boogieshoes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
boogieshoes) wrote2011-01-12 05:08 pm
boogieshoes) wrote2011-01-12 05:08 pm
Entry tags:
Weird Dreams are Weird
you know you're in the spotlight when... a trip up the stairs into an airplane generates an AP story. sheesh. i know it's Ms. Clinton, but really? are we *that* hard up for political news? i didn't think so.
in a more personal comment, i had a dream last night where we were invaded by aliens and saved by zombies. the imagery looked a lot like the artwork from a Deadlands RPG manual. it was... weird, to say the least. especially because i was trying desperately to be a good student and go take all my classes, finish all my homework, and take the finals. now, let me put some background on that: the last couple weeks, off and on, i've been having dreams where i've been in college at TAMU, and i'm taking the last few classes for my Bachelor's. the dreams flip from 'in college the first time' to 'back in college because they've discovered i'm missing some classes from my degree program in my transcript'. but in any case, i'm taking 2-4 classes in this last semester, but i can't seem to keep up. there's always at least one or two classes that i can never get to on time, forget where they are, can't find the time to do the homework for, and forget when the finals are. inevitably, the most distressing version is when it's only two classes, and i'm falling behind on both of them.
so last night, i had a dream that opened with myself and several friends/classmates watching the space shuttle touch down, but knowing it wasn't the real shuttle, and those weren't the real astronauts. and we're trying to contact someone to warn them that something's wrong, but we keep getting laughed at and told we're conspiracy theorists and if we get more aggressive, it could result in legal trouble. finally, a guy from NASA comes to talk to us and he's asking why we're so certain that these are the wrong people and the wrong shuttle. and i say, 'look, i know what it looks like, but if you look through this telescope, you can see the real shuttle. and you can tell it's the real shuttle because of (something i couldn't understand here)."
so he looks through the telescope, which looks like a normal telescope, and even though it's day out, you see this image of the shuttle floating on the black space background, with the bay doors open. and i hand the guy a pair of binoculars and say 'here, these are 10x stronger than that 'scope (evidently, it was old technology...), you can see more detail through these.'
so he uses the binoculars - but like, in parallel with the scope, so he's putting the binoculars up against the eye-piece of the 'scope and looking at the 'scope's image through the magnification of the binoculars, and he's like 'oh my god, you're right, it's still up there!'
and i say something like 'this also explains the skin-bleaching thing.'
'what do you mean?'
'well, you know how nobody can figure out why astronauts always come back paler than when they go? and sometimes it's a *really* graphic change, like black people come back almost white in skin tone? well, if you look, you'll see one of the astronauts up there, and he's the same color as when he left. which means the guy down here is not the guy who left. there's something really wrong going on here.'
and the NASA guy is getting grimmer and grimmer.
'and this has happened to everyone who's gone up there so far. whoever comes back, it isn't the original. and we didn't do it - it must be aliens.'
NASA guy suddenly disappears, the way people do in dreams, and i think he's gone back to warn people we're really on to something, except that it's too late. the alien invasion has begun. they've been 'prepping' us by replacing the astronauts with their clones, and slipping their clones into important positions to hamper our space exploration attempts/ any analysis that might have been done if various people picked up blips indicating the incoming ships/ defensive initiatives, etc. except the clones are kind of like walking viruses, and kind of not. they can infect people who will then do their bidding, but they don't start whole-sale disease issues of any kind, and the infection thing is under conscious control of the clone. the one way to tell that they're clones, or at least not the real people, is the pale skin-bleaching effect. apparently, the complexity of our skin and skin tones is such that the aliens can't really replicate it completely. and they 'feel' kind of plastic to the average person. that is, their behavior is a little off so that it feels subtly wrong, but most people won't really know why they're uneasy about a person, just that they don't really feel comfortable in their presence.
so anyway, the small group of us realize this is a much bigger and more immediate problem than it might otherwise be, because the date for the alien invasion is... tomorrow! and it's not like we can really organize in time, or evac, or anything, just make a few preperations. TAMU isn't in a large city center, or major administration center or any of that, so we figure we won't be in the initial invasion. but somehow, the aliens have figured out that we know about them, and have decided to target TAMU for invasion so they can kill the people who know/knew about the clones first.
at this point, i kind of hazily realize that they probably killed NASA-guy when he returned, and learned from him what we knew or suspected. and my logical self realizes the obvious connection between NASA-guy and the TAMU-specific invasion.
