((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.