a minute, that's not right..." I thought to myself. "I didn't choose this music!"

I didn't go lucid, though, I just figured someone else had made a last-minute change. But then other things started being different than they were supposed to be, and I couldn't ignore them as easily.

"This just isn't right! What's going on here?"

Then someone tapped me on the shoulder and told me to get ready, because we would all have to leave in 18 minutes.

I started to head out and get my things together, but I kept an eye over my shoulder, wondering what was going on. Then...SMACK! I ran right into the doorframe because of my carelessness.

I woke up with my nose bleeding...probably coincidence. This isn't the Matrix, after all.

(PREPARE FOR EXTREMELY WEIRD DREAMS)

My dream recall continues to improve...what memories are there are in near-perfect detail, and I even remember more than one dream, although the second one was very short and came late in the morning.

Dream 1: I was at a gathering of some sort in a large room. Even though it was fairly crowded, it didn't take me long to notice the huge canisters against one of the walls. I walked closer to them, and saw that they were filled with a green, transparent liquid, and a man was sitting Indian-style in the midst of it. He was skinny and totally hairless, plus his skin had taken on a sickly, pale green tone from being in the liquid so long. A tube ran from the back of his head to the bottom of the canister, where a bunch of machinery was.

"What is this?" I muttered to myself.

The man in the liquid opened his eyes and replied:

"I'm being grown into a pickle."

I didn't believe him at first. But there was another such canister next to this one, and the man inside it chimed in:

"It's true."

I ran to find someone who knew what was going on with the men in the canisters. The first person that came to mind was the guy that owned the place, so I talked to him first.

"Excuse me," I began, "do you know what's going on with the men in the canisters back there?"

"They're being grown into pickles, what else?" He replied, as if this were common knowledge. After a moment, he realized I still didn't understand. "You mean...you don't know how pickles are grown? No one ever told you?"

"Told me what?"

He started to walk over to the canisters as he spoke:

"That all the other stories about how pickles are grown are just that--stories. Lies designed to cover up the truth that pickles are grown from humans in canisters like these. The machinery at the base runs the whole thing by connecting to the person inside through the tube at the back. The liquid is what causes the real transformation, though. The machines simply speed things up and make sure it all goes well. The process takes nearly fifty years to complete."

I was shocked.

"Why would people give up their lives for this?" I asked.

"They believe it is a better form of existence." Came the simple reply.

"How the heck is that a better form of existence? That must stink to have to sit down for fifty years straight."

We had reached the canisters by now, and one of the men inside heard me say that, and I guess he agreed.

"You're right!" He exclaimed. "Oh, to get to run again! I've been in here for 25 years...I can't take it any longer! Quick! Get me out!"

The owner of the place protested.

"You can't quit now!"

I didn't listen. I grabbed a nearby crowbar and smashed the canister open. All the liquid poured out, which fried the machine and freed the man inside. He looked more alien than human, but he was alive, and not a pickle, which was good enough for him.

"This can't go on." I told the owner.

I left the building and marched straight to a political gathering. I pushed the speaker aside like he was nothing and took the podium for myself.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to inform you of a conspiracy."

As I spoke, the dream left first-person and was spectating fields of humans being grown into pickles. All stages of the transformation were visible; the ones that were nearly pickle-ized looked quite creepy.

"It turns out that we have things backwards. Previously, in life as we once knew it, pickles were harvested, and humans were grown. However, I have seen the truth with my own eyes, and it is not that way. The truth is, that pickles are grown, and humans are being harvested--yes, humans are being harvested as pickles through a transformation chamber that is neither right nor pleasant. I would inform you..."

I was knocked out by the cops, then.

When I came back to, there was green transparent liquid all around me. I could feel a tube attached to the back of my head. When I reached out, I could feel glass only a couple feet away from me. And outside, I could see the owner of that building I began in. My skin was pale. My arms were woefully skinny. I knew exactly what they had put me in. I tried to break out, but couldn't...

Then I woke up. It probably would have been a kind of creepy dream if the thing people were being turned into wasn't pickles

Dream 2: There was a celebration going on in China that had achieved world-wide attention. It was a celebration of McDonald's anniversary, and it was completely led and organized by a 10-year old girl. I wasn't physically present, but I was seeing an interview with the kid on Discovery Channel. She explained to the news guy how she had organized everything and who was doing what and how it was possible, and then showed him the floats of the parade, the most prominent of which was a play on the chinese dragon where a whole bunch of people stand beneath it and walk around with it over their heads. Rather than a long dragon, it was a float that looked like a chain of hamburgers.

