[UA] Would you like gas with those fries?

[Timothy Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Wedig" <mrteapot at disinfo.net>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2001 9:10 AM
Subject: Re: [UA] Would you like gas with those fries?



> I've died before in my dreams.  Shot on a street corner by Abe Lincoln one
time
> (an image I think was drawn from Sandman, fittingly enough).  So whenever
a movie
> goes into the bit about "If you die in dreams, virtual reality, etc, then
you die in real life"
> I want to slap the writers.  I've also, on a number of occasions, read
written words,
> which is something else you're not supposed to be able to do in dreams due
to the
> (largely fictitous according to some things I've read) left/right brain
division.
>
> No blood though.  That's just inexplicable.

Well, since everyone's sharing....

I've died too.  Hit the ground in the falling dream.  Actually, this is
fairly common, and one of the physiological explanations for "astral
travel."  Seems many people who do this report a levitation that ends
suddenly when the dream ends.  THey awake, and their bodies slam into the
mattress, as if they really were levitating.  In reality, it's the back
muscles clenching, bracing for an imaginary impact.  It just feels like you
hit the bed.

The strangest dream death happened not so long ago.  A friend of mine and I
were watching TV (the XFiles, I think), and a character got on his knees at
gunpoint, as ordered.  We both bragged that we'd never get on our knees.
Like getting into a car with a hostage-taker, it's extremely unlikely that
you'll live beyond the next few hours.  There was no way I'd go out like
that.

So the dream, right?  I was in a cell-like chamber, and the door opened.  A
good friend that I hadn't seen in years walked in.  She asked me in a calm
soothing voice, "Get on your knees and close your eyes."  I trusted her, so
I did it.  I felt something hard, small, and circular press into the back of
my head.  "You need this," she told me.  "You need to know what this is
like."

And then I felt something, as if she'd hit that spot with a ball peen
hammer.  It hurt, but it was an annoyed hurt.  I fell forward, and just lay
there.  I discovered that I couldn't move at all, and it was a little
terrifying.  I tried to will my limbs to move, but it just wasn't happening.
And then...the oddest thing.  I became aware that my thoughts were
disappearing, that they seemed to be leaking away, in the direction of that
spot.  My sense of self was slowly trickling out.  It wasn't memory that I
was losing, but every part of myself.  Most chilling of all, I could feel
the thoughts as they exited the area that I'd always perceived as 'my head,'
and flow, warm and thick, through my hair and down the side of my face.
Then, I guess, I die.  I didn't wake with a start.  Instead, I lay in bed,
and touched the spot where the bullet entered.  It was numb.

But that's not the weirdest.  I went to a prep school for high school, and
there was a 50-50 mix between boarding and day students.  I was kind of the
king geek (a la Anthony Michael Hall), and when I convinced the school to
reallow roleplaying (after a hostage-taking incident five years before),
everyone thought that either I could talk my ass off, or I has mystical
powers.  In reality, I caught up with one of the hostages, and he told me
what really happened, and when I asked the dean, I called him on this, and
he agreed that blaming RPGs was a lot more convenient than reality.

Anyway, after that, I became known around the campus as "the D&D guy," which
made me the de facto expert on the occult.  I really didn't know that much,
so I got a subscription to Time/Lifes Mysteries of the Unknown series, to
bone up.  When that started arriving in the mailroom, my rep was set in
stone.  I was a bit like Constantine, relying on rep more than actual
ability to get my way.

No one called me on it until my junior year.  I ran into a girl that I'd
seen from time to time.  Very much the loner, she managed to find a kindred
spirit in a former jock turned stoner, and they were inseperable.  I don't
think it was sexual...he just followed her around.  She (and he) caught me
in a remote hallway that I used as a shortcut.  She was waiting for me.  She
told me that she heard about me and my powers, but she didn't think I was
shit.  I really didn't take her seriously, so I tried to walk past her and
get to class.  As I passed, she touched me gently with her fingertips on my
chest, and told me, "See you tonight."

