Mawwaige... is What Bwings Us... Togevvah... Todey....

[Note: in this dream universe I didn't seem to have any knowledge about Em and Simon, and I also seemed to be quite a bit younger than my waking life self, by about 20 years or so.]

One of the first things I remember was that it was dark out, but it still had the feel of being early evening, sort of like how it gets dark early during the winter, but it wasn't cold.  I was in a small, unfamiliar town, and I had just gone inside of a building that reminded me of the old Mercedes warehouse in Texas.  It wasn't full of stuff, but rather the aisles were very wide and tall, and in the "walls" of the aisles were doorways into various rooms.  It was mostly dark in the warehouse, with only a few areas dimly lit by lights way above.

As I entered one of the lit areas, there was a room on my right that I knew I was supposed to go into, and as I went in, I knew I was there to meet someone.  I was feeling some hesitation about it because something about it didn't feel right to me, and quickly I realized I was there because I was supposed to be marrying a young woman that I barely knew, or didn't know at all and had only heard of, and I had the feeling that the whole thing was mostly arranged by her parents.  What I didn't know was how I was the one that that got chosen for her to marry.  The young woman was in her early 20s, maybe around 5' or 5' 1", had blonde shoulder length hair, and was on the thin side.

For the most part, I was there just in time for the wedding to begin, but I wasn't going where I needed to go so that it could get started.  After entering the initial room, it turned more of an antechamber into a meeting hall or something for this small town, almost like a narthex to a sanctuary at church.  I knew that most of the people were already in the sanctuary type room, and once I went in, the wedding would begin, so I was putting off going in so that it wouldn't begin yet.

There was some stuff going on that I don't really remember, but during that general time I found out a few things.  First, the whole town, as small as it was, was very close knit, and very religious.  They almost struck me as being Mormon, or something very similar.  Also, this arranged marriage setup was part of their religion, and not going through with it held consequences of ostracism for both of us.  I wasn't concerned for myself because I didn't really know these people, but these were the young woman's friends and family, and they meant a great deal to her.  Her parents seemed to be especially stern about the whole thing, as they also risked losing face should the marriage not go through.  And finally, thinking about it now, I never found out the young woman's name.  Or if I did at some point, I've now forgotten it.  

I don't remember exactly how or when we met, but I think I found out at least some of this from talking with the young woman, and other parts from observing people in and around the narthex.  When I was talking with the young woman, I got the impression that in spite of the marriage being arranged, she wanted to be happy about it, partially because she knew she was supposed to be happy about it, so she tried her best to convince herself that she was happy.  She seemed very unsure of herself overall, as if her whole reason for existing was to make those around her happy by doing the things she was "supposed" to do.  As I realized this, I felt bad for her, and I wanted her to be truly happy by doing what she wanted.  I wanted to tell her this, to tell her to stand up for what she wanted, but at the same time, I felt like she had convinced herself that this wasn't the case, and to tell her so would actually be quite a blow to her, and I didn't want to cause her grief.

During this time, I think I also found out that we had sort of met online or something.  She talked about either putting something online or finding me online, and somehow that caused things to start where I became the one that was going to marry her, but that whole process seemed to happen without my involvement.

After a bit of hemming and hawing I finally decided it was time to get ready and go into the sanctuary for the wedding.  I went in, and I could sense the relief not only from the young woman, but from her parents as well as the pastor.  I went to the front, up onto the raised dais area, and into a little half-walled area that had a folding chair and sat down there.  I don't remember the actual ceremony, but it seemed to mainly revolve around me answering questions and agreeing to marry the young woman as she and her parents sat in the front of the crowd and watched me.  It was more like being in a court room and answering a judges questions from the stand rather than a normal marriage ceremony.  Also, at this point it seemed to be daytime rather than night like the earlier part of the dream had been.

Eventually that all ended and we were supposed to be going to a reception or celebration, but there seemed to be a general feeling that the whole group of friends and family did not want me and the young woman to spend any alone time together in spite of now being married.  Part of it seemed to give me the impression that they didn't want us being intimate, but another part of it seemed to be that they didn't want me to talk to her privately because they were sure I'd say something that would cause her to "wake up" from the spell they seemed to have her under.  They were really quite the controlling group, and I didn't like it.

While we were waiting for the celebration to begin, I wound up sitting next to the young woman on some sort of bench or sofa while other people were milling around.  I was on her right, and her parents were on her left, and people were going around to and fro getting things ready.  She was holding my hand and eventually she scootched closer and put her head on my shoulder.  She actually seemed to be genuinely happy to be there, but was hesitant to show it too much because she wasn't sure if I was actually happy.  When I realized that she was actually happy and not just trying to convince her self that she was, it made me feel better and happier for her, and I leaned my head over onto hers and brought my right hand over to hold hers in both of mine.  As we sat there, I actually started to feel more love for her and less pity for her.  I realized that the marriage was actually going to give us time to get to know each other a little better and I would have time later to talk to her and help break her out of her shell.

Soon after this, we were ready to leave and head to the place where the reception was going to be.  It was night time again, and we were riding in a SUV or something with a number of her friends.  Her parents didn't seem to be there, or they were in a different vehicle, or they had left earlier and were already at the destination.

We finally got to this place that was kind of a rustic bar or restaurant or something, but when we got there, something was wrong.  We got out of the vehicle, and people were outside, and some were trying to go into the main entrance, which was kind of to our left, and others were trying to get into a "back" entrance or service entrance on the right side.  Each door had a single bulb light above it, and there was a little bit of dim light coming from the windows, almost like some lights at the far back or another room were on, but the room that the windows went to wasn't actually lit.

There was something wrong going on.  Either something was broken down, locked up, or possibly even something darker like someone had been hurt or killed.  This seemed to go on for "a while", like maybe a half an hour or so, and then eventually it got cleared up and we were able to go inside.  The room where the reception was to be held was white, very tall, about 20 feet to the ceiling, and big enough for several hundred people to hang out in.  As we were in there, things started to relax a bit, and the young woman seemed to be having more fun and feeling better.  We were constantly at each others side.

