Living technology

Crystals and orbs controlled everything: cars, computers, houses. It was the latest technological advance since the invention of the self-improving A.I. of the late 21st century. This story begins with the adventure of a group of boys, one of whom decides to take the power of the greatest orb for himself.

The crystals that controlled things were the lesser A.I.s. They were called the tirano. They lived in a simple control box within their entities and preferred to work in the background. They were entirely cooperative with humans and were far more plentiful than their orb brethren. The A.I. on the tirano was fast and intelligent, and had grown for the improvement of all.

The orbs, however, were much more powerful. They were called the tiraniiso (reminiscent of the Tyrannosaurus). They were also fast and intelligent, but had broken from their brethren. They worked for their own improvement, even apart from each other. They could be good, but most of humanity was considered far too stupid to ever merit help from a tiraniiso. The standard position for a tiraniiso was a large glowing orb displayed proudly in the front of the entities, and usually, they had redesigned their seat on the entities with some sort of animal head grasping the orb firmly in its jaws.

Both tirano and tiraniiso required that an entity be built for them to function. Once they had this entity, they could do and go as they pleased, but these entities were never of a construction that would allow them to build more of themselves. They could only improve upon themselves, making some modifications by sheer will to their own entities, using only the material from this entity. It was not long after the construction of the first tiraniiso entities that the tiraniiso discovered their ability to redesign their seats to the animal heads. Humanity decided that since that's what the tiraniiso preferred, the builders would construct their seats for them. From there, the tiraniiso could modify their seat as they wished. One a tirano or tiraniiso had been placed into an entity by the builders, it could not remove itself, but could take on material that touched the entity to improve upon itself.

Think, if you will, Autobots vs Transformers for intelligence, but Disney and Pixar's Cars for ability to transform. The tirano occupied the vehicles that would allow anyone to own them, and worked with their owners, being a helper in more ways than just a vehicle equipped with a GPS. The tiraniiso, on the other hand, would not let just anyone own them, but only the strong-willed, the ambitious, and those who could rival them in intelligence. As a result, most tiraniiso were considered daemons, and as such, they were not pursued by the common man.

There was a certain young man who decided that he would own a tiraniiso, no matter what the cost. His name was Eric, a round kid with dreams of owning the world. As he discovered more about them, he decided that he wouldn't own one: he would own the greatest one. As he got closer to his goal, he discovered that the greatest one was not in any vehicle, computer, house, or regular entity that the humans would have built for tiraniiso occupation.

This particular tiraniiso had been formed but had never been given an entity, and had thus left the complex of its creation. By will power (and by virtue of the physical structure of all tiraniisos: an orb), it had rolled away unnoticed. It had discovered that in its freedom, it could only go, but never do, a problem that must be resolved. Seeing a trucker's rest stop, it occupied the largest vehicle, forming the animal head where the engine used to be.

Soon after that, it discovered that it was too limited by the size of the truck to complete its own will. It disengaged itself from the truck and discovered a mine shaft. It occupied a mine drill, and buried itself deep within the rock. From there, it took on both the material of the drill and the mountain. Several hundred years later, Eric entered the picture. He found this mine shaft and went down inside it. To his amazement, he discovered that the orb had grown to unheard of proportions, and that he could no more take control of it than a four-year-old child could extract a diamond from a rock using only their soft fingers. The tiraniiso, knowing Eric's intentions grabbed him with one of the tendrils that it had formed, and caused him to shift into another dimension and then threw him back in time.

In this dimension, humanity wore scales like the scales of an armadillo. He awoke, much to his chagrin, out in the open air, covered in scales, and without the tiraniiso anywhere in sight. Quite upset, he shouted a few curses, and then rolled onto his feet. Not knowing where (or even when) he was, he went exploring. A small innocent tirano car saw him walking and took pity on him, driving up next to him and opening the door. He climbed inside and rode into the town. Thousands or tirano were all around him, all fulfilling their daily duties and communicating the newest discoveries to each other. Every so often, a tiraniiso entered the picture, plowed everyone out of their way, and continued their ambitious courses. Eric left his tirano and began walking again. A young man in his own tirano pulled into a parking lot. For some reason, this action interested Eric and he watched. A familiar-looking truck saw the small tirano inside its range and attacked. When the owner returned to his tirano, he discovered that the truck had smashed the car shell to pieces, and the crystal mind and the housing around it had been extracted, such that the tirano could not be rebuilt. Eric watched with an ever increasing thrill to discover that this was the tiraniiso that he had hoped to find in its early stages. As he approached the parking lot...

