My Education: the dream journal of Clem Snide

((While The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix wends its way to conclusion, and Noir As All Hell part 2 gets written, I had an idea. Humans in The Matrix sleep, and creative people keep dream journals. Combine the two and you get this. I hope to post every day, some taken from events in gameplay and some taken from my own journals. The title is from the real William Burroughs' published dream journal, which is worth a read.))

I started keeping a dream journal long before I was Awakened, whether you count that moment as the period of psychotic hell, knowing but not being able to do anything about it, or the moment when a Zion representative came up to me and I said "About **bleep** time."

Humans represent the only creative force in The Matrix. The "creativity" of the programs, whether loyal (Machines) or rebel (Exile), is based entirely on copying human works and modifying them slightly. This is why nearly all pop music is done by programs. They analyze what it was about a particular composer, or song, or topic that makes humans react to it, then generate variations.

How I found this out-- and what was probably the first moment that I realized things were not as they should be-- was when I overheard a conversation in a bar. I am able to tell a program from a real person by their scent, and while I didn't know at the time that I could do this, I knew that they had a strange aroma to them which I had chalked up to some rancid Turkish cologne.

"I had this weird dream last night," one said, and went on to describe one that I had committed to paper the previous day.

Now more aware of the ways of the world, I can see that my dreams were being hijacked and implanted in the dreaming minds of programs. What purpose this is for, I don't know. I have surmised that it makes them appear more like real people, an illusion upon which the smooth running of the Matrix depends. And with the ability to describe actual dreams in detail, my journal must be a particularly rich source of night visitations for the digital crowd.

Knowledge is power. If you overhear someone talking about these, claiming them as their own, you can be sure that they're a program. And who knows, they may amuse you as well.

I was in school again, my present age but surrounded by younger people. Chalk-dust hung in the air, visible in the streams of daylight coming through the venetian blinds. We are working on some sort of math problem. I rise from my seat and go up to the matronly teacher. "Excuse me. I don't belong here." She looked up from what she had been doing and told me that I couldn't leave. "You haven't had your education yet."

Talking to a woman who had just decided to take an active role in events. "How do you tell good people from bad ones?" So I gave her the basic course.

"Heroes give you the chance to participate or not," I replied; "villains don't." As an example we went over to where a kid was talking to either aliens or faeries, not sure which, in their human forms. One of them asked her "So what's your favorite 'Charlie' episode in the 'Mary Poppins' season?" He meant of a popular TV series, not sure which one.

The boy confided in me that since he started asking questions of the aliens, he had been treated very well: Helicopter rides, secret meetings, etc. He was trying to figure out what he was going to be and wanted to include the alien (faerie) professions.

Continuing with the woman, I now gave her the second lesson. "But then there are antiheroes and charming villains. Antiheroes don't follow the pattern. They may be as rude and inconsiderate as a villain, but they still act for the good of Humanity; it just may be inobvious how what they're doing at the moment will help. As for charming villains, well, a lot of vampires fall into that category. They'd rather you joined them freely, but they use everything they can to persuade you."

"Werewolves?" she asked. I shrugged. "Could go either way."

View going from place to place shifted from driving in a car to pushing a toy ship, a destroyer (in which we were supposed to be), along a highway; jumping off an overpass, and landing on the deck of another toy ship, an aircraft carrier (much larger scale though). As we drove we saw decommissioned battleships hanging from the outsides of buildings that had been taken over by Japanese companies, looked rather like hanging gardens.

There had been a charismatic individual known as "Hivvert," who had been dead for about a year but who was rumoured to be seen through the city. Some locations were more likely to have Hivvert sightings than others; these were tracked by a columnist in the Philadelphia Weekly, and were called "Hiv zones." (While writing I became aware that this could also be read "HIV zones.")

I was meeting with an expert in the topic, but I wanted to do my research first, so I looked through an old pile of newspapers for stories. While there I noticed that the small gift rack was disorganized. It was ingeniously comprised of trays which rotated vertically around a stand, so that on each side of the stand the gifts always faced outward and always had a backdrop. The mechanism was intricate.

Along the sides were stationary racks. Bookmarks were one of the most numerous things in the display. I found a bookmark that was a reprint of a patriotic paionting, one of the Ladies of Liberty (not the Statue of Liberty, but a mid-19th century rendition) with the message "Do U want 2 fight wars 4 ever?" I took a handful and tried to find an appropriate tray, as the rack they were in was along the side, which was pushed up against the wall; not many people could see it.

