7/21/12 Lincoln

In this dream, we re planning to take a trip. I usually tutor a kid on Fridays, and for some reason we have invited him along to go overnight with us. I'm taking him to the library and the corner store to get some supplies for us. In the library, we get several books, and on returning to our apartment we began looking through several speculative biology books. One in particular caught the kid's attention, entitled, "The Future After Humans," and we opened it up to look through it. The initial section of the book took place in a temperate forest setting. Some of the first Creatures were something like an 'evolved' rhino, looking more anthropomorphized and also more rugged and predatory. It had very large armored shoulders and upper body, and slender hips and legs. Another creature looked like a possible posthuman, having a very large arrowhead-shaped face, leading with the nose. Its eyes were diamond-shaped, ringed with a dark outline, and it would look back and forth suspiciously. Both eyes and hair were black. It traveled in packs, looking something like a predatory woods-wandering goblin.
The next creature was a very large crocodile-derivative animal, but it was on its back in a half-moon arc of repose, perforated with metal weapons through its stomach. At this point, we began talking about how I thought there was a television version of this book, like with Future is Wild, and at some point later the dream segues seamlessly into moving film. The next couple of creatures were large birds. They looked something like a quail crossed with a moa or emu, but the markings and the 'plumpness' of the quail (or pigeon) were intact. These birds were being flushed from the brush out onto a smooth oval rock outcropping in a clearing.
Now, we are tromping through the snow in snow equipment. We go into the mouth of a snow cave to meet with one of the portal-exploratory stationed in this region. We meet him, and he invites us in to have something hot to drink with him. His hat is off and he has slightly greasy brown hair and a full but neat beard. We hear some scuffling noise outside and he tells us we have to go inside -  creature is trying to get us. We dive down the tunnel into the deeper chamber bellyfirst, but the creature follows us in like a ferret. It is a large near-human, wampalike, with a squashed nose and brightly-colored mandrill-like face. We all scoot our backs up against the wall and kick out at it with 4 pairs of legs. It manages to grab on to somebody's leg, and another explorer kicks it in the side as its front arms are extended, causing it to lose its grip and slide down an opening (the escape exit), down a path and off the side of a cliff, dragging the explorer it caught by the leg behind it. The captured explorer manages to hang on to the edge of the cliff momentarily, his lifering strangely turning from red back to green (it had been yellow before), before losing his grip and falling after then snow creature.
Later, we are in the explorer's institution. Inside, it is gunmetal, steel, and concrete - surprisingly stark and cold for a snow building but warm inside nonetheless. There is not much furniture other than gym equipment (perhaps we are in the gym room), and some speculation arises as to the veracity of our experience. Something has gone wrong with our verifying equipment, and no sounds were reported back. We try to replicate the noises the creature made with a megaphone inside a freestanding sound-proof booth with glass walls. There is also a rumor going around that somehow the female member of our exploration team, who is incidentally pregnant, somehow ended up with a hybridized fetus as a result of the encounter. The doctor is very smug and certain about this interesting development, but as the viewer we see the camera focus one the readout machine fluctuating after the doctor has stopped looking at it. Later, after the actual delivery of the baby, there is no indication of hybridity, as the machine fluctuations seemed to indicate. The dotor is deflated.

07/19/12 Lincoln

I was in a store in the mall, just to the left of the inside door. I was collecting a bunch of toys from some toy bins, into a plastic red basket. They were mostly pokemon, but also some 1-2 inch high hollow rubber soft animal with flocking on the outside ... squirrels, sheep, bunnies, that kind of thing. There were also some tiny little single-color figurines, like monster in my pocket but smaller, and some larger rubber 2-headed dragons like the old plastic dinosaurs - they were painted on the horns, eyes, nails, etc, but the one I remember most vividly was pink and translucent! It had that typical gaping rubber dino mouth.

7/10/12 Woodland

The dream starts off in a mall, looking for a book store. I am talking about how the only thing I dislike about the advent of alien discovery is that it has totally ruined science fiction as a genre. In the mall, I am listening to/am giving a speech to an assembled group of humans and aliens, talking about how it is a new era for all our species - never before have 36 species come together in peace and harmony, never before have we been collectively capable of the things we are now, and never before have we been so uniquely situated to perform any task that we set our minds to - the day may come when we discover our numbers swelling to 50 new species, and to that end I am creating a defense system based on an intelligent mind - I am calling it Hammurabi. We cut to some video - Hammurabi is a virtual mind based on a transgenic mandrill. There are various tests shown of Hammurabi on his 'real' world environment, growing up, reacting to rests - in particular, one test showing him reacting to a test meant to scare him - Hammurabi simply snorts defensively, almost derisively. Hammurabi's head and body are shown to be larger and more human-like than a mandrill, though he retains the flat skull of a monkey, his crest is amplified, leading us to speculate that he may have new areas of the brain heretofore unseen.

The scene cuts to me - a woman at her home with a small girl. It may be her/my sister. We are all on the vast world-ship, now home to all our species. Hammurabi is orbiting our vessel like a cloud. I am wondering about what the status of Hammurabi is, but the ship's computer restricts my access to that information. The little girl says, "You want to look at Hammurabi? I have a computer we can use." I think, "To have a computer is a punishable offense!" We proceed to plug in the computer, installing the mouse, etc. It is very old and slow. We try to log in, but it seemingly freezes. Then, it is logging in and asking to update a bunch of anti-virus programs. We don't allow it to update, and use the internet lo look at Hammurabi's status.

As the scientist, I am wondering why Hammurabi is not reporting to me properly. Hammurabi is supposed to keep a constant chatter going about his activities, but he is only reporting back about how he is defeating threats. I'm not getting any information about what these constant threats are, and indeed I get the feeling that they are imaginary. I am concerned that Hammurabi is losing touch with reality, or worse is becoming devious. I decide to ask Hammurabi to make reports like we agreed upon and give him another week.

We are now on earth, in small park in an rurban neighborhood. There are some general goings on, when suddenly Hammurabi attacks us in the form of a nano-swarm. The nano-swarm takes many forms, including Okkoto and smaller boars, as well as Yakul. It chases each of us in small groups, It eventually disperses somehow, and I am talking to Jason about it. We are planning to take a trip, but Jason expresses concern about not being able to play his keyboard at the spitting contest tomorrow at the playground, because he has hear that if you are in a wheelchair people will beat you up.

Later, I am a small frog hopping about on a game, still trying to escape Hammurabi. I hop over the top of a seaside overpass, and feel it shaking. When i look down, i can see giant hermit crabs are fighting other animals(warriors?), throwing rocks back and forth. I have to rush to get over the bridge as it collapses. When at the bottom, I use my money to buy a very powerful white sword. I open the remaining treasure chests that are hidden in the seaside caves, under the bridge. I find a sword called Excalibur, and although it is weaker than the sword I just purchased, I keep it because it is a dual water-poison elemental sword. I talk to two of the remaining warriors, one of who is vampirized. They tell me their tale, of how they sought a great swordsman to train under, defeating bandits along the way. The old swordsman trained them well, but they discover he is a vampire. He vampirizes one before they go on their way. The vampire asks me if it is possible for vampires to have children. I tell him that the only option he has is to remain the way he is, or to become zombified (which will return him to a state closer to life). He becomes understandably angry, but I admonish him, telling him that the important aspects of fatherhood are dedication to one's spouse and children, regardless of if those children are biologically yours. For some reason, this prompts imagery of him with a mermaid family.