Funhouse

There was a very large multi-story building dedicated to a Halloween theme park, with many displays in different rooms on different floors. How it worked was that your group is given a particular goal to work toward, which has an alphanumeric name, like K196, indicating the floor and display number. Looking for the display sets you on a journey. Actors in the various displays will be willing to help you find your display. You can't ask the actors in other displays about the alphanumeric name, though; there are also hints about the nature of the display you're seeking in the brochure.

The person in our group was sure that the goal we had been given was either a mistake or a deliberate error, and would be impossible to find, because the way through the building we had to take was mostly abandoned and not totally safe -- no active displays and no actors, and some parts of the pathway not fully constructed. As a result, although he didn't want to totally give up himself, he kept intentionally losing group members by going too fast because they were better off starting over with a different group of people.

Every floor had a large tilted section, like an auditorium/theater with the chairs removed, which connected with other floors. This was the most elaborately decorated portion, with real animals put in and stained glass. I wish I should describe it a bit more adequately.

Anyway, once we found the right floor, which was actually the roof, there were plenty of actors around to ask. I was unsure who to ask because I didn't want to interrupt anything. One actor who wasn't going through their routine at the moment explained: "it's embarrassing; my co-workers all died" (her in-character explanation of the fact that they'd finished accruing out their story, which ended in their deaths, and were resetting things offstage). But I didn't ask her for help for some reason. Our guide was still pessimistic, but the first actor I did ask was able to point us in the right direction from minimal information, namely that a queen was involved in the display we were looking for. We were to head to the castle.

At this point I woke up.

River

A pre-teen girl was preparing to go on a camping and fishing trip with her father and crazy uncle, the mother and brother staying back at the crazy uncle's house. The crazy uncle was more or less Doc from back to the future. There was something about sleeping one night in the crazy house he lived in, but I don't remember - in any case, the girl was excited to go camping rather than spend another night in the house. They weren't bringing much food, and she realized that that's because they would catch fish for dinner, which made her more excited (but her brother teased her about it, saying she was going to be living like a cave man or hobo or something along those lines).

The truck they took was full of unusual equipment, which the uncle set up once they got to the river. There was a bridge that was out. The girl soon found that she had a strange power to manipulate the river. She could make things happen by wishing. This was due to a combination of the uncle's machine and the favor of the river spirit. She tried asking for a bridge, and a bridge appeared, but it was built below the water rather than above it, so didn't look very useful. The uncle asked for the water to go down, which she granted, but she told him it was not a good idea because pushing so much water down took a lot of energy from his machine (she seemed very aware of the energy cost of different wishes); she said the machine would explode. The uncle didn't seem to take this seriously, but he soon realized that the lower water level meant the water wasn't serving as coolant for the machine and a key component would soon overheat (the name of the part was given, but I forget).

He sent her back to the house to get a replacement part. (It was not explained how she returned by herself.) She wouldn't say anything about the situation to her mother and brother. Her brother inferred that the camping was terrible, and said that he understood that her silence meant it was a hostage situation and that he'd get her out of it (and he said it so seriously that it wasn't clear whether he was teasing). There was something I can't logically fit in about her trying to communicate something with a drawing of a figure with yellow French-fry hair. Then I woke up.

Truck

There was a long path through the wilderness from where me and my brother were staying to some really interesting town. We decided to walk all the way, which was somewhat crazy (would take all day) but doable. We got involved in an armed conflict which at first involved knights vs dinosaurs. When we were almost to our destination, we decided that it would be wise to turn back and stop at a grocery store which we had passed a little way back, to get some food. At this point the path transformed to a kind of long back-alley path through a city rather than a path through the woods. The route was a kind of "underground railroad" for the faction we had fallen in with in the conflict. It was important that we get back to the grocery store to retrieve supplies quickly, so we stopped at a safe-house along the path to retrieve bicycles. The safe-house was an artist's residence, and also a frequent host to large and wild parties, to avert suspicions about large gatherings there. The architecture makes me think it was a church renovated to turn it into a house -- large entryway with multiple double doors, to facilitate potentially large crowds coming in. We got the bikes and the host was happy to be of service to the underground militia. We retrieved supplies from the grocery store.

