What a waste of time – I napped for a few hours this afternoon. And there goes my plan of going down to the library, again. It’s really pitiful that I’m falling asleep all over the place. And speaking of which, I dozed off while preparing shepherding yesterday. Thankfully, I’ve already set my alarm before the great disaster of oversleeping happened.

I’m still recovering from my sleep.

Meh, where do all these weird stories come from, anyway? I don’t mind them, and they provide a good bit of entertainment for me, as well as causes of reflection. I’ve learnt (kind of) from today’s dream that we have survival instincts for a reason other than preventing the extinction of humankind. Most of us aren’t that noble yet. Or should I say, altruistic? (This is an inside joke, read no rest for the wicked for comprehension. And yes, this is an obvious attempt to propaganda everyone into reading that webcomic.)

Jumping from vehicles to vehicles was fun. It was in color mode this time! (I’ve finally upgraded?)

I shall tell you the details of the dream to bore you. *evil grin*

It was bright, like a midsummer afternoon in fantasyland. But dreams defy human logic – the air wasn’t sticky; it wasn’t warm. It was still and cool, and the sensations felt three-dimensional. There wasn’t any sound except the gears running in my head.

“I am in a dream.”

The thought was vague, and as a spectator, I watched the story unfold. The setting was unfamiliar this time. Painterly colors, harsh air, busy street junction…

I was in a bus. Those double-deckers that you’ll only find on the roads of London with outlandish paint jobs. Even the structure of the bus was unconventional. There was only one seat on the second story. There was only one man on it. If I remembered correctly, he was green. Not horribly so – it looked like the most natural thing in the world to have green skin. (And of course, in the dream world, not much actually makes sense.)

No stairs, but a glass trapdoor on the small confinement of the single-seat space. The glass felt like plastic.

Something is wrong.

I think it was lab experimentation this time. The man wasn’t supposed to be here. And after that, it all tumbled into a mass of confusion.

Somehow the bus driver got involved (and it turns out that there wasn’t anybody at the bottom as well). But I kind of forgot how he was involved, except that he talked to the fat guy on the pole. More on this below. Some agents, plainly dressed, were in another vehicle beside the bus. I could see the small van from the windows of the double-decker. I think it was this point that I became the man. He panicked, or rather, I did, because he knew that those agents had come for him.

(There was one scene involving this fat green man hugging onto the pole that led down from the trap door as if that pole was his lifeline. He was one of those who escaped, if I’m not wrong. He saw the agents first, got into a state of shock and froze. He was staring into the eyes, the color of liquid black, of one of them, hoping so hard that they did not see him that he didn’t even dare to move his eyes away. I don’t know what happened to him in the end and the whole thing is so confusing that I’m putting this into the confines of the brackets.)

Well, this being a dream, of course the weird agents came crashing into the bus with superhuman jumping powers and heavy-duty guns. And so, I being the weird green man, escaped by jumping from the bus into the open doors of an empty lorry. The weird thing is, the windows didn’t break.

And it turns out that I have a gun too. Oh, what joy, huh? There was a shootout afterwards when the agents gave chase – two of them. And then I was on the run again when the entire lorry suddenly became a gathering of agents. I have no idea where they came from.

I climbed out from the front window, onto the top of the lorry, and jumped onto another moving lorry in front of it. (The weird thing is not that I didn’t break my bones, the weird thing is that the lorries were similar in design and always empty and still somehow managed to steer themselves on a winding road.)

And then I realized that despite shooting so many times, the bullets never ran out.

The setting has changed from the cheerful and busy street junction into a highway road typical of “Need For Speed 2” racing track. (One of them, but I forgot the name of the track.) And then I was shooting at the agents, while there were others in the lorries in front of me in the same plight as me – green people escaping from evil agents. And so, I was climbing all over the lorries. (Gaa, this dreamscape has got an infinite supply of them!) I crawled below lorries, on top of them, at the side, at the back, at the front. And yes, not forgetting jumping from lorries to lorries.

It’s almost like an arcade game except that this felt more horrifying. (At least it was a little fun.)

There was a multitude of dead bodies. But then again, it was glossed over in the dream, and wasn’t grotesque at all. It’s more like those nameless characters you “kill” on games like War Craft. It never occurred to me that I could just roll in some blood, lie down and pretend I’m dead. This is a dream, after all.

And so, back to jumping.

One of the escapees told me that the most effective way of shooting was by the side of the vehicle. That way, you can manually steer the lorry and have a less likely chance of getting hit. But then, when the lorry went too close to a wall or another lorry you get a good scraping. (But you never die or feel the pain.)

Some of the times I ignored his advice and went to the back of the vehicle instead (more space to stand and sit) but had to go back to the side because it was too dangerous.

So after jumping and shooting and climbing all around the place, I finally felt like waking up, and so I slowly did. And that was the end of another weird dream.

And what a violent one it was. Most of them aren’t this bloody.