November 14th, 2013

[prismaticbleed]

 

Normally I don't record dream hacks, but I have to write this one down whether I like it or not.

I was woken up audibly today so I lost all recall but the ending, and that picks up with me standing in some sort of back-lot near my dad's old restaurant (which I am virtually never at in dreams), with Mel and Q. They were pointing through the trees before us, which in the waking lead to a bunch of large gas tanks, but in this dream, opened up into a huge, sprawling mall of stores. Q said to me (in response to a comment I don't remember saying), "can't you go there to shop?" I looked to the mall then, and was honestly totally shocked to see it. I stared at it for a moment, then said, "I didn't even know that was there!" Q laughed and asked how I didn't know that was there (it was huge). I said I didn't know, but I was really glad he pointed it out now, because that would save me 30+ minutes of driving around "whenever I needed to check those stores for prices" now. However, the whole time I was talking, I kept thinking, "how didn't I know that was there? I've dreamed about it before!!" (I clearly recalled a few actual dreams in which I had visited it; in one I was sitting on the roof of a car watching the sunset; I don't know if that one is on this blog.) I didn't express that though.
Then the scene switched and I was in a car, feeling very empty and hollowed-out, and my mother driving. She wanted me to help her with shopping, but I just wanted to sleep. We drove by some sort of funeral home, and I spoke up that apparently, a friend's beloved pet had died-- a cat he loved dearly and who "we had all been close to"-- and the funeral was starting right now, at that very location. I asked my mother, "shouldn't I be there paying my respects instead of helping you shop?" She got inordinately angry at this, barking "we don't have time for funerals," and although I protested, she refused to listen to any further words from me. I felt very upset at this but choked it down, instead going into "robotic mode" where I didn't feel anything, and ignored my own instincts of outcry for the sake of obeying whatever I was told. I basically stayed in this mode for the rest of the dream, which will prove to be near-lethal later.
Thankfully I wasn't forced to shop for her, because the next thing I remember, I was a point of view in a small theater, where assumedly a play was going on. I was viewing the audience from slightly above, and in the first row, there was a group of about 6 small children, looking like they were from cartoons (one of them looked like a younger Milhouse, from the Simpsons). They all looked ill and tired, yet happy. They watched the play interestedly, and when the finale occurred-- causing the rest of the audience to gasp and cry out in wonder and surprise, then applaud thunderously-- the children all smiled with genuine gladness, applauded shortly, and then closed their eyes in unison and fell off their chairs. As they fell, they actually turned into small totem-like figures of themselves, and clattered to the ground in a pile. When this happened, the audience stopped applauding, and a few people ran over to see what had happened to them. I was now physicalized, and some man in a suit across the aisle asked me what had happened to these children? I looked down at them, and mentally received a large news-article like data packet explaining that the children had "Lotus Whisper Syndrome," an incurable, fatal disease that struck children. I didn't want to read the article with this man waiting, so I set it aside mentally and simply said "they were suffering from a fatal disease," insinuating that they had come to this play as their last celebration of life. The man nodded, seeming to understand perfectly, but his face was tragic. He knelt down and picked up one of the totems, seeming very confused, and asked how in the world that had happened? I wondered if that was a side-effect of the disease, but before I or anyone else had time to reply (a small crowd had gathered), he then asked who the children were? Someone else peered down at the strange skin colors and bright hair, and said that one of them looked like a Simpsons character? The man said "you're right," and tried to identify them all as people from that show, but then another person spoke up and started naming Rugrats character names. The suited man shook his head, as this only matched about two of the children, when another person from the crowd pointed to a totem and said "that one looks like Rachel," from Animorphs. The man's eyes lit up and he said "hey, you're right!" I was getting acutely uncomfortable at this point-- social conversations invariably force me to switch out if I am included, and all this cartoon talk was actually scaring me on some similar level-- so I closed my eyes and mentally "ordered" that I didn’t want to be there anymore.