Dale came in as I was doing this. "How'd it go? Where did you do your routine?" I asked. He shook himself off and replied "New Orleans. I don't think it went over so good." I shook my head. "I'm sure you did fine. People there are looking for any excuse to laugh."

Never did do that Hivvert research.

Last camping trip I took with my father. Campfire was down to embers and the night sky was awash with stars. His grey hands pointed out Betelgeuse in the night sky. Betelgeuse: corruption of the Arabic "yad al jauza," "Hand of the al-jauza," the mysterious woman. She forms the right shoulder of Orion the Hunter. I remembered my father's last words: "Stay out of churches, son; only key they got is to the shithouse. And swear to me you will never wear a policeman's badge."

Working undercover at the graveyard. It was my first day and I was late, sort of; the place opened at 6:00 AM and it was 5:55, but I was supposed to be there an hour early. I was at Race and Water Streets. Every time I tried to get closer I wound up further away. But I kept running into people who worked there, people carrying armsful of crepe paper and the like, so I knew I was on the right track.

In a washing-up room there was a water-pressure puzzle. The sink's hot water tap had a collar underneath the knob, which had a little handle on it, very hard to tell unless you looked specifically for it. By moving the handle water flowed to a set of pipes which opened a secret compartment.

This had a balancing puzzle, you had to get the same amount of water in each bowl on a scale, but one leaked. This opened another secret door with a water fountain, but the secre here was to drink the water as it came ou; if you allowed too much to fall into the drain, the compartments closed up and you had to start all over again.

The last puzzle opened up the secret door in back of William Penn's grave. When I went through it, it was being featured by a TV news crew. There were dignitaries there for a ceremony and I was in the sacrosanct area, all marble set off by railings. I tried to surrpetitiously leave and I think I succeeded with only minor notice.

I was walking along a long underground hallway. It ran parallel to the subway and every so often a train could be heard passing by, but there were no entrances to the subway platforms that I could see. The walls were tiled as were the floors. I walked quite a long distance. I saw, off to one side, a pigeon that had somehow gotten into the tunnel and had died. It didn't affect me at the time I saw it but as I walked my mind returned to it and I became more and more sad. Woke up crying.

French animation of the 1930s. A beautiful ballerina on board a luxury liner. The captain and the cook were both in love with her but she didn't know that the cook existed; she was dazzled by the captain's uniform and etc. Cook got more and more frustrated, hatched a plot; he was going to serve her an incredible meal and woo her that way.

Each of the characters were represented by a different instrument: the captain, French horn and drums; the cook, a tuba; the cabin boy, a piccolo. The ballerina was a harp. Music blended smoothly from sea shanties showing the crew on deck to baroque music in the lady's quarters and the dining room.

I knew (with the kind of look-ahead foresight that you have in dreams) where this was going. The cook was going to fail in his bid to impress the woman, and his plot was going to turn into something macabre, possibly involving killing and cooking the ballerina and serving her up to the captain. Before taht could happen, though, the initial dinner had to be made.

Dream turned into a cooking show a la Julia Child, cook described in detail what he was making and the steps for preparation. Cabin boy assisted and was comedy relief, asking silly questions, picking up hot pots without potholders, etc. Never got to gruesome part.

Fancy dinner, society sorts, perhaps on a cruise ship. Orchestra played softly in the background. Dancers. At a table a centipede, one of the enormous poisonous ones known to South American jungles, emerged from the eyesocket of an elderly matron and crawled around on the table before dropping onto the floor. As time went on more and more of the attendees were shown to have insect or animal parts, snouts of pigs, antennae, ovipositors trailing along the floor... Not sure whether I was seeing this through my own eyes or whether I was present at all. Had the sensation of a scene in a movie. Junk sick upon waking.

You could row one of the boats on land, but you had to die first. I did (was a half-cat, half-man at this point) and I wanted to show my best friend, but she wasn't asleep at the moment-- in this dream we could communicate with other dreamers.

Recurring element: An enormous house which had several entrances, some of them unsecure, only after living there for a while do I realize they're there. In this one I was in my living space, along the west wing, and decided to move some out-of-season clothes to closets elsewhere. (I also had a great deal of apparel in the dream.)

Sure enough, a woman was ascending one of the windong staircases. "May I help you?" I asked the intruder politely; she replied "I don't think so." Started lecturing her about how it was my house, she countered with chatter about a contract with the management. I threatened to call the police but give up as I didn't think they'd be doing any damage, but resolved to install better outer doors and change locks as soon as she left.

Saw code structure of her dog as it followed her daughters around.

The one-armed boy is a recurring figure in my dreams; he showed up today, skipping around the dark forest where I was evidently building some sort of wooden structure.

