seeking_brilliance

Stars of Clay Episode Three- Lost Moon Theme music: "Hey," said Clay with a little wave. Amy stepped across the dark cockpit and took the empty seat on the right. As a quick stabilization technique, she pulled her fiery mane to one side and stroked it, just staring at Clay who she now recalled to be someone else entirely. None of this made any sense, but then again, it was a dream. "How much do you remember?" he asked, thumbing through the countless buttons and switches above his seat. Random sections of the ridiculously large dashboard twinkled in rainbow-lit clusters around the spaceship's cockpit. "I'm pretty sure you were my imaginary friend when I was a kid. Bobidunk?" "Kind of a name upgrade, huh?" said Clay, "New name, new body... Oh, look at that! Here's a button for flying lessons, right up your alley." "Clay, I..." "Ah, and here's a dream stabilizer. That's super handy." He pressed it and Amy felt a significant shift in grounding. This particular dream was already feeling lifelike, but now there was just a bit more weight in her center, and she suddenly noticed how tired her legs were from running. She let go of her hair, and said softly, "I'm sorry, I can't believe I forgot about you." "Ah, well," he replied, still not looking at her. "New dream, new me, right? Oh look, a switch to deactivate your CogniChip." "Oh God, I would never get one of those." "Me neither." He flipped it anyway. "So, um, the whole of relative time and dream space. Where d'ya want to go?' "Can we go back in time?" Amy asked, perking up. "Or forwards, or sideways, whatever you'd like. The 'Multiverse of the Mind' as they say." "Can we go back to the last time I saw you?" Clay finally found her eyes and she was so relieved that he didn't seem angry. "Aw, Amy," he beamed like a child reunited with his lost VR tablet. "you do remember me. Ok, to the CogniCorp building it is--" "Huh? No, the last time I saw you was when my mom died." The 'Time-skip' button released mid press, and he cleared his throat. There was a faint ringing as if a million microscopic bells were struck in harmonic succession, then the giant screen above the dashboard cleared away and a new image phased in- like a movie being played in reverse. In it, Clay was flying backwards over a sparkling lake, then up a waterfall to land on a high cliff. Suddenly there were two people on this cliff and --wait, Is that me? she thought wildly. What is this? Another dream? Oh God, my hair is all over the place!" "Well, we'd been flying a lot," Clay said aloud, and for the first time she didn't care if he had read her mind. Bobidunk was always doing it, in fact she couldn't recall if her childhood imaginary friend ever spoke out loud in her dreams. "I don't remember this..." She scanned the whole dream in reverse, to the point of meeting Clay in the CogniCorp building where her mom used to work in real life. In this dream, it was their first day, and orientation was getting very dull. Though there was no audio, tiny bits of information were knowingly revealed as she watched, and yet- "I don't remember this at all." "No? Memory's funny like that, I guess." He pressed the button again and closed his eyes, "hang on, I'll have to channel the other last time I saw you." "So this isn't our first dream together? Well, I mean with you, as Clay." "Gee, you're quicker than I thought. But let's talk about it later." His finger released and the faint chorus of bells once again echoed throughout the small cockpit, followed by a loud thwomp. The screen now showed a moon-sized Earth at day, then zoomed all the way down to the golden peaks of the Ozark mountains, central USA, mid-autumn. Here was the house where she was raised, crowded in on a tall hill with countless other Florida implants following the great marsh floods. Seeing it brought a rush of emotions, nearly drowning Amy in waves of childhood nostalgia. A tiny picket fence surrounded a tiny house the size of a single room; from what she remembered, these houses went several floors down to make up for space lost to modern times. After her mom passed, dad sold the place and moved them further inland, where it was cooler and plenty more opportunities to grow. "Before we go in," said Clay, pushing another button. "A bit of invisibility. Don't want to freak our past selves out." The cheesiest hisssss came from the round door opening at the cockpit's rear, which could have been audibly matched, at random, to any of the worst classical sci-fi shows; she stood and faced it, wondering how the new Bobidunk turned out to be such a huge nerd. He promptly answered "Because you are," and her eyes rolled so hard she almost woke up. Gravity was a bit different in the ship, so that Amy could walk straight out the door into the top-down view of her childhood home (just as zoomed-in as it was on the screen.) Clay shot out in full superman pose, not quite acing the landing unless he was aiming for the neighbor's rose bush. With a more delicate approach, little clouds formed beneath her shoes as she stepped boldly into the air-- Ah screw it, she thought, and leapt into a flying pose of her own. After some exhilarating acrobatic flips and twists, her feet touched delicately on the fluffy lawn near the front door as Clay scrambled over the fence, bloody and bruised. "I forgot to shield before crashing," he whined, and quickly patched himself up by a