I Am A Robot Fairy
From Telkoth.net
Contents |
[edit] Introduction
I was at GMU (George Mason University), in a cafeteria-like place. whatever building it was, it is not a real building at GMU. lots of bench-like tables strung together. I feel like there was a dream before this, that took place in an entirely different place, but when I think about it, I think that must have been the previous night... I dunno. something with a hotel in a city area, but this is not that anymore. so maybe never mind I said anything :P
the room I was in was very white, and large. high ceiling, rows of these benches. the benches were white, and probably plastic. the wall behind me was a window to outside. the weather... overcast, maybe raining a little, I forget. outside the window you could see the JC (a building that does exist at GMU).
I was trying to order pizza with a friend, but having trouble finding a good deal (with Beto? that'd make sense :P we do that a lot in real life)
[edit] Leather Armor
I met Lindsey there by chance, and told her we should hang out, go the the JC. she said "OK", but she was definitely not entirely interested. she said she wanted to grab some of her things, and that she'd be right back.
I saw her through the windows outside of the building headed to the JC, so I ran out to follow.
in the JC, she was wearing what looked like leather armor. it was not entirely-well done. she went to the restroom; I waited outside. when she returned I asked about the armor. she said something like "people ask me about it all the time and seem impressed, but it's just..." - the top layer, which was kind of a hatch of leather, lifted up off the solid leather, which was fake-ish and sewn directly to her shirt, or something. the two leather layers should have been attached, I knew (in the dream), and the bottom layer definitely shouldn't be attached to the shirt. but when she put the top layer back down, you couldn't really tell that this is how it was.
[edit] Buying Candy
Lindsey said she had left-over meal plans. (it was the end of the year.) I recommended that we use them to buy candy, and so we headed toward the food court in the JC.
on the way, Bridget (was a co-worker at B&N) appeared asking how much Fret paper should cost. she seemed a bit in a hurry, and somehow thought I really should know. I told her that I knew about a site where you can print up Fret paper (and I do in real life, too: incompetech.com/graphpaper/), so it shouldn't cost more than the paper. she was surprised "really? you can print it? _Fret_ paper?" like I maybe didn't know what fret paper was. and I was like "yes. Fret paper. the sheets. I know what you're talking about," and I wanted to tell her the site, but couldn't remember the URL, but knew I could find it if I was at a computer, but she was in a hurry, and I was trying to get candy with Lindsey, so she just ran off again. she was quickly out of view behind all the other people. the JC was full of people.
it seemed like owners of the various stores here were also teachers, because not only were there lines to buy stuff, but lines to get grade reports. a couple teachers approached me to tell me my grades, and I was nice about talking to them, but really I didn't much care, since I'd dropped out of college, but I remember in the dream thinking "that's interesting that they remember me specifically well enough to tell me this, even though it's been a while."
Lindsey and I found the candy we wanted at last. it was a gummy place that I remembered liking (totally does not exist at GMU in real life). I wanted a bag of some of these gummy ring things. somehow a box of Nerds also got added to the scale (the owner guy was weighing the gummies to see how much I owed, and apparently weighing the box also made sense?) he put it on the scale, I saw the number, and asked "okay, so I owe you X.XX?" (whatever the amount was), but he explained that the scales take a long time to settle down to a number, like about 5 minutes, so I'd have to wait. during that time a long line built up to get grade reports.
there was another shop next to the gummy shop which also grew a long line.
to be clear, these shops were not in enclosed spaces. the floor was very open, and these shops were kind of all lined up within this open space. the ceiling was at least lower above the shops, and then more open outside. (a bitlike the JC at GMU, if you've ever been.)
