Those dreams were exhausting
Jan. 17th, 2018 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethFirst I dreamed the President tried a thing he learned on the internet and all the computers in the white house went all black screen white text lines of code and then a countdown. Because he's a genius. Who just trashed every computer in the network, possibly after leaving them wide open.
Then he insisted that SG1 weren't doing it right, he could do first contact so much better than them, because he's a genius. So he put together a team, and to my many bad feels I was on it, because I spoke so many languages. I tried to explain it was actually the Waverider AI doing the google translate thing, I was no linguist, and if we found something actually new I'd have no chance of knowing it, but no, he didn't like the cult of Daniel Jackson, my on paper records looked great, I had to go.
The rest of the team were chosen with similar care. Three more to mirror SG1, and some poor sod from the secret service whose sole job was to keep one fat should be pensioner alive while he did something teams of trained marines didn't always come back from
Fat seemed relevant cause there was a training night where it became evident the president does not wear pyjamas. Which was an image I could have lived without. Thanks subconscious.
So we all step through the Stargate, and the very first thing we see is a big sign saying the Aschen have been here, so I read it and call the mission off. We have to leave, now, and go into quarantine, and not even on Earth if we value seven billion lives. I yell for someone to dial the alpha site.
And the president, being the president, is having none of it. He's here to do diplomacy. These Aschen seem like decent guys. Misunderstood guys. Powerful guys. Sure SG1 screwed them up before, but they didn't have the president along. Did he mention he's a huge genius?
So the four of us who have so much as read a mission report come to the same conclusion as one, draw our zats, turn and fire. Unfortunately this results in one unconscious secret service guy, who did his best while surrounded, and three shots that individually were trying to stun but collectively... well, it's kind of difficult to explain you accidentally disintegrated the president.
Fiction has a lot of good presidents, or good actors playing bad presidents, so you can take your pick who played that one. My personal recent favourite was from Supergirl but she's the only one it definitely wasn't. She was president of a whole other planet in the next bit though.
This time the Stargate was up a mountain and in a building, while the people we were there to negotiate with were way down the bottom of a lot of cliffs in a nice green valley. They thought of this as quite nearby. The planet was marginal for human survival and while all the necessary bits of a diet could be grown somewhere they couldn't all be grown any one where, not in quantities sufficient to sustain a community. So long distance trade was the necessary rule for survival, and they seemed entirely willing to continue that through the Stargate. So when a President insisted on doing these negotiations in person, SG1 arranged a large expedition to make it so as safely as possible. Jack stayed with the team guarding the gate, Daniel was with us in the diplomatic mission. It all seemed to be going nice.
But Jack met a guy living up by the Stargate who wouldn't have anything to do with the people we were initiating trade with. His name was Bastian Balthazar Bux, and while we were having a tea party in a garden, Falkor the luck dragon flew in for some reason, and everyone local got really *vicious* at driving him off.
And then it was like some switch flipped and everyone showed their other faces, prettier but meaner, and it was not a negotiation anymore.
By the time weld escaped as far as the base of the cliffs, the president was dead, along with a whole lot of his guards. Some of the people he'd brought were alive, but blaming the SGC and unwilling to listen to much we said. And Daniel was dead again, but in a burst of light, so I wasn't actually worried. Figured held go get Jack and get out backup rolling. Comms weren't working for some reason so it was even handy.
The rest of that dream was me being most senior and next in command, but mostly getting yelled at by people unwilling to listen. I had to try and explain I had to listen to everyone but when the time came to decide that was all me. But no, lots of yelling. And they were upset I wasn't upset, said I didn't care. I said it was my job to care about everything, I couldn't just stop to care about just one thing. The shouty ones did not find this reassuring.
I'm sure we'd have gotten out of there eventually but I strongly suspect it wouldn't have been by my persuasive powers.
And this was a problem, because what we needed to do was broker a peace between these native factions, and trade and safe conducts for our people in there somewhere too. Without that we were going t run out of MREs and die. There was no living off the land here, we traded with a wide range or we starved, that was the whole point of human society here, We just hadn't known this had led them to take such a vicious position against non humans.
Bastian knew, but he was living in a nice cave, not claiming to be the boss of anyone, so the politicians hadn't listened to him.