Sure enough, when I opened my eyes, I was now in the living room, at night, and my mother was setting up the Christmas tree. She still looked angry, so I didn't want to talk to her about it, and instead decided to write a Dreamwidth entry about the day. I walked over to the phone table and took out some sort of iPad thing (I was writing with a stylus, but although it looked like a notepad it was obviously a computer), where I began to talk about the tree, in preparation for Christmas… but I couldn't tell what color the tree was in the dark. Again choking back my worry, I flatly asked my mother, but she didn't even acknowledge me, and so wouldn't tell me. So I walked over to the wall socket and plugged the lights in to see. Shockingly, the tree itself was bright pink, and the lights were all a very sharp, loud red, more like alarm lights than Christmas lights. For a moment my suppressed anxiety spiked, but before I could act on that, I was pushed out of fronting, and JULIE SHOWED UP.
Don't panic yet, though; things get interesting first. Immediately, Julie started writing in my journal about this, saying the tree's colors were "perfect," and how happy she was that the mother had chosen them. I think she continued in this train of thought, but all I clearly remember is that she ended the entry in several hugely-written words basically saying "I'm so excited," and then her pausing, and moving to write a small footnote at the bottom… but then she stopped, wondering why the handwriting in the journal didn't match her curly, looped style. I thought, maybe she was writing via AP channel and not a direct body link? Either way I wanted her to write that footnote, as the intention for it felt very different than usual, but she got angry at the handwriting discrepancy, put the journal pad down and left the room.
Then, suddenly, she was in the shotgun seat of an actual car, and LYNNE was driving! But that was scary, because although Lynne was 100% herself-- cascading ginger hair, bright orange dress-- Julie was in my physical body, even though she was strongly projecting her own form overlay over it. The two were driving through the local town towards my waking house, assumedly headed there, and they were talking about something, Lynne mostly. Lynne was not doing so conversationally though-- she seemed to be lecturing her, or otherwise speaking strictly, as her face was solemn and her tone of voice was level and almost authoritative. Julie was being herself, though; she was lounging around, pouting and not really listening. She was also doing something else which Lynne kept loudly reprimanding her for.
I don't know how far they drove, because my memory gets choppy here, and the next thing I knew, I was in some weird sort of floating office building, dressed in a suit and knocking at the front door. There was a very strong but subliminal feeling of wrongness about the whole thing, but I felt cut off from my own body, as if I were watching it from afar, and it was acting robotically. Regardless, the door opened, and a woman answered. She had short-cut blonde hair and grey-blue eyes, was wearing tight slate slacks, a ruffled white top under a navy vest, lipstick, and I think glasses. She gave me an icy look and asked me what I wanted. I said, utterly without expression, that I had heard most of her workers were incompetent, and I was therefore looking for a job there, as I felt I had a good work ethic and would be a good employee. The woman scoffed loudly and derisively, laughing acridly that yeah, most of her employees were "brawns with no brain," and utterly useless. Past her I could see a few very muscular men, almost cartoonishly so, walking around, some of them carrying unknown large objects. Oddly, none of them wore shirts. I didn’t have time to wonder about this though, as the woman's mocking expression subtly shifted into something I can only describe as "scheming," and she smiled darkly, biting a nail and saying "you look like you'd make a good employee." Then she turned swiftly and motioned for me to follow, saying I'd have to start immediately, and that she'd be very disappointed if I turned out to be "another shitty worker." I followed mechanically, still not present in my own body, but all the while knowing that something was very wrong about this, and starting to become very scared. The woman stopped at an office door and opened it, pointing for me to go inside with a smirk that was almost a sneer. I nodded to her, then stepped in. The room had two halves separated by an open doorframe: the half that I had stepped into resembled an office break room, but it was virtually empty-- there was a simple shelf/drawer/counter setup to the left, with a coffee pot on it but nothing else, and one small plastic table with two plastic chairs to my right. Everything was spotless office-white, and lit by a fluorescent light in the ceiling. However, I heard the door click shut behind me, and the woman pushed me into the adjoining room-- which was painted a peachy sort of orange, and had a window to the left, but otherwise it contained nothing but a bed. Immediately my panic jumped so drastically that it overrode this numb fronter, and it froze, now feeling my fear and becoming hesitant. But as we turned, the woman blocked the doorframe, and I realized that she had unbuttoned her vest and was in the process of removing her top. Behind her, two burly men were blocking the outer door, grinning obscenely, in obvious anticipation of what their superior was obviously about to do. Although the numb fronter stated still, my perspective started going haywire here-- unwilling to go anywhere near my own body, the dream POV started moving wildly about the room. However, I was trapped, and the last thing I remember is the woman half-removing her top and then suddenly grabbing at her pants, and hip-thrusting at me. The numb fronter collapsed onto the bed, not from obedience but because it had actually shut down and no longer wished to be in the body either-- and the next thing I knew is that instantly, we were hacked. Feeling the screaming pain, I