Weird Dreams
Oct. 12th, 2011 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynI had a dream last night.
Normally my dreams are somewhat distorted versions of reality, but this one was clearly cut out of whole cloth. Very strange whole cloth. Since this happens so rarely, and may indeed be my brain trying to tell me something, I'm writing it all down.
But really, I think it's just a plot bunny trying to weasel it's way out.
The dream started out odd, because I don't think I was me. I mean, normally when I'm in a dream I can be in different times and different places, but I'm still recognizably me. I don't think that this was true here. For one thing, I think I looked different, and even though it's difficult to tell what body you're in from first-person perspective, I don't think it was mine. For another I was now a scion of a very old, very distinguished Latin American family now living in an Asian metropolis, which is not true. Normally I don't get a new origin story.
My new family was very rich, very insular, and very, well, I believe the word to use in polite society is "proper", but "stuck-up" is probably closer to the truth. The entire extended family owned a series of rooftop penthouses and other high-value (and high-altitude apartments) which served as its mansion at the top of whatever city we lived in. They were extremely insular, children were basically kept at home until they were old enough to begin working for the family glory, they lived in family-owned apartments, and they died in a private hospital. In fact you could basically live your entire life and never have to leave your rooms (they were big enough that you probably could get lost and die in your rooms too).
Part of this was because of how the family made its money. I'm not entirely clear on the specifics (and had the distinct feeling that they were being hidden from me), but part of it was because the entire family had psychic powers. Little things, like telepathy, and psychokinesis (in my case), and other fairly simple parlor tricks. The story was that they were extraordinarily rare genetic gifts, which had slowly and carefully been cultivated and bred together until they had reached the point of sustainability. That was part of the reason the family always lived a very insular life, our brides and grooms were selected for us based on compatible genetics to ensure that all members of the family always were born with psychic gifts.
Anyway, I had two brothers (well, more then that, but only two that counted), one whom I believe was named Esteban, and another named Muriel (who seemed to be a boy, but might have been a girl). Esteban was an active, and rather normal child of about thirteen or fourteen, but Muriel was just...weird. I would use the term "fey", but that has a definitely different connotation, instead it seemed more like he was living in a different world then the rest of us, and possibly that he was able to see the real world outside of the dream.
Esteban and I were getting a little anxious at this whole setup because, to be honest, being rich doesn't do much for you when you're stuck in a single apartment, and the best view in the world doesn't mean anything if you can't go out and see what's down there. Also, I was beginning to have my doubts about this whole setup, so I went up with Esteban to the top of our high-rise tower to talk to the elderly ex-patriarch of the family, who I'll call Crazy Grandpa.
Crazy Grandpa might have been the family patriarch once upon a time, but in his retirement he did not seem to be living very well. I mean, his penthouse suite was probably fantastically expensive and large, but it was so cluttered with the knick-knacks and memorials of a long, full life of adventure that there was barely room to move about in. He seemed fond of us, especially in letting Esteban into a room where basically everything he wanted to do would break something near-priceless. Anyway, CG, tucked away in his plush armchair, proceeded to indulge the youngster coming to complain about the way the family was run.
The problem, as I pointed out, was that the entire story didn't wash. The idea seemed to be that psychic powers were a very rare and highly recessive trait that had to be carefully bred in order to retain any sort of potency. But all the children had psychic powers. Recessive genetics don't work that way, especially when breeding with people without the right genes, no matter how carefully they're chosen. All the genetic evidence from years of breeding indicated that psychic powers were dominant, not recessive, which meant that they should be spreading like wildfire. CG thought about that for a moment, and then conceded that I was probably correct.
Then I made a leap of logic and pointed out that if the trait isn't dominant, that chances are that it's not genetic at all, and that psychic powers are being induced in the children through external means. CG admitted that this was true as well, which is a pretty disturbing thing for your grandfather to admit. And then I asked him if the safeguard that whoever was doing the inducing had doubtlessly installed was psychological in nature.
At this point Crazy Grandpa poo-pooed me, claiming I had watched too many bad movies, and pointed out that psychological barriers aren't all they're cracked up to be. Rather the researchers who had done it had simply placed a computer chip in our brains, which was why we always died in our own private hospital, because there was nothing quite so likely to raise questions as a doctor finding a giant piece of silicon in our brain stem.
I almost asked about Muriel at this point, but something held me back, because I was becoming aware that a crazy old man who knew for years about the fact that his family was little more then a research project, or possibly participating in the act of making them into a research project, might have his own agenda for revealing this to a handful of snot-nosed punks. Also, he might not have noticed Muriel, which was a good enough reason not to tell him about it. And I have a permanent distrust of crazy old men who pretend that they've given up all the power they ever had.
