Lucid Dreams

I've always dreamed vividly. I often dream lucidly - where I'm in control of my dreams. I never have nightmares because I can change any element of my dreams and wake up on command. Sometimes I think this is dumb and change the channel to an entirely new dream. The earliest lucid dream I can remember started with me on a blank set and several producers and actors with scripts and clipboards pitched me the dream they had planned. I thought it sounded boring so I flew away and fought ninjas under a rollercoaster instead. That production motif is a recurring theme: people in my dreams occasionally apologize for flubbing their lines and doing a second take.

Here are my adventures.

• Simon and Mera (two PCs from my Level 20 RotFM campaign) were enjoying a Christmas together. Mera was singing Christmas music and Simon kept casting counterspell to get her to stop. Every time Simon took a sip of his drink, Mera would yell silvery barbs! to make him drink again.

• I was at a public pool and a man got pulled over outside. He bet the cop that he'd get out of the ticket if he could make a dive off the pool's famous 1,000ft high dive. Due to some dream physics nonsense, the landing pool for this diving board was only 5ft wide and 100ft deep. I watched his attempt with binoculars. He was a professional so he nailed it like an Olympian.

• I managed to use my dreams to write explore ideas and write drafts for nycmidnight's 100-word Microfiction Challenge 2025. Note: This is the first time I've succeeded in doing this! I've done it once since for DND prep, but that's spoilers. I didn't get to the second round but you can read my 100-word entry: Same River Twice.

• Got to enjoy playing DND under Matt Mercer himself! It was the fourth chapter of the Dragon of Icespire Peak trilogy (a running theme). When we took our break, Matt decided we should finish the session elsewhere and packed up to move. We tried the living room (too small), a barn (fellow player Zac Oyama - nbd - vetoed because he's allergic to birds), a mall (no tables), and finally a cafeteria (where we got squeezed out by another gaming group with an even larger setup). Note: not being able to find a good location for an activity is a common motif in my dreams.

• Flying back from London, I was offered a $40 upgrade to teleport to PHL instead. I took the opportunity to leave the conference a day early and get instantly home. I forgot to upgrade my luggage though, so I had to go back the next day to try and sort out that mess.

• Nicole is friends with Tom Cardy (whom bartends and looks like my brother-in-law).

• Another library conference turned out to be a spy thing. Hand over all personal items. Cover story: Going to get dental care overseas (a timeless group destination activity).

• Hopping off a train with two young twin nephews in tow to do a rollercoaster tour of London. Hop in a queue to take a business slide down the mountain among regular commuters.

• A body-hopping world where you can Spider-Man gesture your way into an automaton. Automatons are openly available - hanging in abundance in the open. A favorite pastime is trashing them, so there tend to be many along high railings for “sky diving”. Available automatons look like hanging dresses. The larger and more elaborate the dress, the more high-functioning and realistic the form. I apparently enjoy spending my vacations in low-powered forms. Ignorance is bliss?

• My mother and I agreed that there aren't enough street name signs in our hometown. We designed some stickers to add our own signs. I went out and added a few to some stop signs. They looked nice. When I got back, my mother had placed thousands of stickers end-to-end down the center line of every street in our neighborhood. Some of the stickers were upside-down and there were chaotic areas of hundreds of stickers making patterns or art or spelling out the name. In order to promote (celebrate?) the project, she bought large street sticker-branded crash pads and constructed an outdoor gymnasium/obstacle course for the community.

• A long rant about how a drink a bought said it was 64oz but was actually 32oz. The labelling consistently said that it was a four quart beverage while actually being half that. One part of the label mentioned watering it down for kids - but the bottle is just lying. My friends let me yell about this in an abandoned movie theater.

• One of our fosters got out. Found a very similar cat but I couldn't be sure. Brought them home to check with Nicole - whom decided to let every cat that looked remotely like the lost foster into the house. For the rest of the dream (and the next two), there are at least 4 cats in every room and I'm constantly scooping cats up and letting them outside.

• I play a VR game with my dream nephew. I'm very good or a dev or something. I figure out that one of the nephew's friends plays the game and we're often - coincidentally on the same team. He even 3D printed his mask from in the game. This allowed him to recognize me and he freaks out like I'm Neo from The Matrix. The rest of the dream is coming up with an overly complicated plan to explain to our nephew's parents why he was so nervous to meet me. This involves lying to say that I'm a nurse and I give him insulin shots and he was surprised to see me outside of office hours? Very dumb. Hold on. There's a stray cat in here.

• Our cat came down with rapid ear growth and we had to isolate her in my parent's 2003 minivan. By the end of the dream, she was contently purring while 14 ears covered her eyes like bangs. I woke up before the medicinal cure cream I ordered on 2-hour delivery arrived. Real-life Pearl is fine.