hand's healing swipe. "Ah, I remember this place. You used to dream about it a lot." "Yeah, I did. So, are we really here? Like are we visiting the real past, or is this just another dream?" "Beats me, I've never actually done it before. But it's possible, I was able to cross over to your physical realm before, as Bobi-- as the other me, if that's what you mean by real." Amy stepped up to a window and peeked in; the kitchen was always the first floor in these mountain stackhouses, hers was hauntingly empty. Her parents were wonderful cooks and at least one could be found bustling about the top floor at any given time. If this was truly the day she died, then they'd all be a few flights down, in her parent's bedroom, awaiting the worst. They met at the door and entered directly into the kitchen. Even Clay seemed to be wrapped up in sweet nostalgia, going straight to the fridge as Bobidunk used to when he visited late at night. He slumped back with news that it was practically empty. In stackhouses, each square room connected by way of a square staircase in the far left-hand corner that should have creaked as they descended, perhaps the invisibility button masked their mass as well. Below the kitchen was the main bathroom, then a cozy living room with three chairs and a fireplace where a young Amy used to lay and draw pictures of her wild adventures with Bobidunk. Next down was Amy's bedroom. She kept going as quickly as possible and didn't want to look at anything. In her parent's bedroom, they were met with the scene she spent years trying to forget: a young but ragged-looking version of her dad sobbing by the bed, her mom in that bed, deathly gaunt and muttering utter nonsense, unable to lower her right hand frozen in a finger snap. It had been that way for at least twelve hours by now, judging by the time holo-projected from the nightstand. Amy could only guess the agony this might cause, and whether or not her mom constantly felt it until she passed; the thought haunted her for years to come. Ah, and then there was a pre-pubescent Amy standing awkwardly by the faux window, so sad even her pimples were crying, though perhaps mainly from embarrassment. "Oh Amy, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself," Clay whispered. "I'm sure I told you that lots of times back then." "Huh? I didn't say anything. Why are we whispering?" "For dramatic effect." No one else in the room responded to their audible presence, so Amy said aloud, "I think we arrived just before mom passed. Look, she's starting to foam at the mouth." "Oh man, I'm so sorry. What turned out to be wrong with her? I remember the doctors couldn't say, and then... well, I never saw you again until I was Clay." As the guilt piled on, Amy tried her best to remember what she learned about her mom's lethal disorder, but it was all just out of mind's reach. Her dream-mind was always doing silly things like that, even when lucid. What she could recall is that she always felt a bit responsible, but never able to pin down why. Maybe if she hadn't been so busy hiding her face, she could have noticed the signs early enough to help. "Hey, what's she saying?" Clay asked, and crept in around Amy's dad for a better listen. "CogniCorp... rainbow dressing... the end of tomorrow... 04..20..85..." Amy scoffed. "CogniCorp makes sense, she worked there. Was one of the first to receive a CogniChip, actually. But the rest is utter nonsense, right?" She stepped over to her younger self by the window and touched her own shoulder, struck by a sudden memory of this very moment, having her shoulder touched that day. Back then, she thought her grandmother had done it, visiting their grieving family in spirit. "Wait, so this has to be real. I think I just proved it." "Oh, nice!" But something was wrong. A few things, in fact. Like the sheets. Her parents adored the Professor Zero show, their bedroom was practically a nerd-altar to it. Here there were only a few posters on the wall, and that hideous lamp made to look like Professor Zero's purple time machine, the VERITIS; but where were his big goofy head and delightfully corny catchphrases holo-printed all over the sheets? These covering her failing mother were just way too plain, a word that could never be used to describe either of her parents. "We're in a dream then," she said, deflated. "Dang, I really hoped we could go to the real past." "There's that word again. What exactly is 'real'?" "Well you know, like when I'm awake," she said, "when things really matter." Clay politely informed her of how dreamist that sounded and she figured, correctly, that he meant something like 'sexist', which may have set her off, just a bit. "Excuse me? Who do you think you are? You disappeared for a huge chunk of my life, ya know, right when things got hard!" The lights flickered and the house shook, the angrier she became. "I mean, what do you even do? You get to go off on all these fun, awesome adventures, and yeah I can come too, I guess... but don't talk to ME about what's real until you spend a day- a day!