"The king is dead," he giggled. "Long live the king!"

"Which king do you mean, kid?"

"The king." He wouldn't elaborate but treated it as one of those games that little kids play, sort of a "what's up? Chicken butt" kind of thing. I tried to get information out of him but I also had to do something on the building which was time-critical so I couldn't spare much attention.

Dreamt that I woke up and went back to sleep. The one-armed boy was still there and he gave my the answer: "The child, Eric." It was however the same dream.

(Dream occurred on second anniversary of the alien invasion of the Matrix.) I was once more working with Agent Tango on the hardline disappearance case, only this time I knew why he was working to preserve the hardlines.

I also had the Megner Sponge code long before I ought to have. Instead of using it against the alien's entry portal I used it against The Merovingian. But even as I did I knew that it wouldn't be the proper way to destroy him absolutely, I just wanted to see what it would do. I did this despite knowing that my action was essentially dooming the entire virtual world. Sorry about that.

Despite the discrepancies from history, everything turned out the same way. Aliens gone, hardlines restored except of course for the second one in Stratford Campus, memory erased from most redpills and bluepills and programs. I even had the anhr despite that being found on the bit-reversed alien RSI (which in this version never seemed to happen).

Temple dancer, the kind you would find on the Malaysian mainland before Islam. She is taking up postures that are physically impossible with seeming ease. The other temple dancer is supposed to answer my questions.

"Has an operation taken place." It's less of a question than a statement. I get that from my downstairs neighbor, Mrs. O.

But it's like at the movies where you have to stay quiet, everyone around is shushing me, finally I get really annoyed and go up on the stage, take the dancer by the left leg and right shoulder. Her arm and leg come off in my hands like she was a mannequin. Everyone is staring at me holding the limbs, including the dancer; and I am tremendously self-conscious of the attention. I say one word before the dream ends.

"Ssssshit."

Joan and I were jonesing bad for a fix, so I wandered through town to see what I could find. Saw a man put down two suitcases as he opened an apartment door, then go inside. Without hesitation I gerabbed the suitcases and walked around the corner as if they were mine.

Near a gulley I opened them up to see whether there was anything good inside. Found a woman's body, cut into pieces, oozing blood onto the lining. Dumped the remains into the ditch and went to a pawnshop.

When I showed the suitcases to the proprietor, he wrinkled his nose and said "God, smells like something died in there!" I replied "Well, what do you want, it's Mexican leather." Gave me an Abe for the both, later I scored smack in Kowloon.

I enjoy a good game of craps and was in an anonymous old casino, not the glitzy strip kind but a place where elderly pensioners go to while away their Social Security checks.

A guy at the other end, big mope in a checkered suit and pork pie hat, obviously very drunk, was cursing at every throw, and not just the usual "damn it" kind but really blue. Now I don't mind cussing but there is a time and place for that and it was really getting on my nerves.

The pit manager came over and asked him to modulate his language as he was disturbing people at the table. "Disturbing who?" the guy asked, looking around in a fake casual manner. "I don't see anyone who was disturbed by my language. Is anyone disturrrrrbed by my lang-u-age?" He sarcastically stressed the words.

So I said "Yeah, me. I'm a church-going man." The asshole left in a huff, not having a ready reply to that, and the manager comped me for a dinner.

The very idea that I am completely out of milk is for some reason hilarious to me. Why? I don't even drink milk. But in the dream every time I think about buying more, or think about how I used it up, I break into uproarious tear-provoking laughter.

I am also out of paper clips, but this is not at all funny.

Some sort of convention, perhaps wargames or reenactors. Lots of people in SCA garb, seemed mainly Celtic in nature. Cloaks with expensive clasps over T-shirts, khakis and sneakers.

I found a couple of suitcases and walked off with them, thinking they may have something valuable inside. In a relatively quiet corner on a folding table I looked at them. There were a lot of fanzines with the typical in-joke names, some artifacts I couldn't see clearly. I realized that this was of little value to anyone but the owner, who must have ammassed it over the years and would be heartbroken over its disappearance. Feeling guilty, I zip the nylon up and go to subtly return it to where I grabbed it, along the way figuring out a good story in case the owner is already there.

SCENE 1: Young girl hesitantly approaches robot, climbs invisible staircase out of set. Robot wheels about with one broken tread. Black ball bounces into view from stage L.

SCENE 2: Robot disassembles self. Man watches. TV is off. Sound of dripping water.

SCENE 3: Man disembowels young girl, is captured by robot. L leg is handcuffed to R arm. Panel discussion on TV.

