Dreams
OK, 2nd night home and still adjusting to the jetlag. I just woke up from an interesting dream sequence...
The first bit was just a jumbled collection of thoughts at first, but slowly evolved into a narrative. The basic premise was that the surface of the earth was no longer habitable, and I was hearing a voice say that this was the end for all life. Since there was no sunlight, there would be no plants, and without plants there would be no food or breathable oxygen, nor fuel to power any machines. As I was hearing this narrative I was thinking "well no, that's wrong. There's still geothermal, and we can tap that energy for a long time, probably long enough to endure until the surface recovers. The basic problem is energy, converting whatever's available to chemical energy that we can use for food and fuel. As long as we have any kind of energy source, we have time to work on the conversions, we can provide artificial sunlight to keep plants growing, we can keep some machines running."
The dream transformed a bit from there, and became a sort of tour of the underworld. At first it was just wandering/floating disembodied through networks of caverns and tunnels, but later there were people walking around, and I was watching them from a distance. I remember while watching them I had flashes of "The Time Machine" going through my head, thinking about Morlocks evolved for life underground, and blind cave fish. But while these people looked odd, they didn't look like that. In this underworld, there was plenty of light, perhaps channeled from lava tubes or some other ready source. The people looked a bit like walking rocks, but on closer inspection it seemed a lot of that was body armor, just colored and textured like rock on the outside. The group of people I was watching were headed to investigate a disturbance in a larger cavern. As they arrived, I saw another group of people already there, with slightly different colorings and different facial structures. It looked like they might be invaders, and a fight may be pending. But the two groups of people started talking. One of the invaders said "we just want soup" and followed up by sticking out his tongue, which unrolled to a length of a foot or two down from his mouth. One of the locals echoed that "soup!" and stuck out his tongue, the same way, and the two parties marched off together with occasional cries of "soup!" ringing through the air.
I think somewhere along the line I merged into the group and was marching along with them, wending our way through the maze of tunnels. At one point we came out into another large cavern, and while the previous ones were illuminated with a reddish-orange light, this one had a bluish white cast. There was a Christmas carol playing. (Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, I think.) This was either a room set up as a memorial, to remind everyone of what they left above, or a welcoming chamber for survivors coming down from above. I don't know which, I just remember both thoughts floating thru my head at the time. There was an unlit doorway leading downward in the center of this chamber, and we went in. I don't remember anything after that.
The next dream sequence may have followed immediately, I really don't recall any connection or transition though. There was a narrator talking about how "lighthouses are also an embassy, and the captains of visiting ships are representatives of their governments." I guess I was on a walking tour of a lighthouse, somewhere on the gulf coast, probably Texas. They were talking about the facility having an extensive sonar array in addition to the constantly probing light, broadcasting underwater to warn ships away from the rocks. I looked out from the tower to the water below, watching the waves pounding onto the rocks, as the light passed overhead. The night was utter black when the light moved on, you couldn't see anything, you could only hear the ocean in the dark void.
I was walking along behind a group of sailors, and suddenly I had the impression of traveling a great distance. "I think we're in Toronto now." There was a sailor ahead of me, about to board a ship. I called out "hey, where are we?" and he looked up at the sky, looked at a couple of stars, and said "Toronto" and returned to climbing aboard. I don't know why we moved so suddenly from one place to another, but it was still a lighthouse. This time I saw several ships docked below, apparently there was a channel and a breaker and the lighthouse served to guide ships in. Inside the lighthouse there was a shop, apparently selling merchandise that was abandoned by certain ships - contraband perhaps, or recovered from wrecks. There was a room with a sign over the door "Happy Thanksgiving" lit with yellowish light, there were shelves lined with cassette tapes, records, other stuff, and on one shelf was a small stereo system blaring out some stridently hissy rock music. I ducked back into the main room and looked over another display shelf. More cassettes, some CDs, and an oversized DVD package that caught my eye. The top of the package was labeled "ORCS" and beneath that was an illustration of 4 orcs seated at a table. Underneath were some captions saying stuff like "see them fight over spoils..." and beneath that a larger caption "Watch and learn to roleplay!" Apparently it was one in a series of DVDs, but that was the only one on the shelf.
Some guy was trying to shove past me (the room had pretty narrow aisles) and so I put it down and moved off to the side. "Pretty crazy stuff, huh?" he said. I replied "yeah, I haven't figured any of it out." "Me neither." I moved on. My brother was over by the checkout counter, talking to some other people I didn't recognize. He said to me "hey, my cell phone is still running slow." I said "yeah, mine was too, I had to turn off the callerID. The network around here seems to be flaky." At that point a phone number flashed in my head: 999-999-9116 which was an actual caller ID I had received yesterday on my cell phone. I clearly remembered it, the same way it looked when I had looked at the phone at that moment. Then back in the dream, we fumbled with the phones for a bit, navigating menus and turning features on and off. Some folks around us were buying some items from the shop, and I woke up.