Due to an accident, there was a semi truck stopped in the middle of the road. For some reason it was more important to take care of the truck than the trucker, who was unconscious by the side of the road. Maybe I was taking the truck for use of the underground militia, but that was unclear; the battle was more or less forgotten by this point in the dream.

I wasn't very good at driving the truck, so I missed the turn-in for the gas station I was trying to take it to. I looped around and came to a service station specifically for trucks, which was much more expensive. Somehow this seemed like the better option anyway. The place used a truck-lifting device to raise the truck to where it could be fuelled. While I was talking with the employee there, the truck driver (still laying unconscious by the side of the road) began to wake up. I hoped that it would be obvious enough that he should come to the nearby service station. (There was no justification in the dream for why I shouldn't just go to help him.)

I think at some point I discovered that there was already an extra tank of fuel on board the truck which I could use.

It turned out that there was a famous tech startup in the top floor of the service station. There were a lot of cool people who I knew. The space was set up kind of like a university computer lab, with rows of computers on desks, but everything was exceptionally nice; antique varnished-wood tables and sort of a hipster coffee shop vibe. There was a slightly more private space in one corner where the actual work was getting done (somewhat walled-off between computers). The rest of the space was open for anyone to come and hang around.

Art Show

We (ambiguous group of people) were walking from Dad's house to Mom's, and noticed an art sale taking place in Joe's yard (out on the lawn - I was a bit worried about what would happen if it rained). There were primarily lots of copies of two different paintings. They didn't look like prints; they looked like re-paintings of the same thing. They were watercolor. I thought they looked very familiar, like Mom actually painted those a long time ago.

One painting consisted of four or five poppies, viewed from above/side (45 degree angle). The other was a garden, but painted in a geometric way; there were a lot of interlocking triangles to represent plots, in an orderly grid (looking somewhat like a quilt design).

We walked into the show. In addition to the paintings, there were vegetables on sale film Joe's garden. I was trying to figure out if the paintings were Mom's. The layout of the show was very confusing, and I never managed to get close to the paintings I recognized to examine them.

We left, briefly being very renaissance-themed in terms of clothing and surroundings; the exit was a nice brick stairway up to a university street.

At the university, we became modern again. The art show was now all a dream, and my obsession was no longer whether the paintings were Mom's, but whether the people who were with me had dreamed it too. One person readily admitted to that, but I was trying to get details com her/him (the person remained ambiguous) to confirm.

We had to go to a class on morality, which had a very strict/domineering teacher. I was too curious about the dream to pay much attention. We were supposed to bring some props yoto this lesson; I prepared a mental image in preparation for claiming that she hadn't specified that they needed to be real physical objects, but it turned out she had spares for the forgetful. The lecture was about Gods.

After the class, I continued trying to get information about the dream from this person. They started to seem uncooperative. We were now visiting Britain, and it seemed it was some kind of business trip. At an outdoor table, we had a chummy conversation with people we were visiting. I noticed a girl coming down a walkway, who was making a big show of acting as if she was controlling a tendril of fog which happened to be drifting along. I caught her eye and she continued the performance just for me - or that's what I thought.

After the meeting broke up, I went and looked for the girl, who was indeed still close by; but, another meeting attendee had found her first, and actually knew her. There were some introductions, the content of which I have forgotten.

I then tried again to get information about the dream with the paintings from the person I had been trying with before (who was now definitely female). She asked what I thought about dreams. I told her that I try to regard them shamanistically, because it's simply more fun that way; wondering if the dream means something and so on. She was offended by this and no longer had any interest in telling her part of the dream.

After this there was a portion in a very rainy, run-down place. Mom had moved my clothing from out of where I had piled it in a shower, and I was quite upset about this for some reason (even though I recognized that it would be necessary you move the things in order to take a shower). Then, I found some guy's keys in a makeshift drain (made of black flexible tube); but, it seemed a lot of keys had been dropped in there, so it would take a while to sort them out. The guy was big and muscular; I though if him as a security-guard type.