- out there, in the real world, in pain. You know, I would love to see you try and hold down a job." They were too far underground to hear crickets, but her mom's incoherent babbling was enough to break the awkward silence. Clay blinked slowly and after a reflective moment said, "Ok, I can see you are angry..." And when Amy refused to say more, he rather bravely continued, "Now, I know emotions in dreams can get real intense..." Amy made the biggest fireball she could muster (which in her state was rather terrifying) and shot it so hard at Clay it blew her dad's hair around. Clay shielded, of course, but she was too distracted to care, struck again with another memory-- of her dad swearing that his mother-in-law's ghost had ruffled up his hair. He even thought she went through him like a tempered flame, upset about her daughter's ill fate. He talked about it for years. And here he was now, in the dream, commenting on it, just like she remembered. It wouldn't be long before Amy's mom becomes a ghost too. "I-- I just don't understand! Are we in the real past or not?" "Maybe there is no past," said Clay, coming back around the bed in hands-up surrender. "I mean, in a dream, reality is created in the moment, constructed by memory, you know? The past too. Even when you're awake, what exactly is the past except for your memory of it? Maybe the question isn't... what is the real past, but what is memory?" "Seriously, that's what you got? I thought you were supposed to be all wise and sagey." "Hey, I never said--" but she never found out what he never said because both her dad and younger self transformed into correctors, coming at them with gnashing gold dagger-teeth and black voids instead of eyes. "What?" she shrieked, "they're here too?" "I didn't think they'd follow us! Usually they go away after a dreamer gets lucid, but you keep narrating them into the story!" Amy had no idea what that was supposed to mean, a reoccurring issue with this guy. Clay conjured an ice wall to block the correctors, and they escaped up the staircase by way of flying and CloudWalking. The front door burst open and Amy scanned the skies. "Where's the ship?" "Right there," Clay answered, pointing at the sun. He jumped up and flew straight for it. "No the moon, what happened to the moon?" She followed close behind, running up little puffs of clouds. "Well it's daytime, innit?" He pinch-zoomed the sun until it was only a short flight away. Upon approach, a round door opened within a festering sunspot; entering was definitely hot like she expected, but not excruciating. The door closed securely behind them, cutting off all light besides the prismatic dance of luminous buttons splashed across the dashboard. Amy slumped back to her chair on the right, Clay to his beside her. She had never before considered a dream to be so exhausting. What was worse, she had been so wrapped up in it ever since Mrs. Larkin ate Sandra at the grocery store (and escaping with that weirdo over there geeking out over the countless dream-enhancing buttons at his disposal,) that she completely forgot to look for her dream totem, her cat Bynx. Bynx, a typical black cat who kindly allowed Amy to live in his apartment in real life, appeared as a stuffed animal in her dreams. At first, it was her main way of becoming lucid since she would see the stuffed Bynx and know she's dreaming. As her methodology evolved, she found new ways to wake up inside her dreams and began to seek out Bynx after she was lucid. The feline totem acted as a great dream stabilizer and lucidity anchor; as long as she petted him, she wouldn't wake up. Additionally, the longer she petted him, her thoughts would become clearer, and more akin to how she is when awake. For example, it would be rather startling if she suddenly remembered where she actually worked, since even her lucid mind was still stuck on that grocery store. So he was real handy to have around, but there was no way she'd be wasting any energy looking for him now. After what sounded like a button press, a stuffed Bynx fell into her lap from an opening above her seat. She stared at it, then at Clay, then back to the dream totem and started petting it, and said, "Thanks, but why did you do that?" "You said you didn't have the energy to look for him." "No I didn't, I wasn't even thinking that..." "Oh, my bad. You must have been narrating that part." Amy sighed, the way she does when she's had way more than enough, and thought about how she should wake up. It was no surprise when Clay offered a handful of fun ideas; she agreed to click her heels and repeat "there's no place like home" like from one of her favorite classical films. Before fading away, she apologized profusely for losing her temper so often (although he 100% deserved it, of course) and asked that he come find her again, just maybe if they could do something a bit more fun. When her sparkling silhouette was all that remained, she gave a little wave and awoke. ********* Clayton leaned back, thinking that didn't go half bad. By chance, his eyes rested on the temporal massage button and he pressed it, then melted into his seat and began thinking about where to go next. Maybe he'd scout out a few locations first, before bringing Amy along, since she truly did deserve a fun dream next time. He had a reputation to keep, and all. At the press of a button, the chorus of bells brought him to a place he had heard about in his travels but never got around to visiting. On the screen, it looked like any other giant space station out in the cosmic frontiers, but Star City was known to be the most luxurious space resort in all the known universes, and God, what he wouldn't do for a cocktail... Outro: (Artwork by Shaun Power from MindVenture club)