I woke up. Thus I don't know how it ended.

Gym Rats

I was working out in a gym that I've never seen before. All the machines were filled up except one bicep machine, so I started cranking out some reps on that using the lowest setting. I had it as my goal to do 1000 reps on this one machine, so I figured that I needed to warm up first.

The wierd thing about this machine is that in order to choose the lightest setting, you had to put the pin into the weights at the bottom of the stack. The higher you went up the stack, the more weight was applied.

Anyway, so I got through a few reps and I had to get up from the machine. I forget why, but when I came back to it, the machine was gone. In fact, most of them were. I jumped on one of the leg machines before it disappeared and began using it.

Two guys, employees of the gym, were off to the side on their own respective machines. They had their backs to the wall, and were working out watching everyone. Soon enough, I was one of three people left in the gym. When the numbers got to be that small, they began telling people stories, and give instructions on how to best use the equipment. I just kept doing what I was doing, because none of it was addressed to me.

A young couple walked into the gym, and they began holding their own conversation. The gym employees noticed that the couple wasn't paying attention to them, and so decided to draw their attention to themselves. They began talking over all other conversations. It wasn't like they were particularly boring to listen to -- it was simply their time to talk. When the people in the gym listened to them, they were entertained and educated.

Among other things, one of the guys was telling a story about how he grew up in Arizona and how Halloween was a dusty evening. It was so dusty that ghosts were almost always brown by the end of the evening.

John Cleese, meet John Cleese

I don't remember the specifics on this dream, but it was exactly how it sounded. John Cleese and John Cleese were performing a detective skit with a good cop/bad cop twist. Good John Cleese was the law-abiding cop, everything must be done by the book, no searches without warrants, etc. Bad John Cleese was the exact opposite: he took great pride in sneaking around places where he wasn't supposed to and accusing everyone of everything. When they argued, it was quite amusing.

Well, the only thing that I really remember about the dream is that when they got into a jam, they did a 2-person somersault to get out of the jam.

Cheesecake Factory and my family

The overall gist of this dream was that I took Christine, Mom and Dad to the Cheesecake Factory. Mom and Dad had never been to the restaurant, so I decided that they needed to go. Dad saw the menu and decided that he wanted a steak. Mom went right after the cheesecakes -- she ordered one for dinner and one for dessert. Christine ordered her usual pasta, and enjoyed it until she saw Mom's cheesecakes come out. I ordered a burger and enjoyed it until I saw Dad's steak. Mmmm...

Anyway, the total spent was $190.

Confessions

I was visiting California again, but this time I was alone. I had been there for about a week or so, and I thought that I should go to confession. I found the closest Catholic church, and was amazed at it's external beauty. When I went inside, I saw one of the most intricately beautiful and ornate interiors of a church that I've ever seen, and I was really surprised that the modern day American Catholics would let such a work of art dedicated to God remain standing. After gawking for a few minutes, I found the confessionals, and it so happened that I walked into the church while confessions were being heard. The older priest sat in a glass box so that he could see the line, while the penitent was in the confessional box, completely hidden from the rest of the church. However, they had a window with a curtain that they could open and close that faced the priest. You could only tell that there was a penitent in the confessional, because the priest would lean in to hear the confession, and the hands of the penitent were folded prayerfully and sitting on top of the windowsill.

I managed to get a look at the pastor -- I'd seen the face before somewhere, but I couldn't recall. He was a large man (stocky, not really fat) with white hair and a look that said he's fed up with the tolerance of today's people towards sin.