Jungle House

I was making repeated train trips somewhere, by force. The government was requiring these train trips for some reason. Every time I went, I walked to the train station with a priest. The priest and I would frequently have a conversation about Hell. The priest had a strange idea that I, as an atheist, must be OK with spending some time in Hell and would ask me about how long I think I'd be willing to spend, stuff like that.

The train station was not in a very public location -- it was in the back of some other building, like a small church maybe, which stood on a grassy corner away from the busy part of town. The station itself was underground, down a flight of stairs. When we arrived, there would always be some problems with paperwork. I would stick close to the priest, who was better at these things. I think there was also something about changing into clothes more appropriate for the train ride (maybe government-issue uniforms). The destination of the train was someplace very far, like China. After getting things sorted out, we would wait a long time for the train in a crowded room with other people.

One time, the train took much longer (or much shorter?) to arrive than usual. It turned out that the train was "infested by a Vampire", which really meant that the machinery of the train had taken over its operation and locked out all human control. We were all required to get on the train anyway; there was no alternative, even though now the government was not in control of the situation.

Later in the dream, I was moving into a house in a jungle-like area with an older woman and two slightly younger people who were brother and sister. A lot of the dream was spent on details of moving in; the house had bizarre plumbing and electricity systems to decipher, and a lot of dust and old stuff to move out. We also planted a garden and some other things. At one point I was quite excited to figure out that some red strobe lights which we kept finding around the place must have been part of the original lighting system in the structure, before it was turned into a house; they must therefore have been quite old, although they appeared to be in quite good repair because they were likely never used.

The brother and sister who were moving in with us had no religious upbringing, but they were under the distinct impression that they were descendants of God's chosen people and that this jungle climate really was not for them -- "Surely God wants His people to move back to the promised land.", they'd say. I don't know why they decided to move in with us, but they were quite unhappy and often physically ill.

During this part of the dream, the old lady would occasionally be interacting with strange animals; most memorably, at one point she was cradling an "information weasel" in her arms and taking it down to the road. When asked, she could not explain where the animals had come from or what she was doing with them beyond the obvious; and I could not explain what an information weasel was, even though I apparently knew one when I saw one.

Once we got the house all set up, a deity put a curse on it. The deity was a green floating head. It did not make its problem with us clear, but it dit make it clear that we should leave the place. Poisonous plants grew madly all over the house, and dangerous animals became attracted to the area. None of these ever caused a problem for us, so I was wondering if it was some kind of illusion or if it was a serious threat after all.

I woke up around here, but I shut my eyes again for a little while. In my half-sleep, the dream continued with us realizing that every time the older woman had been with one of her strange animals was a time when we got an important letter or phone call. The information weasel represented information!

Crows

I was aware that this was a dream, but I was not lucid.

I believe I was moving back to my hometown in the dream. (In real life I'm not doing this, but I'm moving back somewhere close.) I was trying to retrieve some boxes I had shipped; it seemed I was attempting to retrieve them from out of a garbage truck. I was doing this with two totally fictitious high-school friends, in the parking lot of a (much more run-down) version of our high school. Somehow, successful completion of the task involved getting access to lockers inside the high school, which we did.

On our way back out of the high school, Evita Moreau suddenly appeared. This was quite a surprise, as she (as far as I know while waking, and also as far as I knew in this dream) essentially never appears in my dreams. (This is a person who I never see in real life either, but who formed a strong impression.) She had aged and wasn't so recognizable, but nonetheless I knew instantly who she was and was trying to figure out what to do about it while we talked.

