Lucid Crossroads Visit #1

I dreamed of reviewing black-and-white movies, approaching a steam train at night, though which I had to dodge clowns who threw cream pies and fruit pies and then pulled out guns and shot each other. I dodged behind unlucky ones.

When I got to a room on this train, that, for no reason at all, was full of zebras, I wondered, "What is all this, am I dreaming or something--" and became lucid.

Since my previous attempts at big dream control have ended badly (between getting dumped with dream nautical garbage and spiraling into a nightmarish sleep paralysis), I decided to use my lucidity to reflect on why my subconscious saw fit to put me into this situation.

I took a moment of pondering.

...

And had no flashes of insight.

...

So I decided to go to the Lucid Crossroads. I had just thought the concept of the Crossroads, then--

Next I knew, I was standing on a shore of perfectly smooth amber sand. The waves sounded like they were crashing, but I could see that they were merely lapping at the shore. "A beach? That's not right... the Crossroads is supposed to be in the desert--" In the distance, I could see a sandstorm. "Okay, that works."

I turned around, and saw a very realistic Clem and Glad. They stood at the foot of a flight of stone steps, that seemed to lead up to nowhere. The setup was a lot like the Abyss of Time from Persona 3: FES. Glad smiled at me, but they both carried a far more solemn air than the website guide said they should.

"Increase lucidity," said Glad. Since there was no freshwater pool coated in chainmail, I dunked my arms in the ocean. The water felt icy.

And I began to be aware of my sleeping body. My eyes stared at the back of my eyelids, and I desperately visualized the ocean again. Technically, I think, I was awake at this point.

It felt like a half-daydream at first, because I was still aware of my body. I imagined, not dreamed of, telling Glad, "It's too cold! I'm waking up..."

And Glad took my hand and led me up the stairs.

Her fingers between my dream-fingers, and the sturdiness of the dream-steps, gradually took over my sensory scope as we ascended. I was dreaming again, and could be sure of it now that I saw where the steps led to: a grass hut, on very tall stilts. I didn't visualize or will that, so I must have been dreaming again.

Inside the hut, Clem asked me what I wanted to do now. I noticed that there were no doors, and remembered the last time I tried to materialize something that big.

I remembered this month's quest was an LD4all.Com party, so I asked to summon the dream-selves of the LD4all members who were asleep at this time (5 or 6 AM local time, GMT+8.) I was able to manifest the LD4all yellow circle with seagull silhouette on it, at least, and thought of it as a magnet.

Less than a dozen floated into the hut-- and except for one, they all looked very young. They also looked kind of out of it.

I remember seeing a robust, middle-aged Caucasian man, and a dark teenaged or early 20-something boy with aquiline Indian features and wearing a black T-shirt and gray shorts, but mostly I noticed the many "dreamers" who looked just a little too young to lawfully be on the forums, so I thought I might have made a mistake with the summoning.

I turned to Clem to ask how I could verify that they were real. To my surprise, he and Glad had turned into Zachary Quinto as Spock, and Beverly Crusher.

"Come with me," said Spock-Clem, mildly.

"But--"

"Now."

I followed him down the stone stairs and into a non-lucid dream walk by the seashore with Spock. I might have been semi-lucid, but I have the feeling that we talked about something deeply important that I can't recall now, and ended up plunging through the turquoise waters to see the corals.