Dreaming adventures
Feb. 4th, 2013 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI dreamt there was a library, The Great Library, with shelves full of scrolls at the start and bound books beyond, row after row.
And below it was the Other Library. There the scrolls and books and all the rest were blank white on white shelves, stretching off like they'd been snowed on. But the statues at the end of the rows were a lot more real, and in between books, or on the floor between shelves, there were other things. There was a bottle so cold it condensed air inside it, and a fire that never went out, even if you poured liquid air on it. There were funny little statues with too many angles that looked like they moved, just a little, if you blinked. And there was me.
I was a statue in a cage at the end of a shelf, the cage bound up in chains. I woke up once a generation when the shift changed, and I got to see the new man make his speeches and send us all back to sleep.
One year the functionary fetched the new man and showed him the oath. It was a young man, as usual, probably nephew of the last one, they never did have time for sons. He didn't seem happy to be following the functionary, but the functionary didn't have enough mind to care. It just showed him the oath on its stand, and showed him the little alcove full of books written to let the new man translate the oath, since the big block ideograms were no longer in use. He looked back and forth between them, then something in his pocket buzzed. He pulled it out, held it to his ear, started talking, and rushed off.
And we were all still just barely awake.
So we started to blink a bit, though the blinks were long and the light moved around between them. And we started to shift around a little, in our shelves and cages. And whenever nobody was watching, we started to move.
The functionary came back quickly with another man.
This time the man was older, grey beard and white hair, sticking up every which way. His clothes didn't match and he'd probably been pulled from his bed. When the functionary showed him the oath he patted all his pockets, sometimes twice, before finding his wire frame glasses, and while he fumbled with books he knocked some down and kicked a chair around and knocked the oath, on its stand, around so I could see it.
Then he started sounding out some of the syllables, not starting from the top, but saying 'Move'.
Everyone got just that bit more lively.
I smiled and started speaking, and as I spoke, instead of getting sleepy, everything around us started to come awake. The statues twitched and started having expressions, the fire roared high, the cold bottle burned behind it so fiercely it started spilling liquid air that stayed that way whole feet beyond the brim. Books creaked, things fluttered, and a stack of cards a little like tarot started to stand themselves on end. The back of each of them had a sort of frog, hand drawn like the front of the cards, and it started to hop, up, down, off the table, around in a circle, cards surrounding the old grey beard.
He looked delighted, facing me, then looked around to the functionary and, seeing even that slow thing start to crack an expression, he started to flap and scowl as if alarmed.
But I finished the oath, and suddenly that whole library belonged to me. The functionary froze instead, and all of us were free... under my will, of course.
So what kind of things do you find in the Other Library. Every kind of magic item you can imagine, one of each, and every other kind of being, filed in their right places? Like the copyright collection of magic.
Makes me wonder what I was there for, with that kind of company.
Later I dreamed people kept turning up to either serve me or kill me. None were both, which was a bit of a relief. There was a Leoben, though I'm pretty sure in personality he weren't like that show. One arrived to be my loyal soldier, in a grey suit with a gold shirt, but pale everywhere. He wasn't much for facial expressions but hand him a gun and you only had to specify who needed to die. Which I rather needed, given who else kept turning up.
I wanted to know what was going on, so I tried going up to the library to find out. Bit of a mistake. Nobody up there was pleased to see me.
So we took a reading room, made all secure, threw out the corpses, and had a whole second of breathing space.
Which I very much needed. I was surrounded by these cold controlled types, but I was having enough feelings for all of them. By that point I was wound up enough I said I needed five minutes - five minutes! - where nothing and nobody else happened. Just five minutes to catch up. And anybody who thought themselves more important than my five minutes, anybody who couldn't just be still and leave be, was going to get a whole magazine worth of shot at, swear to god!
... so then someone turned up looking like 7 of 9. But in a suit.
She knocked on the door, calm and polite.
Very calm and somewhat less polite, I cracked the door open and emptied the gun into her chest.
It seemed like the thing to do at the time.
And I was very calm about it. No emotions about it at all. I had said I would do this thing, and there she was, and so this thing was done.