The conversation reached no special conclusion, and she faded into the realms of mystery once again. (I don't remember any actual words which we said to each other.) I went outside to go home with the two friends. It was getting dark, and the grass was mostly dead and damp as it might be in late autumn. There were many crows in the air. The crows had an unnatural dark shadow/cloud which followed them as they flew; I was quite aware of it being physically implausible, and was trying hard to come up with an explanation for this. Then I saw a skeleton of some large beast, surrounded by dense black fur. The body had been picked clean. All the crows around were trailing (still physically implausibly) black fur from the beast, indicating that they had participated in the slaughter (or at least the subsequent cleanup). I became a bit worried about the crows eating me, and hurried along.

Entity

I released some kind of noncorporeal SCP-style horror. This entity was being contained in a government facility which seemed to be a mixture of datacenter, power plant, and research center. I don't remember exactly why I released the entity, but it might have been malicious on my part. The main effect of the entity was to create pervasive glitches in reality having to do with most kinds of communication channel. Any kind of symbolic communication would be changed randomly, in ways that mostly maintained the pragmatics of the message while destroying epistemic content. In other words, the more a property of the message matters to you, the more likely it is to be preserved by the entity; but unimportant aspects of the message get a lot of noise injected. The communication glitches are inserted into the brain as well, resulting in an altered state of consciousness for everyone. However, spoken language was only mildly effected by the glitches (as compared to written language).

An additional effect of the entity which was not so obvious was that any symbolic act involving a symbol for "up" is interpreted as a call for the entity to eat you. Somehow we were able to communicate this to people without getting eaten, though.

Society gradually devolved into a non-functioning post-apocalyptic state due to the difficulty of things running smoothly under the influence of the entity.

Song

The main portion of the dream was about living in an unfinished house. The sense was somewhat post-apocalyptic, but more a large financial meltdown then a zombie apocalypse. There weren't resources to properly finish the house. However, I remember two houses; the idea seemed to be that we were taking stuff from my childhood home to try and finish this new house, but it wasn't going so well. I recall a storage room filled with furniture which had been painted over too many times, and then left unused. I also recall being in the old house with Mom and Daniel, and pointing out that all the books were supposed to be moved to the new house already. Mom replied that, well, we had moved everything at one point but we'd picked up new books since then. There was also a bit about flowers growing outside the old house, which mom recently planted. I tried to move a small one from a bad spot to a better one, but realized there were so many it didn't matter.

There was a song on the radio which I tried to look up in the dream because it seemed really interesting. I thought it could be the mamas and the papas, based on the style, but the content of the song was something about atheism. I wish I could remember more about it. There were lines saying that when you're getting married it all makes sense, but then what if you die and there's no recompense? That was the most significant line, but I don't remember what the other lyrics could have been. In the dream, I made up extra lyrics to the same melody which went something like: Moses stepped in the 20th way to find knowledge of God; but his knowledge was wrong to the present day. (This is mostly capturing the sense of what was said without capturing the rhythm. This "20th way" was an obvious indication that Moses had a lot of knowledge of rituals, in the dream.) I considered these new lyrics worse, but felt they added something missing in the song; something like comparison to ancient religion where the song discussed just modern.

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.

Meet Joe Black + Police Training

I watched the movie Meet Joe Black last night, and it had a large influence on my dreaming. However, I also combined it with the following movie premise:

"Imagine a family so skilled in the art of disguise that it's normal to question which relative you're really talking to."

(In the dream, this was a much more dramatic speech describing the situation... I couldn't replicate it properly.)

So, the family in Meet Joe Black was involved in a number of double-twists involving removal of masks and finding out who people really were.

The father (Bill Parrish) mentioned now and again some life work which he had kept secret. In the most important scene of the dream, Susan (who is the favorite daughter in the movie) convinces him to hand it over to her. (The implication seems to be that previously, he did not think she was up to the task.) Mr. Parrish removes some dusty papers in a binder, from an old box of toys left over from before the children grew. He gives these to Susan. She takes off her mask and it turns out that she is really the mother, who everyone thought to be dead for many years.

In the dream, I had joined the police force as a side job to make spending money while finishing school. There was a scene at the firing range, learning to use a gun. The chief demonstrated several types of guns, showing us that with the most expensive gun, it was much easier to hit bullseye every time; he lamented the fact that the police department didn't have the budget to buy that gun for everyone, saying that it would save lives.