the shop next to the candy shop was more strange. the woman there was kind of new-agey. she was selling these things... they were "fairies", but technological. they were these electronic spheres, and they definitely floated and flew, but then they had a design of a fairy printed on what was the front. the design was of that annoying fairy from the Zelda games - the glowing blue ball with wings. in the center was a lens - the camera. these were little helper robot things that people bought - not uncommon in this dream world, though I'm not really sure what function they served. I overheard her talking to someone who was selling these, and she was talking about how you should treat them respectfully, etc, because they were more than just robots, or something. she was treating them more like living things, which I thought was a little silly.
when I got back to buy my candy, there were tons of people who wanted their grades. I happened to see one girl's report card that had only two grades, something passing, and something failing. she was all like "what?!" about the failing grade, like it was a surprise, but it was obvious she was expecting it.
also, while the guy was handing out grades, I think he told a story... or maybe someone else did... about a class where everyone got a No-Pass because the bus broke down, so they couldn't get to where they were going, so of course no one could Pass, so what was the only option? No-Pass. I pictured the stopped bus on some mountain highway. and I told (I guess Lindsey) "wow. really? an entire class got a failing grade? it wasn't even their fault." and she said "he's obviously just kidding; they probably got no grade."
we stood around for a while waiting for the guy to get to us, but he kept handing out grades, or dealing with someone else's order first. someone remarked - not really directly at us - that we weren't even in the right line; we were in the line for receiving grades. so we moved to the back of the paying-things line.
finally we got up there, and the guy gave me my total. (I thought) he said "$2050.99", I asked "$2050.99?", and he explained that he was mistaken about weighing the Nerds, and that I owed $1.50 (I was still mishearing at this point; I think he must have told me that the Nerds cost $1.50, or the other candy did, but I'm not sure, since in the dream, I misheard :P). that seemed more reasonable, although also lower than expected. but I gave him $1.50, and he was like "$1.50 is good, but what about the rest?" I asked how much, he said "$1.99" I thought that made more sense, so I handed him two more dollars. "do you care about the penny?" he asked. I was about to tell him I did not care about the penny, so I told him no, I didn't care about the penny...
[edit] Metro-Station Heist?
and finally I left.
now things became more strange.
the transition is not clear... someone was stealing something. it was big, rectangular, rather the shape of a mattress, and might have been a mattress. I think I'm ahead of myself, though.
a bunch of people were at a metro-like station. I was by myself by this point. the metro tracks were very crisscross-y... like, if you looked at the tracks, you could make no sense of them, and there were waiting platforms all over. trains would come and go, and people would get on. it kind of seems like some of where people were going was pre-assigned and/or I was intending to get on the wrong train.
I don't remember the exact order of things, but me and some other guy had crutches (we had for a while, even though I hadn't until now in the dream so far), and we were with a girl - the three of us were planning to steal this big thing that now, after the dream, I can only think was a large mattress (the box, I guess, based on how it didn't flop).
I kind of want to say that the girl and other guy were Bridget (again) and her boyfriend/husband, but I'm not entirely sure. they didn't seem to be going out in the dream, anyway.
anyway, this thing we were stealing was in a box. or maybe the box was it. I don't know. people were chasing us, though. they were on to us. we had met up on one of these metro trains, but whoever had got the mattress-thing this far was already being chased. we'd hop from metro to metro. finally we got off the metros and waited inside a building. the walls were mostly glass, with black beams. it was dark inside, so we could see outside to the metro platforms easily. while the guy and I sat down and put our crutches up against the wall or table, the girl remarked on how annoying she was finding our crutches to be. the other guy, highly sarcastically: "yeah, I have them because I want to." I don't know how we were moving this mattress-box-thing around so quickly, though I do remember it was not easy to do. it was an effort, but somehow it didn't seem to slow us down. I dunno, but somehow we avoided being caught so far. finally, though, we were caught up to. we were making a run for it, but things became even more insane >_> there were large robot guard things chasing us. not at all human-looking robots. more like spiders, but 4 legs, the camera hanging down underneath, and a big gun on the left side (its right) that took a while to charge up: you could see this increasingly-bright blue ball grow until the gun was ready to fire. a couple times, explosives, or robot fire, would destroy parts of the metro platforms that we were trying to escape on. it was done kind of video-game-ily, where most of the platform would be destroyed, but there was still some path we could take, which may or may not require jumping. at some point the other guy lost his crutches. I started to get rid of mine, because they were starting to just get in the way. the other guy assumed I was doing this in order to throw him one of mine, and that I would be keeping one. I went ahead and threw him one, then tried to throw one at a spider robot thing, but missed. it wasn't long before I didn't know where either of my partners was... it was just me, running from robots. at some point, it became a first-person view (I feel like it was third-person, usually), with me running down halls, etc, and when there wasn't enough ground, even flying. I happened to fly into some huge master-control spider-robot thing's place. it appeared exactly the same as the others, but bigger. its cannon was also bigger. I then got pulled into a wall, and I had this momentary third-person view of my face as a wireframe of light being pulled into this wall, which stretched back as I was pulled into it.