@Arcangelo stay tuned for episode three ?

Stars of Clay Episode Two: The Girl Who Ran to the Moon Intro theme music: Amy studied the backs of her hands, from the pointed tips of her turquoise colored nails, to the faint little wrinkles above the wrists. There was something she was missing… something more important than anything else right now, if only she could remember… "You get it all?" Sandra asked, scowling. "I swear, if I get my hands on those little cretins." Oh. Right. Amy was checking her hands for ketchup splatter after two small kids, a boy and girl playing an enthusiastic game of cops and robbers, tore through aisle eight where she was stocking. It was cute at first (the girl had crimson hair like Amy's, so maybe she held a soft spot) until the taller, lankier boy fired a finger pistol at his friend's heart; she clutched her chest and fell back into the ketchup shelf in a slow, painfully dramatic demise. Five bottles hit the tiled floor and shattered, spraying half the condiment aisle--and Amy-- in dark, oozing tomato blood. Her new CloudWalk shoes were saved at least; a huge relief since they were as white as the name suggests, and remarkably overpriced for its promise. Sandra, her manager, had brought paper towels and offered to "help mop," which really meant standing near the mop to gossip about Bryan in pharmacy. Amy was used to it, she'd been at this job long enough to know there was really no one to extend a hand. It wasn't long before Amy was called up to work a register, and even less time before some cranky old lady was arguing over the price of bananas. To most, this would seem a very bad day at work; Amy just called it Monday night. She bit her tongue and explained, as smiley-faced as she could muster, that the store charges for each banana, not by the pound like in the dinosaur days, and that each banana would cost a dollar-four. "So if you're planning to buy three bananas, Mrs. Larkin, it's going to cost you three dollars and some change. Your total is right here on the screen, but if you'd like I can find a calculator--" "--Well in my day the customer was always right! Then you post-millennials got all 'woken' and now there's drone cameras everywhere spying on us shoppers, and 'employee rights'" - air quotes were applied to that last bit, performed by long knobby fingers trembling with years of abuse- "and now here I am being asked to pay over a dollar per banana. Per! Instead of by the pound as it should be!" "Mrs. Larkin..." "You know, I remember when water was free! Yeah, you could just step right up to the tap, and there ya have it. I want to speak to your manager!" "Well, I don't think the water was ever really free was it?" Amy couldn't help herself; besides the ketchup explosion earlier and Sandra's meltdown in the deep freeze, it was a rather slow night. "I mean, maybe it was really cheap, but you got a water bill, no?" "Your manager!" "Sure, let me get her for you." Amy suddenly remembered her customer-service smile, and quietly promised to stop being so cheeky. "But just so you know, I left her mopping up a huge mess, which usually doesn't leave her in a great mood... but if you really want me to... I'm sure she can come up and use her big fancy manager calculator." She cringed immediately and looked away, that was too far... But there was no reply, and when Amy looked back the old lady stood motionless, her head hanging low, an outstretched hand in midst of the particularly rude gesture of a bird. A long wheezing moan passed through her thin pursed lips, sputtering off to a dead silence. "Uh, ma'am?" Amy scanned the checkout center for help, but no one was paying attention besides the tall guy next in line. Kind of cute, thought Amy, if he weren't staring like a creep. Cute in like a nerdy movie star kind of way, she amended upon further study. She didn't typically go for brunettes but there was something magnetic about his eyes, green with burst of hazel around the pupils. When he noticed her staring back, the young man smiled and said, "You've already forgotten about the old lady, haven't you?" With a gasp, she snapped back to Mrs. Larkin, who still stood frozen by the paypad. Amy felt frozen too, except to reach out and touch the lady's shoulder. It felt soft and warm, like when she last hugged her grandmother. "Hey, are you OK?" she asked, and looked around again. Why won't anyone help? "Wow," the cute guy said, "you really broke one properly this time, huh?" Amy wheeled. "Are you just going to stand there?" she burst, panicking. "Get help! Call someone!" Suddenly, manager Sandra ran up from the back of the store, heaving. "You paged?" she