It seems that I was taking a city bus every day in this life, between two very different parts of the city. I would regularly be in the neighborhood of Bill Parrish and his family during part of the day.

There was a scene where our rights as police were explained to us. We were told that we had no right to violate the law, and so in many situations we were dependent on the compliance of the criminals we were trying to catch. There was a scene illustrating this, with one of my fellow police-in-training talking to an uncooperative youngster who looked like he may be trying to break into a house, but had not yet violated any law, and was waiting for the policeman to be on his way.

Hopping Trucks with Justin

Justin (friend at work) was teaching me the unlikely art of travelling around by hopping in the back of trucks (without the owner's permission). We weren't trying to get anywhere, just doing it for it. My brother and some other people (unclear) were at a school, after-hours, which also seemed to be a "sneak in" kind of situation; but this was home base, which Justin and I would come from and try to return to via ill-gotten truck rides.

A couple of times, I thought that I lost my cell phone or wallet in one of the vehicles. I would eventually find them. This is surprising, since often in dreams you can never find what you're looking for. There was a scene where I was outside the classroom where everyone else was, after Justin and I returning from a truck-hopping journey, and I was looking for my cell phone in several pairs of pants I had. I found my old cell phone first, which confused me; it had the new cover that my brother put on it. (In hindsight, this makes perfect sense, since my brother was there.) A person then wandered by while I was changing pants, which surprised me. It turned out that this person had just come from another group using classrooms after hours; a music remix club. They came and met our group, and we discussed remixing (displaying our ignorance).

Alien Invasion

I was at some kind of summer camp. I don't remember all the details of the early part of the dream, but at some point a yellow liquid started to become important. The liquid came in with a supply truck, and people were treating it like it was a new novelty drink or something like that. It eventually became clear that the yellow liquid was an alien being who would replace parts of your brain if you drank it. It could even gain some control over you if a droplet got in your eye, or otherwise got into your body somehow. People who were infected by the yellow liquid would try to get other people infected, either by enthusiasm (acting like the drink is really good, or failing that, playing with the liquid and splashing each other) or by force when necessary. When I figured this out, I started avoiding people. I eventually decided to run, but by this point they had become suspicious and someone followed me. There was a swampy lake to the back of the camp, which I swam in to escape. The other person continued to come after me, but I eventually lost them and gained the other shore.

There was a field there, which I'm familiar with from other dreams. Actually, it was two fields, one slightly lower than the other, and with a somewhat sheltered path between. I thought at first that I could stay there, but then I decided that they would most likely come after me in larger numbers by morning. I  kept walking. I quickly arrived at what seemed like a miniature golf course. I walked through this and arrived at some roads with a few houses and a view of a larger city in the distance. The reality of the dream was starting to fall apart. I was thinking about how I was wrong to run away; to people in the city, I would at best be a crazy homeless person talking about alien invasion. More likely, the city would already be infected with the yellow liquid. Running was pointless in a planetary invasion. I arrived at the city, but by this point there was no reality left in the dream. There were a few fractured images of buildings which I wasn't able to hold together as I woke up.

Taking Out Tanks

What I remember of the dream begins with an epic convergence of souls. I believe I followed at least one of the characters before this point, but I cannot recall. The sense of the dream was this: a story involving many characters acting independently, yet mystically coordinated in some way to accomplish a larger plan. The idea was that the observer (me) would never understand the whole plan; the actions of some characters in the story would never make sense. Yet, a coherent part of the action was to be revealed.

At the point in the dream where my memory begins, many characters had been acting independently for some time. The development of the plan was now at a point where, just this once, a specific subset of the characters would be brought together in mystic space (mentally sharing the same experiences while their bodies remain far apart). Before this and after this, each would be acting independently with no knowledge of what the others are doing. However, these specific people had the unique opportunity of knowing that there was a larger plan, and knowing some of their fellow workers in the plan.