At this point the dream started falling apart and fading out and I started waking up, but I was feeling happier and ready to see where this thing with the young woman went.

Sometimes They Come Back, Sometimes They Go

Em and I were in a mall, but I'm not sure where it was located.  I got the idea it was somewhere in Virginia, and it seemed that both Em and I worked there for the mall, at large, rather than a specific store.  It was also almost as if we even lived there, working in one part of the mall and living in another part.

I was walking through the busy shopping part of the mall, working on some task that required me to go from one store to another, and passed by a group of people that suddenly seemed very familiar.  It turned out that it was the family of an ex from high school, including the ex.

At first I worried that they'd spot me and recognize me, but I realized that I had changed a lot in my appearance since they last saw me, and I figured between the added weight, the buzz cut hair and the beard, I was safe.  I just walked quickly past, but wondered briefly what brought them there as I thought that they lived a lot farther away.

A short time later I was walking through another hallway past a music store on my right, and there was a line of people waiting to get in.  I quickly glanced over and saw my ex and her mom in line, and they immediately spotted me and recognized me and started calling out to me.  I turned away quickly and acted like I didn't know them and made my way towards the "dead" end of the mall where the living quarters were.  There were some divider screens that were up that I just walked around, and I hoped that if they decided to follow me, it would be enough to deter them from continuing to follow me.  I was hoping to be able to just wait it out for them to leave.

I made my way to one of the bathrooms in this living quarters area.  It was basically a giant public restroom that was huge, full of stalls, and very much like other bizarrely huge bathrooms that have shown up in other dreams.  I went in and and was looking for an empty stall to just go sit and hide out in, but so many were occupied or broken.  It was amazingly busy in there.  As I was walking around, a couple of my "coworkers" and "housemates" were asking what was up, and I told them about my situation.  They seemed sympathetic, but didn't have any good suggestions and basically just wished me luck.

While I was still wandering around this huge bathroom for somewhere to hide, my ex and her family came in and found me.  They started talking to me, asking me how I was doing, what I'd been up to, and things like that.  My ex, of course, started asking me why I ran away when they had called out to me.  I wound up telling her that I just didn't have any interest in talking to her.  She seemed slightly offended, but it also seemed to feed off of it in a way that meant that she was going to start needling me even more about why I didn't want to talk or something.  I remember feeling angry about that and feeling like I was ready to start yelling.

This part got kind of fuzzy, and the next bit was about being out in a fairly hilly area.  I think at first I was kind of disembodied, kind of like flying, and it was like as if this part was almost showing me background story of what was to come.  It kind of had the feel of Warwick, NY during the late summer or early fall.  

There were a number of small farms and farm houses around, but things seemed to be very close to the road.  I remember seeing one farmhouse on the right side that was only maybe 10 feet from the side of the road.  There was a very old blue pickup truck parked near by, and it had something on the license plate that made me realize it belonged to Em and me, and that this was supposed to be our house.  (I think I knew when I first woke up what the plate said, but now that it's several hours later, I only have a vague impression that was something cutesie like our current plates, alluding to my and Em's relationship.)  I had the feeling that I was on my way to see Em for a bit, but it ended quickly

The next thing I knew I was driving through the same area during the winter.  There was snow all around on the grass and trees, but the roads seems fairly clear.  Normally this would make me very happy, but I was feeling very sad.  It was strange because I wasn't actually 100% aware of why I was sad or where I was going.  I knew I wasn't going to my house, and when I got to it, I drove past it and kept going without slowing down.

A short way past the house, I saw the old blue pickup truck, this time on the left side of the road.  This area had a lot more trees, and while the truck was close to the road as before, this time it was among the trees near a cobblestone driveway with an open gate.  When I saw the truck, I knew I had to turn left and drive up the driveway.

It went back quite a ways from the road, and it was kind of a steep rise that seemed to wind around to the right and the back to the left.  I eventually came to an open area that was a large circle made of the same cobblestone and with short, knee-high walls on either side.  It appeared to be one of the parking areas for this residence, as there were a couple of cars there.  The driveway continued out to the left a short way and then hooked right into a garage that was under a gigantic stone house.  Another part of the driveway wrapped around the house to the right and continued up the hill where there was another parking area behind the house.  The house was huge and gray stone, about 4 or 5 stories tall, and it was almost castle-like in appearance.

I stopped my car in the middle of the first parking area and got out.  There were a few of people around, a couple of men an at least one woman, and I got the impression that they might have been expecting me they were talking in hushed tones as I walked in their direction.  They greeted me and I greeted them, and I suddenly realized who they were.  They were my exes family from the mall!  But that realization didn't come with the shock of surprise, and neither did the realization of why I was there.

Somehow, between the time that I had seen the farm house and truck in the first "fly by", and now, Em had passed away.  It was why I was feeling so sad while driving, but now I finally remembered why.

My ex and her mom came out of the house via a door to the left and above the garage.  There was a long set of stone steps that matched the house and came down to meet the cobblestone of the driveway, and as they were walking down, I was walking up.  I still wasn't sure exactly why I was there at their house.  My ex stopped about halfway down and held out an arm and made a "come on" motion with her hand and said, "Come on in.  I know exactly what you need."

Of all the things that could have meant, I somehow knew with every fiber of my being that it meant she was going to make me pancakes, and I started to follow her inside.

The Hole in the Earth

When the dream started, I was at the Miller farm in Weyers Cave, or somewhere close by.  I was in an open field, and there were mountains on the horizon, but everything had a very stylized, almost cartoonish quality to it.  Everything was very "clean" and sharp, almost simplified in appearance, and it all had this weird glow to it, almost as if it were supposed to be night time, but in a the middle of a city in a video game.  Saints Row 3 and 4 come to mind.  It was dark, it was late, yet everything was plainly visible.