Around then I started to wonder if perhaps the cage and chains had not in fact been overkill, but perhaps reasonable precautions.
She looked like 7 of 9 but got injured like a terminator, flesh layers blown away to show the silver underneath. But then she healed faster than either, and by the time I let her in (just five minutes), she looked like a whole person again, albeit one in plain linen rather than a fancy suit. Yes, her clothes healed too, but not as nice as they had been. The finished effect was a little like a tailor's dummy with a woman sticking out the edges, wearing blood soaked tatters.
So then we had to run.
The rest of the dream was running and shooting, basically. A lot of running, and a lot of shooting. It didn't really bother me. I had few feelings about it one way or the other. There were things in my way, so of course they needed shooting.
There were identical sets of ten standing in a [ around a desk, to protect a man who as it turned out wasn't sitting there once we got there. Every new base we turned up at there were more of this one guy. He was tall and broad and also black, where all my people were white and blue. At best this resembled a chess match, but now I'm awake it's creeping me out. We shot a lot of this guy. When he had something to defend he was fierce as anything, but not so much a one for ranged weapons, so not terribly difficult to destroy. But one base we arrived at, the smiling man never had arrived to tell them what to do. They had the building and the guards all in, but no orders. And there they were not fierce at all, but more like lost children. One of them started to cry, and another set up a wail, and none of them knew what to do at all so they just stood in a huddle in the middle of the room and waited for us.
I didn't shoot those ones. Would have been a waste. Still didn't feel much about it.
We got to a compound where there were half a dozen different people, much repeated, doing things like drinking and smoking and whatever caused them to go in small rooms in groups of three and slam the door in our faces. These ones were all... pretty much white, in a South America way. (Why I fighting ethnic minorities all night? Dreams are creepy.) They were also not shooting at us, so we didn't start shooting at them. We had something to find in the basement.
7 of 9 led the way, and Leoben stayed beside me. I looked around a lot. I noticed that the smoking people all stayed upstairs, as did all the machine guns. Down where we were going people only had big knives. I started to wonder why when Leoben and I were at the top of the access slope, but 7 of 9 had already reached the bottom and been challenged. I sniffed, and thought that I smelled fuel. I paused. And then one grey moustached man with a machine gun stopped a step in front of us, for one final puff on his roll up cigarette, then recognised 7 and grinned. She pulled her guns, and he, all leisurely, just flicked his cigarette down the slope.
The air down there exploded, and everything went slow motion for me. I could see the point of ignition, the fire blossom, faster than even I could turn and run. Leoben, beside me, wrenched me around and got between me and the flame, and we started running while the air went white-gold-red around us.
*BOOM*
That entire house had been a trap built on a fuel store, to get my people in and light it up.
No wonder the bait were partying hard, and the guards had been watching them more than us.
Outside there were more soldiers, each unit led by that same moustached man. The heart of the place was a big courtyard, the building around it full of balconies and guns, but Leoben and I could see each bullet coming like a leisurely arc, eyes sharp enough to see each swift gleam, bodies almost as fast to dance out of the way. It was so easy we could have a conversation in bullet time. The other side had no such advantages and could only try and soak the area in fire. And it wasn't enough.
We stood there when it was over, surrounded by corpses, not a living soul in evidence.
And I still didn't feel very much.
Then some reinforcements turned up, my side, that I recognised when I shot one and nobody started shooting back. Nobody was much fussed about me shooting them. It seemed a bit much, that I could get away with that.
Another Leoben wandered in, this one in a bright t-shirt and baggy shorts. He nodded at my Leoben and told everyone he needed help with the cargo he was escorting. They had been on a plane with a pride of lionesses, and they needed to feed them. So if my people could all go, grab a chunk of meat, throw it over the edge of the wall outside, and then come back, that would be just fine.
I tipped my head and studied him, smiling pleasantly in a way that seemed kind of creepy after my blank faced bunch, but the others all just turned and went to do like he asked.
So I shrugged and followed them.
The smile dropped off and he raised a hand, started to tell me not to, but he wasn't half way fast enough.