focused on visualizing a cross above the bed, and held that image with all my willpower until the pain stopped. However, as it ebbed, I heard the woman start shouting in rage, and I opened my eyes. However, my perspective opened up in 3rd person, viewing the scene from about 5 feet away from the bed at an angle. My body was sitting up, obviously in shock, with the woman standing in front of me, pulling her clothes back on and raging at me that "you ruined it for me," "what the fuck are you doing," you get the picture. My perspective blinked into my own body for a second there (the numb voice was tangibly slipping away, surprisingly), and I got a view of her face, which was contorted with not only fury and hatred, but also a weird sort of misery. I thought it looked familiar, but suddenly I heard another voice suddenly coming from my right. Glancing over, I saw that there was a person of indeterminate gender standing there, wearing opaque sunglasses but still obviously glaring at me. Oddly, I couldn't get a "grip" on their appearance, so my POV started switching again, but all I could really grasp was the "impression" of how they looked, nothing literal. Either way, to my total surprise, they began freestyle rapping at me? It made me smile at first, with how out-of-place it was, but then I quickly realized the words. Although I can't recall them exactly, they began by describing my current situation, then asking me what the heck I was doing? I clearly remember the phrase "and I'm here// screaming" as a transition into them saying that I shouldn't have let another hack happen. Shocked, I realized that this person was a headvoice, as they concluded their rhymes by saying they had to show up to prevent things from getting worse. The woman in front of me was looking at them with indignant rage, but not fear, and similarly this unknown voice was obviously not scared of her either, just gravely annoyed with her. I moved back into my own head and looked back at the blond woman, and my mind said her name was "Sheri," but although that felt correct on one level, it felt very incorrect on another. Quickly rifling through memory, I remembered that a character I once greatly admired from Zatch Bell was named Sherry, and that's where the energy of the name was supposed to go (names do not repeat in headspace). I said this to the unknown voice, but as I did, Sheri screamed again, "no, that's my name!" I said it couldn't be, it didn't belong to her. She began to growl and shriek, pulling at her hair, but to my surprise, as she yanked at her short hair, it suddenly shifted into two large blond pigtails. Immediately her wobbly energy vibe balanced out, and I knew without a doubt that yes, this had been Julie all along.
The voice to my right straightened up (they had been slightly leaning over me in concern), sheer ire now coloring their voice as they said "you!" but she just glared at them and said "yes, me; who the hell are you?" I cut her off though, remembering the Christmas tree bit from before, and asked her what she was trying to write in that post-script? She said it was none of my business, but I continued, saying that I felt she remembered a time when she was on our side, and not ruled by lust. Immediately she shrieked "no I don't!" I said "yes you do," as there was a tangible good-pink edge to her energy that hadn't been completely killed, but she kept shouting, saying she didn't remember. I paused, then added, "you mean you don't want to remember." At that she spat "that's right, I DON'T want to," and explained that she was sick of being told that she wasn't allowed to have what she wanted, because it was damaging other people in the System and making her self-loathing and frustration go through the roof. I said she was still hurting people now, she was outright ABUSING people again, how was that less offensive than the subtle sort of damage? She didn’t answer that, only saying that she wanted to be able to have sex whenever she wanted, no matter what anyone said. I tried to get an actual response out of her again, but she just repeated that same train of thought. Somewhere around here, the voice at my right spoke up and said "then what about the atoners," who had to bleed out the poison in the blood, which the hacks put there? Wasn't that solid proof that she was doing a LOT of damage either way, and HAD to stop? I clearly remember Julie shouting something like "that's stupid!" or "sex doesn't get in the blood!" to which the voice said yes they do, maybe not literally but they DID get a hell of a lot of corruption into the blood, which was the lifestream, and therefore it needed to be purified after she did things like this. I asked if ze was going to have to atone for this one, and they paused, saying they weren't sure, as it was a dream hack. But Julie kept repeating this whole thing was dumb, they were just trying to stop her from having sex, and that was "why she left." Surprised, I told her that technically, she could have done that while she was on our side anyway, as long as she respected the fact that sex was not some recreational thing, it was effectively holy in a sense. At that she laughed once, sharply, both in disbelief and mockery, and said "It is not! That's what I was so sick of!!", explaining that she DID want to have sex as a fun thing, as something purely recreational or motivated by lust, and she didn’t want to even consider the fact that it might be something inherently more significant than that. Quizzically, I said that I thought she did acknowledge that while she was in Central? But she kept talking, ignoring me, and I realized that even if she had, she had soon realized that it was incompatible with her own rabid lust, and so she had forced herself to not only ignore and deny it, but to also actively try to prove it wrong, so to speak. Therefore yes, she HAD willingly abandoned the Pink slot and its inherent innocence, for the sake of her more selfish wants, which were incompatible with the color. Around here, she got so frustrated that she actually left, taking all the dangerous-looking men with her.