Out in the middle of the field, there was a very large hole.  The hole was also cartoonish in that it was a perfect circle, and the edges of the circle were cut perfectly into the ground, and it was solid black.  There was a little bit of a hint of perfectly vertical walls at the edge that ran down into the ground, but it did not look like dirt.  It was just cut into blackness.  The hole was growing rapidly, and things were falling into it.  At first the hole looked like it was maybe several hundred feet wide, but then it looked like it was miles wide at the same time.  

I was with a group of people, some family and some from work, I think, and there was even someone that I think was kind of dressed like a medieval knight.  The knight was there to somehow help us fight the hole or something.  The rest of us were just scrambling to keep away from it so we didn't fall in.  There may have been a brief scene where we were with the knight in a setting kind of like a Robin Hood encampment.  There was a large wooden fence all around, and torches all over the place keeping everything lit, and lots of people running around.  I think we were trying to figure out either how to avoid the hole, what was in the hole, or where the hole eventually wound up.  What was on the other side of it?  Where did it lead?

I saw a brief view of the entire planet Earth from space, and I could see the hole on the surface, almost as if it were an overlaid image on top of the earth.  The hole was kind of up to the north-west of my point of view, but just like with seeing it on the ground, I could see the dark gray-to-black of the inner wall of the hole, perfectly perpendicular to the flatness of the top of the hole.  From here I could see it growing, too, going from taking over about one fifth of the surface, to one quarter, to one third, growing to the size of the Earth itself.

Back on the ground, the edge of the hole was coming towards us, and lots of things were still falling in.  We were running between the "Big Barn" towards the dairy barn on the farm, but even the big barn started to fall into the hole.  Somehow at this point we realized that the other end of this hole came out into something like an alternate dimension that resembled our current one, but was different and somehow more malicious.  I don't know if there were any specifics about that discovered, but somehow we knew.

Finally the hole got big enough and came fast enough that the dairy barn dropped into it, and we were going to be next.  I remember a very brief falling sensation, followed by a quick flip, and suddenly I was standing on new ground.  Everything in the new place had a reddish color to it, almost as if it were lit by lava.  It was as if the entirety of Mordor was inside of Mount Doom.  We knew we were stuck here, because within a few minutes the hole would have the whole Earth engulfed, but we still didn't know why this was all happening.  Unfortunately the dream ended before we found out.

The Matrix is Shutting Down

I started out in a large mall-like building that was supposed to be my work building.  I was talking to someone there about The Matrix 4 coming out, and as we were talking, it was supposed to be like we were starting to watch it.  Keanu Reeves was there, but he looked more like his Cyberpunk 2077 character, Johnny Silverhand, than Neo.  Pretty quickly it transitioned from watching a movie about it to being part of the story.

The inside of the mall-like building was very brightly lit and pretty much all white except for some black accents.  There were a lot of video screens around, too.  Big ones, like big video kiosks that would normally have a map of the mall or playing an ad, and others on the walls that were like giant multi-part displays.

Keanu (because he was Keanu in the dream, really not Neo) looked around and said that the Matrix was being turned off.  I looked around, too, and I didn't see anything at first, but when I tried to relax my mind and my eyes, I started seeing the Matrix code sliding around on everything, except that instead of being green, it was a bright, light blue.  As I looked in the direction he was looking, I could see where these screen like areas were going dark, and the Matrix code was disappearing from them.  It was starting from farther away, but was quickly coming towards the area we were standing in.  As it did, it also was turning out the lights in that direction, so it was getting darker.

There was a group of maybe about 10 or 15 of us around, all different ages, men and women, boys and girls.  It really was just a random selection of people.  We all took off after him.  We understood that if the Matrix shut down, our world and our existence would be wiped out.  It was more like we were programs rather than people injected into the Matrix, but at no point did anyone ever imply we were programs.  Keanu said, "We have to stop the Matrix from shutting down.  Come on!"  And he took off running in the opposite direction of where everything was turning off, and we all followed.

As we ran and watched the Matrix code around us, we could see it flickering in and out, and we could hear the "thunk" behind us, like a big switch being thrown in an empty warehouse, as things turned off.   It seemed to catch up to us, and Keanu egged us on to keep running and keep following him.  He kept telling us that we needed to get to "the center of the Matrix" before it all shut down.

There was a point where we came up to a really big area, kind of like a huge food court but without the tables and chairs.  The light was getting dimmer, and there were something like giant statues of heads around.  The Matrix code was getting sparse on everything and kept flickering in and out.  But even though this was the case, we were in this area for a bit longer.  There was some talking going on, and it kind of seemed like maybe Keanu was talking to... I don't know...  machines, maybe?  I think he was trying to convince them to stop the Matrix shutdown, but they were saying that this was the way it had to be, and eventually we moved on.

Soon after this we were running through more big white mall-like hallways, and the power outages seemed to be very close, and stuff was turning off all around us.  We had hit an area of the building where there seemed to be some strangeness in the structure of the building, going up in kind of a weird diagonal direction, and we were having to climb up over furniture, boxes, weird built-in structures, and such to get through a doorway sized opening that was about 10 feet up from us.  Everyone was helping each other climb up and through.  Once we got though there, the whole area where had just left turned off and went black.  The way forward went through a short hallway and then opened up to a very sunny and warm outside area with green grass and blue sky.

At this point my alarm went off and I woke up.  I wish I knew if we ever made it to the "center of the Matrix"...

The One True Marker

 I was in a house with other people, and it was late at night.  I think Em may have been there, and possibly other family, but there were also people there that I didn't know.

In the course of talking to these people, someone showed us a "marker" (as in the large coin like item from the John Wick movies) that they had, but they needed to get rid of it because of some trouble it was causing. 