Outside there was a long staircase and a wall, sticking out into a lot of green. Jungle or something, I wasn't that interested. There was processed meat in chunks at the base of the stairs, so I grabbed a handful and threw bits as I ran. At the other end of the wall there was round tower on the right angle, and out there was already a big pile of meat. And my people. And arriving from the right hand wall, a lot of lions.
My people, never fussed by injury, were calmly distributing meat, even though the big cats considered them a prime source. I yelled at them to follow me back, and swift and sure they did. We got back to the courtyard with casual Leo's shout for me to stop still echoing.
I smiled at him, but mine was not pleasant.
"You didn't need the extra hands. You needed them to leave a scent trail, so your lions would come in here. Waste not." I looked around at all the corpses we'd left in our wake.
Leo shrugged. "You were never meant to be at risk."
I turned my back on him, and went back to my Leoben. He stood calmly, despite all injured around us. I got hold of his shoulders and shook him. "You never throw your life away like that. Never. You stay with me." I ordered him, and he nodded, calm as ever... but I was not calm at all. This, this was then I had a feeling. They weren't so cheap as to throw them away on orders like that. Life's value was inestimable.
... which made it kind of awkward shooting all them other guys, but I pretty much woke up right then, so *shrugs*
I woke up knowing these metal framed people didn't have half the life span I did. They burned fast, to burn so bright. I ordered one to stay there with me, and so I'd get to see the little lines, the white hair, the effects of time. They'd burn out before they lost any function. Of course. Who needs an elderly bodyguard?
So that was going to be a problem.
Presumably before my order they'd have quietly swapped out for an identical model, to ensure continuity of service.
So now I'm awake all that's pretty creepy. Spectacular adventures. Unquestionable queen of all I survey as long as I don't mind bits of it shooting at me, and all my loyal servants being pretty much unbreakable and really easy to replace... all that's really very creepy when you value things like free will and not treating people as things. Maybe they're moving statues and only people shaped, but given that you cannot tell by looking, it can't be good for you to see them and think Thing.
I liked the library, but I'm pretty much thinking the cage was the right place for that me.
On the other hand, it's pretty much an author's anxiety dream, to worry about all these people we push around and kill off. Except usually when I'm an author I get more miserable about the dead dudes.
And below it was the Other Library. There the scrolls and books and all the rest were blank white on white shelves, stretching off like they'd been snowed on. But the statues at the end of the rows were a lot more real, and in between books, or on the floor between shelves, there were other things. There was a bottle so cold it condensed air inside it, and a fire that never went out, even if you poured liquid air on it. There were funny little statues with too many angles that looked like they moved, just a little, if you blinked. And there was me.
I was a statue in a cage at the end of a shelf, the cage bound up in chains. I woke up once a generation when the shift changed, and I got to see the new man make his speeches and send us all back to sleep.
One year the functionary fetched the new man and showed him the oath. It was a young man, as usual, probably nephew of the last one, they never did have time for sons. He didn't seem happy to be following the functionary, but the functionary didn't have enough mind to care. It just showed him the oath on its stand, and showed him the little alcove full of books written to let the new man translate the oath, since the big block ideograms were no longer in use. He looked back and forth between them, then something in his pocket buzzed. He pulled it out, held it to his ear, started talking, and rushed off.
And we were all still just barely awake.
So we started to blink a bit, though the blinks were long and the light moved around between them. And we started to shift around a little, in our shelves and cages. And whenever nobody was watching, we started to move.
The functionary came back quickly with another man.
This time the man was older, grey beard and white hair, sticking up every which way. His clothes didn't match and he'd probably been pulled from his bed. When the functionary showed him the oath he patted all his pockets, sometimes twice, before finding his wire frame glasses, and while he fumbled with books he knocked some down and kicked a chair around and knocked the oath, on its stand, around so I could see it.
Then he started sounding out some of the syllables, not starting from the top, but saying 'Move'.
Everyone got just that bit more lively.
I smiled and started speaking, and as I spoke, instead of getting sleepy, everything around us started to come awake. The statues twitched and started having expressions, the fire roared high, the cold bottle burned behind it so fiercely it started spilling liquid air that stayed that way whole feet beyond the brim. Books creaked, things fluttered, and a stack of cards a little like tarot started to stand themselves on end. The back of each of them had a sort of frog, hand drawn like the front of the cards, and it started to hop, up, down, off the table, around in a circle, cards surrounding the old grey beard.
