feotakahari

Last night’s dream was about a video game with dual worlds.

The first world was a cutesy game in a seemingly child-friendly style where the mechanics were built around combat. Authority figures were corrupt or helpless, intractable social issues were ignored instead of resolved, and you were hopelessly ill-equipped to make things better.

The second world was a parallel take on the same characters, as an unabashedly idealistic porn game. Not child-friendly in the least, but no combat whatsoever.

The game had a framing device with the developer discussing what he wanted to make. The first world was the kind of game he’d spent his career reluctantly making for publishers and storefronts. The second world was what he made for himself.

I had a dream about a researcher studying a memetic virus. He accidentally infected himself, and it compelled him to repeat the meme to his wife and daughter. They died together as the meme ripped their minds apart, yet what remained of him felt terribly alone, hating himself all the way.

I fucking hate my dreams.

Three hikers, lost in the middle of nowhere as the sun begins to set. A flash flood forces them to higher ground. As they work their way up the slope, they come to a flat area and catch their breath--only to see someone scaling the cliffside . . .

The same three hikers, but there's no flash flood. They continue at ground level, looking for a landmark. Then a ragged, filthy woman beats one of them to death. Cornered, the other two scale the cliffside to escape. As they climb higher and higher, they see visions of lives they might have lived and people they might have met. The man among the pair sees a version of himself who found happiness in a more feminine presentation, and the woman sees a version of herself who became a strong, proud man, and the visions change them, and they become what they could have been. Then they reach flat ground, and find their original selves already there, along with the dead man, alive and unharmed.

A hiker, the only survivor of the flash flood that killed her two companions. She's been out here for a long, long time, and she keeps meeting strange, twisted copies of them. Along with copies of herself. But they can't be real. She knows she's the last one left. So whatever these monsters really are, she won't rest until she's killed them all.

I woke up before it came to any kind of ending.