I don't think I specifically volunteered to do anything with it, but at one point I took it to get a closer look or something, but doing so "activated" it somehow, and suddenly I knew that "they" were coming for me to get it.  At this point, it became very much like Lord of the Rings where I needed to keep this thing out of the reach of the ones coming after it, although I wasn't entirely sure what I needed to do with it or how I was going to do it.

Very quickly, I wound up leaving and heading north.  I knew that if I went north quickly enough, I could get to where they couldn't reach me.  I don't remember how I found out what "they" were, but pretty early on I knew that they were like a combination of the Ring Wraiths from LotR and the dementors from Harry Potter.  Oh, I think I found out because when I left, it was still night time, and these things were only active at night, and they were dormant during the day.  I think I got a short way out but had to make my way back to the house or something, and I either spotted them or heard them during that time.

In the morning I left the house (I'm not sure how I was safe at the house during the night) and once again set out for heading north.  With the chasers dormant, I picked up a strange power from the marker, and it made me extremely fast, allowing me to travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles in a day on foot.  I remember the scenery blurring by as I moved.  I also picked up some extra strength from it, although I don't remember using it for anything.  I just knew that during the day I could move faster than the chasers did at night, and as long as I kept going each day, I could outpace them to my goal.

I remember going through a number of wooded areas, and at one point I even came up to the top of this hill or something that overlooked into a valley and the mountains beyond it.  It was late evening at that point, and though I was heading north, the sun was behind me shining down into the valley, although it had that "golden hour" look to it.  I knew I'd have to find shelter for the night so I could get up early and keep going in the morning.

At some point during all the travel, the dream ended before I reached my destination.

Mini Tornados at the Barn

 I was in the "Big Barn" that used to belong to my maternal grandparents, but rather than being dark and run down like it is in real life, it was actually somewhat fixed up, decently lit, and relatively clean.  I was in there with a small group of people, mostly family I think, and for some reason we had our cat, Pumpkin, in there with us.  She had gotten loose so we split up into a couple of groups to try to find her.

After a short period of time, there was some sort of weather alert, and there was a big storm coming.  I knew we had to find Pumpkin fast, so we were moving quickly around the barn looking for her.  I think we eventually found her in a doorway under one of the hay storage areas.

Shortly after that, the wind started to pick up, and a number of us went to the windows to look out and see what was going on.  I saw that the barn was pretty much surrounded by mini tornadoes that were forming within 50 feet of the barn.  Oddly, they weren't really dangerous because they weren't fast moving.  There were maybe three to five of them around, and they were forming and spinning slowly, but I knew that if I wasn't careful, they'd speed up and turn into full blown tornadoes.  

For some reason we thought we'd have a better time dealing with them from the dairy barn instead of the big barn, so we quickly ran from one to the other.  I'm not sure what our reasoning was, but we felt like we could see them better since there were more windows, so that's what we did.

There was something about the tornadoes, and the weather in general, that I knew I had some degree of control over, or at least if I did certain things, it could cause them to get worse or better.  I kind of feel like I knew what those things were within the dream, but I can't remember now what in the world they were.  

I think the dream ended there because Simon, my son, came and woke me up.

Ah! Not the bees!!

 I was in a large building that had a very "back rooms in Portal" feeling to it.  Things seemed to have a lot of reddish and brownish tint to them, and had the feel of an open warehouse layout.

I was talking with a couple of people (no one I recognize or remember) and one of them was commenting about how they were trying to get wasps out of the building.  They were using wasp spray on the nests, but not much luck with it.  They pointed out the nests to me, and they looked almost like they had been manufactured by people rather than built by wasps.  They were kind of an orange-brown color, and they had very obvious sections or layers to them.  The bottom hole was where the wasps were coming in and out, and that was on the narrowest section.  As it went up to the top of the nest, there were maybe 4 or 5 sections total, each a little bigger than the one below it, except for the top one which was smaller than the one below it.  The nests were all aimed at a 45 degree angle, and there was some light inside, as if it were getting in from the outside.

At some point I wound up with the wasp spray, so I inched up within 15 feet or so of one, aimed the can and sprayed.  I got close to the hole in the end, but I wasn't right on it at first.  I quickly adjusted the spray and started spraying all around inside of the nest to kill all the wasps.  It seemed to be going well, but there were a lot in there, and I hand to really keep on them to make sure they didn't escape and start flying around.

Someone said something to me (I don't remember what) and distracted me for just a moment.  I stopped spraying, and it was enough that some of the wasps slowly started coming out and buzzing around sickly.  I started spraying again, thinking that I'd get to those escaped wasps in just a moment, but as soon as I fired into the nest, those six or eight wasps immediately bolted straight at me and attacked the right side of my abdomen.  I jumped and screamed, waking myself up in the process.  I heard my self emitting a mumble, "Mmmmhhh!" instead of an actual scream as I woke up.

Back to Work

[Context: In waking life, we're in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and work has completely shut down except for those of us that can work remotely.  Starting Monday, 4/27/2020, Trevor returned to the office and warehouse in order to start putting away stock that has been delivered to the Goulets' previously so that we can slowly start getting up and running.]

In the dream, the morning that Trevor went back to work, I was told I could also go in since we would not cross paths, and so I went.  When I got there, it was just Trevor in the warehouse, but shortly after, more people started showing up.

At first I was excited to see the other people as well, but I soon realized that they were all in Trevor's area helping out with the receiving, and they weren't practicing safe social distancing.  Rachel was at the receiving tables within two or three feet of other people.  Drew was walking around talking to everyone from only about three feet away.  Adam, Brandon, Anita, Micah and all sorts of people were there, and no one seemed to care that we could be getting each other sick.  For some reason I was even in the warehouse instead of back in my office away from everyone.

I really wanted to say something to everyone, but I just couldn't get it out, and I think part of it was that I didn't want to seem like the bad guy or stepping out of my place to tell everyone else what to do.  I figured that if Rachel, who is normally very cautious, was ok with it, then it must be ok, but I knew deep down that it really wasn't yet.  The dream ended there.

