Timewaster's Guide Archive

Any board where I end up hanging around eventually ends up with a topic by this title, the title I used for a college paper on dreams many year ago. Since I have now had two or three Sanderson-related dreams, it seemed time for a new version here.

So if you have some fun dreams, and you can remember them, please add them in. Dreams are cool!

Lots of cool sci-fi dreams recently, but this is the first I've gotten on the computer for a bit. I'm out in a wooded sort of area, being pursued. I'm being chased by Uther from the Merlin television show, and it is in a world that has a kind of a cross between the magic system from Farland's Runelords series and Sanderson's Breath system.

Anyway, I'm trying to find people from whom I can gain power, and avoid the enemies in this wooded area. It is like there are 5 or 6 different 'strains' of power out here, and I am trying to figure out which ones I still need, and which ones I already have. At this point, I have several hundred of whatever kind of essence is in this world, but there are at least a couple of strains in the area that I don't have.

Problem is, if you move to collect a power, and it is one that you already have, it is of no benefit (because you -already- have it), but the time you spend trying to get it might enable somebody else to catch you, or add your power to their own. But you don't get any more powerful if you aren't collecting new strains. (The system doesn't seem to be exclusive. If you claim somebody's 'essence' [for lack of a better word] they don't lose it, but now you have it too.)

I am new to the system, but have managed to get several strains, and am getting fairly powerful ... but what I haven't realised up to now is that the more power I get, the more of a presence I have, and the more noticeable I am. I'm here in the woods, along with a lot of other people. A few, like me, are very powerful, but most have very limited power. But I can kind of sense the others who are powerful, and they can kind of sense me. And Uther's soldiers are getting better and better at tracking us all down.

It reaches a point where we're at kind of a lull. But suddenly one of Uther's soldiers will appear, and the powerful people have to make a choice between trying to hide their power and hope they are not found, or run for it, and hope they can get enough distance that their 'presence' fades before the hunters can catch them. We're all on the run, dodging around, trying to to be seen, moving through the more normal people, trying to hide among them.

I reach a point where I seem to have reached a new heightening, and the dream kind of shifts to a Matrix venue. The new line of power I have added brings me to a power level roughly equal to Neo, I'd say. The regular agents are powerless against me, now ... in fact, they are on the run from me, because all I have to do is touch one of them, and I convert him to our side. So agents come against me, but one touch and they now follow me.

Problem is, Agent Smith seems to have reached the same level of power. So we're now among huge crowds of people, and in the middle of the crowd, one of the people will suddenly become an agent (like the movie does it, they just kind of warp into the agent), and then every person who is already touching against that agent begins to change into an agent. And as each person becomes an agent, they reach out to touch others, and spread the process.

And yet my side is just as powerful, so anywhere there is a gap, we reach out and touch an agent before they can touch us, and they turn back into a normal person, and every agent they are touching starts to turn into a normal person. I'm kind of watching from above, and it is like a live, fast moving version of Reversi, with human beings. Instead of the usual colors, it is a rapidly shifting pattern of clothing, switching back and forth between the black and white suits of the agents, and regular clothes for the normal people.

Some of us start almost tapping others, so that the second they start to change to an agent, they are then changed back to a regular human again, but the agents are doing the same thing. It's like a stalemate, neither side can really progress, but it is kind of fun to watch the shifting patterns.

I love dreams where you wake up saying "That was cool!"