The first bit was just a jumbled collection of thoughts at first, but slowly evolved into a narrative. The basic premise was that the surface of the earth was no longer habitable, and I was hearing a voice say that this was the end for all life. Since there was no sunlight, there would be no plants, and without plants there would be no food or breathable oxygen, nor fuel to power any machines. As I was hearing this narrative I was thinking "well no, that's wrong. There's still geothermal, and we can tap that energy for a long time, probably long enough to endure until the surface recovers. The basic problem is energy, converting whatever's available to chemical energy that we can use for food and fuel. As long as we have any kind of energy source, we have time to work on the conversions, we can provide artificial sunlight to keep plants growing, we can keep some machines running."
The dream transformed a bit from there, and became a sort of tour of the underworld. At first it was just wandering/floating disembodied through networks of caverns and tunnels, but later there were people walking around, and I was watching them from a distance. I remember while watching them I had flashes of "The Time Machine" going through my head, thinking about Morlocks evolved for life underground, and blind cave fish. But while these people looked odd, they didn't look like that. In this underworld, there was plenty of light, perhaps channeled from lava tubes or some other ready source. The people looked a bit like walking rocks, but on closer inspection it seemed a lot of that was body armor, just colored and textured like rock on the outside. The group of people I was watching were headed to investigate a disturbance in a larger cavern. As they arrived, I saw another group of people already there, with slightly different colorings and different facial structures. It looked like they might be invaders, and a fight may be pending. But the two groups of people started talking. One of the invaders said "we just want soup" and followed up by sticking out his tongue, which unrolled to a length of a foot or two down from his mouth. One of the locals echoed that "soup!" and stuck out his tongue, the same way, and the two parties marched off together with occasional cries of "soup!" ringing through the air.
I think somewhere along the line I merged into the group and was marching along with them, wending our way through the maze of tunnels. At one point we came out into another large cavern, and while the previous ones were illuminated with a reddish-orange light, this one had a bluish white cast. There was a Christmas carol playing. (Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, I think.) This was either a room set up as a memorial, to remind everyone of what they left above, or a welcoming chamber for survivors coming down from above. I don't know which, I just remember both thoughts floating thru my head at the time. There was an unlit doorway leading downward in the center of this chamber, and we went in. I don't remember anything after that.
The next dream sequence may have followed immediately, I really don't recall any connection or transition though. There was a narrator talking about how "lighthouses are also an embassy, and the captains of visiting ships are representatives of their governments." I guess I was on a walking tour of a lighthouse, somewhere on the gulf coast, probably Texas. They were talking about the facility having an extensive sonar array in addition to the constantly probing light, broadcasting underwater to warn ships away from the rocks. I looked out from the tower to the water below, watching the waves pounding onto the rocks, as the light passed overhead. The night was utter black when the light moved on, you couldn't see anything, you could only hear the ocean in the dark void.
I was walking along behind a group of sailors, and suddenly I had the impression of traveling a great distance. "I think we're in Toronto now." There was a sailor ahead of me, about to board a ship. I called out "hey, where are we?" and he looked up at the sky, looked at a couple of stars, and said "Toronto" and returned to climbing aboard. I don't know why we moved so suddenly from one place to another, but it was still a lighthouse. This time I saw several ships docked below, apparently there was a channel and a breaker and the lighthouse served to guide ships in. Inside the lighthouse there was a shop, apparently selling merchandise that was abandoned by certain ships - contraband perhaps, or recovered from wrecks. There was a room with a sign over the door "Happy Thanksgiving" lit with yellowish light, there were shelves lined with cassette tapes, records, other stuff, and on one shelf was a small stereo system blaring out some stridently hissy rock music. I ducked back into the main room and looked over another display shelf. More cassettes, some CDs, and an oversized DVD package that caught my eye. The top of the package was labeled "ORCS" and beneath that was an illustration of 4 orcs seated at a table. Underneath were some captions saying stuff like "see them fight over spoils..." and beneath that a larger caption "Watch and learn to roleplay!" Apparently it was one in a series of DVDs, but that was the only one on the shelf.
Some guy was trying to shove past me (the room had pretty narrow aisles) and so I put it down and moved off to the side. "Pretty crazy stuff, huh?" he said. I replied "yeah, I haven't figured any of it out." "Me neither." I moved on. My brother was over by the checkout counter, talking to some other people I didn't recognize. He said to me "hey, my cell phone is still running slow." I said "yeah, mine was too, I had to turn off the callerID. The network around here seems to be flaky." At that point a phone number flashed in my head: 999-999-9116 which was an actual caller ID I had received yesterday on my cell phone. I clearly remembered it, the same way it looked when I had looked at the phone at that moment. Then back in the dream, we fumbled with the phones for a bit, navigating menus and turning features on and off. Some folks around us were buying some items from the shop, and I woke up.