And clearly now we were stuck in a story we weren't prepared for, but, since we couldn't just quit, we had to learn, fast.
That was shouty and frustrating.
And then there was a bit where we thought we were in an unknown lad with unfamilar stars, but then the 'sun' started swinging back and forth, and we turned out to be shrunk down and in a model. Seemed like a county to us, actually a shoe box to them. And we found the way out but didn't know if getting out would change our size back. But one guy tried it. And then couldn't get small to get back in. So then he pushed his wedding ring in through the gap, which only just fit, but would provide us with enough gold to buy anything while we looked for the rest of us.
This led me on a sidetrack where I wondered why shrinking did things to mass, because it made no sense, we couldn't be this small and still have room for neurons, it could all work fine if it was some kind of TARDIS dimensional distortion thing but no, this ring was huge and heavier than us, how could that even work.
... dreams where you get distracted by the non existent laws of physics but still don't figure out they're dreams...
So there was like a whole small civilisation in the box, and their 'sun' was going out, and a whole lot of the mechanisms of the box were getting stuck. Seas were rising, skies going red, end times stuff. But they were all gathered together trying to do a magics rather than realising getting out was an option. And who knows, it might not have been an option for them. Or we might have been the answer to the magics. But magic working would solve the physics problem, so eh, we went with that.
And then last dream, somewhere after I woke up and turned the lamp on, was Ms Marvel, muslim edition, earnestly explaining to Sam Vimes that a lot of what we think we know about vampires is really just stories, and the names for them, the Chronicles of Darkness, Kneelers, Twice Knocked, they're really all just about different phases in history. And sure they tried to integrate with society twice before, but we don't know why that failed. And, also, really, the baby was so cute. Who can hate a baby this cute?
And Sam Vimes, who had the baby cuddled up to some of the least armoured bits, and was absently wiggling fingers at the cute smile, felt a sharp pain and looked down to realise that while the infant might be rather short on teeth as yet, two tiny sharp bits were already there, and had enabled some happy suckling on his hand.
Which is sort of awkward, but cute.
So that was a lot of dreams in a row that were not restful.
Figuring out what to do with a vampire baby seems actually the least challenging.
But there's plenty of plot in any of them.
Then he insisted that SG1 weren't doing it right, he could do first contact so much better than them, because he's a genius. So he put together a team, and to my many bad feels I was on it, because I spoke so many languages. I tried to explain it was actually the Waverider AI doing the google translate thing, I was no linguist, and if we found something actually new I'd have no chance of knowing it, but no, he didn't like the cult of Daniel Jackson, my on paper records looked great, I had to go.
The rest of the team were chosen with similar care. Three more to mirror SG1, and some poor sod from the secret service whose sole job was to keep one fat should be pensioner alive while he did something teams of trained marines didn't always come back from
Fat seemed relevant cause there was a training night where it became evident the president does not wear pyjamas. Which was an image I could have lived without. Thanks subconscious.
So we all step through the Stargate, and the very first thing we see is a big sign saying the Aschen have been here, so I read it and call the mission off. We have to leave, now, and go into quarantine, and not even on Earth if we value seven billion lives. I yell for someone to dial the alpha site.
And the president, being the president, is having none of it. He's here to do diplomacy. These Aschen seem like decent guys. Misunderstood guys. Powerful guys. Sure SG1 screwed them up before, but they didn't have the president along. Did he mention he's a huge genius?
So the four of us who have so much as read a mission report come to the same conclusion as one, draw our zats, turn and fire. Unfortunately this results in one unconscious secret service guy, who did his best while surrounded, and three shots that individually were trying to stun but collectively... well, it's kind of difficult to explain you accidentally disintegrated the president.
Fiction has a lot of good presidents, or good actors playing bad presidents, so you can take your pick who played that one. My personal recent favourite was from Supergirl but she's the only one it definitely wasn't. She was president of a whole other planet in the next bit though.