anyway, i'm down in the 'south fields' of the university campus the evening before the invasion, and in the morning, they surprise us. their ships are silent, i think. either that, or everyone is so invested in finals week that nobody notices a damned thing until they start killing people. and then, of course, it's chaos. sort of. because the people blink in and out in my dream like my mind can't decide if everyone's running around screaming, or they're all locked up in their rooms studying and the campus is deserted. and the two states meld so they're running around screamining in their rooms about studying... which i suppose is what finals week is all about anyway. at any rate, in the dream state, this produced kind of a weird feeling in me, heh.
anyway, i'm the only one outside the initial invasion circle who's awake at the time and sees what the aliens are doing. and somehow i know it's like everyone inside the circle needs to be 'woken up', and then they can be organized into a resistance. so i get up and i run in a northerly direction to campus proper, taking cover as i go. as is typical in these things, i'm naked. (why am i always naked? is it just that i have sensitive skin, or what?) my goal is to get to my dorm room, on the other side of campus, and get my gun/weapon/clothes...
so i get to campus proper, and i make my way through the Bright Building (which is where i spent most of my actual time when i was acquiring my BS in RL), which has, of course, changed layout to suit my dream-state. (and is probably why i can't find my classrooms!) anyway, as i'm sneaking through the ground floor of Bright, i run across A, who in RL is a mentor-coworker/friend from old!job. in dream!life, he's evidently a professor at school, and he stops me and says 'i'm really disappointed in you. you need to pass X class to graduate from school, but you've been missing classes all semester. and you've only turned in 1 assignment, but there are at least 3 more due. and it's not like it's hard, you know.'
now as it happens, i know the class he's talking about *isn't* hard - in fact it's a very basic math class. or maybe it's a very basic english class. or maybe it's a basic linguistics class, since it seems to combine both basic math and basic english... but every time i 'go to class', i can't get there in time. or i'm late. or it takes so long to get there i miss the class all together. and i know this in dream!life, because after A's speech, i'm getting this montage of times when i'm trying to get to class and running out of time, or trying to do my homework for the next day, and the time literally disappears so now it *is* the next day, 20 min before class, of course.
and A says 'Mrs So-and-So is about to kick you out of the class, and you really need to complete it. your grade is awful, and i'm not sure you can make it up at this point.' oh, shit. so now i have to fight off an alien invasion, *and* somehow successfully do all my missing assignments, take a test i haven't studied for in a classroom i can never seem to get to on time. naked. hmmm. better add 'my textbooks' to that list of stuff i need to get from my dorm room.
so i promise A that i'll do the homework, and that i'll show up for the rest of the classes and take the final on time, and i head out to sneak across the rest of campus to get my stuff. there follows a bunch of scenes where i'm 'getting my stuff' - in about 5 different dorms. apparently, i don't have an actual dorm room, just a locker here, and a footlocker there... and did you see my backpack of textbooks anywhere? i can't remember where i put it...
i start back down to Bright, because remember, that's where the classrooms are that i need to be in, and this time, i'm fighting defensive/offensive actions all the way, and 'waking people up' to the invasion. and i'm gathering a rag-tag group of freedom fighters together as i go, and the people waking up decide whether to fight, evac, go warn parents, or... pack for the end of the semester move. yeah.
now, TAMU is famous - or infamous, as the case may be - for the Corps of Cadets. someone i met once described the Corps as ROTC on steroids... which is pretty true. but to be completely fair, TAMU started *out* as a military school like VMI, etc, and only became 'open to the public' in the 60's, and the first woman wasn't admitted until 1969. so the Corps has a pretty long-standing and strong tradition to follow, and most of members aren't really fanatics... anyway, in my dream, i run into or wake-up a rough dorm-full of Cadets, all or mostly guys. and they're in uniform, except not the Cadet uniform or Cadet BDUs, but kind of an orangy version of Desert Camo with those boxy hats the lizard-aliens in the 1980s 'V' miniseries wore. the shirts are sleeveless. anyway, they've been fighting, but they're all kind of disorganized because they're without leaders at the moment - all their upperclassmen/ TIs are still under the alien influence. and they decide to join with my group because i'm a 'bounder' - a leader who can 'bound the problem' around the aliens, thus making assaults on them successful, even against superior firepower. (why hello there, job!dialect!)