Cleaning out the Miller Garage

It was night time, and there were a bunch of my family members in the garage at the Miller farm. (my maternal grandparents)  Matthew, Michelle, my mom, Emily and Simon were there, as well as maybe one or two others.  There was lots of light inside the garage, which was unusual because in waking life, I don't think there was any electricity or lights in there.

We were all working on getting the two sides cleared out, but mainly the side where the old pick-up truck and tractor used to be.  As time went on, we got things out and it was looking very nice inside, although it was still very old with the twisted wood and dirt and board floor.  I have no idea where we were putting the stuff that was inside, but it was disappearing anyway.

Eventually it was light outside, and we wound up outside of the garage, on the side that the road was on.  I'm not sure what we were doing out there, but I was there with Simon, who was 4 years old at the time.  We wound up having a run-in with some bees or wasps, which scared Simon.  I think I wound up either taking his hand or just picking him up, and we ran off away from the bees towards the road but staying within the field behind the garage.

Catching COVID-19 The Stupid Way

I was at a giant shopping mall that had a very modern or even futuristic vibe to it.  A number of people seemed panicked and were running around, and there were a number of people with masks.  I realized that it was due to COVID-19, and I quickly realized I had no mask on. 

In all of the chaos, an Asian man came up to me, and I realized it was Patrick, who I worked with at MB in waking life when I lived in Texas and New Jersey.  (But he didn't look like Patrick.  He looked like Mr. Uekusa, a.k.a. "The Naked Comedian", but he was fully dressed.) He started talking to me, asking how I was doing, and he was very concerned about me not having a mask.  While talking to him, I found out that he had it, and the understanding was that he was going to die from it.  He wound up taking off his mask, and giving it to me.  In the back of my mind, I knew that if I put the mask on, I was going to catch it, too, but for some reason I felt like I still needed to do it, so I did so.

Patrick and I went separate ways, and I continued on walking through the mall.  The mask was very thick, and I was having trouble breathing through it.  Eventually I wound up somewhere where it was confirmed that I now had COVID-19, and I wound up falling into a deep sleep.

Eventually I woke up, and the mask was gone, and somehow I knew that it was 500 years later.  I hadn't aged at all due to the type of recuperative sleep I was in, but things looked even more shiny, sleep, metallic, and futuristic.  I got up and was walking around, and I eventually ran into Zippy. (former coworker at GPC in waking life)  She was very old with white hair, but it was her.  I don't know how she had survived so long, but it was definitely her.  We talked briefly before the dream ended, but I don't remember what about.

Harry Potter and the Multiple McGonogalls

In spite of being a grown adult IRL, in this dream I was an 11 year old Harry Potter trying to get to my first year at Hogwarts.  It was night time with a light drizzle.  I had already been to the dormitory to drop off my belongings, and I was told I needed to get to "Hogwarts" for the evening meal and ceremony.  In this case, I think Hogwarts actually meant the Great Hall.

After leaving the dorm, I was walking through the fairly empty streets of a normal muggle city.  I came to a part that had fewer lights and I could see the night sky pretty clearly, and there were tons of stars out.  I realized I had been instructed to follow the stars in order to make it to the Great Hall, but as I was looking at them, they started moving and swirling around.  Some were small groups that moved around each other, and other stars moved across the canvas of the night sky.

I was starting to feel very frightened, both because I knew the stars were not supposed to move, and also because I was going to be late to the Great Hall, and as I looked around, Professor McGonogall showed up.  She looked up at the sky and said something like, "This won't do," and raised her wand, swirled it around her head once and then flicked it at the sky.

All of the stars moved back to their original positions in about 5 seconds time.  I looked around to say thank you to Professor McGonogall, but she was nowhere to be found.  I didn't think much of it, and I kept walking until I finally got to the Great Hall.

When I walked in, Professor McGonogall came up to me and asked me where I'd been, and I told her about the stars and said, "Wasn't that you that came and helped me?"  She said, "It certainly was not!" and acted very huffy about it.  We quickly came to the conclusion that someone out there was pretending to be her, and that in spite of them helping me, it was someone that was dangerous and it was a very bad thing.  She sped off to go deal with it.

A little while later the dinner and ceremony were done, and I was back at the dorm with Ron.  I was in this spot that almost felt like a stone stairwell, but it was also supposed to be my dorm or bunk.  It was very high up, and there was a window looking out into the moonlit yard to my right. I also had the feeling that the part of the dorm I was in was suspended over open air, like it was hanging off the side of a tower. 

Ron was unpacking, I was telling him about what was going on with the imposter.  He thought it was weird, too.

Being "Let Better"

It was early morning, and I had just gotten in to work.  It was still dark outside, and a lot of the lights were off in the building.I was in the process of getting settled when my manager, Sam, came to me and started talking.  He was being weird and snarky (not at all like his IRL persona) and finally he let me know I was being let go.  I was floored!  "What do you mean let go?" 

"We figured you could go work with John at Nabisco making Goldfish crackers.  So don't think of it as being 'let go'.  Call it 'let better', because we think will be a better fit for you."

[John recently left my company IRL under some mysterious circumstances, but to my knowledge, he's certainly not at Nabisco.]

I couldn't figure out where this was coming from.  I said, "What about when you said before that if there was a problem with my performance, there would be plenty of advance notice and we could work on it?"

"We figured you'd forget it if we did, just like everything else," he snarled.

I was heartbroken.  I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.  I wound up walking around the office, partially because I was supposed to be getting my stuff together, and partially because I didn't know what else to do.  I talked to a few people, but I didn't get any real info about what was going on.