asked between wheezes, "what's wrong?" "No, she didn't," said the tall guy. "What?" Amy and Sandra retorted in unison. This weirdo was looking less cute by the minute... "If you'll remember, Amy," he said, and stepped over to Mrs Larkin, then gently lowered her middle finger. "You never called for the manager. This lady asked you to, and you never did. And then, this happened." He bent down and opened one of the old woman's sagging eyelids. Satisfied, he stood and turned to Sandra. "No, she never called you, you're a diversion to get us back on track. On script. And if that doesn't work, they'll show up soon." "Look here, my dude," snorted Sandra, "I have no idea what you're on about, but if you have any idea the kind of night I've had, you'd shut your mouth and let the adults do the talking, mmmkay?" "Yes ma'am," he replied with a snappy salute. "but only if Amy here can tell me where she works." Looking to Amy his hand lowered, "and don't just say you work 'here.' What is the name of this store?" "Are you crazy? There is an elderly person here having a real medical emergency--will someone PLEASE call 911!" "You call them." He shrugged. "Don't you have a phone on you? What century are we in?" "Well I - Yeah, I'm sure I have one... around here..." Amy patted her pockets and searched around the register. "Where do you work?" he insisted. "I'm not stupid, I know where I work! It's-- it's uh... well, here. I work here. " "What's it called?" "It's called... Um, hmmm, hang on..." "Why do you have ketchup all over you, Amy?" "Well," she replied, looking down. The sour stench of vinegar and tomato wafted up from her splattered shirt. "Yeah, there was a thing earlier and... and Sandra said I couldn't go change because they might need me up on a register." She looked to her manager, who nodded with reassurance. "I mean, I think, right? I was mopping all that up and then... I got called up to a register." "You sure?" Leaving Mrs Larkin, the tall guy stepped to the far end of the checkout counter, eying the nearest exit. "Or, did you just find yourself here, arguing with that delightful young lady about the price of bananas?" "You're right... ," said Amy, slowly piecing it together, "No, I never called for the manager..." Shoving past Mrs. Larkin, Sandra stepped up to the register and grabbed Amy's hand, patting it softly. "Don't listen to him Amy, everything will be just fine. You can go home and change your clothes right after I kick that trouble maker's skinny little--aaaahhhh!--" The shrieking that ended Sandra's sentence was short winded, as the old woman sprung to life and sunk her teeth deep into the manager's veiny neck. No, not teeth-- they didn't look like teeth at all to Amy, they just looked... wrong. Too long and shiny, like rows of little golden daggers. Amy stood shocked, as tiny bits of Sandra were caught in Mrs. Larkin's deepest wrinkles; the old woman relished her meal with closed eyes--wait no, she had no eyes! Two black holes were all that filled Mrs. Larkin's sockets, darker than the loneliest voids of space between dying stars. Amy fell back into the shelves behind the register and knocked over a bottle of red shampoo, dousing her CloudWalks in thick bloody soap, completing the ensemble. "Amy, we need to go," the tall guy said, "right now. Please, I need you to leave your register and let's walk away. Carefully." "I -- I can't..." she replied shakily, unable to take her eyes off of Sandra. "Mrs. Larkin is a vampire?" "Something like that," he said, reaching out, "and yes you can. You can leave here if you want. But you have to want it, and quick before Mrs. Larkin is finished with her meal. Who do you think will be next?" The old woman released her golden daggers from Sandra's neck; then as if her lower jaw became unhinged, Mrs Larkin's mouth opened wide enough to swallow Amy's manager whole, head first. Her crooked body seemed to stretch and grow just tall enough to do it, and picked up a limp Sandra with very little effort. Before long she was sliding the feet down with a wet slurp. "Don't just stand there Amy, come on!" Like breaking from a nasty spell, Amy turned to him and, shaking her head, "I'm dreaming..." "Took you long enough, now let's go!" His hand stretched further, wriggling anxiously for her to take it. "Yeah," she agreed, and their fingers met with tingling excitement. Off they went and he led her past the other checkout counters and to the big exit doors at the front of the store. A large man with no eyes stepped on their path reaching out with long stretching fingers; Amy's new friend dodged expertly and rolled her around to his other side. "Don't