Weird, right? Pickles as a dream sign, I mean. Hamburgers have pickles on them, and the first dream had pickles...so that seems to be the common element with my dreams last night. No idea why.

I'm actually kind of glad I didn't go lucid last night. I probably would have done something other than go through this totally awesome dream I had. It was super vivid and realistic...I seriously felt like I was there. And honestly, I might have been just a tad bit aware that I was dreaming, due to the car thing...but I'll just tell you what happened now.

It was a pretty normal day...to begin with. I had one of my video jobs to do that day, and it required a team of people driving from place to place all day long. We had it all organized and figured out, though, so it wasn't stressful or anything; just another thing to have to do for the day.

The first three film locations were easy and went smoothly. I got all the footage I needed, and everybody did what they were supposed to and did it well. We stopped back at the hotel we were staying in for lunch and planned out the remainder of the day--still normal. But when we were about to leave again, I went to the bathroom and on my way out discovered that everyone had left without me! I gathered up all my equipment as fast as possible and tried to run after the car, but they were already way too far off to hear me call, and it was impossible to run while carrying all that stuff.

Fortunately, a friend was driving by just then and he stopped to ask if I needed a ride. I got in his car (which was unnaturally small, and which I observed without gaining full lucidity, if any) and he took me where I needed to go. However, once at this final location, things would go anything but as planned...

I caught up with my team by nightfall. They were gathered in a dark alley, all of them evidently very scared.

"What the heck was that!?" I shouted. "Why did you guys just leave me back there with all the..."

"SHHH!!!" They all replied desperately.

Then I saw what their problem was. A few feet away from me, out of the pitch blackness, a light turned on, and I heard the familiar sound of a Geth. Within moments, a million other similar lights turned on all around us, the same sound of communication echoed through the walls, and we knew we'd be dead in a few moments if we didn't get the heck out of there.

"Hey! In here!" I heard one of my team members shout.

We all turned around to see him at an elevator on the outside of one of the buildings. We got in as fast as was possible and rode it to the top floor, hoping to escape. But on our way up, we heard the chilling roar of a zombie, and soon witnessed several jumping down onto the glass roof of the elevator. Fortunately they were not too bright, and when they collided with it, they simply were thrown off from impact...but there were more where they came from.

We got to the roof and instantly looked for a door to get us inside and away from harm. We found one, but halfway there, I stopped everyone.

"No." I said. "We have to finish this!"

I clamped together the tripod legs on the camera I was carrying and tightened the camera itself so that it wouldn't budge from its position. It was a metal camera, and I figured it would make a great club.

"We can take them."

My friends got the point and hurriedly threw together some makeshift weapons. Then we waited. Before long, zombies and Geth and headcrabs and other such creatures began climbing up the side of the building and trying to attack us. With a loud war cry, I swung the camera and tripod through the air, doing a spin move, and landed the camera right on the head of a zombie. It was thrown back over the side of the building and burst into pieces when it hit the ground (it was probably an 80-story fall).

It was a huge battle. We had to stop each and every creature from climbing onto the roof, or if they made it all the way up, we had to knock them off the edge immediately. My group and I were doing well, but it was only a few of us against millions of them. Even with my camera-club (which was by far the best weapon we had) and crazy attack moves we were slowly being pushed back.

I hurled my whole body against an oncoming zombie and threw him over the edge. The effort made me stumble and land on my knees right on the edge of the building just as another zombie was reaching up to pull himself to the top. I remember his face...skin totally white and rotted from death. His hands and arms had no skin left, just a bloody mess of muscles and bones. As I sat and watched this monster approach me, I thought for sure he would grab me and throw me over the edge before I would have a chance to do anything about it. And then...

The Indiana Jones theme began to play as the man himself burst out of the door behind us and start pulling off awesome moves with his whip and gun. Shortly after that, Lara Croft, Luke Skywalker, and Jake Sully (in his Avatar) showed up, too! We had a chance now, and with my renewed hope, I grabbed the face of the zombie with my bare left hand, ignoring how disgusting it was, and then bashed it in with the butt of my tripod. The creature screamed and then fell, defeated.

After that, the fight was an easy victory. The last thing I remember is peering over the edge and looking at all the bodies in piles below...

and then I woke up. But here's a funny little sidenote: all the moves I did in the dream with the tripod I can now do IRL! Hmm...