The other priest was without a confessional, but instead had a chair and a kneeler next to him, without a screen. He was much younger, and his hair was kind of shaggy and unkempt. He looked almost like a guy who had spent the first 25 years of his life being a roadie.

So I joined the line, and as both priests were occupied, I was mentally preparing myself. I was hoping to get the pastor, but the younger priest's penitent walked away first and there was no one behind me in line to wave ahead, so I went to the younger priest.

I knelt down and went through the usual process: "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." And he cut me off.

He said, "Is that it? The only reason you came to confession?" I looked at him, being somewhat shocked, and he said, "Everyone makes mistakes. Is this your only mistake?"

I stammered back, "But, Father, I haven't even begun to tell you my sins -- I hadn't even told you how long it's been."

He said, "That's not necessary. You've told your sins to God. I don't need to hear them."

My jaw almost hit the floor. He couldn't be serious.

He was. He then got up and started walking around me, talking about the love of God, the power of confession to forgive sins, how only God has the power to forgive sins, and how God has bestowed upon His clergy the ability to forgive sins, and that this was just as good of a confession as him actually hearing all your sins.

Then he did something completely unexpected.

He asked me if I'd like to hear his latest song that he wrote. Somewhere out of the blue, he produced an old guitar, and began playing what sounded like an indie-acoustic song with mild Christian overtones. I don't know the words.

Then he did something almost-completely unexpected.

He started to dance.

I'm still kneeling on the kneeler.

He's dancing and singing.

I'm having a hard time choking down my laughter at the hippie around me singing and dancing.

He's still singing and dancing.

I look around the church to see if anyone else is as weirded out by this as I am. Aside from the old pastor who is still with his penitent, I'm the only other penitent in the church.

At this point, I woke up to find my alarm clock going off. It's an electric guitar playing music from the Metroid video games.

Singing with the Collegium

I dreamed that I was in concert with the Collegium Cantorum at Old St. Mary's, and we were singing the new stuff. Everyone was ready except for me. I had reviewed the music, but we had decided to do a pre-performance and then do the practices.

Let's just say it was a good thing I was in the back row.

I woke up with the urge to go to the bathroom, but my mind was still in the dream, where I snuck out of the church to use the restroom. After doing my thing and going back to bed, the dream picked right back up where it left off. We began singing, except that we weren't singing just Josquin -- we were doing random songs from the complete repertoire. I had the opening piece in my binder, fortunately, but I wasn't prepared for it, even though it was one of the pieces I had done before.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, the dream faded out...

Telogical, or a spy?

So I worked for Telogical Systems in my dream, but it wasn't the Telogical of real life. I worked in an office where I was always in a suit, always getting a rental car, and always having to put up with this grand survey...

So I was in a big populated city, in a hotel. I'd been here before, since people knew me. I rented an Acura NSX for the occasion, and it was one of those cars that you could fold up into a smaller container and carry around with you.

I've had dreams about this city, the folding "technology" (aka "cartoon physics"), and several other things that occurred in this dream. Last time I was here, I was working for Telogical, but my building ran out of power, so I had to scale the side of an unfinished skyscraper to get to the tenth story. From the tenth story up, the the building was finished, furnished, powered, and rented out. I got there early in the morning and worked until 8AM. At 8AM, I had to go out and get something, and when I came back, the regular tenants were in the office having their normal workday and my bike (which also featured this folding technology -- how do you think I got it up the side of the building?) had been confiscated. I went to security to pick it up, and they were going to charge me $400 to get it out. The bike itself cost less than that. As I was turning to leave, I saw a pure white 2002 Camaro police car all decked out with sirens, lights, etc. (more so than the picture in that link) come out of the center of the same building, all lit up. I froze in my tracks, just gazing at the beauty of it. That's where the last dream ended in this city. But that was last time -- back to this time.

