Resident Evil rewind
I was sort of myself and sort-of not, part of a team sent into a city that was crawling with zombies, trying to find the source of the problem. I remember a trashed street where we spent a lot of time fighting. We realized too late that this seemed more a suicide mission than anything else, as we were vastly outnumbered and were having to improvise weapons much too quickly as ammunition ran out. I vaguely remember the leader of our team, a blonde woman, realizing she was infected and doing some kind of heroic thing like running out into a ton of the zombies with explosives and blowing herself up. There was some vague reference to flying zombies, perhaps a genetics experiment gone very wrong, but the dream seemed to retcon that a moment later.
A lot of this is fuzzy because it was the first of several dreams involving the bio-zombie concept. The last bit of this one I remember was fleeing into a building of some sort, and another member of the team realized he'd been bitten. I think at this point there were, at the most, three or four of us. I walked right up to him with some kind of wooden stake/pole and stabbed him through the heart. He couldn't believe what I'd just done, but then he was shortly dead and the other guy(s) on the team completely agreed with how I'd handled things. Then I woke up.
I fell back asleep, and this time I was playing probably another part of the same story on a console (probably a 360 with how good the graphics were). The view on the screen was first-person perspective, and my character was part-way up a slowly-spiralling, sturdily-secured hanging staircase in an office building somewhere. A cutscene had just ended, and I was trying to pause the game because I had to talk on the phone. No matter how hard I pressed the start button, it wasn't pausing, and I was being attacked from below by a T-Rex skeleton that apparently had been animated by the zombie virus. It wasn't actually trying to bite me though, it seemed to be hellbent on head-butting me to death.
I figured the game had done this on purpose as some sort of surprise realism gimmick, so I figured I'd let myself die and reload the saved game because I was still dealing with the phone call. This seemed a lot like a boss or at least a mini-boss fight, but I noticed it wasn't hurting very much on the interface's life bar. That was a good sign, that meant when I redid the fight it should be pretty easy. Suddenly the T-Rex flopped down onto the main floor as if I'd defeated it. Apparently it only had so much fight and then the thing gave out completely. Weird.
At this point I was done with the phone call, then suddenly the game showed me the hanging supports for the stairs were coming undone (super-rust attack of doom?) and the whole thing was going to collapse. I ran off of the stairs before they fell, then wandered over to see what was up with the skeleton. It seems like there was someone else there now, some guy who was maybe a team member, and we were discussing strategy for taking this thing down if it happened again. It was also not a game anymore, but actually me (or some psuedo-version of me) and the person standing in the room with the dinosaur skeleton.
The dream rewound for a moment, as if the whole fight were happening again, except this time I had a chance to load my gun up with these large, pointed bullets that were "just the thing" for taking the dinosaur out. I think I was trying to kill it without going onto the stairs, because now I knew they had a limited duration and I wanted to see if there was anything I needed to get on the landing the stairs led to (the video game puzzle-solving concept was still in effect it seems). This bit is fuzzy, but I think I was succeeding in taking down the dino but I noticed that the second-floor-type landing had changed more into a catwalk that didn't look very stable. Then I woke up again.
I fell back asleep and this time I was an office-worker who was again sort of like myself. I knew something was wrong, thanks to all the hints from the previous dreams, but it seems like everyone on my floor had no idea and was doing the daily routine. I remember thinking maybe the virus was currently outside and hadn't gotten this far into the building. A group of ladies wanted to gossip and I blew them off because I was actually trying to find a way outside even if it was dangerous out there. Obviously staying in the city would end up a death sentence in the long run.
I was in darker offices before long and I think the zombie thing hit around then. People out in the main offices were toast, and I may have run across something myself (this bit is fuzzy yet again). I was now looking for weapons and not having much luck, but I did find a woman who wasn't infected yet, as well as a little girl. I picked the girl up and we went down a back stairway to the floor below. I remember wanting to protect the child but finding the other lady a nuisance. I woke up again.
Back to sleep, and now a sequence of elevator puzzles ensued. I was alone again, and I knew various floors of the building were badly infected. The main elevator shafts all seemed to open up in the same general area on each floor, but not all the elevators went to every floor. I remember one elevator going to the 5th, 11th, and 12th floors, and one on the 5th floor supposedly went to the 7th, 3rd and 1st. (I'm not 100% sure on the numbers but that sounds about right, considering I was keeping track of this in my head for solving the damn "puzzle." Whether I'm off or not, I'll talk about them like they are the correct floors just to avoid confusion.)