I REALLY didn't think about it.  Honest.  I swear.  When I went to sleep, I
turned on my lucid dreaming, and started telling stories in my head.  For
those of you who don't know (all two of you), lucid dreaming can best be
described as remaining slightly conscious while dreaming, so that you
maintain a degree of control over the dream.  I've done it since I was a
little boy, and had an incredibly traumatic dream, and discovered this
ability gradually.  Often, I'd pick up the threads of a dream I'd have
before, and continue an old dream.  I tried to do this, but instead found
myself in a cornfield in October, under a starless and moonless sky.  Every
sound was muted by the rustling leaves, but I heard a steady rustling in a
certain direction.  I headed that way, and found a clearing where a
old-school scarecrow was propped up on its crucifix.  THis was the only new
feature to the dream, so I knew it was significant, so I ran with it.  I
approached it.  There was a ripping and a twanging of wire popping as the
scarecrow leaped off its perch, and stood before me.  It had a familiar
shape, and a familiar gait as it walked towards me.  I ran before I knew I
was running, even though I knew that I could never get away.  Inevitably, I
was caught, and the scarecrow ripped into me with fingers twisted from wire.
As I died, I could hear her laugh echoing my ears, "You're nothing."

She and he were waiting for me along a new route I'd elected to take only a
few minutes before.  I hadn't told anyone, but my sleep haunted eyes spoke
volumes to my friends.  She smiled.  "You liked last night?"  I walked past
her.  "I guess so.  I'll see you later, Toner."
It went on for a week, and I wasn't getting any sleep at all.  Finally,
before going to sleep, I picked up my old dream journal (I'd been told that
you should write down your dreams, because you often forgot them), and
skimmed through it, finally nodding off.  Somehow, I retained an inkling of
self-awareness upon arriving in the cornfield.  I realized that she hadn't
robbed me of the capacity to lucid dream, but instead scared my subconscious
enough to make me forget how to use it (sorta like voodoo, and other nocebo
attacks).  WIth that realization, I snapped out of it.  I walked to the
center of the field, and stared at the scarecrow.  I then refocused.  _I_
was on the perch.  _I_ was looking down at the two of them.  And then I was.
I popped the wires holding me up, leapt down, hunted and killed them.  I
then let go, and had a pleasant dream.

The next morning, I ran into them outside the office.  She saw me, lowered
her head, and scurried off, and he followed.  I never talked to the two
again.  Soon after, she stared phoning in bomb threats from the payphone
outside the office, and he dropped out.  In the years since, I've wiggled
back and forth on the interpretations of this event, from my magickal,
mystical powers, to a really weird mind fuck.

I would focus on the latter, except for something extraordinarily weird that
happened in college.  I was reading Sandman, specifically A Doll's House,
and I liked the idea of everyone's dreaming mind next door.  I lapsed into
lucid dreaming, and tried consciously to exit my own corner of the dreaming,
and I did it!  I found myself in a void with a million different green
shiummering globes hanging in space.  I realized that if I touched the wall,
I could "hear" the dream inside.  Most walls were stiff and unbending, but a
few were soft enough that I thought that, with a little pressure, I could
enter them fully.  I resisted the temptation, since I recalled how freaked I
was by my unwelcomed visitors.

On my way back to mine, I touched one more, and was surprised to hear,
"Hello?" in a soft, feminine voice.  I pulled my hand back, but touched it
again.  "Come in," she said.  I kept pushing, and passed right through.
There was a woman, about my age.  She was sitting in a parlor in a
Victorian-era home.  "This is my grandmother's house.  I played here when I
was little.  She died recently."  We talked for a long time about various
things.  Soon, I knew I had to wake up, so I left.  She asked me to come
back, and I told her that I'd try.

The next night, I didn't know if I could do it again.  After all, there were
so many spheres, and no sense of gravity to give direction.  I realized,
though, that all of this was in my head, so OF COURSE I would be able to
track her down.  Sure enough, I found her with little trouble.  We talked
some more, and I was surprised at how annoying she was. If I were making my
perfect woman out of dreamstuff, wouldn't I fashion someone a little more
agreeable?  Finally, it was time for me to go again, and she asked something
else of me.  We moved to a classroom, presumably where she went to school,
and wrote down a number on the blackboard.  She tried to tell it to me, but
the numbers all jumbled.  Since it was written, I could visualize it.  I
woke up, and found myself repeating the numbers over and over.  I picked up
the phone, and dialed (it was long distance, but this was too weird to pass
up).  FInally, after five rings, a very tired, VERY familiar voice said,
"Hello?"
    "Amy?" I asked.
    "Is this...you?"  she gasped.  I gasped.  I more than gasped, I
panicked, and slammed the phone down.  An incredible shudder rocked through
my body that bordered on seizure, like I had done something very very WRONG.
Not surprisingly, she didn't call back, and I didn't remember the number, so
I got a little depressed.  Then, of course, the phone bill came, and there
it was, but I never found the courage to try again, and I stayed put from
that point on.


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