Unfortunately, whether through my own carelessness in asking too many questions, or through some machinations of Crazy Grandpa, Esteban and I had no sooner left the penthouse when a series of black helicopters swooped down on us and began disgorging black-armored and masked troops down rappel lines. The two of us got inside where I sent Esteban to find some other way down while trying to get the attention of the soldiers who were now coming straight after us. Or rather, me, because I was successful in getting their attention, leaving me with a horde of troopers at my back and only one way down, through the building core, where all the heating, water, and air connections were made.
One advantage of being moderately pscyhokinetic is that you can throw a steel line and it will sink deep into a concrete structure. This allows you to rappel yourself down the shaft pretty fast, while the soldiers behind you are stuck taking the stairs. This lasted a while, because there were a lot of heavy water pipes that I could land on, or in some cases, bounce off of. But then I ended up kicking my way out of the bottom of the building core, and into the bottom fifteen floors of the high-rise.
Which turned out to be a giant open-air atrium, because the bottom fifteen floors or so of the high-rise turned out to be a giant layer-cake shopping mall, each floor set to have a court of shops facing the huge atrium, and a giant fifteen-story tall window. I ended up popping out of the ceiling about in the middle of the room, and dropping pretty fast down the center.
The room was built in an industrial style, so there were plenty of pipes and other things hanging around to take advantage of, and the view was positively eerie. It seemed to be night outside now, or at least it was dark, and so the only illumination came from the glowing neon signs of the various stores, from the garish to the tastefully restrained, conflicted with the brilliant eye of the searchlights on the helicopters that were now hovering outside the window. I don't recommend this though, because as soon as you start dropping through an open area soldiers can start shooting at you. They weren't shooting very accurately, but they were doing it from both below and above, and that was enough that I cut free at about floor seven and jumped onto the nearest deck of stores and started heading down the corridor to the restrooms because it was away from the helicopters.
At this point I met a group of women coming the other way.
This was sort of a disjointed moment, because up until now the dream had been dominated by either members of my family, or people in black facemasks shooting at me, but now here were these women, wearing normal, everyday dresses, and running by me like they were at the park. Well, up until soldiers began pouring into the hallway after me, then they pulled pistols out of their dresses and started shooting. One of the women came up to me, claimed to be a member of a rebel group intending to get me out of there, and offered herself up as a hostage in order to get me to trust her. An offer which I politely refused because hey we have genetically engineered psychics, and soldiers crashing through a shopping mall in black helicopters, and I'm not letting anyone near me because I don't know if we have genetically targeted poisons or not.
Also I have to admit that I was getting jealous and annoyed at this point because here I am, the product of an extensive genetic engineering project, with psychic powers, and all I can do is stick a line in a wall. What I need at this point is a gun so I can shoot people in the face, and I don't have one. But everyone around me does. That seemed mostly unfair.
So anyway the rebels got me out of the building, and into the parking lot in front, when our pursuers brought in the heavy artillery in the form of a giant frickin' robot that was tall enough to step over a ten story building and into the parking lot. Someone with too much time on their hands had painted a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on the robot's torso, probably just to annoy the hell out of me. Anyway, the thing was huge, so huge that when it stepped into the parking lot, it basically shattered the tarmac.
The rebel leader looked at me with a "Well, what are you going to do about this?" look, which I responded to with what I hope was a passable "Look, I can't even be as effective as a pistol here. What do you want me to do about a giant twenty-story robot? Wave at it?" look. Because, seriously, giant robots are a bit out of my league.
At this point I noticed that there were a lot of people in the parking lot, mostly soldiers running around and shouting at each other. Several of them were carrying off members of my family, which I took to mean that someone had decided that the experiment they were working on had too many risks. One of them was carrying off Muriel. He looked around, caught my eye, wrinkled up his face, and started crying.
Then he leveled everything in about four city blocks.
I should have been blown away, but I wasn't somehow. The robot didn't fare so well, he was blasted head over heels, crashing through a few skyscrapers on the way. Most of the buildings surrounding the parking lot simply evaporated, and the debris was flung so far that you could not even see it come down.
Now this was definitely not fair. I mean, what, they give me the power to drill holes in a wall, while my little brother is walking around with an A-bomb in his cranium? Also, speaking of Esteban, what happened to him? Was he blown away too? What was happening to any of this? Why was it even going on?
The continuity errors had built up to the point where I could no longer stay asleep, so I was forced to wake up. I don't know how it ended though. I don't even know how it began. Am I finally losing my mind while asleep? Or is my subconscious giving me a warning about my possible reincarnation? Or do I just hate being attacked by giant robots?