This time the Stargate was up a mountain and in a building, while the people we were there to negotiate with were way down the bottom of a lot of cliffs in a nice green valley. They thought of this as quite nearby. The planet was marginal for human survival and while all the necessary bits of a diet could be grown somewhere they couldn't all be grown any one where, not in quantities sufficient to sustain a community. So long distance trade was the necessary rule for survival, and they seemed entirely willing to continue that through the Stargate. So when a President insisted on doing these negotiations in person, SG1 arranged a large expedition to make it so as safely as possible. Jack stayed with the team guarding the gate, Daniel was with us in the diplomatic mission. It all seemed to be going nice.
But Jack met a guy living up by the Stargate who wouldn't have anything to do with the people we were initiating trade with. His name was Bastian Balthazar Bux, and while we were having a tea party in a garden, Falkor the luck dragon flew in for some reason, and everyone local got really *vicious* at driving him off.
And then it was like some switch flipped and everyone showed their other faces, prettier but meaner, and it was not a negotiation anymore.
By the time weld escaped as far as the base of the cliffs, the president was dead, along with a whole lot of his guards. Some of the people he'd brought were alive, but blaming the SGC and unwilling to listen to much we said. And Daniel was dead again, but in a burst of light, so I wasn't actually worried. Figured held go get Jack and get out backup rolling. Comms weren't working for some reason so it was even handy.
The rest of that dream was me being most senior and next in command, but mostly getting yelled at by people unwilling to listen. I had to try and explain I had to listen to everyone but when the time came to decide that was all me. But no, lots of yelling. And they were upset I wasn't upset, said I didn't care. I said it was my job to care about everything, I couldn't just stop to care about just one thing. The shouty ones did not find this reassuring.
I'm sure we'd have gotten out of there eventually but I strongly suspect it wouldn't have been by my persuasive powers.
And this was a problem, because what we needed to do was broker a peace between these native factions, and trade and safe conducts for our people in there somewhere too. Without that we were going t run out of MREs and die. There was no living off the land here, we traded with a wide range or we starved, that was the whole point of human society here, We just hadn't known this had led them to take such a vicious position against non humans.
Bastian knew, but he was living in a nice cave, not claiming to be the boss of anyone, so the politicians hadn't listened to him.
And clearly now we were stuck in a story we weren't prepared for, but, since we couldn't just quit, we had to learn, fast.
That was shouty and frustrating.
And then there was a bit where we thought we were in an unknown lad with unfamilar stars, but then the 'sun' started swinging back and forth, and we turned out to be shrunk down and in a model. Seemed like a county to us, actually a shoe box to them. And we found the way out but didn't know if getting out would change our size back. But one guy tried it. And then couldn't get small to get back in. So then he pushed his wedding ring in through the gap, which only just fit, but would provide us with enough gold to buy anything while we looked for the rest of us.
This led me on a sidetrack where I wondered why shrinking did things to mass, because it made no sense, we couldn't be this small and still have room for neurons, it could all work fine if it was some kind of TARDIS dimensional distortion thing but no, this ring was huge and heavier than us, how could that even work.
... dreams where you get distracted by the non existent laws of physics but still don't figure out they're dreams...
So there was like a whole small civilisation in the box, and their 'sun' was going out, and a whole lot of the mechanisms of the box were getting stuck. Seas were rising, skies going red, end times stuff. But they were all gathered together trying to do a magics rather than realising getting out was an option. And who knows, it might not have been an option for them. Or we might have been the answer to the magics. But magic working would solve the physics problem, so eh, we went with that.
And then last dream, somewhere after I woke up and turned the lamp on, was Ms Marvel, muslim edition, earnestly explaining to Sam Vimes that a lot of what we think we know about vampires is really just stories, and the names for them, the Chronicles of Darkness, Kneelers, Twice Knocked, they're really all just about different phases in history. And sure they tried to integrate with society twice before, but we don't know why that failed. And, also, really, the baby was so cute. Who can hate a baby this cute?
And Sam Vimes, who had the baby cuddled up to some of the least armoured bits, and was absently wiggling fingers at the cute smile, felt a sharp pain and looked down to realise that while the infant might be rather short on teeth as yet, two tiny sharp bits were already there, and had enabled some happy suckling on his hand.
Which is sort of awkward, but cute.
So that was a lot of dreams in a row that were not restful.
Figuring out what to do with a vampire baby seems actually the least challenging.
But there's plenty of plot in any of them.