Finally as I was getting my stuff together, Rachel (co-owner) came by and was talking for a bit.  I told her about what was going on, and she laughed and she said, "What?  He didn't mention that it's only for 30 or 45 days?  It's just for while the whole coronavirus thing blows over, and we figured you'd like doing something with your hands in the mean time."  I felt so relieved, but I couldn't figure out why Sam was being so mean about everything. 

A little while later I passed by Rachel again, and I wound up saying something to her about Hannah, which was her daughter that miscarried a few years ago.  I think it was something along the lines of giving her a hug and saying that I know it can be tough when the anniversary comes around.  She smiled and thanked me, and I went back to meandering around the office until the dream ended.

Trying to Outrun the Space Storm

(Oh man I wish I'd written this one down this morning.  So many of the details are gone already.  Even most of the narrative is lost...)

Towards the beginning of the dream, I was on some sort of space craft.  It was a fairly large and spacious craft that had lots of windows.  There weren't much in the way of lights on in the interior of the craft, but with the large windows, there was enough light coming in from the stars, planets and other celestial bodies that I could see fairly easily, comparable to a nightlight in a single bedroom, although the light was blueish. There were a few other people around, and we were supposed to be working together on something, but I think at some point we had to head back to Earth for something.

Later we were on Earth, and it was day time.  I was near a balcony type of area in a large house, almost like it may have been the White House or something.  Soon, something came down from above and landed on the balcony.  It was either the people I had been on the space craft with, or it was new people, or a mixture of both.  I want to say that the craft was just above the building, and they came down via something like a rope ladder.  There was some brief discussion and it turned out there was some impending cosmic event that was coming up very quickly, and we had to go to try to either take care of it or outrun it.  Somewhere in all of this, President Obama was involved.  I think he may have been one of the new people in the group that was saying we needed to go.

Soon I was back up on the space craft, and pretty quickly things started to escalate.  Whatever the event was (an explosion?  an implosion?  space-time just falling apart?) the craft started to move quickly away from it, trying to outrun it.  It looked a lot like big clouds that just kept expanding faster and faster, full of light, and it was catching up to us.  I feel like there was a good bit of discussion about whether or not we should try to stop at certain planets to try to "think our way" out of this situation, but we didn't really have time. 

I feel like the dream ended with us getting right on the verge of getting caught in the edges of the event and feeling like we could have done more to get this thing stopped. 

The New Incarnation of God

I was in an area that was like a big rounded hill with walking paths, stairs and benches around, almost as if it were a park.  The hill was huge, like if it was a mountain unto itself.  The weather was warm and sunny, the sky was very blue and the grass was very green.  There were a lot of people around in small groups of two to five, and they were sitting and standing around quietly chatting with one another, and it was kind of like they were there waiting before a scheduled event.

I was about 200 feet away down the hill from the pinnacle of the hill/mountain, and I found myself in conversation with Pope Francis.  He was telling me about the New Incarnation of God that would be with us soon.  In preparation, I was supposed to hold the power of the New Incarnation within myself until the new person was ready.  

I was wondering about him being there with me because I thought I had heard that he was no longer the Pope, and through a vision he showed me an image of a nervous looking young man, in his mid 20s with sandy hair, wearing the clothes of the pope, but looking very disheveled.  He was standing in front of a bank of microphones outside in a city center somewhere, and the wind was blowing.  He was looking from side to side, unsure of what he was supposed to be doing.  Pope Francis told me he would be fine, but he was one of the youngest popes in quite some time.  

When my vision came back to my current location, I saw my son, Simon off the side of one of the walking paths.  He appeared to be about 4 years old (he's 2 in waking life) and was talking with a small group of people.  I went over to him, and as I got closer, I realized that he was supposed to be the New Incarnation of God.  He saw me and smiled and took my hand.  There was some talk from someone near by about "getting him ready" and "making sure he's worthy" to take on the power and title, and somehow this involved us holding hands and jumping onto something kind of like a water slide that went about 30 feet down the side of a steep part of the hill.  

We did a couple of practice jumps, and both were slightly wrong somehow.  We may have been out of sync in our jumping or something. Then something clicked, he said he was ready, and we did a final jump and slide and it went off perfectly.  He was now ready for the power and title of New Incarnation of God.

After the jump, we both climbed our way back to the very top of the hill where he sat on a small raised area, almost like a broad pedestal.  I hugged him and kissed him and held his hands and transferred the title and power to him.  People knew immediately what had happened and the people milling around started coming over to visit and talk with him.  I stepped back to not be in the way.  He was smiling warmly and everyone around him and started to glow with a faint golden light.  As he was starting to talk to people, he started to transform slightly, looking more like a little Buddha.  Specifically, the main thing I remember was that his hair started to grow upwards and loosely pulled itself together on the top of his head, kind of like a large loose bun, and then a second one started to form on top of that one, and a third on top of that one.  The hair was moving of its own accord, even once it was in place.  

He started talking a little more to the group at large, and kept his warm smile and demeanor.  He was looking around at everyone, and every so often his gaze would rest on me for a moment and I could just feel the love pouring from him, and about this time the dream ended.

Ending Earths

... 5 years and 19 days later.

I was traveling with my wife, Emily, and we were in Virginia near the area where I grew up. We were with a few other people, and somehow, maybe through something like a TV or radio news broadcast, we found out that the world was in the process of ending.  It was simply just winking out of existence a bit at a time.

We were near my grandparents' old farm house, and I started seeing evidence of the world ending there.  Patches of reality were just blinking out and being replaced with just pure white, almost as if the planet were a picture on a white board that was in the process of being erased.  I felt a little nervous about this, but somehow I realized that even though we were at the end, there was someplace else I could go.  I could go to the "next world".

It turned out that Earth was one of many (thousands?  millions?) Earths, and they had come into existence from the original Earth.  Earth 1 had spawned Earth 2 in a slightly offset reality or dimension.  Earth 2 spawned Earth 3 in yet another slightly offset reality or dimension.  Unfortunately each Earth that was created was slightly worse than the last, having worse weather, rougher terrain, more warring civilizations, and so on.  On the flip side, the first Earth was the longest lived and most peaceful, beautiful, and Utopian of the line of the planets.