I think I was on the 5th floor when I managed to get onto the elevator that should take me down to the 1st floor, which was my target as I think it was the only one with street exits. I do remember basement numbers that I think I pressed by accident, but managed to clear with a cancel button (which of course I've never seen on an actual elevator in real-life). The elevator stopped at the 3rd floor and a guy got on who looked like Mr. Jones from Fringe. Oddly enough, the elevator now went upwards as if his priority for wanting to go up floors somehow overroad the fact that the elevator should still be going down.
Great, so now I was on the 7th floor where he got off. Somewhere in here I woke up again, and went to sleep again, not wanting to give up on this trail of interconnected dreams (I was actually enjoying them, even with the scary factor and the puzzles of illogical doom.) I was back in the office building on one of the floors a few stories up, and I was near the elevators. There was a black woman who was one of the secretaries, on some very open stairs near me, and it was a bit dark there. I think she knew something was going on, but she was going to take the stairs down and I had no interest in teaming up with her. At this point it seemed like it was gonna be a solo project for me.
By now I'd realized that I'd spent a lot of consecutive time in this building where other people were getting infected, and I wasn't. I'd even tangled with zombies and was still fine. Hmmmmm. I had a feeling that there was some reason I wasn't catching the virus, that I was somehow immune. So now I needed to escape not only to save my own skin, but possibly help make an antivirus or vaccine. Time to get crackin' on the elevators again. Plus, it seems like as soon as I had this epiphany, zombies were approaching. Yep, good time to split.
I thought the first elevator I got into was the correct one, but as I hit the button trying to get the damn door shut right now I realized there was only one number on it, and an arrow above it. The number was 75. Oh crap, I'd just gotten on the executive elevator that makes a non-stop trip to the 75th floor. Gaaaaaaah! Well, at any rate, at least the door would be shut for a while and I had time to think.
The back side of the elevator had another set of doors that was cordoned off by those easily-movable poles with a thick decorative rope between them. There was also cardboard taped over the doors. Hmm, that says "not allowed" in a major sorta way. I had my eyes on the poles themselves, and decided that since it looked like nobody could see what I was doing, I'd try to take the things apart and see if they'd make good weapons.
The pole part itself unscrewed from the top and bottom parts, and was now made of wood for some reason (pretty sure it started as metal -.-;; ). The ends were very pointy where they'd screwed into the other pieces, and it was about 2.5 feet long. Perfect. I got two of these things, though for some reason the second was shorter by about a foot. I also peeked behind the cardboard on the doors, seeing that there weren't actually doors there at all and I could watch the elevator shaft wall go by.
Right then a voice came over a speaker like somebody had been watching me; the way he talked it sounded like a security guard who was probably monitoring things from the 75th floor. There were suddenly a whole bunch of little tiny black cameras in the elevator ceiling now too. (Hey dream logic, you and I need to have a talk.) He was asking what I thought I was doing, and... yay for fuzzy memory... I think I may have said something weird was going on in the building, that it was dangerous, and I didn't even want to be on this elevator.
He was starting to respond like he didn't give a rat's ass and needed to report me and all this stuff... but not far into that he sounded like he was losing interest in the conversation, and forgetting that he'd already said part of it. Then he made this weird staticy almost-growly noise and the feed cut out. Greeeeat. The elevator started slowing down, and also for some reason it had gone from the size of a decent elevator to a rather cramped space. I pointed both my weapons towards the main doors and was sort of crammed in the back-left corner of it, ready to defend myself as needed. My main goal was going to be getting the doors closed again once they opened, and thus the elevator returning to where I'd gotten on earlier.
The doors opened, and I could only see a bit of the waiting room beyond. The lighting was very dim, and I could see a woman sitting in a chair facing away from me. There was some kind of decorative plant next to her, and I couldn't really see anything else. She was just sitting there making little odd humming noises, and I was trying desperately to get the elevator to understand that I'm hitting the damn button that indicates I would like to go somewhere else please. I think I hit it with my elbow at first while holding the weapon in that hand, then using my hand when it wouldn't cooperate. Mind you, the button is now smack in the middle of the back wall where the do-not-touch doors should have been (and no longer were).
The doors shut finally, nothing having attacked me though I knew there were bad things in that room that thankfully hadn't noticed me or hadn't gotten to me yet. As the elevator made its way back down, I made a mental note again that I still wasn't infected. Suddenly I noticed blood on the far ends of my weapons, as if I had been attacked up there but had made it through fine. There was suddenly also carpet in the elevator, so I busied myself with wiping the blood off onto it.