Now alone with the unknown voice, I commented to it, "you sound a lot like Laurie," due to its profanity and hellbent "do the right thing" attitude. "Do I," it said, then emphaticallty added, somewhat anxiously, "but I'm not her, our jobs are far different from each other." Straining to see them then, but only getting a vibe of an orangey-pinkish color, I then asked them who they were, what was their name? As I suspected, they said they were the "algorithm" voice from earlier this week in the waking, although they felt their name was closer to "arpeggio"…adding, under their breath, "but mister Einsatz says only music voices can have music names," which I thought might explain why they were trying the rap thing earlier. So I asked if it had to take a name tied to the atonement stuff, if that was their job? It sighed and said possibly, but those names are what felt right. Then it went back to our first topic, explaining that its role was far different than Laurie's-- it was part of the "cleanup crew," the people who tried to get the body and soul back in proper working order after hacks. It said it was technically an "Undergrounder" in that sense, except it was a Downstairs voice, for the sake of its job. It said that's why it was here instead of Laurie: Laurie cannot touch hacks, as she holds Chastity and therefore needs to stay completely separate from that corruption or else her own existence would be threatened. However, this voice could not help me on a spiritual level as she did; it could only stand up to hackers, try and preemptively stop them, and atone for hacks if it couldn't do that. I remember it said something here that caused me to respond with "that used to be Josephina's anchor," and it exasperatedly responded "see, that's what I mean; I don't want to accidentally take people's anchors," even if they were old ones that were left behind. It then repeated that this was worrisome because it and Laurie did have similar outward attitudes, and it didn't want to cause trouble. I said it wasn't stealing her anchor, as long as it was careful with the profanity (Laurie only uses it as a forced 'edge,' which is what this person was likely doing too) and didn't try to help me directly in the way she did. It said it couldn't if it wanted to, as it didn't understand things like she did, so don't worry about that. But this whole thing reminded me that we did have to check and re-stabilize everyone's anchors, since we hadn't done so after the several reset attempts of this year, and many people (especially Central, as they got hit directly) were unstable or slipping as a result. I think I told it that, but either way I realized I couldn't stay asleep any longer; I was holding on to the last shreds of the half-dream already, and any further slippage would result in me waking up all the way. Sure enough, right around here my grandfather called in for me to wake up, and now I'm here.

I don't think I can say anything else about this without repeating myself… but for the sake of its importance, I will repeat that I am still oddly heartbroken and worried about Julie. I know she is actively burying the qualities of hers that redeemed her in 2011, no longer willing to give up her wants for the sake of others. I'm feeling the consequences of that more than anyone else, but ironically I'm more concerned about her than I am about myself. Maybe I still can't let go of the hope that, if she joins us again, the hacks will stop. But I don't know. All I know for sure is that I just wish we didn't have to deal with hacks anymore. They say resistance is needed in order to strengthen faith, but really, I'm tired. I'm tired, and I hurt, and I just want peace and harmony now. I don't want to fight anymore.
But the atoners still guard me with their blades and I'm not sure what other action we're supposed to take.