He looked delighted, facing me, then looked around to the functionary and, seeing even that slow thing start to crack an expression, he started to flap and scowl as if alarmed.
But I finished the oath, and suddenly that whole library belonged to me. The functionary froze instead, and all of us were free... under my will, of course.
So what kind of things do you find in the Other Library. Every kind of magic item you can imagine, one of each, and every other kind of being, filed in their right places? Like the copyright collection of magic.
Makes me wonder what I was there for, with that kind of company.
Later I dreamed people kept turning up to either serve me or kill me. None were both, which was a bit of a relief. There was a Leoben, though I'm pretty sure in personality he weren't like that show. One arrived to be my loyal soldier, in a grey suit with a gold shirt, but pale everywhere. He wasn't much for facial expressions but hand him a gun and you only had to specify who needed to die. Which I rather needed, given who else kept turning up.
I wanted to know what was going on, so I tried going up to the library to find out. Bit of a mistake. Nobody up there was pleased to see me.
So we took a reading room, made all secure, threw out the corpses, and had a whole second of breathing space.
Which I very much needed. I was surrounded by these cold controlled types, but I was having enough feelings for all of them. By that point I was wound up enough I said I needed five minutes - five minutes! - where nothing and nobody else happened. Just five minutes to catch up. And anybody who thought themselves more important than my five minutes, anybody who couldn't just be still and leave be, was going to get a whole magazine worth of shot at, swear to god!
... so then someone turned up looking like 7 of 9. But in a suit.
She knocked on the door, calm and polite.
Very calm and somewhat less polite, I cracked the door open and emptied the gun into her chest.
It seemed like the thing to do at the time.
And I was very calm about it. No emotions about it at all. I had said I would do this thing, and there she was, and so this thing was done.
Around then I started to wonder if perhaps the cage and chains had not in fact been overkill, but perhaps reasonable precautions.
She looked like 7 of 9 but got injured like a terminator, flesh layers blown away to show the silver underneath. But then she healed faster than either, and by the time I let her in (just five minutes), she looked like a whole person again, albeit one in plain linen rather than a fancy suit. Yes, her clothes healed too, but not as nice as they had been. The finished effect was a little like a tailor's dummy with a woman sticking out the edges, wearing blood soaked tatters.
So then we had to run.
The rest of the dream was running and shooting, basically. A lot of running, and a lot of shooting. It didn't really bother me. I had few feelings about it one way or the other. There were things in my way, so of course they needed shooting.
There were identical sets of ten standing in a [ around a desk, to protect a man who as it turned out wasn't sitting there once we got there. Every new base we turned up at there were more of this one guy. He was tall and broad and also black, where all my people were white and blue. At best this resembled a chess match, but now I'm awake it's creeping me out. We shot a lot of this guy. When he had something to defend he was fierce as anything, but not so much a one for ranged weapons, so not terribly difficult to destroy. But one base we arrived at, the smiling man never had arrived to tell them what to do. They had the building and the guards all in, but no orders. And there they were not fierce at all, but more like lost children. One of them started to cry, and another set up a wail, and none of them knew what to do at all so they just stood in a huddle in the middle of the room and waited for us.
I didn't shoot those ones. Would have been a waste. Still didn't feel much about it.
We got to a compound where there were half a dozen different people, much repeated, doing things like drinking and smoking and whatever caused them to go in small rooms in groups of three and slam the door in our faces. These ones were all... pretty much white, in a South America way. (Why I fighting ethnic minorities all night? Dreams are creepy.) They were also not shooting at us, so we didn't start shooting at them. We had something to find in the basement.
7 of 9 led the way, and Leoben stayed beside me. I looked around a lot. I noticed that the smoking people all stayed upstairs, as did all the machine guns. Down where we were going people only had big knives. I started to wonder why when Leoben and I were at the top of the access slope, but 7 of 9 had already reached the bottom and been challenged. I sniffed, and thought that I smelled fuel. I paused. And then one grey moustached man with a machine gun stopped a step in front of us, for one final puff on his roll up cigarette, then recognised 7 and grinned. She pulled her guns, and he, all leisurely, just flicked his cigarette down the slope.