my group and the Cadets split up and meet at Bright, deciding to defend the building by stealth force. somehow, i've lost everyone but me, and the Cadets are bloody, dirty and tired (so am i, it's kind of a classic War Scene At the Movies... with fewer guns, but they're all rifles). we have to sneak into Bright, because it's sort of under alien control, or it hasn't been invaded yet, but we don't want to let the aliens know we're here. and i go in the front, and the come 'round the side. and while i go in, i see the classroom where i'm supposed to be taking that class with Mrs. So-and-So, and... people are taking the final. and i've completely missed the test. again. crap.
after some hard fighting and sneaking, i meet with the Cadets in the Stairwell. now let me explain, RL!Bright is 7 stories tall, not including the basement, and you can access all of it via the stairwell. dream!Bright is also like that, except the stairwell is a sort of an open-secret - it's not nearly as well traveled as it is in RL. anyway, i'm with the Cadet Lt on the first floor landing of the Stairwell, and we're waiting for the aliens to invade Bright. we know they're going to sabotage the elevators, and use the stairwell to access all the floors, trapping the humans and killing them. so we're holed up in the Stairwell (there's only one), and when they open the door, we're gonna burst out and do a major rampage on the aliens. but it's a grim scene, because we have to hold the stairwell, and there's not that many of us, but there's hundreds of aliens, maybe thousands, and we might lose anyway.
and then the Cadet Lt says they've gotten a transmission from the General, who's coming back to earth and sending help. and he's confident about the help, but i'm not so sure, because apparently the General is supposed to be dead. and what kind of help would he be sending anyway - what can take on these aliens?
and the Cadet Lt says they're supposed to be these great heroes - originally a band of 20 men, and now there's just 15. and somehow i know what he's talking about, but it's really just pure legend, like the Arthur will come again in the time of greatest need legends. and i know that the original 20 men were supposed to be based on horsemen or cowboys in the Old West, and while i like the legend, i'm pretty sure it's not gonna happen.
and at that point, the aliens open the door, and i can see they're everywhere. so i just reach out and slam it shut again, which really startles the aliens because they weren't expecting that. and apparently, there's enough time for artistic license to occur, because the Cadet Lt produces the same telescope we originally saw the space shuttle in and said 'look, the General's ship is here!'
so i look, and i see this ship, that looks kind of like a cross between Moya of Farscape, and the roving Elder Gods - no tentacles, though, and it's all metal, it just... looks nasty. And somehow i know the General is actually part of the ship. he - or his body - really is dead, but his brain/conciousness has been implanted into the ship, kind of like Andromeda. and as i watch, i see a beam of light come out of the ship. and i know he's gonna keep his promise, but i'm not sure how, so i open the door and yell 'let's get 'em!' and we boil up out of the stairwell and fight the aliens.
except there's too many. it's kind of an epic battle scene. apparently, right across from the stairway, is the front door of Bright, which in this dream faces a green field. (in RL, the front door opens onto a street, across from with is the Petty-Chem building. dream!Bright is a much prettier setting). and as i'm fighting, i see the same fire-red beam of light that was in space fall on the green, and these horsemen fade in, on their horses. except horses and riders are zombies in various states of disrepair. and some of them i don't recognize, but i unexpectedly know who seven of them are - it's the Magnificent 7, come again to save us (plus a few others). and Chris, of course, is the leader of everybody.
and one of the riders - i think it's Josiah - is de-armed right as they come in by an alien - literally, his arm is flopping on the floor with his hand still holding the gun. and Ezra's horse has toppled over, and they can't stand up - evidently, they've fused into a single unit, and they're kind of stiff as a board in the prone position. the other guys are there, though, and fighting, and we're fighting, and eventually, we meet in the middle, with all the aliens dead or dying. and i pick up Josiah's arm and hand it to him. and myself and Cadet right Standish and his horse.