Normally my dreams are somewhat distorted versions of reality, but this one was clearly cut out of whole cloth. Very strange whole cloth. Since this happens so rarely, and may indeed be my brain trying to tell me something, I'm writing it all down.
But really, I think it's just a plot bunny trying to weasel it's way out.
The dream started out odd, because I don't think I was me. I mean, normally when I'm in a dream I can be in different times and different places, but I'm still recognizably me. I don't think that this was true here. For one thing, I think I looked different, and even though it's difficult to tell what body you're in from first-person perspective, I don't think it was mine. For another I was now a scion of a very old, very distinguished Latin American family now living in an Asian metropolis, which is not true. Normally I don't get a new origin story.
My new family was very rich, very insular, and very, well, I believe the word to use in polite society is "proper", but "stuck-up" is probably closer to the truth. The entire extended family owned a series of rooftop penthouses and other high-value (and high-altitude apartments) which served as its mansion at the top of whatever city we lived in. They were extremely insular, children were basically kept at home until they were old enough to begin working for the family glory, they lived in family-owned apartments, and they died in a private hospital. In fact you could basically live your entire life and never have to leave your rooms (they were big enough that you probably could get lost and die in your rooms too).
Part of this was because of how the family made its money. I'm not entirely clear on the specifics (and had the distinct feeling that they were being hidden from me), but part of it was because the entire family had psychic powers. Little things, like telepathy, and psychokinesis (in my case), and other fairly simple parlor tricks. The story was that they were extraordinarily rare genetic gifts, which had slowly and carefully been cultivated and bred together until they had reached the point of sustainability. That was part of the reason the family always lived a very insular life, our brides and grooms were selected for us based on compatible genetics to ensure that all members of the family always were born with psychic gifts.
Anyway, I had two brothers (well, more then that, but only two that counted), one whom I believe was named Esteban, and another named Muriel (who seemed to be a boy, but might have been a girl). Esteban was an active, and rather normal child of about thirteen or fourteen, but Muriel was just...weird. I would use the term "fey", but that has a definitely different connotation, instead it seemed more like he was living in a different world then the rest of us, and possibly that he was able to see the real world outside of the dream.
Esteban and I were getting a little anxious at this whole setup because, to be honest, being rich doesn't do much for you when you're stuck in a single apartment, and the best view in the world doesn't mean anything if you can't go out and see what's down there. Also, I was beginning to have my doubts about this whole setup, so I went up with Esteban to the top of our high-rise tower to talk to the elderly ex-patriarch of the family, who I'll call Crazy Grandpa.
Crazy Grandpa might have been the family patriarch once upon a time, but in his retirement he did not seem to be living very well. I mean, his penthouse suite was probably fantastically expensive and large, but it was so cluttered with the knick-knacks and memorials of a long, full life of adventure that there was barely room to move about in. He seemed fond of us, especially in letting Esteban into a room where basically everything he wanted to do would break something near-priceless. Anyway, CG, tucked away in his plush armchair, proceeded to indulge the youngster coming to complain about the way the family was run.
The problem, as I pointed out, was that the entire story didn't wash. The idea seemed to be that psychic powers were a very rare and highly recessive trait that had to be carefully bred in order to retain any sort of potency. But all the children had psychic powers. Recessive genetics don't work that way, especially when breeding with people without the right genes, no matter how carefully they're chosen. All the genetic evidence from years of breeding indicated that psychic powers were dominant, not recessive, which meant that they should be spreading like wildfire. CG thought about that for a moment, and then conceded that I was probably correct.
Then I made a leap of logic and pointed out that if the trait isn't dominant, that chances are that it's not genetic at all, and that psychic powers are being induced in the children through external means. CG admitted that this was true as well, which is a pretty disturbing thing for your grandfather to admit. And then I asked him if the safeguard that whoever was doing the inducing had doubtlessly installed was psychological in nature.
At this point Crazy Grandpa poo-pooed me, claiming I had watched too many bad movies, and pointed out that psychological barriers aren't all they're cracked up to be. Rather the researchers who had done it had simply placed a computer chip in our brains, which was why we always died in our own private hospital, because there was nothing quite so likely to raise questions as a doctor finding a giant piece of silicon in our brain stem.
I almost asked about Muriel at this point, but something held me back, because I was becoming aware that a crazy old man who knew for years about the fact that his family was little more then a research project, or possibly participating in the act of making them into a research project, might have his own agenda for revealing this to a handful of snot-nosed punks. Also, he might not have noticed Muriel, which was a good enough reason not to tell him about it. And I have a permanent distrust of crazy old men who pretend that they've given up all the power they ever had.