The air down there exploded, and everything went slow motion for me. I could see the point of ignition, the fire blossom, faster than even I could turn and run. Leoben, beside me, wrenched me around and got between me and the flame, and we started running while the air went white-gold-red around us.
*BOOM*
That entire house had been a trap built on a fuel store, to get my people in and light it up.
No wonder the bait were partying hard, and the guards had been watching them more than us.
Outside there were more soldiers, each unit led by that same moustached man. The heart of the place was a big courtyard, the building around it full of balconies and guns, but Leoben and I could see each bullet coming like a leisurely arc, eyes sharp enough to see each swift gleam, bodies almost as fast to dance out of the way. It was so easy we could have a conversation in bullet time. The other side had no such advantages and could only try and soak the area in fire. And it wasn't enough.
We stood there when it was over, surrounded by corpses, not a living soul in evidence.
And I still didn't feel very much.
Then some reinforcements turned up, my side, that I recognised when I shot one and nobody started shooting back. Nobody was much fussed about me shooting them. It seemed a bit much, that I could get away with that.
Another Leoben wandered in, this one in a bright t-shirt and baggy shorts. He nodded at my Leoben and told everyone he needed help with the cargo he was escorting. They had been on a plane with a pride of lionesses, and they needed to feed them. So if my people could all go, grab a chunk of meat, throw it over the edge of the wall outside, and then come back, that would be just fine.
I tipped my head and studied him, smiling pleasantly in a way that seemed kind of creepy after my blank faced bunch, but the others all just turned and went to do like he asked.
So I shrugged and followed them.
The smile dropped off and he raised a hand, started to tell me not to, but he wasn't half way fast enough.
Outside there was a long staircase and a wall, sticking out into a lot of green. Jungle or something, I wasn't that interested. There was processed meat in chunks at the base of the stairs, so I grabbed a handful and threw bits as I ran. At the other end of the wall there was round tower on the right angle, and out there was already a big pile of meat. And my people. And arriving from the right hand wall, a lot of lions.
My people, never fussed by injury, were calmly distributing meat, even though the big cats considered them a prime source. I yelled at them to follow me back, and swift and sure they did. We got back to the courtyard with casual Leo's shout for me to stop still echoing.
I smiled at him, but mine was not pleasant.
"You didn't need the extra hands. You needed them to leave a scent trail, so your lions would come in here. Waste not." I looked around at all the corpses we'd left in our wake.
Leo shrugged. "You were never meant to be at risk."
I turned my back on him, and went back to my Leoben. He stood calmly, despite all injured around us. I got hold of his shoulders and shook him. "You never throw your life away like that. Never. You stay with me." I ordered him, and he nodded, calm as ever... but I was not calm at all. This, this was then I had a feeling. They weren't so cheap as to throw them away on orders like that. Life's value was inestimable.
... which made it kind of awkward shooting all them other guys, but I pretty much woke up right then, so *shrugs*
I woke up knowing these metal framed people didn't have half the life span I did. They burned fast, to burn so bright. I ordered one to stay there with me, and so I'd get to see the little lines, the white hair, the effects of time. They'd burn out before they lost any function. Of course. Who needs an elderly bodyguard?
So that was going to be a problem.
Presumably before my order they'd have quietly swapped out for an identical model, to ensure continuity of service.
So now I'm awake all that's pretty creepy. Spectacular adventures. Unquestionable queen of all I survey as long as I don't mind bits of it shooting at me, and all my loyal servants being pretty much unbreakable and really easy to replace... all that's really very creepy when you value things like free will and not treating people as things. Maybe they're moving statues and only people shaped, but given that you cannot tell by looking, it can't be good for you to see them and think Thing.
I liked the library, but I'm pretty much thinking the cage was the right place for that me.
On the other hand, it's pretty much an author's anxiety dream, to worry about all these people we push around and kill off. Except usually when I'm an author I get more miserable about the dead dudes.