let me pause here and say something about the graphics. the riders - all of them - and their horses had parts that were there, and parts that weren't. Josiah and his horse were almost entirely invisible. his arm, when attached, was at arm-level doing arm-things, but it was looked disembodied from his head, which looked like it'd been decaying for a few hundred years, and from the horse-armor that was pretty much all that defined his horse. i knew the horse was *there*, but i couldn't see it. and it was kind of freaking me out. Ezra's horse was 'missing' his legs, but the invisible hooves rested on visible skids with wheels, like on a rocking horse. when Ezra was righted, he was the most 'well put-together' zombie. and he said 'well, thank you for your timely rescue.' *smile showing his gold tooth*
and i'm looking around, and i see JD, Nathan, Buck, and for a minute, i can't figure out where Chris and Vin are. 'Chris is over there'. i turn to look, and Chris and his horse are all visible, and Chris is dressed in his trademark duster and hat. his head is down, and then he lights a cigarello and raises his head to look at me, and his face is burned, crinkled and cracked - he looks like he's been burned alive, and has decayed a bit. he kind of grunts, then sticks his head down and rests against the tree. Vin is with him, but Vin is *entirely* invisible, not a trace of him anywhere.
and then Buck says 'Damn, it's good to be home! Where're the ladies? I need some comfort.' and i look at him, and he's got his mustache and hair and most of his skin, where it hasn't been torn and gaping open on his cheek, what i can see through rents in his jacket and such. and he sees me, and it's like he spots his prey, and i panick. 'Gotta go do something,' i mutter to Cadet Lt, and take off back north. i want to get away from zombie!Buck, because i have this thing about zombies, no matter how heroic, and i'm not a necrophiliac. who knew?
so i'm retreating as fast as i can through the crowds to the dining hall (i love the instant scene changes in dream-land), and i hear the Cadet Lt behind me tell Buck 'that's our leader. be careful with her, she's a bounder, and we really can't afford to lose her.'
'Well, all right,' he says. 'just let me get cleaned up.' the next time i peek back i see Buck cleaned up, and he's 'whole' now, and in color, and it wasn't until then that i realized all the zombies were in various shades of ash grays, except for Chris, who was black with lines of orange-red fire cracking through the burnt skin from time to time. but i'm still kind of freaked, because, you know, not a necrophiliac, and i *know* what Buck looks like under there. and he's getting closer, and he finally corners me on an upper terrace level of tables and chairs set out for the diners.
'what's a pretty little filly like you doing in a place like this?' he says. damned charmer.
'studying!' i squeak, and then i wake up.
i had to laugh.
and then i had to quickly jump out of bed, because i'd slept longer than usual!
and now, i'm poking at Farad, because i seem to remember her telling me she has an idea for my Green Day universe, and she hasn't written it yet, and i still want to read it. Farad, what say you?
-bs, bemused by her brain
in a more personal comment, i had a dream last night where we were invaded by aliens and saved by zombies. the imagery looked a lot like the artwork from a Deadlands RPG manual. it was... weird, to say the least. especially because i was trying desperately to be a good student and go take all my classes, finish all my homework, and take the finals. now, let me put some background on that: the last couple weeks, off and on, i've been having dreams where i've been in college at TAMU, and i'm taking the last few classes for my Bachelor's. the dreams flip from 'in college the first time' to 'back in college because they've discovered i'm missing some classes from my degree program in my transcript'. but in any case, i'm taking 2-4 classes in this last semester, but i can't seem to keep up. there's always at least one or two classes that i can never get to on time, forget where they are, can't find the time to do the homework for, and forget when the finals are. inevitably, the most distressing version is when it's only two classes, and i'm falling behind on both of them.
so last night, i had a dream that opened with myself and several friends/classmates watching the space shuttle touch down, but knowing it wasn't the real shuttle, and those weren't the real astronauts. and we're trying to contact someone to warn them that something's wrong, but we keep getting laughed at and told we're conspiracy theorists and if we get more aggressive, it could result in legal trouble. finally, a guy from NASA comes to talk to us and he's asking why we're so certain that these are the wrong people and the wrong shuttle. and i say, 'look, i know what it looks like, but if you look through this telescope, you can see the real shuttle. and you can tell it's the real shuttle because of (something i couldn't understand here)."
so he looks through the telescope, which looks like a normal telescope, and even though it's day out, you see this image of the shuttle floating on the black space background, with the bay doors open. and i hand the guy a pair of binoculars and say 'here, these are 10x stronger than that 'scope (evidently, it was old technology...), you can see more detail through these.'
so he uses the binoculars - but like, in parallel with the scope, so he's putting the binoculars up against the eye-piece of the 'scope and looking at the 'scope's image through the magnification of the binoculars, and he's like 'oh my god, you're right, it's still up there!'
and i say something like 'this also explains the skin-bleaching thing.'
