![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6The Wonders of Science!!! + a Lucid dream
Okay, here's what happened last night, in general. I had a dream about some new little gadget and I woke up after it thinking 'hmm, that's kind of cool, have to remember that one', and so it stuck in my mind... and it wove itself into many of my dreams last night, changing slightly and getting more techy.
Anyway, first up, I can't remember anything else about the dream except it also included a little gadget, a small ball you hold up to your eye and look through, and you could see a different scene. In particular, when I looked at it, it was a playground somewhere in Africa. Except the idea was that it was pre-loaded with something like a day or twos worth of footage in advance and continuously played whether you looked or not, so you could sort of peek in on this other place at will and sort of get an illusion of looking in 'live' on another place. When you ran out of footage it would either loop or could download more. Although there was one other thing about it, you could change the point of view slightly with controls on the ball, moving forward, panning, almost like a video game.
The next dream, although the general form was the same, it had changed slightly and I was watching a news report about this new rumored invention that would put an end to personal privacy, because this time, the image _Was_ live, and you could move it anywhere you wanted. Sort of like that recent Arthur C. Clarke/Stephen Baxter story 'The Light of Other Days' (incidentally, there's a little bit of a naming connection here. When the image was preloaded, either half-awake or still in the first dream I made the connection in the first dream with the Bob Shaw story 'The Light of Other Days', where you had windows that light travelled very slowly through and so you'd be seeing things that happened months or years before through the window but looking like it's live. In this second dream, it was like more like technology in another book by the same name).
Anyway, the idea was that anybody could use this technology to look in on anybody, and nowhere on Earth was safe, so you could look in on government secrets too, if you wanted to. So naturally governments were looking into whether they could ban it but they were caught by surprise a little too.
In the third dream, it was still the same little ball except now it had the nickname 'Magic 8 Ball' because you could peek into it and sort of run little 'scenarios'. If you wanted to see, say, what would happen if you took a left turn or a right turn, you could use the 8ball to watch scenarios of what outcome would most likely come from both - either it was analyzing it and producing a simulation or was actually peeking into an alternate reality. The plot of the dream revolved around a woman getting into an accident because she was so obsessed with keeping herself safe she was constantly using the 8ball to check her every move, even while driving, and at some point she forgot when she was doing a simulation and when she was actually doing something, so while she was driving she thought she was just doing a simulation and let go of the wheel to try and go back to 'reality', and she hit somebody.
There were also a whole bunch of minidreams where for a few seconds instead of thinking of the device as a dream I thought it was real as I was hovering on the edge of consciousness.
Finally (although it happened before many of the mini-dreams), I also had a lucid dream that was one of the most long lasting ones I've ever had, and I also had more control than usual.
Can't remember much about the beginning of it. All I can remember is it was in a grocery store, and someone ahead of the line said something annoying/rude to me (called me by some sort of derogatory nickname or something I think) and so I gave them the finger. Anyway, my brother was there, and somewhere while we were waiting in line I realized it was all a dream. He was buying a lot of groceries, something like $50 worth, so he was going to have to borrow some cash from me. Except I told him that the price probably wouldn't be more than $5. I also told him to look in his wallet, that he already had enough money and willed there to be a few more twenties in there. Anyway, while they were ringing up stuff, every time the total got above $5, I willed it to go down to just a few cents, so we got everything for under $5 like I said.
(At this point I'd like to interject with a public service announcement. Dreams are all well and good, but using mental powers to pay less for groceries is theft, and it's wrong, and I can't condone it)
Anyway, we got through with it and I told him I'd wait for him outside but it was all snowy and cold and so I altered the weather and decided to make it sunny and warm. A couple other minor things happened and my brain's going a bit fuzzy on it, but somehow I lost track of my brother and so started to go home. I flew at first, then was about to stop and go teleporting when I saw someone in a trenchcoat and old hat coming towards me, except he didn't have a face, kind of like The Question. So I decided to experiment a bit and change him into Rorshach, from Watchmen. Changing the trenchcoat color was easy, but the face wasn't, I kept making his face have weird combinations of eyes, mouth (with no lips) and such, and he was getting angry and attacking me until it finally all clicked into place and his face became the moving rorshach inkblot, but then he started to run away, and that's about where I woke up.
