excalibots; heartwarming procedure

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A spaceship, or a TV stage made to look like a spaceship, like from the TV show Star Trek. A group of people were out on the control deck. The ship was probably orbiting over some planet.

A strange life form had been detected on the planet. It was causing some alarm to the crew of the spaceship. The Captain of the ship, a man with sharp, chiseled features, bronze-tan skin, and dark blonde hair, decided to send some people down to see what the life form was.

The Captain transported himself into the transporter room, which also served as a debriefing room. The room was mostly dark, with black floor and ceiling, and walls that showed nothing but stars.

The Captain stood with another person, kind of like Scotty from Star Trek, before a meter-long conventional telescope that wasn't pointed anywhere in particular. The Captain and the other crew member were discussing something about the dangers or logistics of the trip.

A few crew members had been transported down to the planet. I identified with a woman who had been sent down. The woman was in a lake. Three strange creatures emerged from the lake. At first the creatures were like huge, mutated animals, with slimy, pink, fleshy bodies that kind of had the shapes of familiar animals, like zebras. Each creature had a different animal shape.

But the creatures then became big robots, like 1950s conceptions of robots, with metallic "tin can" bodies, coily arms, and clear, glassy, elliptical heads. One of these huge robots, maybe three or four times the size of me/the woman, lifted me/the woman up out of the water as it emerged. The woman may have stood on top of the robot's head or found a way to fit underneath the robot's head, like the head was shaped like a shallow lampshade or parasol.

There was now some exposition about the robot. The woman had either studied this information or was learning it on the spot. The robots had actually been made to take care of human beings. The robots were still concerned with taking care of human beings. In fact, one of the robots wanted to do an examination on the woman right now.

But something was wrong with the robots. They may have been contaminated, so that contact with the robots would infect humans. Or they may have had bad programming, so that, even though they meant to help, they often did harm. The robots needed to be fixed. Then they could help humans again. But until they were fixed, they were viewed as a threat.

The woman seemed to understand all this better than anybody else. She wanted to help the robots. She viewed them as potential helpers. But everybody else may have viewed them only as a threat.

The sequence of events seemed to start again, from the point where the Captain was in the transporter room. The Captain himself may have been planning to go down to the planet. But he was hesitant. He was coming up with a bunch of silly logistics questions to stall getting into the teleporter machine and possibly even to stall the mission altogether.

But the Captain realized that others in the crew recognized that he was just stalling because he was afraid. So he now tried to come up with questions that sounded really brave and noble, to mask the fact that he was still trying to stall the mission. There was an image of a long, crusty roll before the Captain.

The Captain now asked, "What I really want to know is... can we safely transport ourselves... into the planet's crust?" As he asked this, the Captain may have dug a knife just a little bit into the crust of the roll.

Dream #2

It was daytime. I was in a car with my mom. My mom drove, and I sat in the passenger seat. My mom was telling me about some procedure she, and then my sister, had on their hearts. The procedure was just to diagnose whether my mom and sister had heart problems.

In the procedure, something like a fiber optic cable was piped through a vein and then into the heart. Once the cable was in the heart, some little device at the end of the heart would heat up and test some kind of stress levels on the heart.

My mom explained how the procedure hadn't bothered her a whole lot, but how it had really bothered my sister. My mom explained how the procedure wasn't painful. But it did feel strange. It made the heart itch, which was annoying. And it also created an unpleasantly warm sensation in the heart. This warm sensation had probably been the most bothersome sensation of all for my sister.

shot in the face; thunderclouds; independence days; being pissy

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a room, probably a living room, with my nephews and maybe some of my other family members. My nephews were all running around wildly, mostly around one structure in the room that seemed like a child-sized chair with a couple boxes piled on or around it.

Things were getting really out of hand. I may have been getting ready to try and deal with the situation. But my youngest nephew, in defiance of whatever anger I was showing, pulled up a gun and shot me in the face.

I didn't hear the gunshot. All I sensed was a quick pop of light, like when a light bulb suddenly goes out, accompanied by an almost electronic, bird-warbling sound. Then all my vision was just a blank, dull brown-red. I couldn't hear, see, or feel anything. I figured I was probably dead.

But then I could tell I was near my mom or sister. I was either being held while standing up or lying in the arms of my mother or sister. I hadn't heard anybody ask me anything. But I just crossed may arms back and forth in front of me a couple of times, as if to say, "No, thanks. Don't do anything for me. I'm already dead. Don't worry about it."

I had made the arm motions because I couldn't talk. But now I could. I must have heard somebody ask me a question, because I now said, " Oh, no, I can't see anything. But I'd rather not see right now. I really don't want to know what I look like."

Dream #2

I was driving or running along somewhere during the afternoon. I was probably in some suburban part of town, flat, with a wide, cloudy sky overhead. I suddenly began to pass under an even cloudier section of sky. The clouds were low, thick, and grey-black. They looked like they could send down spikes of lightning at any second.

I was really afraid. I began to move faster, hoping I could get out from under these clouds or into whatever building I was headed for before the lightning started to get really bad. But I also realized that it was a kind of cold day. It was too cold, I thought, for lightning actually to strike -- despite my ominous tactile sensations, which always seem to surface on my skin before thunderstorms. I was less worried, but not quite convinced the lightning wouldn't strike. But I probably slowed down my running or driving a bit.

Dream #3

I was in some room like a living room. I was listening to some device which may sometimes have looked like a cassettee Walkman, a CD Walkman, and an iPod. I was listening, apparently, to a compilation of versions of the song "Independence Day," by Elliott Smith. Every version was apparently done by Smith.

Each song seemed to be a bit more and more distracted or corrupted versus the original version. I was getting a little frustrated, hoping I could eventually get back to the original version. I wanted to sing it, but I couldn't quite remember how it went.

One of the final versions I heard was actually some dramatic theme from one of the Star Trek series. I was reading some horizontally scrolling text on my device that said this theme had been influenced by "Independence Day." The theme was orchestral and electronic, I think. But the melody sounded a lot like the beginning guitar playing for "Independence Day." After that, some of the progressions sounded the same, though the actual melody became something of its own.

The final song I heard was probably Smith's "Waltz #2" song.

Dream #4

I was possibly using a laptop in some living room. My third oldest nephew came up to me and started acting annoying. I got all pissy. I stood up and stomped away into the kitchen, then used the laptop in the kitchen. I probably felt bad for having gotten so pissy.