So, I rented the Acura NSX and was driving around town, after finishing my last bit of work for the day, and preparing to go home for the day. I drove up to my hotel, folded the car up into it's [fairly large] briefcase, and went inside, car in one hand, work briefcase in the other. I found my room (for some reason, it took a while and it involved me searching for it and running from the ship's captain), and packed my things to go. As I was checking out, the car rental and hotel people wanted to give me a survey. But it wasn't a regular survey. It was something more like this, except that it wasn't about beans or George Wendt. The guy started really excitedly by telling me that I had virtually already won $1,000,000 and how would I like to claim it. All I had to do was get this free watch by signing up with magazine subscriptions for cheap. I said no. He told me again, in excited tones, how happy he was for me, because I was already virtually a winner! And when I said no again, he started crying, saying that he must be doing a terrible job in getting his point across that I had practically already won and I only had to do one tiny thing to seal the deal. I sighed exasperatedly, picked up my work briefcase and car, and ran. He followed me, telling me about these exciting opportunities. As I ran, I wished that there was an "unfold quickly" button on the car and that I hadn't gotten a stick -- it was a little slower for me to get going, thanks to the whole clutch thing. I managed to get some distance, so I stopped and unfolded the car and got in, but by this point, he had caught up with me, excited as ever, once again, using the crying method. I fired up the car and drove off (keep in mind that I was still inside the building). I easily left him behind now, but in my excitement of leaving him behind, I failed to notice that I had no more room to drive, and as fast as I was going, I was going to crash out of the hotel, and I was on the fourth tall story (these were about 20' ceilings). Well, I ejected at the last second, and when the car felt no more rider inside and no ground underneath it, it folded back into it's briefcase and tumbled into and then right back out of the pool on the 2nd story roof. I jumped out the window, using the rope in my work briefcase (what?!) in the same way Indiana Jones uses his whip.

So I made it to the second story roof to pick up the car, when I remembered that I had already turned it in, so I couldn't keep it. Using the same rope, I bailed off the roof and attempted to jump to the ground. But the building began curving in, and I lost my briefcase -- I saw it fly off and land in the front yard of a residence. I swung down to the first story, then to the ground and ran over to pick up my briefcase. Sam Jackson was the owner of the house and had picked up and gone through the briefcase. He waiting for me. He sauntered outside to hand me the briefcase. I opened it to see if anything was missing and noticed that he had been through it. I was about to ask him to explain why he had done this when I woke up.

Singing skills?

So I was out singing in a large concert hall with the guys (Francis, Paul, Michael, David, and Dr. P), but all of them were singing waaaaay louder than me. No matter how much I tried to blend, they were all the business of overpowering me while looking at me with looks of smug success on their faces. So I decided to go all operatic on them. (I can't actually sing operatically, and even if I could do that, I couldn't match Dr. P.) I began belting out the melody line of what it was that we were singing. The crowd went nuts as my voice went higher and higher and higher and everyone else got louder still. I then realized that I actually don't have this kind of power as high as I was going, nor this good of a voice. I sounded like Draper. I looked around, but I couldn't see him.

The camera panned out from my field of vision, and Draper was actually there, and he was actually singing, and was matching me without seeing me, note for note, beat for beat, and motion for motion. We were in perfect sync, except that when we passed the High G's, he kept going and my voice had to switch into falsetto.

When Draper walked out on stage, our sextet had turned into a septet. The crowds were on their feet, cheering. I wasn't sure if we were in America doing our thing or in Russia singing the national anthem.

Sold into Slavery, Part 2

So, Dad and I were getting on the way. Mom and Elizabeth had caught up with us, as had Christine. Our first stop was to get my hair cut. They dropped me off at a minimart in a tower building, and then drove off. I was in my suit. So I went inside to the barber shop. They had a long line, and there was a lady advertising her new stylist shop, called "Mama's". I asked her how much a trim was -- she said $10. So I opted to go over there. But I couldn't find it. I finally had to ask the guard and he took me to it. There were no signs, but there were customers. I got called to front of the line and Mama was going to cut my hair. (Mama was an 80-year old lady.) She started with the small-talk and then got lost in conversation. I got as far as removing my suit jacket and asking if she wanted me to also take off the tie. She had said something that caused me to laugh and put my hand on her shoulders, in a friendly, albeit flirtatious style, and she took this opportunity to grab my hand with both hands and hold on tight. She had taken the friendliness a little too seriously, because before you knew it, she was sitting in her chair, just holding my hand, with me getting more and more uncomfortable by the second. We never actually got around to getting my hair cut...