The last thing I remember is finally getting off the elevator of doom, and managing to get to about the 3rd floor or so. There were stairs nearby, the sort of stairs that go to all floors, and I decided that it was high time to screw the elevator puzzle and just walk to the first floor.
Then I woke up (for the last time).
A lot of this is fuzzy because it was the first of several dreams involving the bio-zombie concept. The last bit of this one I remember was fleeing into a building of some sort, and another member of the team realized he'd been bitten. I think at this point there were, at the most, three or four of us. I walked right up to him with some kind of wooden stake/pole and stabbed him through the heart. He couldn't believe what I'd just done, but then he was shortly dead and the other guy(s) on the team completely agreed with how I'd handled things. Then I woke up.
I fell back asleep, and this time I was playing probably another part of the same story on a console (probably a 360 with how good the graphics were). The view on the screen was first-person perspective, and my character was part-way up a slowly-spiralling, sturdily-secured hanging staircase in an office building somewhere. A cutscene had just ended, and I was trying to pause the game because I had to talk on the phone. No matter how hard I pressed the start button, it wasn't pausing, and I was being attacked from below by a T-Rex skeleton that apparently had been animated by the zombie virus. It wasn't actually trying to bite me though, it seemed to be hellbent on head-butting me to death.
I figured the game had done this on purpose as some sort of surprise realism gimmick, so I figured I'd let myself die and reload the saved game because I was still dealing with the phone call. This seemed a lot like a boss or at least a mini-boss fight, but I noticed it wasn't hurting very much on the interface's life bar. That was a good sign, that meant when I redid the fight it should be pretty easy. Suddenly the T-Rex flopped down onto the main floor as if I'd defeated it. Apparently it only had so much fight and then the thing gave out completely. Weird.
At this point I was done with the phone call, then suddenly the game showed me the hanging supports for the stairs were coming undone (super-rust attack of doom?) and the whole thing was going to collapse. I ran off of the stairs before they fell, then wandered over to see what was up with the skeleton. It seems like there was someone else there now, some guy who was maybe a team member, and we were discussing strategy for taking this thing down if it happened again. It was also not a game anymore, but actually me (or some psuedo-version of me) and the person standing in the room with the dinosaur skeleton.
The dream rewound for a moment, as if the whole fight were happening again, except this time I had a chance to load my gun up with these large, pointed bullets that were "just the thing" for taking the dinosaur out. I think I was trying to kill it without going onto the stairs, because now I knew they had a limited duration and I wanted to see if there was anything I needed to get on the landing the stairs led to (the video game puzzle-solving concept was still in effect it seems). This bit is fuzzy, but I think I was succeeding in taking down the dino but I noticed that the second-floor-type landing had changed more into a catwalk that didn't look very stable. Then I woke up again.
I fell back asleep and this time I was an office-worker who was again sort of like myself. I knew something was wrong, thanks to all the hints from the previous dreams, but it seems like everyone on my floor had no idea and was doing the daily routine. I remember thinking maybe the virus was currently outside and hadn't gotten this far into the building. A group of ladies wanted to gossip and I blew them off because I was actually trying to find a way outside even if it was dangerous out there. Obviously staying in the city would end up a death sentence in the long run.
I was in darker offices before long and I think the zombie thing hit around then. People out in the main offices were toast, and I may have run across something myself (this bit is fuzzy yet again). I was now looking for weapons and not having much luck, but I did find a woman who wasn't infected yet, as well as a little girl. I picked the girl up and we went down a back stairway to the floor below. I remember wanting to protect the child but finding the other lady a nuisance. I woke up again.
Back to sleep, and now a sequence of elevator puzzles ensued. I was alone again, and I knew various floors of the building were badly infected. The main elevator shafts all seemed to open up in the same general area on each floor, but not all the elevators went to every floor. I remember one elevator going to the 5th, 11th, and 12th floors, and one on the 5th floor supposedly went to the 7th, 3rd and 1st. (I'm not 100% sure on the numbers but that sounds about right, considering I was keeping track of this in my head for solving the damn "puzzle." Whether I'm off or not, I'll talk about them like they are the correct floors just to avoid confusion.)
I think I was on the 5th floor when I managed to get onto the elevator that should take me down to the 1st floor, which was my target as I think it was the only one with street exits. I do remember basement numbers that I think I pressed by accident, but managed to clear with a cancel button (which of course I've never seen on an actual elevator in real-life). The elevator stopped at the 3rd floor and a guy got on who looked like Mr. Jones from Fringe. Oddly enough, the elevator now went upwards as if his priority for wanting to go up floors somehow overroad the fact that the elevator should still be going down.