'what do you mean?'
'well, you know how nobody can figure out why astronauts always come back paler than when they go? and sometimes it's a *really* graphic change, like black people come back almost white in skin tone? well, if you look, you'll see one of the astronauts up there, and he's the same color as when he left. which means the guy down here is not the guy who left. there's something really wrong going on here.'
and the NASA guy is getting grimmer and grimmer.
'and this has happened to everyone who's gone up there so far. whoever comes back, it isn't the original. and we didn't do it - it must be aliens.'
NASA guy suddenly disappears, the way people do in dreams, and i think he's gone back to warn people we're really on to something, except that it's too late. the alien invasion has begun. they've been 'prepping' us by replacing the astronauts with their clones, and slipping their clones into important positions to hamper our space exploration attempts/ any analysis that might have been done if various people picked up blips indicating the incoming ships/ defensive initiatives, etc. except the clones are kind of like walking viruses, and kind of not. they can infect people who will then do their bidding, but they don't start whole-sale disease issues of any kind, and the infection thing is under conscious control of the clone. the one way to tell that they're clones, or at least not the real people, is the pale skin-bleaching effect. apparently, the complexity of our skin and skin tones is such that the aliens can't really replicate it completely. and they 'feel' kind of plastic to the average person. that is, their behavior is a little off so that it feels subtly wrong, but most people won't really know why they're uneasy about a person, just that they don't really feel comfortable in their presence.
so anyway, the small group of us realize this is a much bigger and more immediate problem than it might otherwise be, because the date for the alien invasion is... tomorrow! and it's not like we can really organize in time, or evac, or anything, just make a few preperations. TAMU isn't in a large city center, or major administration center or any of that, so we figure we won't be in the initial invasion. but somehow, the aliens have figured out that we know about them, and have decided to target TAMU for invasion so they can kill the people who know/knew about the clones first.
at this point, i kind of hazily realize that they probably killed NASA-guy when he returned, and learned from him what we knew or suspected. and my logical self realizes the obvious connection between NASA-guy and the TAMU-specific invasion.
anyway, i'm down in the 'south fields' of the university campus the evening before the invasion, and in the morning, they surprise us. their ships are silent, i think. either that, or everyone is so invested in finals week that nobody notices a damned thing until they start killing people. and then, of course, it's chaos. sort of. because the people blink in and out in my dream like my mind can't decide if everyone's running around screaming, or they're all locked up in their rooms studying and the campus is deserted. and the two states meld so they're running around screamining in their rooms about studying... which i suppose is what finals week is all about anyway. at any rate, in the dream state, this produced kind of a weird feeling in me, heh.
anyway, i'm the only one outside the initial invasion circle who's awake at the time and sees what the aliens are doing. and somehow i know it's like everyone inside the circle needs to be 'woken up', and then they can be organized into a resistance. so i get up and i run in a northerly direction to campus proper, taking cover as i go. as is typical in these things, i'm naked. (why am i always naked? is it just that i have sensitive skin, or what?) my goal is to get to my dorm room, on the other side of campus, and get my gun/weapon/clothes...
so i get to campus proper, and i make my way through the Bright Building (which is where i spent most of my actual time when i was acquiring my BS in RL), which has, of course, changed layout to suit my dream-state. (and is probably why i can't find my classrooms!) anyway, as i'm sneaking through the ground floor of Bright, i run across A, who in RL is a mentor-coworker/friend from old!job. in dream!life, he's evidently a professor at school, and he stops me and says 'i'm really disappointed in you. you need to pass X class to graduate from school, but you've been missing classes all semester. and you've only turned in 1 assignment, but there are at least 3 more due. and it's not like it's hard, you know.'
now as it happens, i know the class he's talking about *isn't* hard - in fact it's a very basic math class. or maybe it's a very basic english class. or maybe it's a basic linguistics class, since it seems to combine both basic math and basic english... but every time i 'go to class', i can't get there in time. or i'm late. or it takes so long to get there i miss the class all together. and i know this in dream!life, because after A's speech, i'm getting this montage of times when i'm trying to get to class and running out of time, or trying to do my homework for the next day, and the time literally disappears so now it *is* the next day, 20 min before class, of course.
