3rd Dream - video
[Lol hey it's that androgynous weirdo by which we mean Alex. She looks, as usual, disheveled and mildly distressed. ]
Okay, I. Look, I need a little help, if, someone would perhaps be able to...
[Aaaand sudden cold feet. She starts to blush, then squeezes her eyes shut, takes a deep breath, and continues.]
I'm having trouble telling if I'm awake or asleep again, mostly because of this whole... I mean, everyone changing age. Thing. I've tried to post this to the network three times only to realize that I was sleeping, and the only reason I did is because in my dreams, no one answers. Now. And...
...
Okay look actually this, is probably going to be, um, easier for me. In text.
First, to sum up my previous points: I am having difficulty discerning whether I am awake or dreaming, as my dreams have always been extraordinarily vivid. I am unfortunately also prone to occasional bouts of narcolepsy - not debilitating, no cataplexy with it, but I have chronic tiredness and a poor habit of falling asleep at inopportune times. The worst part is that I have a habit of falling asleep when I am wake in situations that most people would use as reality checks to see if they're dreaming - when I make a reality check to wake myself if I am awake, I tend to fall asleep instead, and furthermore reality checks don't always work for me in dreams.
It's become quite debilitating. At home it was no problem, as I could easily tell the difference, but here there's... there's a different quality to the waking world that makes it much more difficult. It's partially the surreality of the situations - people changing age or species and aliens running about and so on.
Presently my method is part of the problem. Where I am from, everyone dreams in the same dream-space, there's a... I hesitate to call it a secondary reality, but that is how it was described to me. Personally think of it as a global thought network. Very few people where I am from are aware of its existence as it is deliberately kept secret to prevent the unscrupulous from taking advantage. Rather... violently kept secret. I am a special case as I've been drafted to help repair a problem within that network, but that isn't important to the subject at hand. The point is, where I'm from, when anyone dreams of another person, that person is usually dreaming of them. Not in all cases, in many you'll dream of a construct, but in most you dream of them. The reason no one notices is that most people do not remember their dreams, or even all the dreams they'll have in one night. I could dream of my best friend every night for three months and only remember three cases, and he might only remember three cases, and the likelihood of those three cases coinciding is so slim that even if they did it'd be considered coincidence. And when you have six billion people randomly selected from for said dreams... you see the problem.
The difference with me is that I've always... I can't control who I dream of completely, as some of you found out. But I can control the dreamscape and once I've dreamed of someone the first time I can often find them again.
None of this is the point - the point is that you people don't seem to dream the same way. Normally, my dreams should be filled with you, but everything is empty, save for occasional constructs generated by my own mind (and yes, I can tell the difference, constructs don't feel the same way). But whenever I've dreamed of any of you, really dreamed, you notice and you seem to remember, which... isn't normal. It's...
I think it's that our worlds must work in fundamentally different ways.
... but the end point is that my dreams are very, very lonely right now, and the only way I've been able to tell that I'm sleeping is because it's too silent. Because I'm a recluse, admittedly, it's much harder, I've gone weeks without seeing another soul and if I dream of this station my mind tends to populate the network with posts anyway. I think I went a whole day yesterday asleep with no idea because I just assumed that nobody was about the section of the station I live in and people weren't talking about anything interesting, and when I woke up at last I thought I was dreaming as the network was filled with these posts about aging and only figured out I was awake when someone walked past the building.
I have started testing by seeing if I can bend the dreamscape, but even when I dream of this station it's... harder to shape it, I think because I have a preconceived notion that I shouldn't be able to. And it takes me quite a while to realize that I should try that, and finally, this doesn't change the fact that my dreams are so empty.
...
Which admittedly feels a bit like whining. I'm sorry, you can ignore that part. This was a bit long, wasn't it?
[OOC: REPLIES MAY BE SUPER, SUPER DELAYED, AS I AM BEING KIDNAPPED LATER TODAY TO GO OFF ON VACATION??? I'll have my phone but no idea if I'll have internets where I'm going.]