SCENE 4: Yellow ball rolls down ramp from stage R. Turns red. Young girl pops ball with pin, places flowers resulting from this into vase on table (out of scene).

SCENE 4 (alternate): Same except that ball does not change color.

SCENE 5: Young girl disembowels man. Sitcom with laugh track on TV. White ball bounces down invisible staircase; girl disappears. Motionless robot visible throughout.

SCENE 6: Robot disembowels man. Invisible staircase becomes visible. Young girl on TV, looking at red ball and crying. Native American music.

File it under "pornography," boys.

The HvCft Gaea crew has captured one of the quickening cauldrons and I was supposed to steal and deliver DNA data. Unfortunately the raid did not go well, I was hit with a Degaussing Field and it wiped some sections of the DNA, specifically the stop sequence for embryonic development; what we have here is a huge mass of indeterminate tissue (IDT) that keeps growing.

IDT becomes whatever kind of tissue wins the embryonic struggle at that particular place; directed by the DNA sequences, our cells fight to become for example neurons, and the losers have to become glial cells, supplying the king neurons with the nutrients they cannot produce for themselves. In this case there is a constant production of muscle tissue.

"Thanks for the big lump of cancer, but what we really wanted was a chicken," one of them says in a sarcastic manner. In the dream I have a great idea for food supply, though, the "batching hen," an eternally growing decerebrated chicken. No pain receptors, you just hack off parts of it as it sits in its nutrient bath and they grow back. Source of food for Zion perhaps?

I am meeting the crew of the HvCft Moirai. We've gotten to the poart of the evening where we are swapping stories.

"After a rumble in Dallas involving this aphrodisiac ointment (my associate, Dr. Benway, mixed in too much Spanish Fly and burned the prick off a police commissioner) we headed south to Mexico. Now smack is unbelievably cheap there, in fact everything is, and I spent three days in a little apartment atop a bodega strung out, just staring at my foot."

Olisi, who had gone for coffee, returned at that moment. "Hey Bill, would that be your shoe or your bare foot?"

Instantly I answered "My bare foot, of course. Nothing's so interesting about a shoe that you'd spend three days staring at it."

I was at the church in Camon Heights and Neil was there, proud as could be about the new organ and sound system. The thing looked like it could blow the doors off this relatively small building. The donation boxes had been enlarged into lucite cubes the size of a man, and he had a bucket of pennies that he poured on the top to push through the slot there.

On the way out I commented to Ron that "I didn't want to hear that monster hit the first big chord in 'Meet Me After Midnight,'" the last cut on the album that last year's winner of Megacity Idol released just before disappearing. If you haven't heard it, it's a real classic style hard rocking piece. I haven't dreamed of Ron in ages. He chuckled.

In the back, I was on penny detail. I got up on the roof (low sloping roof) and picked pennies off the shingles. As I did so people tossed more. Some of the roof sections were covered in chicken wire, the same that we used to keep tourists away from fragile gravestones, so I had to fit my fingers between the wires. Slow work and I'm not even sure I made enough to cover my wages.

There was a suit jacket and some other clothing hanging from the gutter. "Whose blue suit is this?" I asked. I took it down and hung it from the French-door closet that was near where we were. Later Carl said "I believe that would be my 'blue' suit," the word "blue" in a condescending manner; looking at it again I saw that it was now brown. "Well it was blue when it was hanging up from the gutter." I haven't dreamed of Carl in ages.

He can see it already, the Jungle Hiltons: Orchids blooming in the moonlight on the New Deck. And in the bar behind the orchids, a tank full of piranha fish. The management throws in live goldfish and pieces of raw meat... It's a big attraction. Hamburger joints, souvenir shops, drunken Indians, polluted rivers. The gritty bite of diesel fumes outside the Mineos Opera House. Tourists posing with a boa constrictor.

Terrible scandal: A big pop star in a jealous rage fueled by cocaine grabbed his girlfriend's Yorkshire terrier and threw it into the piranha tank. As the fish attacked the helpless floundering dog, the hysterical starlet grabbed a heavy bronze ashtray and threw it into the tank, shattering the glass, spilling snapping fish and bloody water across the floor, as the disemboweled screaming dog dragged its intestines toward the door.

Quite a scene it was, and of course there were plenty of cameras to freeze-dry this edifying spectacle for posterity and export.

It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to be destroyed.

Picnic table lunch, tents have been raised against the rain which never came. I am at the end of a table with some kind of sandwich. Half finished but I have to get to the pyramid, so I rise to leave.