These Earths were not visible to one another or reachable by normal means, but in terms of moving from one dimension to the next, they were practically touching.  One could travel between them as long as they knew how to travel across these dimensions.

It turned out that the newest of the Earths had been unmade and ended and most of the evidence of its existence and the existence of anyone or anything on it was erased.  There were some of the best pieces and aspects that were being rolled back into the previous Earth, but shortly after, that Earth was also unmade and ended.  I don't know how I realized this to be the case, but it almost seemed like something that would have been common knowledge.

By the time I had heard that any of this was going on, Earths had been getting wiped out for thousands of years, and it only took a few days for each one to go.  The current Earth that I was on was somewhere right in the middle of the sequence, and it was now our turn.

Knowing that there were other Earths in dimensions before ours, I decided that I was going to be one of those few things that moved between them as the current one was wiped out.  Pretty much all of the other people I had been with were no longer there, either wiped out or moved on to the next Earth.  I wound up stepping towards one of the spots where reality has been whited out, and with a few moments to spare, I stepped through to the next Earth, just about right into the same spot where I had been in the previous one.

Colors were a little brighter, the weather was a little more pleasant, and the world just seems a little better organized.  I knew that this one would be ending within days as well, so I was planning on moving to the next Earth, and the next Earth, and the next Earth, and so on, as long as I could, but the dream ended here.

Escaping from the Uruk-hai

I was at the little house I grew up in, but it looked the same as it did before we added on to it.  I was outside with a number of people, and it was overcast and warm.

I'm not sure what we were doing initially, but soon we started seeing Uruk-hai (from Lord of the Rings) showing up and setting up areas to prepare for battle.  We knew that they were going to be targeting us for the battle, but they didn't seem to care that we were wandering around and seeing what they were doing.  They pretty much completely ignored us for the time being.

We knew that once the Uruk-hai decided to let loose, we were going to be killed off pretty quickly.  We were huddled at the corner of the house where the kitchen is discussing what we were going to try to do to either fight them or escape, but we couldn't come up with anything that we thought would work.

Suddenly John Locke (from Lost) showed up and said that if we wanted to survive, we needed to go with him.  We wound up walking for a bit and eventually wound up on the outskirts of Harrisonburg.  He took us into some sort of building, either like a small cabin or house, or perhaps some sort of small shop, where we wound up going down into the basement and then out through a short tunnel in the back of the basement.  We came out of the tunnel and we were in this densely wooded area, which we thought of as "the forests of Harrisonburg."   Even though we had only gone a short way through the cabin or shop and basement tunnel, we knew that it had actually deposited us a long way away from where we had entered the building initially.

We followed a tightly winding but well worn path up and around a few hills and eventually made it into a small clearing.  There, we were met by a bunch of John's friends, who were a bunch of older, bearded and mostly overweight men.  They had a bunch of radio equipment and remote controlled cars that they were using to track the Uruk-hai in order to detect if they were going to be attacked.

After a short bit, a short and thin woman with short dark hair showed up.  She looked like Morena Baccarin's character "Anna" from the TV show "V".  She had a kind of an aura of power about her, and soon we found out that she was Darth Vader's wife, but Vader was dead. 

She was talking with John and the other men for a bit, and it was soon discussed that she and Vader had had two children, both boys.  One of them was grown and successful and off ruling some planet or something, but the other was thought to either suffer from some sort of mental or developmental disorder, or to have died some time ago.  The successful son, she knew, wouldn't be able to be bothered to come help us to fight off the Uruk-hai, so one of the men suggested using his radio equipment to search out the son that everyone thought to be dead.  Obviously most people thought that would be a waste of time, but he did it anyway, and one or two other people, including Vader's wife, decided to help out.

I wound up leaving for short time to go to the bathroom, but when I returned, they had found that the second son was actually alive and well and they were in the process of contacting him to have him come help us. 

My alarm went off and the dream ended here.

Apartment Hunting

I was walking around at an amusement park with Em.  We saw a roller coaster with tons of loops and two "open" ends of track that were at opposite ends of the coaster, but pointed towards one another.  Upon seeing it, I realized that I had heard on the news about another one just like it where people had died, but I don't think it was the one at this particular park.

We stood and watch the roller coaster train as it went through the loops and eventually off one end of the open track, flew upside down to the other end of the coaster and hooked right into the other open track and kept on going.  I thought to myself that there was no way that could be safe, and I told Em that it would only take a few numbskulls to make an effort to throw their weight to one side or the other while in mid air for the train to not make it across to the other side successfully.

After a bit, we wound up leaving and going to an apartment complex to see an apartment that's for sale.  We went into main hallway or lobby, which was also the primary stairwell area, and it was very busy with people all over the place.  It was raining, and the stairwells were open at the top, letting it the rain.  Going upstairs meant getting rained on.  There was a stairwell in each corner of the building, but we went up the one at the front-right of the building.

We started climbing the stairs to go to the top floor.  Each floor was a very wide hallway (20 or 30 feet wide) and almost felt like a parking garage with doors in concrete walls on either side.  As we got to the top floor, we realized that none of the apartments had numbers, so we weren't sure which one was the one we were there to see.

As we exited the stairwell and were looking for the apartment, we walked along the wall on our right.  As we passed, we noticed five or six people dumping loads and loads of laundry into chutes in the wall.

Finally Em figured out which apartment we were there to see and knocked on the door.  The current tenant threw the door open and yanked her in.  He reminded me of Adam from Mythbusters, only he was more squirrely and goofy.  I followed them into the apartment.

I quickly noticed that the apartment was tiny and dirty.  There was a small kitchen as you walked in, and the apartment went off to the right from there where there was a small living and dining area.  At the end of the dining area, the apartment made a right, and there was a small bedroom area off to the right that was open to the rest of the apartment.