let them touch you!" he shouted, and picked up an umbrella to beat off a persistent eyeless baby crawling around their feet with tiny gnashing golden daggers. "Geez Amy, are all the demon babies this quick in your dreams?" "I wouldn't know!" she replied, "so that's what these things are? Demons? These dream characters with no eyes?" "Something... like... that!" he managed through strong forward thrusts. "And you... can call me... CLAY!" With the last word the tall guy swung the umbrella low and putted the baby high in the air and deep into the store; they ran harder. "You know, that way you can stop referring to me as 'he' or 'the cute tall guy!" "You're reading my thoughts?" Amy yelled back, tearing her hand free but keeping pace. "I didn't know dream characters can do that! Are you like some special kind?" Clay didn't answer, just gave her one long look as they neared the exit. A calm night peeked through the glass doors and Amy could just see her car out in the parking lot. "They're not opening!" He waved the umbrella at the doors' sensors. "Ok we're going through..." "Through?" Amy slowed, wheeling in thought, "oh, I'm not good at going through things... especially in a hurry..." "It's easy, just don't overthink it. Like how we have so much time to discuss all this even though we've been approching the doors for quite a while. It's a dream Amy, there are no doors, not really!" "Ooooh, I don't know!" She winced. "There's got to be another way out..." "Listen, doors aren't important, we just need to get to the other side, the parking lot. Just close your eyes and think about the parking lot!" She did and, after a short woosh, when her eyes opened they were now running outside and across the dark, near empty lot. Her car seemed a lot further than she remembered parking, but her mind was on what just happened. Did I go through the doors, she pondered, noticing the big cheese-yellow moon hanging over them as they scurried like mice away from the store. Or did I teleport? I totally teleported, didn't I? "Something like that," Clay said, and she promptly ordered him to stay out of her head. "Really?" He replied. She could've felt his smirk from eons away. "I'm not even reading your thoughts, Amy, you do well enough alone to broadcast them out like a free concert! You know, in a dream, your thoughts still feel like they're in your head, but where is your head, Amy?" "All around?" "Something like that." Amy thought about what horrific things she might do to him if he used that phrase again; Clay requested she'd not go with shooting fireballs at him since he took so long choosing his outfit. "STOP IT!!" "I will when you will!" He shouted, and ducked as an expertly crafted iceball whizzed by, grazing an ear. "Oh good job, you've been practicing, huh?" Amy didn't know what he meant by that, and didn't have time to explain where she learned the trick because two eyeless demons climbed out of a nearby vehicle and took chase with considerable speed. Amy threw large iceballs at them but any that would've hit were swallowed whole. "Hey, you still know how to fly?" Clay shouted from further ahead. "Yeah I can fly! Uh, but I have to jump off of somewhere high..." "Oh you're still on that? Ok, come here." He flipped the umbrella down and pointed the long guilded tip at her shoes. "CloudWalkers, huh? That'll work." And with a quick incantation ("Hocus pocus... wibbly wobbly...abra kadabra!") golden sparks leapt from his makeshift wand and disappeared into Amy's shoes, now restored to a pristine white. The umbrella then opened high above his head and he lifted up and away into the night sky. "Now just walk right up to me, Amy! Actually, RUN!" With a narrow escape of gnashing dagger-teeth and long stretching arms, she ran vertically right up to Clay who was already high above the power lines. Each step created a literal cloud to cushion her climb, accompanied by a cute little 'poof'; luckily the eyeless demons couldn't fly. When she caught up to him she asked again about the creatures chasing them. "They're kind of like an immune system response," he said while they hovered well above the parking lot (Amy could see part of the town twinkling further down.) "Okay, or say that a dream is like a supermassive simulation with an aggressive autocorrect function. Those are the autocorrect. Correctors, I call them." "When things go wrong," Amy added, "or off script like you said earlier..." "Yeah, the correctors are the number one reason you don't get lucid more often. They show up lots of times when you start noticing things are unusual, but especially if someone tries to tell you that you're