Wednesday, March 14, 2007

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME...

...unto someone with a head full of Whiskey and Snakes?

I don’t know, but I can say that they may be passing strange.

Early Sunday morning, I had a remarkably bizarre and vivid dream, a dream that incorporated so many diverse images and elements that it left me almost breathless. At the risk of appearing completely insane to my Esteemed Readers, I’ll essay to describe it as best I can remember...

I recall being in a large jet aircraft. It’s not unusual for me to dream about traveling by air, given the amount of time I spend shuttling about in the Silver Aerial Bus. I had forgotten to turn off my BlackBerry, however, and it sent the plane into a steep dive...

...and suddenly we were outside, looking at the plane as it sat, freshly materialized, on an asphalt parking lot. It was night-time, and beyond the parking lot, in the direction we were compelled to go, was a river.

Crossing the river would be difficult, as it was not so much a river as a series of cataracts plummeting from an almost vertical rock face of indeterminate height. But I resolutely pointed myself in the direction of that steep wall.

As I approached, the cascading water seemed to diminish, revealing a stony edifice of astounding complexity and height silhouetted against the darkling sky. I looked up at it, realizing that it was inspired by the Fortress of Ultimate Evil from the movie Time Bandits. What the fuck!??!

Suddenly I found myself inside, amidst a haze of electronic noises and whirring, fast-moving objects reminiscent of the video game sequences in Tron. The other passengers on the plane with me had disappeared. After a few bewildering moments, I managed to navigate my way to an exit.

Outside, I found myself in a daylit world of cartoonish characters reminiscent of the “Toontown” scenes in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? People shared the pathways with various seemingly sentient animals, careening willy-nilly through a world of saturated colors and rapid movement. I noticed various familiar-looking round objects scattered hither and yon, whereupon I realized where I had ended up.

I was in a future world. The “plane” had not been a plane at all, but a time machine that had transported me a hundred years into the future. And not just any future, but one in which the real world had been replaced by an electronic construct similar to that in The Matrix.

Unlike the electronic simulacrum of reality in The Matrix, this was a benign Virtual World. It was nothing less than Second Life, applied to the entire Real World by its future denizens. They had turned their backs on First Life, finding it wanting. The people and Furry Animals were avatars - stand-ins for the people who had created this new world.

I touched one of the round objects (“Sit Here”) and I - or my Future Avatar - promptly sat down. The inhabitants of this strange world had heretofore ignored me, but now that I had figured out what was happening, I knew I could find a way to communicate. I got up and began walking.

Further confirmation of the Second Life-like nature of the place came when I took a snapshot of myself and a few of the passersby. For, following the traditions of SL, when one takes a snapshot, one must react with an exaggerated “High Five” gesture. I was learning the language and customs!

But now a new problem surfaced. A box containing Essential Scripts had been stolen - by whom, or why, I could not tell. But the missing scripts were the ones that held the Virtual World together. Without them, the people of the future would be dumped into a Real World with which they had no experience. It would be a disaster!

I had to act fast. Already, there was a massive spot of deresolution growing in the sky just over the horizon, a rapidly growing zone of nothingness.

Running along the path, I ran into the one person who could save the world! It was...Elder Daughter! Looking remarkably like her normal early-21st Century self, too!

And that is when my alarm awakened me. Holy Crap!

So: Wazzup with this peculiar dream? Wazzup with all the Filmic References? Was the powerful influence of a combination of Vodka and Snakes at fault?

What nutty-ass dreams have you had lately?

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