Cult

Day after day, we would have dinner with our host. The dinner was invariably excellent. Those around the table were mainly older men, greying. Our host - the master - was a quiet man, with an unremarkable face like a lump of flesh. Sometimes his part was played by a lacky. Sometimes a dog wearing human clothing. They thought we didn't notice when the master was switched out. How malleable we were! They were gaslighting us, teaching us not to notice. Day after day, we had lessons with the master. We were locked in, unable to leave this building except under one condition: proving that we had learned the master's ways by beating him in a contest if wits. I was determined to escape by other means. They caught me on my first attempt. I had snuck out a window to a neighboring apartment. My memory and/or the dream gets hazy after here.

Island Apartment

Another dream about an apartment. This one was with family, not alone. The city we were in was a multi-island city, and one without bridges! We found a really cheap and nice apartment, and on the beach, but it was on a smaller island with less transportation options and more crime. I recall trying to figure out how the commute would work, looking at options in google maps. The bus routes which were suggested terminated at the shore at various points, and ferries were not explicitly shown. It seemed I'd have a long commute to the big Island for work.

There were also some scenes about moving. We were trying to figure out exactly how close another friend was - of course they turned out to be on another island entirely.

Bad Apartment

I was in an apartment which was falling apart. The landlord was arguing with another tenant who had bluntly refused to pay rent - "I dislike to pay, prefer not to pay" while I noticed that the television antenna had fallen over. I dragged it inside to take it to the dumpster out back, realizing midway that dragging it through the apartment rather than taking it around was foolish and only served to alarm the other tenants.

In another portion of the dream, there was a community center. I don't remember exactly what happened there. I have the image of people exchanging food or clothing, my intrusion on events which had nothing to do with me, a back door and a back room.

Estate Tour

I was on a tour of someone's estate in Germany. The estate had been turned into a kind of tourist attraction. There was a train which would take you all over the estate (which was nice enough that I considered just staying in it for a while), and also games were set up. We might realistically suppose these were augmented reality games with goggles or some such, but in the dream it was just as if you were able to play video games in real life with no boundary. In a swampy area, the game had to do with catching insects which were infected with the spirit of an evil witch; this was a scavenging hunt game with no violence, intended for younger children. (The connection of the witch to the story of the estate was not made clear in the dream.) In a large building which I take to be the central estate, there was a monster-slaying game. While playing this, the view became more abstract, as if I was playing an actual video game. The interface was somewhat confusing and I accidentally went up the stairs many more floors than I intended. The monsters grew more difficult with each floor, so on the floor I ended up at, the monsters were far too high for my level and kept simply killing me. (I would respawn on the same floor.) I was quite surprised at how many floors there were, given that I thought this building used to be the living quarters of the estate. I eventually found my way back down. Someone (plausibly my brother) was playing with me and we were chasing a cat (a real cat, I think) around the place.

Riding the train around the estate, I viewed many German houses and buildings out of the window. (These may have been on the estate as well, or simply near its borders.) All the buildings were painted bright colors, often primary colors, in dazzle-paint style. I felt somewhat surprised by this, but thought that it was typical of Germany, and so was a little puzzled why I should be surprised.

There was another part of the dream which I remember less well; this included a room with a console and tube which accessed a spaceship? Maybe an alien trying to get home?

Meta-Punk'd

I've just awoken from a nap. In my dream, I had just awoken from a dream and was talking to my brother, telling him that I just had a really awesome dream, but I knew I wouldn't be able to remember it to tell him. I also talked with him about whether I had briefly spoken with him a while earlier and then gone back to sleep. I thought I had, but I was wondering if I had dreamed that as well.

So, I was extra-surprised to wake up and find out that both conversations were pure fabrication.

Alien Settlement Bookstore

We were leaving a planet after an unsuccessful settlement attempt; forced out by the harsh wildlife, which took the form of an underground tentacle that would come up and destroy things, hurt/kill people. I was worried the tentacle had already grown into the ship somehow, but not too worried.

The whole thing was more like a game than a serious settlement: I had the feeling that we were waiting for the other "team" to show up, and part of why we had to leave was because they didn't show (rather than because of the harsh wildlife). It seemed like it would only be a short trip to the next star.

There was a rummage sale going on while we picked up camp, since some people had things they didn't care to keep. I was looking through books and trying to decide on a couple to take. There was a weirdly complex price system where some items would be free. It's likely that there was no coherent version in the dream, but it was something like: buy an item with a yellow ribbon on it and you can turn in the yellow ribbon to get a free item, but only from a specific category of freebie items.

In any case, I found two graphic novels and was trying to figure out the price system (as well as thinking about how I'd need to pack my own items and shouldn't be taking too much time going through other people's discards) when I woke up.

Left Behind

My brother and I were at some kind of event, which was in an unfamiliar town. The person driving us was acting impatient, in a way which I took to be non-serious. It turned out to be totally serious: when my brother got out of the car to get something forgotten (like a cell phone or cell phone charger), he started the car and left. I thought at first he was still joking and would turn around, but when I figured out that he wouldn't, I got out of the car. I was a good distance away from the starting point already, and had to walk back through the unfamiliar city (including walking on some roadways not intended for pedestrians, because I needed to retrace the route taken by the car to avoid getting lost).

I also remember another part of the dream, which had to do with getting food in a greatly distorted version of my hometown school. (Too distorted to identify as middle school / high school / elementary school.) I think this was the event we were going to (despite the unfamiliar town). There were people there who had gone to school near when I did, but different enough that they were several grades below me and I had never heard of them while in school.

There was a detail about a kid who was universally shunned by the people in his grade while in school.