dreaming. They get real nasty then. And it's not hard to keep you on track, they just swallow the evidence, literally." "Well I don't remember seeing any dream characters like that before! It's certainly not something to forget..." "Of course not. When they destroy the evidence it's like it never happened, including their sudden appearance. You just go on with the dream, maybe under new circumstances that you believe were always there. The mind adapts. And when all else fails, they'll just eat you. Then you wake up and poof-- it's like it's never happened." "So that's why I don't remember so many of my dreams?" A topic heavy on Amy's mind as of late. "Something like-- "Don't even!" "Sometimes." He said instead, and began to lift higher and higher to the pull of his umbrella; Amy thought he looked more like Mary Poppins now than a handsome movie star (well I guess he could be both...) "And sometimes you just have really awful memory," he added, and dodged a whizzing fireball or two. He swung the umbrella far away to avoid losing his fabric vehicle to Amy's fiery retaliation-- "Hey I'm flying here!" "Fly away then, you're no help!" But before she could spray him with a barrage of fire and ice, a helicopter zoomed up from the parking lot and three more correctors leapt out, diving straight for the quarreling duo. "Follow me!" yelled Clay "to my ship, quick! Straight to the moon!" "Your ship in on the moon? But it's so far!" "Something like that..." he muttered. Holding his free hand up to the moon, he pinched his fingers together, then pulled them apart like zooming in on a virtual tablet. The moon stretched and grew from the size of a watermelon to taking up the whole of Amy's view. When awake, she had seen close ups of the moon but never knew the rocky craters to have such an iridescent shimmer. "And my ship's not on the moon..." he corrected, "it is the moon." One of the large craters opened up like from a cheesy old sci-fi movie, and Amy marveled that she'd even dream up such a thing. It seemed totally out of the norm of her usual dream-fare, to have some irritably handsome mind reader whisk her away to the moon. Maybe it was the special tea she had last night at Evelyn's party....(I was at a party last night, right?) Or perhaps from binging too much Professor Zero on DisFlix. She CloudWalked (or rather, cloud-ran,) right inside the crater behind Clay, and after a short swirling vortex of a tunnel, found herself stepping into the dark cockpit of a futuristic looking spaceship; her shoes no longer created little clouds on the metallic floor. A lanky sillhouete of Clay shifted across the small cabin to the pilot's seat on the left, partially illuminated by the glow from a multitude of prismatic buttons and switches comprising a ridiculously large dashboard. A giant screen towered above, displaying a moon-sized Earth on a dark and silent night. "Take a seat," Clay said, patting the other one on the right. "It won't bite. It will give you ten kinds of temporal massages and a total chakra cleansing--that is, if I can remember where the buttons are..." He scanned through what seemed like thousands of flashing buttons above the empty seat alone, and promptly gave up. "Come on, we're safe in here. The correctors can't get inside. Come on, take a seat... " "Fine," Amy said with a firm resolve. "But only if you start being honest with me. No more 'something like that' crap, just... tell me the truth, even if you don't think I'd understand." "The truth? Sorry Amy, but I'm not here to tell you the truth. I don't even know if half the things I could say are true. What I can tell you is that we can have fun, if you want." He patted the seat again. For the first time, she saw him. Sure, she had looked at Clay plenty of times by now, but it suddenly made sense who this was, yet impossible to put together into a single cohesive thought. Amy was flooded by memories of dreams she had as a small child. In them, there was always a special friend who bailed her out of trouble, or helped her to understand things as a scared little girl, or took her to amazing new places beyond her wildest dreams. When awake, she even had an imaginary friend based on this character, but didn't remember it being male, or of any gender, really. Eventually she had stopped talking to this friend and slowly forgot about them as interests turned to boys and clothes, or the worse, adulting. No, this was not just some random dream character, this was her most secret and adventurous childhood friend, back again after all this time... "Hey." (To be continued in episode three...) Outro: (Artwork by Shaun Power from MindVenture club)