We made the short walk through the apartment and wound up in the bedroom.  The bed, which was just a dirty little cot, was on the left, and on the right was an area that had short wall that was three or four feet high with an opening right in the middle.  The area was about six or eight feet wide, and about twelve feet long, and it was full of laundry.  There were chutes on the wall, and the people that were outside dumping in their laundry were dumping it right into this apartment!

The laundry was piled up four or five feet high, and at one point I noticed a white "wife beater" shirt in the pile that reminded me of a white, pasty fat and hairy male torso, kind of like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  Suddenly it was no longer the shirt, but an actual torso laying in the middle of the laundry.

Then a thin, old, shirtless and shoeless man barged in through a door in the end of the bedroom with two dogs.  He reminded me of Rip Torn's character on Dodgeball or the trans-gender sergeant on Venture Bros.

One dog was a bulldog, and despite looking very happy and friendly, I was afraid it would bite my hand, so I made an effort to keep my hands away from it.  The other dog was on a leash, was green and brown in splotches, and only had one leg.  Somehow I knew that it may have been dead at one time.  The landlord was "walking" (hopping?) the green dog around in the apartment quickly chanting "take a dump take a dump take a dump" over and over to the dog.  The apartment tenant acted like this was normal.

Then my attention turned to the TV, which was back in the dining area.  A giant image of a dead woman from the 19th century came up, and she was partially covered in maggots.  It was supposed to be some sort of miracle (in the same sense as some surviving relic from the Virgin Mary or something) because she had been dead for so long, yet there was still stuff for the maggots to live off of.  I felt sick to my stomach, and I turned to Em and said, "That's it!" and grabbed her arm and we left.

On the way out, we realized that the apartment complex had "closed" and now there was no one around.  Doors to stairways and ways out were closed and locked.  We wandered around for a bit and found our way down to the second floor, but we couldn't get down to the first floor no matter what we tried.  At one point we looked over a balcony, and it reminded me of Super Mario 64 with big paintings on the walls and a fountain in the middle of the floor.  The dream ended before we got out.

Racing to the Devil

 Through the whole dream it was night time out, and it felt a bit like "The Lost Highway".  I was somewhere where the land was very flat, and it had the feel of being near a beach.  The area was sparsely populated with things like a few service stations or dilapidated strip malls.

I was in a black car that felt something like an older muscle car.  It was very clean and shiny with chrome accents.  I wound up driving to some predetermined meeting point very slowly.  I'm not entirely sure who or what I was supposed to be meeting there, but the meeting was brief and I was soon back at my original starting point.  There were some other things that went on that I don't remember, but it eventually wound up being time to make a second trip.  On this second trip, I was basically going off to be some sort of hero and face off against the Devil.

I was in the car again, and I was at an intersection and made a right hand turn.  Even though I don't know what my plan was, I had a gut feeling that I knew exactly what I was doing.

While taking off, I noticed that the car had a manual transmission.  I thew it into first gear and jumped on the gas.  The car took off lightning fast, and despite only being in first gear, my speed increased quickly.  As I ratcheted my way up through the gears, I took off faster and faster, eventually speeding off at over 600 miles per hour towards my encounter with the Devil.

I don't know how the encounter turned out, but some time later the dream changed over, and I was actually writing down the details of the dream within a new dream.  Suddenly, and for seemingly no reason, I was scared awake, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw someone standing next to the bed.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Five Dollars

In the scene where everyone changes into Harry (in the actual book), Harry was changed into some older guy.  A fight broke out, and while it was going on, Harry started changing back into his own form.  After the fight was complete, they were out in this big destroyed city area, and Harry's transformation back had stopped early.  He had a section on the right side of his head (his right) that was still bald.  Even though I was just a "viewer", I took a five dollar bill and wiped it across the untransformed spot, and it went back to normal.

The Slow Dungeon

I was in a building that felt like a house or a cluttered downtown shop.  I was slowly making my way through the rooms while looking at the things around me, either as if I was going to purchase the items or if I was looking to purchase the building.

Eventually I made my way to the back of the building and into the kitchen.  The kitchen was nice and updated with stainless steel appliances, nice brown tile on the floor, black granite on the counters and the walls were painted a deep shade of red.  There were windows off to my left, and a back door to exit the building was in the middle of the back wall.

On either side of the back door were two spiral sets of stone steps heading down.  The person I was with was the current owner of the building, and when I saw the stone spiral steps, they informed me that they went down to the basements, which were called "Slow Dungeons".  Although they didn't tell me anything about them, I knew that going into the Slow Dungeons was a dangerous thing, and that once I chose to go down there, there was no coming back out without dealing with those dangers.  Part of that danger was that things could not happen too quickly down there, such as moving too quickly or solving puzzles too quickly to get out, otherwise it would cause some sort of death or destruction.  I looked at both sets of stairs and opted to take the ones on the left, spiraling around clockwise as I went down.

Once I was in the first level of the basement, I began slowly looking around.  I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be looking for or doing in order to progress into deeper levels.  There was all sorts of stuff laying around on tables and in old glass curio cabinets, and the place looked a bit like a cross between a thrift shop and an antique store.  I knew that something here had to be the first step to getting through this place, but I didn't know what.  After a while of looking around, someone I was with wound up finding a dragon head that could fly.  They were able to use it to do something which unlocked our way to the next level of the dungeon.  I don't remember what they did with it, but I remember it flying around soon before we knew we could progress.

Once we got to the next level, I knew that I was going to be on my own to figure it out.  I felt like I had a little bit better understanding of what I was supposed to be looking for, but I still wasn't feeling terribly confident. 

The second floor had more one and two step raised platforms with items resting on them than the first level did, but everything was still just as cluttered.  Before I was able to really get started with figuring my way out of this level and to the next one, the dream ended.