and A says 'Mrs So-and-So is about to kick you out of the class, and you really need to complete it. your grade is awful, and i'm not sure you can make it up at this point.' oh, shit. so now i have to fight off an alien invasion, *and* somehow successfully do all my missing assignments, take a test i haven't studied for in a classroom i can never seem to get to on time. naked. hmmm. better add 'my textbooks' to that list of stuff i need to get from my dorm room.
so i promise A that i'll do the homework, and that i'll show up for the rest of the classes and take the final on time, and i head out to sneak across the rest of campus to get my stuff. there follows a bunch of scenes where i'm 'getting my stuff' - in about 5 different dorms. apparently, i don't have an actual dorm room, just a locker here, and a footlocker there... and did you see my backpack of textbooks anywhere? i can't remember where i put it...
i start back down to Bright, because remember, that's where the classrooms are that i need to be in, and this time, i'm fighting defensive/offensive actions all the way, and 'waking people up' to the invasion. and i'm gathering a rag-tag group of freedom fighters together as i go, and the people waking up decide whether to fight, evac, go warn parents, or... pack for the end of the semester move. yeah.
now, TAMU is famous - or infamous, as the case may be - for the Corps of Cadets. someone i met once described the Corps as ROTC on steroids... which is pretty true. but to be completely fair, TAMU started *out* as a military school like VMI, etc, and only became 'open to the public' in the 60's, and the first woman wasn't admitted until 1969. so the Corps has a pretty long-standing and strong tradition to follow, and most of members aren't really fanatics... anyway, in my dream, i run into or wake-up a rough dorm-full of Cadets, all or mostly guys. and they're in uniform, except not the Cadet uniform or Cadet BDUs, but kind of an orangy version of Desert Camo with those boxy hats the lizard-aliens in the 1980s 'V' miniseries wore. the shirts are sleeveless. anyway, they've been fighting, but they're all kind of disorganized because they're without leaders at the moment - all their upperclassmen/ TIs are still under the alien influence. and they decide to join with my group because i'm a 'bounder' - a leader who can 'bound the problem' around the aliens, thus making assaults on them successful, even against superior firepower. (why hello there, job!dialect!)
my group and the Cadets split up and meet at Bright, deciding to defend the building by stealth force. somehow, i've lost everyone but me, and the Cadets are bloody, dirty and tired (so am i, it's kind of a classic War Scene At the Movies... with fewer guns, but they're all rifles). we have to sneak into Bright, because it's sort of under alien control, or it hasn't been invaded yet, but we don't want to let the aliens know we're here. and i go in the front, and the come 'round the side. and while i go in, i see the classroom where i'm supposed to be taking that class with Mrs. So-and-So, and... people are taking the final. and i've completely missed the test. again. crap.
after some hard fighting and sneaking, i meet with the Cadets in the Stairwell. now let me explain, RL!Bright is 7 stories tall, not including the basement, and you can access all of it via the stairwell. dream!Bright is also like that, except the stairwell is a sort of an open-secret - it's not nearly as well traveled as it is in RL. anyway, i'm with the Cadet Lt on the first floor landing of the Stairwell, and we're waiting for the aliens to invade Bright. we know they're going to sabotage the elevators, and use the stairwell to access all the floors, trapping the humans and killing them. so we're holed up in the Stairwell (there's only one), and when they open the door, we're gonna burst out and do a major rampage on the aliens. but it's a grim scene, because we have to hold the stairwell, and there's not that many of us, but there's hundreds of aliens, maybe thousands, and we might lose anyway.
and then the Cadet Lt says they've gotten a transmission from the General, who's coming back to earth and sending help. and he's confident about the help, but i'm not so sure, because apparently the General is supposed to be dead. and what kind of help would he be sending anyway - what can take on these aliens?
and the Cadet Lt says they're supposed to be these great heroes - originally a band of 20 men, and now there's just 15. and somehow i know what he's talking about, but it's really just pure legend, like the Arthur will come again in the time of greatest need legends. and i know that the original 20 men were supposed to be based on horsemen or cowboys in the Old West, and while i like the legend, i'm pretty sure it's not gonna happen.
and at that point, the aliens open the door, and i can see they're everywhere. so i just reach out and slam it shut again, which really startles the aliens because they weren't expecting that. and apparently, there's enough time for artistic license to occur, because the Cadet Lt produces the same telescope we originally saw the space shuttle in and said 'look, the General's ship is here!'