Okay, here's what happened last night, in general. I had a dream about some new little gadget and I woke up after it thinking 'hmm, that's kind of cool, have to remember that one', and so it stuck in my mind... and it wove itself into many of my dreams last night, changing slightly and getting more techy.
Anyway, first up, I can't remember anything else about the dream except it also included a little gadget, a small ball you hold up to your eye and look through, and you could see a different scene. In particular, when I looked at it, it was a playground somewhere in Africa. Except the idea was that it was pre-loaded with something like a day or twos worth of footage in advance and continuously played whether you looked or not, so you could sort of peek in on this other place at will and sort of get an illusion of looking in 'live' on another place. When you ran out of footage it would either loop or could download more. Although there was one other thing about it, you could change the point of view slightly with controls on the ball, moving forward, panning, almost like a video game.
The next dream, although the general form was the same, it had changed slightly and I was watching a news report about this new rumored invention that would put an end to personal privacy, because this time, the image _Was_ live, and you could move it anywhere you wanted. Sort of like that recent Arthur C. Clarke/Stephen Baxter story 'The Light of Other Days' (incidentally, there's a little bit of a naming connection here. When the image was preloaded, either half-awake or still in the first dream I made the connection in the first dream with the Bob Shaw story 'The Light of Other Days', where you had windows that light travelled very slowly through and so you'd be seeing things that happened months or years before through the window but looking like it's live. In this second dream, it was like more like technology in another book by the same name).
Anyway, the idea was that anybody could use this technology to look in on anybody, and nowhere on Earth was safe, so you could look in on government secrets too, if you wanted to. So naturally governments were looking into whether they could ban it but they were caught by surprise a little too.
In the third dream, it was still the same little ball except now it had the nickname 'Magic 8 Ball' because you could peek into it and sort of run little 'scenarios'. If you wanted to see, say, what would happen if you took a left turn or a right turn, you could use the 8ball to watch scenarios of what outcome would most likely come from both - either it was analyzing it and producing a simulation or was actually peeking into an alternate reality. The plot of the dream revolved around a woman getting into an accident because she was so obsessed with keeping herself safe she was constantly using the 8ball to check her every move, even while driving, and at some point she forgot when she was doing a simulation and when she was actually doing something, so while she was driving she thought she was just doing a simulation and let go of the wheel to try and go back to 'reality', and she hit somebody.
There were also a whole bunch of minidreams where for a few seconds instead of thinking of the device as a dream I thought it was real as I was hovering on the edge of consciousness.
Finally (although it happened before many of the mini-dreams), I also had a lucid dream that was one of the most long lasting ones I've ever had, and I also had more control than usual.
Can't remember much about the beginning of it. All I can remember is it was in a grocery store, and someone ahead of the line said something annoying/rude to me (called me by some sort of derogatory nickname or something I think) and so I gave them the finger. Anyway, my brother was there, and somewhere while we were waiting in line I realized it was all a dream. He was buying a lot of groceries, something like $50 worth, so he was going to have to borrow some cash from me. Except I told him that the price probably wouldn't be more than $5. I also told him to look in his wallet, that he already had enough money and willed there to be a few more twenties in there. Anyway, while they were ringing up stuff, every time the total got above $5, I willed it to go down to just a few cents, so we got everything for under $5 like I said.
(At this point I'd like to interject with a public service announcement. Dreams are all well and good, but using mental powers to pay less for groceries is theft, and it's wrong, and I can't condone it)
Anyway, we got through with it and I told him I'd wait for him outside but it was all snowy and cold and so I altered the weather and decided to make it sunny and warm. A couple other minor things happened and my brain's going a bit fuzzy on it, but somehow I lost track of my brother and so started to go home. I flew at first, then was about to stop and go teleporting when I saw someone in a trenchcoat and old hat coming towards me, except he didn't have a face, kind of like The Question. So I decided to experiment a bit and change him into Rorshach, from Watchmen. Changing the trenchcoat color was easy, but the face wasn't, I kept making his face have weird combinations of eyes, mouth (with no lips) and such, and he was getting angry and attacking me until it finally all clicked into place and his face became the moving rorshach inkblot, but then he started to run away, and that's about where I woke up.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 10:21 pm (UTC)