Okay, I. Look, I need a little help, if, someone would perhaps be able to...
[Aaaand sudden cold feet. She starts to blush, then squeezes her eyes shut, takes a deep breath, and continues.]
I'm having trouble telling if I'm awake or asleep again, mostly because of this whole... I mean, everyone changing age. Thing. I've tried to post this to the network three times only to realize that I was sleeping, and the only reason I did is because in my dreams, no one answers. Now. And...
...
Okay look actually this, is probably going to be, um, easier for me. In text.
First, to sum up my previous points: I am having difficulty discerning whether I am awake or dreaming, as my dreams have always been extraordinarily vivid. I am unfortunately also prone to occasional bouts of narcolepsy - not debilitating, no cataplexy with it, but I have chronic tiredness and a poor habit of falling asleep at inopportune times. The worst part is that I have a habit of falling asleep when I am wake in situations that most people would use as reality checks to see if they're dreaming - when I make a reality check to wake myself if I am awake, I tend to fall asleep instead, and furthermore reality checks don't always work for me in dreams.
It's become quite debilitating. At home it was no problem, as I could easily tell the difference, but here there's... there's a different quality to the waking world that makes it much more difficult. It's partially the surreality of the situations - people changing age or species and aliens running about and so on.
Presently my method is part of the problem. Where I am from, everyone dreams in the same dream-space, there's a... I hesitate to call it a secondary reality, but that is how it was described to me. Personally think of it as a global thought network. Very few people where I am from are aware of its existence as it is deliberately kept secret to prevent the unscrupulous from taking advantage. Rather... violently kept secret. I am a special case as I've been drafted to help repair a problem within that network, but that isn't important to the subject at hand. The point is, where I'm from, when anyone dreams of another person, that person is usually dreaming of them. Not in all cases, in many you'll dream of a construct, but in most you dream of them. The reason no one notices is that most people do not remember their dreams, or even all the dreams they'll have in one night. I could dream of my best friend every night for three months and only remember three cases, and he might only remember three cases, and the likelihood of those three cases coinciding is so slim that even if they did it'd be considered coincidence. And when you have six billion people randomly selected from for said dreams... you see the problem.
The difference with me is that I've always... I can't control who I dream of completely, as some of you found out. But I can control the dreamscape and once I've dreamed of someone the first time I can often find them again.
None of this is the point - the point is that you people don't seem to dream the same way. Normally, my dreams should be filled with you, but everything is empty, save for occasional constructs generated by my own mind (and yes, I can tell the difference, constructs don't feel the same way). But whenever I've dreamed of any of you, really dreamed, you notice and you seem to remember, which... isn't normal. It's...
I think it's that our worlds must work in fundamentally different ways.
... but the end point is that my dreams are very, very lonely right now, and the only way I've been able to tell that I'm sleeping is because it's too silent. Because I'm a recluse, admittedly, it's much harder, I've gone weeks without seeing another soul and if I dream of this station my mind tends to populate the network with posts anyway. I think I went a whole day yesterday asleep with no idea because I just assumed that nobody was about the section of the station I live in and people weren't talking about anything interesting, and when I woke up at last I thought I was dreaming as the network was filled with these posts about aging and only figured out I was awake when someone walked past the building.
I have started testing by seeing if I can bend the dreamscape, but even when I dream of this station it's... harder to shape it, I think because I have a preconceived notion that I shouldn't be able to. And it takes me quite a while to realize that I should try that, and finally, this doesn't change the fact that my dreams are so empty.
...
Which admittedly feels a bit like whining. I'm sorry, you can ignore that part. This was a bit long, wasn't it?
[OOC: REPLIES MAY BE SUPER, SUPER DELAYED, AS I AM BEING KIDNAPPED LATER TODAY TO GO OFF ON VACATION??? I'll have my phone but no idea if I'll have internets where I'm going.]