so i look, and i see this ship, that looks kind of like a cross between Moya of Farscape, and the roving Elder Gods - no tentacles, though, and it's all metal, it just... looks nasty. And somehow i know the General is actually part of the ship. he - or his body - really is dead, but his brain/conciousness has been implanted into the ship, kind of like Andromeda. and as i watch, i see a beam of light come out of the ship. and i know he's gonna keep his promise, but i'm not sure how, so i open the door and yell 'let's get 'em!' and we boil up out of the stairwell and fight the aliens.
except there's too many. it's kind of an epic battle scene. apparently, right across from the stairway, is the front door of Bright, which in this dream faces a green field. (in RL, the front door opens onto a street, across from with is the Petty-Chem building. dream!Bright is a much prettier setting). and as i'm fighting, i see the same fire-red beam of light that was in space fall on the green, and these horsemen fade in, on their horses. except horses and riders are zombies in various states of disrepair. and some of them i don't recognize, but i unexpectedly know who seven of them are - it's the Magnificent 7, come again to save us (plus a few others). and Chris, of course, is the leader of everybody.
and one of the riders - i think it's Josiah - is de-armed right as they come in by an alien - literally, his arm is flopping on the floor with his hand still holding the gun. and Ezra's horse has toppled over, and they can't stand up - evidently, they've fused into a single unit, and they're kind of stiff as a board in the prone position. the other guys are there, though, and fighting, and we're fighting, and eventually, we meet in the middle, with all the aliens dead or dying. and i pick up Josiah's arm and hand it to him. and myself and Cadet right Standish and his horse.
let me pause here and say something about the graphics. the riders - all of them - and their horses had parts that were there, and parts that weren't. Josiah and his horse were almost entirely invisible. his arm, when attached, was at arm-level doing arm-things, but it was looked disembodied from his head, which looked like it'd been decaying for a few hundred years, and from the horse-armor that was pretty much all that defined his horse. i knew the horse was *there*, but i couldn't see it. and it was kind of freaking me out. Ezra's horse was 'missing' his legs, but the invisible hooves rested on visible skids with wheels, like on a rocking horse. when Ezra was righted, he was the most 'well put-together' zombie. and he said 'well, thank you for your timely rescue.' *smile showing his gold tooth*
and i'm looking around, and i see JD, Nathan, Buck, and for a minute, i can't figure out where Chris and Vin are. 'Chris is over there'. i turn to look, and Chris and his horse are all visible, and Chris is dressed in his trademark duster and hat. his head is down, and then he lights a cigarello and raises his head to look at me, and his face is burned, crinkled and cracked - he looks like he's been burned alive, and has decayed a bit. he kind of grunts, then sticks his head down and rests against the tree. Vin is with him, but Vin is *entirely* invisible, not a trace of him anywhere.
and then Buck says 'Damn, it's good to be home! Where're the ladies? I need some comfort.' and i look at him, and he's got his mustache and hair and most of his skin, where it hasn't been torn and gaping open on his cheek, what i can see through rents in his jacket and such. and he sees me, and it's like he spots his prey, and i panick. 'Gotta go do something,' i mutter to Cadet Lt, and take off back north. i want to get away from zombie!Buck, because i have this thing about zombies, no matter how heroic, and i'm not a necrophiliac. who knew?
so i'm retreating as fast as i can through the crowds to the dining hall (i love the instant scene changes in dream-land), and i hear the Cadet Lt behind me tell Buck 'that's our leader. be careful with her, she's a bounder, and we really can't afford to lose her.'
'Well, all right,' he says. 'just let me get cleaned up.' the next time i peek back i see Buck cleaned up, and he's 'whole' now, and in color, and it wasn't until then that i realized all the zombies were in various shades of ash grays, except for Chris, who was black with lines of orange-red fire cracking through the burnt skin from time to time. but i'm still kind of freaked, because, you know, not a necrophiliac, and i *know* what Buck looks like under there. and he's getting closer, and he finally corners me on an upper terrace level of tables and chairs set out for the diners.
'what's a pretty little filly like you doing in a place like this?' he says. damned charmer.
'studying!' i squeak, and then i wake up.
i had to laugh.
and then i had to quickly jump out of bed, because i'd slept longer than usual!
and now, i'm poking at Farad, because i seem to remember her telling me she has an idea for my Green Day universe, and she hasn't written it yet, and i still want to read it. Farad, what say you?
-bs, bemused by her brain