-------------- BEGIN dream-flow.v001.n114 --------------
001 - "Wilkerson, Richard" <rcw - Dead Cats in a River, cinnaminpop
002 - "Wilkerson, Richard" <rcw - Falling
003 - "Wilkerson, Richard" <rcw - "attacking cat"
004 - "Wilkerson, Richard" <rcw - prisoner of the state
005 - "Wilkerson, Richard" <rcw - The Rainwater Room
Electric Dreams: Dream Flow
A fountain of dreams in Cyberspace
--------------- MESSAGE dream-flow.v001.n114.1 ---------------
From: "Wilkerson, Richard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Dead Cats in a River, cinnaminpop
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:48:30 -0700
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Dream Title Dead Cats in a River, cinnaminpop
Date of Dream June 18,1999
Dream I was at school when all of us students were
making flower boquets and I had gotten on the bus to go home. When I got
home I got off the bus, then I returned to the bus for no reason and rode
the usual route. Then all of a sudden I was getting off the bus and walking
through this river about ankle deep. I noticed that I kept stepping on
something and to my surprize I looked down and I was stepping on dead cats.
The dead cats were floating in the river everywhere. I couldn't step over
them. I have no clue on the meaning of this dream. It was a dream I will
never forget.
Comments by Dreamer I wish I knew what a river full of dead cats means.
Permission to Comment yes_share_comments
--------------- MESSAGE dream-flow.v001.n114.2 ---------------
From: "Wilkerson, Richard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Falling
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:52:30 -0700
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Dream Title Falling
Date of Dream
Dream I had a dream once that I was at my old school
which I had went to when I was a child. With me were my 2 year old cousin
and my aunt. We were playing on the side of a cliff when I notice that my
cousin is falling. I just stood there and let her fall. She hit the bottom
of the cliff, the road, and I thought surely that she was dead. I got to
the bottom and she was alive.
Comments by Dreamer I don't know why I had this dream, I love my
little cousin with all of my heart.
Permission to Comment yes_share_comments
--------------- MESSAGE dream-flow.v001.n114.3 ---------------
From: "Wilkerson, Richard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: "attacking cat"
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 08:59:17 -0700
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Dream Title Attacking Cat - Mary
Date of Dream 22 June 01:30
Dream I was walking down a country lane with my husband,
and further ahead down the road was a cat. I love cats - so I was calling
out to him. Then all of a sudden (and I could sense the tone of the dream
changing) my husband had disappeared, and I'd fallen down, but couldn't get
up - I was totally lacking in co-ordination. Then suddenly I could see
that the cat was running towards me, but it was no longer a nice friendly
cat, but had yellow eyes and bared teeth. So I tried to should at it to go
away, but couldn't make sounds other then strangled noises, then I thought
I'd throw my shoe at it, but again, I couldn't control or co-ordinate my
limbs. Then the cat was coming closer and closer, and I could see it was
going for my face/throat, so I tried desperately to shout/move for all I
was worth to scare it away...and I woke up schrieking and hitting my husband.
Comments by Dreamer Very scarey - as it's not the first time I've had
the "attacking cat" dream.
Permission to Comment yes_share_comments
This dream is part of the Dream Flow, a grassroots flow of dreams in
cyberspace that includes many groups, including : DreamGate
www.dreamgate.com, The Dream Tree www.dreamtree.com, the Electric Dreams
community, DreamaLittle Dream, DreaminWorld and many other dream sharing
communities.
If you would like your comments to these dreams to get back to the
dreamers, please remember to cc: to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or even better,
to put your comment in the dream flow form at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
If you would like your own group to be part of the dream flow, contact
Richard Wilkerson at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--------------- MESSAGE dream-flow.v001.n114.4 ---------------
From: "Wilkerson, Richard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: prisoner of the state
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 12:05:43 -0700
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Note from editor: Stan requests his name and email be kept with the dream.
stan kulikowski ii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
DATE : 22 jun 1999 06:51
DREAM : prisoner of the state
=( last night i did not get back from school until after 23:00. some
former students way laid me in the computer lab to help with a programming
problem. they had horrible messed up code on a linked list of pointers.
it took a while to understand their convoluted attempts and explain why
their data was lost. eventually i got their code working, but i just
gutted their insort procedure and kludged in some processing loops. one
student kept saying 'if it works, what does it matter?' when i mentioned
inelegance. i hoped they could learn from that but i did not have time to
reteach them data structures. mom and i watched a cheap B movie on time
travel and i went to sleep early, around 01:30 without much difficulty. )=
anne said she found the gun in a box under the seat of the van when she
went to get the weekly groceries. probably a guard had left it there by
mistake as none of us prisoners are allowed to drive the van. she was
looking for her small umbrella under the seat when she discovered the
weapon. immediately she began to convince the rest of us that now was the
time to make a break.