Great, so now I was on the 7th floor where he got off. Somewhere in here I woke up again, and went to sleep again, not wanting to give up on this trail of interconnected dreams (I was actually enjoying them, even with the scary factor and the puzzles of illogical doom.) I was back in the office building on one of the floors a few stories up, and I was near the elevators. There was a black woman who was one of the secretaries, on some very open stairs near me, and it was a bit dark there. I think she knew something was going on, but she was going to take the stairs down and I had no interest in teaming up with her. At this point it seemed like it was gonna be a solo project for me.
By now I'd realized that I'd spent a lot of consecutive time in this building where other people were getting infected, and I wasn't. I'd even tangled with zombies and was still fine. Hmmmmm. I had a feeling that there was some reason I wasn't catching the virus, that I was somehow immune. So now I needed to escape not only to save my own skin, but possibly help make an antivirus or vaccine. Time to get crackin' on the elevators again. Plus, it seems like as soon as I had this epiphany, zombies were approaching. Yep, good time to split.
I thought the first elevator I got into was the correct one, but as I hit the button trying to get the damn door shut right now I realized there was only one number on it, and an arrow above it. The number was 75. Oh crap, I'd just gotten on the executive elevator that makes a non-stop trip to the 75th floor. Gaaaaaaah! Well, at any rate, at least the door would be shut for a while and I had time to think.
The back side of the elevator had another set of doors that was cordoned off by those easily-movable poles with a thick decorative rope between them. There was also cardboard taped over the doors. Hmm, that says "not allowed" in a major sorta way. I had my eyes on the poles themselves, and decided that since it looked like nobody could see what I was doing, I'd try to take the things apart and see if they'd make good weapons.
The pole part itself unscrewed from the top and bottom parts, and was now made of wood for some reason (pretty sure it started as metal -.-;; ). The ends were very pointy where they'd screwed into the other pieces, and it was about 2.5 feet long. Perfect. I got two of these things, though for some reason the second was shorter by about a foot. I also peeked behind the cardboard on the doors, seeing that there weren't actually doors there at all and I could watch the elevator shaft wall go by.
Right then a voice came over a speaker like somebody had been watching me; the way he talked it sounded like a security guard who was probably monitoring things from the 75th floor. There were suddenly a whole bunch of little tiny black cameras in the elevator ceiling now too. (Hey dream logic, you and I need to have a talk.) He was asking what I thought I was doing, and... yay for fuzzy memory... I think I may have said something weird was going on in the building, that it was dangerous, and I didn't even want to be on this elevator.
He was starting to respond like he didn't give a rat's ass and needed to report me and all this stuff... but not far into that he sounded like he was losing interest in the conversation, and forgetting that he'd already said part of it. Then he made this weird staticy almost-growly noise and the feed cut out. Greeeeat. The elevator started slowing down, and also for some reason it had gone from the size of a decent elevator to a rather cramped space. I pointed both my weapons towards the main doors and was sort of crammed in the back-left corner of it, ready to defend myself as needed. My main goal was going to be getting the doors closed again once they opened, and thus the elevator returning to where I'd gotten on earlier.
The doors opened, and I could only see a bit of the waiting room beyond. The lighting was very dim, and I could see a woman sitting in a chair facing away from me. There was some kind of decorative plant next to her, and I couldn't really see anything else. She was just sitting there making little odd humming noises, and I was trying desperately to get the elevator to understand that I'm hitting the damn button that indicates I would like to go somewhere else please. I think I hit it with my elbow at first while holding the weapon in that hand, then using my hand when it wouldn't cooperate. Mind you, the button is now smack in the middle of the back wall where the do-not-touch doors should have been (and no longer were).
The doors shut finally, nothing having attacked me though I knew there were bad things in that room that thankfully hadn't noticed me or hadn't gotten to me yet. As the elevator made its way back down, I made a mental note again that I still wasn't infected. Suddenly I noticed blood on the far ends of my weapons, as if I had been attacked up there but had made it through fine. There was suddenly also carpet in the elevator, so I busied myself with wiping the blood off onto it.
The last thing I remember is finally getting off the elevator of doom, and managing to get to about the 3rd floor or so. There were stairs nearby, the sort of stairs that go to all floors, and I decided that it was high time to screw the elevator puzzle and just walk to the first floor.
Then I woke up (for the last time).