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.