the springfield street house where we live is a minimal security prison. a
half way house where we are permitted live and serve out our sentences in
labor for the state and the penal system. the work we do is not that
challenging, like cleaning public toilets of their disgusting filth with
hand brushes. the smell of those places never quite goes away once you
have spent hours scrubbing on your knees.
since i am a computer scientist, another job i am given from time to time
is algorithmic repair of the defense dome. the battle robots are
constantly trying to complete the geodesic dome which arches above the city
and surrounding county. it does not matter where they start, they can
always get the thin rafters in place to cover just slightly less than half
of the precinct when the structure starts to weaken and fail. then they
have to tear down what they have built and start afresh on different pylons
with a different pattern to the arch. several squads of robots are always
building the construction from several starting points, some here around
the city, others across the river. the robots are continually patrolling
the incomplete structure in the sky above the buildings. they can barely
be seen from ground level. since i work on their programming, i know that
their intelligence was engineered so that they can never complete the dome.
they keep constantly in motion in trying. most of the repairs i have to
do concern removing learned connections if their architecture gets too
solid so as to encroach the midsky limit by chance or design. they must be
kept in a constant state of flux by an unsolvable problem to prevent their
actions from becoming predictable. this is the only way to solve the
problem of pseudorandomness, like a law of thermodynamics. machines always
become fixed in routine given time in self maintenance. this is a
strategic weakness in battle drones which can be eventually analyzed and
defeated when the worn groove of their routines becomes predictable. i
would as soon clean the smegma crusted urinals as mend the off balanced
neural nets of the robots.
but prisoners of the state only get scutwork. no one else would do it,
even for minimal wage and robots cost even more. i can not even remember
what my original crime was. some minor infraction of an unheard of
regulation, but being a tourist was no consequence. that ignorance is no
defense of the law is one of the stupidest maxims we are taught. how can
we obey rules we have never heard of, or even guess at their existence?
with busy legislatures constantly making new regulations, it is impossible
for anyone to know the law. this is the defining principle of a police
state. we live at the mercy of which unknown regulations get enforced and
how aware we are of them. like god, we can never know the law we are held
accountable to. for me, it was five years detention in the springfield
street holding facility. i am only two years through.
anne says that once we get the van out from under the defense net and on
the open interstate, we can make it to the next country where extradition
is not given for minor crimes. she is convincing. six of us agree to make
a run for it.
hot wiring the guard van is no problem. as we begin to drive several
blocks through city traffic, i decide to look closely at this gun which is
the impetus for this breakout. i do not think that any of these people
would actually threaten anyone with this weapon, let alone fire it. so why
is this mere symbol of power so potent in causing us to consider a prison
break? from my pocket i pull out a swiss army knife that has a torx wrench
attachment. i start to work on removing the five bolts which join the
halves of the heavy weapon.
at first the wrench will not turn the bolt, being one size too small. but
i am able to lever it at an angle to get the bolt to turn a degree or two.
to my surprise all five bolts turn uniformly when i turn just the one.
this makes removal very easy once i get the initial one going. when i
separate the gun casing, the barrel, magazine track and trigger come apart.
what is all this small wiring inside? looking closely i find the handle
of the gun has a bundle of copper coiled up which is attached to printed
board circuitry. i look at several of the condenser and diode packs. one
of them is labeled TRNSMTTR.
"damn. this gun has a radio bug in it." i tell the others, cutting the
antenna and several of the board components. it is about ten seconds
before the dopplered alarms can be heard as the defense droids rain down
from the sky, surrounding the van which stalled almost immediately when the
gun signal cut off. we had only gone about twelve blocks.
we are quickly pushed into a nearby building where a police lieutenant sits
with a smirk on his face. "you did not make it half as far as we thought
you would." he tells us. "good work, anne. your sentence has been
reduced by six months. the rest of you get an additional five years in
moderate security. be glad your escape was short circuited. if you had
made it outside the defense dome where we expected you, it would have been
ten years. report to the clarkson street holding facility."
as quickly as that the police action has been logged and they begin to
break up, the robots filing off toward the base of the sky dome. "but i do
not even know where clarkson street is." i say.