Someone notices. "Hey, aren't you that guy on TV?" I did one commercial which has been shown constantly on late-night UHG for the past two years., I admit to it and the woman shakes my hand.

There follows a sequence where people at the picnic table start shaking my hand just because someone else did and they think they ought to, too. I leave my hand extended and go along the row. Some people hadn't been paying attantion and don't shake it, but just as I think it's time to put the thing away, someone else hesitantly grabs it and that fuels the next bout of handshaking.

I am asked my opinion for drama schools to send the families' kids to, and one mother entrusts me to take her son to the hotel "near the bypass." I'm certain that I'm going by there but make lame excuses because I don't want a little kid tailing along with me.

A pro-domme friend of mine is seated langourously on a modern recliner; she is wearing black clothing: boots, slacks, bustier; her arms and upper chest are uncovered. A team of vaguely defined men (anonymous reddish blurs, like an out-of-focus Blue Man Group, only red) are at work covering her with designs in what I guess to be a henna stain.

The designs are linear, like a Greek key pattern or a Mayan fresco, very tightly drawn and immensely intricate. Her arms, body, and face up to her cheekbones is covered in this manner. She speaks, slowly and in a low voice, "Prepare me... for the experience."

That's when I burst in, dressed in full Scots garb: kilt, sporran, blouse, weskit and tam. In a brogue I tell her "Och, lass! Ye needn't go through such prrreparations to enjoy a Killian's Irish Rrred!"

The road is called "highway 671," but it's scarcely a highway at all, just a small road barely two lanes wide that goes through the prarie. It's the only way to go home. The snow is making passage difficult and my speed is down to 30 MPH.

I see a woman at the side of the road, clad in a translucent garment unsuitable for the weather. She is pale of skin, barely any more color than the snow itself, and has tremendously long black hair that blows into the roadway; she is barefoot. I brake the car and it drifts to a stop.

I roll down the window and try to find her, but the driving snow hides her from view. All I hear is the sound of her crying. I leave the car and try to follow the sound but it mixes with the sound of the wind.

I am stricken with a sudden fear and decide to go back to the car, but the snow is so thick that now I can't find the car either. As I search for it she appears out of the white haze, her frozen arms extended toward me. Panicked, I run, trying to find the car, but no matter which way I turn there she is, crying and open-armed. At last I surrender.

I awoke at that point to find that the god damned gas company had shut off my service again.

Textbook or possibly journal.
1: WHAT IS A GLEEF?
A gleef is a developed human, similar to the blooddrinkers and lupines, more piscene in nature. It has a rudimentary ability to extract oxygen from water using a gill-like structure, pulsing red sacs of spongy tissue about its neck and breast, but does better in atmosphere. They have a swampy scent about them, sliminess to the skin which must be kept moist.

2: DETAIL OF ORGANS.
Spongiform gill, previously mentioned. The nose is also modified, being longer and wider than human, containing a jelly-like substance thought to be part of the gleefs' electrodetection sense. Since none have been caught in a state suitable for autopsy, this remains a conjecture. Mouth devolve into round disclike orifice, attaches to prey by suction, rasping tongue bores hole in victim from which gleef feeds. Poisonous spines on elbows used in defense or offense.

3: EVOLUTION.
Like the other supernatursl creatures one must catch the mutation from an existing gleef, unlike others it is entirely voluntary. One must seek out a patron for infection purposes. The transformation is said to take weeks of intense pain similar to cold-turkey withdrawal from opiates.

4: SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
Best described as pyramid or Ponzi scheme, a certain percentage of ingested tissue is regurgitated fo the "upline" gleef, the patron who initially infected the individual. Unknown how far down or up the tree of relation goes but a gleef is supposed to be able to tell precisely the relation of themselves to another of their kind; distance from Primagenitor shows who needs to defer to whom in a social setting.

5: RELATIONS WITH EXTERNAL SOCIETY.
Because of their innate sense of mercantilism the Gleef often works as a go-between or escrow service, supposedly gleefs can be taken at their word, no records exist of treachery. A heavy price is paid for this surety.

The journal was kept by a reporter who was going to infiltrate gleef society, becoming infected but pulling out for a cure as soon as he had the story... No further record exists of his work.

Falling dream. It was a small room with an open window. A chair floated out and I along with it. I knew that I could survive the fall by making sure that the chair landed in a particular manner, the back and seat facing down.

However in the room was also a cat. It was scared, but I felt it would survive if it stayed put. It jumped and I saw it tumbling away from the room, rotating in space. I screamed an extended drawn-out "NO!" as it was lost in the distance.