Nothing is forcing anything...

Nice, thanks!

@Tyler Durden it what?

For an experience 'outside' of what you think is a body?? just for kicks and giggles

Hmm what about those claims to smell colours, or see sounds?

The 'human experience' is a dream, dreaming of a God who is dreaming of being human. ?

Let it wash over you. If you can't do that, play binaural beats or isochronic tones, and let them wash over you.

Even if it's true, think of (y)our simultaneous nature?.

Try Buddha's reclining method ??

"Shaman's Medicine"

I have recently discovered a new hobby which is fun and can inspire original art. The process is very simple : I just take a good sized crystal (mine is quartz) and use my cell phone to take pictures. The pictures are a mix of intuitive snapping with my eyes closed, or seeking out the images. Both work extremely well. The images appear on the outside of the crystal, or deep inside. I then decided to start drawing what I see, because others were struggling to see the images. I am only sharing images that I consider to be uncanny and unexplainable. Do you see what I see, or something else?

The first is called "Shapeshifter" can you make out all the many faces and forms? The second, "Just Sit", depicts a person sitting at the mouth of a cave.

@seeking_brilliance The negatives are titled "How the Pyramids Were Built" And the positive, "Dreams End as They Begin, in Love"

Keep up the music ???

This is lovely, but shall we rest in ultimatums?

Hey, queens get some love too, right?

Don't worry, all is not lost ?

What else would it be? ?

If you haven't already, lucid dreaming is a much gentler way to expand and open.

I present to you, "Promised Land." A collaboration.

@LfcCharlie4 whats that?

Or non-local perhaps. Why you trying to stick me in a meat suit ?