"don't worry. you will find by sun down or face a step toward maximum
security." replies the policeman. clearly he would get a merit pay raise
if any of us eventually upgrade from moderate to dangerous security. anne
seems pleased with herself. moderate security does not have mixed sex
living arrangements which may be a benefit here. i guess women learn the
skills of entrapment as soon as they realize they can not compete in the
league of strength. it is harder for men to learn this as we have to test
ourselves against each other before the pecking order gets established and
it becomes clear that there is always someone stronger.
i start walking down the street towards the small business zone of the city
where i think clarkson street must be. now that i have learned the lessons
of minimum security, i feel like i have graduated to the next level beyond
private enterprise. the springfield street facility was in the residential
zone, and now my life will come into the commercial stream where endeavor
in valued in profit margins rather than utility.
as i am thinking about this, i see my high school friend, porter welbourne,
walking on the sidewalk across the street. i do not wave, but i can see
that he has noticed me. for a moment i hope that he will take word of my
presence in the police state back to friends who can sue for my release
through legal means. but then i see that he has a hair piece attached to
the back of his head. it is a long braided pig tail to simulate the
cossack warrior braid, worn to facilitate the handling of your severed head
after a battle. this is the badge of a consultant to police internal
affairs. i hide my disappointment and walk on toward my destiny on
clarkson street.
i find that clarkson street is only one block long, at an angle to the city
street grid. the buildings are all two story red brick, built into each
other without even an alley between. i assume that the holding facility is
on the second floor above the firehouse on the corner. perhaps i am to be
a fireman in this incarnation of the penal system. this area of town looks
rather oriented to street life having nothing to recommend it for private
interiors nor private lives.
i feel someone grab my leg below the knee. i look down to discover that a
young child, hardly more than a toddler. she is looking up and saying
"daddy? daddy?" her skin is a lovely chocolate brown color, but her
shoulder length hair is platinum blonde, a startling contrast. cold blue
eyes. must be one of the engineered mutant children. "no, i am not your
daddy." i tell her as i extract her bear hug on me. a worried mother is
running from across the street. i am careful not to appear dangerous after
my recent upgrade from minimal security.
poor kid. this is the world she has been bred for. prisoner of the
genome, no chance even from birth. am i so different, i wonder.
=( i wake easily at 06:30 without the alarm. it seems to me that the
repair of the geodesic dome by the robots actually started on the far side
of the river across from the town in an earlier dream which i could not
recall well enough to include here. i think my original crime was
explaining to the robots how geodesic structure is achieved and they were
fascinated. i do not have many associations with this in-city dream
content. i recall that i did not teach the section on random generators
very well a couple weeks ago in one of my programming classes, so perhaps
that figured into the robotics work here. )=
. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
=== qui non est hodie cras minus aptus erit
| | who not is today, tomorrow less suitable will be
--- -- Ovid _Remedia Amoris_ i 94
--------------- MESSAGE dream-flow.v001.n114.5 ---------------
From: "Wilkerson, Richard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: The Rainwater Room
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 19:04:05 -0700
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Dream Title The Rainwater Room / Na
Date of Dream 19JUN99/5:30-6:30am?
Dream Background - earlier that evening, I was on a
first date with a man I had met a week earlier. The man is in my dream -
coincidentally?
The dream: The man from my date is in a small room in a house that is
supposed to be my own. One wall in the room is covered with planks, like
the siding on the outside of a house. There is a small iron bed against
the wall. The man is standing by the bed. He is garbed in dingy white
shirt and pants, sort of rumpled. Pajamas? The bedsheets are dingy
gray-white. The wall is dingy white with the high gloss paint on the
planking thick and rippled. There is dirt in the ripples as if this was
once an exposed external wall. The ceiling is a dingy white. I enter from
a clean, if spartan room with unfinished hardwood floors and a window
bright with glowing sunlight. My room connect to the man's room through a
tiny 'foyer' or hall. I go to his room because he had called or came to
get me, to show me that it was raining very hard outside. I can see my dry
room while standing in the wet room. I am a little annoyed to find that
water is streaming into this room. The floor !
!
and walls are glistening wet. Above the bed, the planked wall has sprung a
leak and clear rainwater is streaming down the horizontal planks onto the
bed, soaking the mattress. At first I am concerned about where the man
will sleep. He does not care about the wet mattress but is concerned about
the water streaming onto the bed. I assure him that I can take care of
that. I begin applying a dirty, dingy caulk to holes that suddenly become
apparent in the planked wall. The caulking is dirtier than the rippled
paint and I'm concerned that when it dries, it will not blend in. I get
some of the smaller holes filled but the larger ones (where did so many
holes come from?) have so much water flowing through that the caulk is
pushed out. I am determined to fix my home and frantically try to fill the
holes. The man recedes out of the room. All I remember of him are his
words - him saying that he could still sleep on the mattress and my
reaction, of distaste, that I could not sle!
!
ep in such a bed. But he is my guest and I'm concerned that he be able to
sleep at all. So I'm trying desperately to patch the holes. And then I wake.
Comments by Dreamer
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--------------- END dream-flow.v001.n114 ---------------
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