The shared mystical experience was confusing, though, and did not answer many questions. (It more or less revealed just what I've described above.) At the end, the characters still did not know exactly what was expected of them.

Once the vision was over, two people (one younger girl, the other inspecific) found themselves in an abandoned building on the top of a hill. Further exploration revealed that many small cannons were in the building, along with everything needed to make cannonballs from metal. Outside, the hill was populated with apple trees. It seemed clear that the plan had provided the apples for food, and intended the two of them to make cannonballs for the cannons. They used the furnace to cook an apple while they were getting used to their surroundings and planning.

Soon (the next morning?), a company of tanks started to pass by on a path below them in the hills. (The hills they were on were overlooking an ocean, and the path was roughly halfway between them and the ocean.) They recognized the tanks as enemies, and saw that they were in an abandoned fortress which was concealed from the tanks by trees and height. They saw that they were supposed to shoot at the tanks with the cannons. Unfortunately, they had only made a single cannon ball so far. They were not prepared. They started attacking the tanks anyway, firing their single shot and trying to make more in a hurry.

The single shot was enough to alert the tanks to their presence, and they were soon under direct attack. The two resorted to some negotiation and trickery with their enemies. I remember the young lady putting on a dress with a lit bomb in the back of it, and getting the captors to panic about extinguishing the bomb (it was not intended as a suicide attack, but rather a ploy). This somehow worked to their advantage such that they were accepted into the company of strangers. (I also remember some business with switching the lit fuse on the bomb with a lit thread from the dress, somehow further tricking the enemy, but I don't think it made any sense.)

The dream ended with the sense that we cannot know whether the mysterious plan was still working, or whether they had failed in what they were supposed to accomplish.

The Weapon

A scientist died, and left plans to a dangerous weapon to me.

This was quite a long dream, with many elements which were not relevant to the central plot at all... I remember wandering around in a city, a dinner party... and I'm rapidly forgetting. I'll try to write as much as I can, but I will focus on the plot and then try to get the other stuff (which is basically dishonest, since the dream world doesn't care quite as much about plot as we do, although it cares more about plot than the real world does).

The desire of the scientist was to keep the weapon plans as safe as possible, but without destroying them. He thought that the world was not ready for his weapon, and would use it for evil, but perhaps one day would be ready. I was to formulate a plan for keeping the weapon out of human hands for an extended period of time.

I cut the weapon plans into pieces (or perhaps the scientist had already done this), and buried these pieces in containers along a muddy dirt road. I then created some codes which were supposed to roughly indicate the locations, but not precisely, and distributed them between 18 people. These people would act as guardians, and eventually hunt for the containers and re-assemble the plans. Things were designed so that it would be OK if some of these people did not persevere.

At one point, I remember despairing that this was a stupid plan and would not work. However, I eventually launched the project, giving the 18 people their codes and a pep talk. The pep talk was given by me filling in (in real time) word balloons on a comic-format explanation which I had made. (I was very happy with how the drawing turned out.) For some reason, I was typing from the dirt road, using an archaic keyboard which was capable of sending characters but whose main function was more specialized; I spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out the unusual button configuration (so, for example, some letters required key combinations). It seemed to me I was talking to the 18 on an irc channel (though I was also talking through the comic I had drawn). I was heartened by the enthusiasm of the 18, and came to believe that the plan would really work.

Soon after this, I was being transferred to a different school. Someone asked me why I would move to that particular area. I responded that I was being sent there by ____, who was my old-wizard character in the dream (dumbledorf/gandalf). I didn't know what I was getting into, but I assumed that there was a good reason. This discussion took place on a hill at the end of the stretch of road where I had buried the pieces of the weapon plan. It seemed as if there was a send-off party.

There as another party, earlier in the dream, in the city setting. I think this was a part of the dream where I was still trying to figure out what the plot would be. I remember wandering around the city looking for something... coffee, or a place to sleep, or a place to hide the plans. I remember coming into a large empty garage-type room, in which someone told me I could find refuge. Separately, I remember a pot-luck style party where I might have been explaining the inheritance of the weapon.