Unfortunately, whether through my own carelessness in asking too many questions, or through some machinations of Crazy Grandpa, Esteban and I had no sooner left the penthouse when a series of black helicopters swooped down on us and began disgorging black-armored and masked troops down rappel lines. The two of us got inside where I sent Esteban to find some other way down while trying to get the attention of the soldiers who were now coming straight after us. Or rather, me, because I was successful in getting their attention, leaving me with a horde of troopers at my back and only one way down, through the building core, where all the heating, water, and air connections were made.
One advantage of being moderately pscyhokinetic is that you can throw a steel line and it will sink deep into a concrete structure. This allows you to rappel yourself down the shaft pretty fast, while the soldiers behind you are stuck taking the stairs. This lasted a while, because there were a lot of heavy water pipes that I could land on, or in some cases, bounce off of. But then I ended up kicking my way out of the bottom of the building core, and into the bottom fifteen floors of the high-rise.
Which turned out to be a giant open-air atrium, because the bottom fifteen floors or so of the high-rise turned out to be a giant layer-cake shopping mall, each floor set to have a court of shops facing the huge atrium, and a giant fifteen-story tall window. I ended up popping out of the ceiling about in the middle of the room, and dropping pretty fast down the center.
The room was built in an industrial style, so there were plenty of pipes and other things hanging around to take advantage of, and the view was positively eerie. It seemed to be night outside now, or at least it was dark, and so the only illumination came from the glowing neon signs of the various stores, from the garish to the tastefully restrained, conflicted with the brilliant eye of the searchlights on the helicopters that were now hovering outside the window. I don't recommend this though, because as soon as you start dropping through an open area soldiers can start shooting at you. They weren't shooting very accurately, but they were doing it from both below and above, and that was enough that I cut free at about floor seven and jumped onto the nearest deck of stores and started heading down the corridor to the restrooms because it was away from the helicopters.
At this point I met a group of women coming the other way.
This was sort of a disjointed moment, because up until now the dream had been dominated by either members of my family, or people in black facemasks shooting at me, but now here were these women, wearing normal, everyday dresses, and running by me like they were at the park. Well, up until soldiers began pouring into the hallway after me, then they pulled pistols out of their dresses and started shooting. One of the women came up to me, claimed to be a member of a rebel group intending to get me out of there, and offered herself up as a hostage in order to get me to trust her. An offer which I politely refused because hey we have genetically engineered psychics, and soldiers crashing through a shopping mall in black helicopters, and I'm not letting anyone near me because I don't know if we have genetically targeted poisons or not.
Also I have to admit that I was getting jealous and annoyed at this point because here I am, the product of an extensive genetic engineering project, with psychic powers, and all I can do is stick a line in a wall. What I need at this point is a gun so I can shoot people in the face, and I don't have one. But everyone around me does. That seemed mostly unfair.
So anyway the rebels got me out of the building, and into the parking lot in front, when our pursuers brought in the heavy artillery in the form of a giant frickin' robot that was tall enough to step over a ten story building and into the parking lot. Someone with too much time on their hands had painted a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on the robot's torso, probably just to annoy the hell out of me. Anyway, the thing was huge, so huge that when it stepped into the parking lot, it basically shattered the tarmac.
The rebel leader looked at me with a "Well, what are you going to do about this?" look, which I responded to with what I hope was a passable "Look, I can't even be as effective as a pistol here. What do you want me to do about a giant twenty-story robot? Wave at it?" look. Because, seriously, giant robots are a bit out of my league.
At this point I noticed that there were a lot of people in the parking lot, mostly soldiers running around and shouting at each other. Several of them were carrying off members of my family, which I took to mean that someone had decided that the experiment they were working on had too many risks. One of them was carrying off Muriel. He looked around, caught my eye, wrinkled up his face, and started crying.
Then he leveled everything in about four city blocks.
I should have been blown away, but I wasn't somehow. The robot didn't fare so well, he was blasted head over heels, crashing through a few skyscrapers on the way. Most of the buildings surrounding the parking lot simply evaporated, and the debris was flung so far that you could not even see it come down.
Now this was definitely not fair. I mean, what, they give me the power to drill holes in a wall, while my little brother is walking around with an A-bomb in his cranium? Also, speaking of Esteban, what happened to him? Was he blown away too? What was happening to any of this? Why was it even going on?
The continuity errors had built up to the point where I could no longer stay asleep, so I was forced to wake up. I don't know how it ended though. I don't even know how it began. Am I finally losing my mind while asleep? Or is my subconscious giving me a warning about my possible reincarnation? Or do I just hate being attacked by giant robots?