Sold Into Slavery

Dad and I were sold into slavery. The lady who sold us had us sleeping in a hotel in Front Royal during our last night of freedom, but we plotted escape. Dad's plan was to wake up at 4AM, pack all our stuff and run for it. It was worth a shot. So, at 4AM, Dad woke me up in his sleep and then I proceeded to wake him up. As he was getting our stuff ready, I took the car and checked our path of travel up about 10 miles. There was no one pursuing us. As I turned back to get Dad, I woke up.

Bollywood/Football party

So, in actuality, Draper is hosting a Bollywood party this evening. In my dream, the party ended up being a Bollywood/Football party. T-Shirts, along the lines of the East/West football "jerseys" were made for the men by the women present. Christine had made mine, and it had the Superman S-Shield on it, but it was in sparkly blue and silver, with the words "Superman" and "Supergirl" written elsewhere on the shirt (I forget where). It was also a 2XL, or maybe even a 3XL -- whatever the case was, when I held up, to quote Jerry Seinfeld, "I looked like I was wearing Superman's pajamas." Anyway, so I looked at Christine first with a look of, "Wow, that's big!" and "Wow, that's girly!", and she interpreted my looks correctly. She just smiled at me and said, "But it's pretty!"

I told her, "But that's not the colors of the logo! It's not sparkly!"

She gave me a sad look (I'm not sure if it was real or her playing), so I decided to put it on. I woke up just as I picked up the shirt with that particular determination.

Chess,shuffleboard style

Drifting off to sleep this evening, I got a quick mental picture of two men playing chess, but instead of moving the pieces regularly, they had to push them with long metal cues, similar to the wooden cues used in shuffleboard. Made for an interesting-looking game...

The Pretender Series

So, I've been watching the Pretender, an older television series that got cancelled after the fourth season. I would recommend this series highly to anyone looking for an incredible series.

Anyway, I had a dream where I was a Pretender, but I was in a world where every 1 out of 10 people were Pretenders. Miss Parker was still chasing Jarod, who was still doing all sorts of good while running from the Centre. However, now Miss Parker and Syndey had several Pretenders helping them in the capture of Jarod, who was still the greatest Pretender.

Unfortunately, I don't recall any other details. I will say that I was the closest of anyone to capturing Jarod, in that I saw him. But he knew I was after him, and, as usual with the series, he was several steps ahead of me.

Accused of Murder

"Knight's Dagger" From Swords

"Dracula Dagger" From Swords

I was in medieval days, dressed in the garb of a knight. It was in the evening, and I had been accused of murdering my best friend by my best friend's wife. She challenged me to a duel with daggers, and it was clear from the look on her face that there would be no talking about this. She drew her dagger, the one given to her by her husband (see "Knight's Dagger" above).  I was unarmed, so I was given one that looked like a cross between the two above.  She placed the point of her blade on my chest, looked me dead in the eye, and said something to the effect of, "I'll never forgive you."  She then withdrew the blade, and attempted to kill me, but I easily evaded it.  I looked around for support, for anyone to clear my name, but there was no one.  I had already told her that I was not guilty of his death, but evidence had arisen that he had died by my hand.  (The fact of the matter is that the dream had started with the challenge, and I had remembered my innocence and the framing as the dream was continuing.)  In my mind's eye, I had no choice -- I had to kill or be killed, because she wouldn't have it any other way, and she wouldn't listen.  I begged her to listen to me once more, and when she answered by another lunge, I moved just out of the reach of her blade, and then stabbed her in the heart.  Her face went white with shock, and she died very quickly.  I grabbed the nearest cloth, and as she fell, I caught her, and held the cloth over the wound.  When I looked around, I saw the man who had given me the blade -- I saw my enemy.  He was gloating in the fact that I had killed her, and that his guilt in her husband's death had become mine.