my view wound through this wall, electronics around me, etc, fish-eye lens-like, and finally into this small ball with a circular window. the fish-eye effect stopped at this point, which is what pulled the walls around me, putting me in this little sphere. I couldn't escape this view, it occurred to me, though I was not particularly worried.
[edit] Death
a voice informed me that this was now my form... I forget exactly how the voice worded everything, so I will paraphrase what it said, and my feelings.
basically, I had died. (thinking about it now that I'm awake and thinking about it, I was probably died the moment the view switched from third to first person) but I would continue to live controlling this fairy ball thing. I then remembered that lady who sold these things, and how she was saying that they needed to be treated well, etc. she apparently knew that these things had the souls of people in them, or at least knew more than most people. again, I wasn't particularly worried about being dead. this apparently happened to lots of people.
there were, in fact, lots of people around. there was a space for me to wander around in this form... so I zipped around.
there was also this... background song. like, this kind of light chanting thing. it was a simple tune, and I was able to hum it when I woke up... I should have got my microphone first thing :|
anyway, there were lots of other people here. I knew that they also must be in some other form, but everyone appeared as people to me. I was able to find my two partners-in-crime. we were happy to see each other more than worrying about what had happened, or that we were dead. those things didn't matter. people were all... I dunno what the word would be. but what we'd done before didn't matter, at least we could meet up again before being assigned different locations. we seemed to again be in a metro station very similar to the last. we all got on the same train at first, and then when we got off, there were lines of people getting into these... I guess elevator-like things. they were cylinders. we followed a bunch of people into one, except that after the girl and I got in, the door automatically closed for being full. the door was glass, or at least transparent. again, these were cylinders, so it just kinda' slid around the cylinder into place. the other guy looked disappointed and sad, but accepting. he said goodbye as best he could through the glass (either we couldn't hear him talk, or he didn't say anything), before walking to the next available elevator thing.
I was starting to wake up at this point, but I think I was finally assigned to that same woman who I saw selling things like me before. I knew that most people wouldn't realize that they weren't just buying a robot, but I felt better because I knew that this woman had some realization, and at least was telling people to take good care of things like me... little fairy ball robot things.
and that is mostly it.
I wonder if all the robots - like the ones shooting at us - also had people in them...
[edit] Oh Yeah: The Song
oh, also, I remember: when I first woke up, I knew I'd forget that tune that was playing after I died, and tried thinking about it to myself a couple times, to remind me. but I thought it was OK, that I'd remember it, because I could easily remember this pattern:
which... I don't think even made much sense to me at the time. I was clearly still only half awake/half-dreaming :P I can kind of remember the general sound of the song, but this picture doesn't help me at all. when I think of it, the line segments are connected - it's one line without any breaks - but I show them here disconnected because they are certainly supposed to be thought of as separate segments. like that the first bit of the tune is the segment on the bottom left, and the next the top, and finally the lower-right. but now, when I try to think about the voice "ahhhh"ing just three notes, it doesn't seem like enough.
geh - I dunno.
