Synthesizing Gold in Perpetual Twilight

This dream held on to me for a couple days.  What I loved about it was how much detail I could remember.  Keep in mind that I really try to stay true to the dream when it comes to describing places and things.  I never look for pictures before I finish the entire write up so it keeps me honest when I explain what I remember. 

The dream starts with me being in an apartment complex.  I'm standing next to a window while several of my friends are studying for something.  In retrospect, I suppose it could have been a dorm room.  Apparently I had already finished studying and was itching to play some tennis.  I think there was a tennis court within view.  My friend, Sean Darragh, said that he would go play a game with me, but we should go play at his house on his planet.

I don't remember the means of commute, but in no time at all we were there.  The first thing I notice about this planet is that its dark.  It isn't pitch black, rather it has a slight purple glow around the horizon.  The sky more directly above me has a fantastic view of other cosmic bodies such as other moons and planets.  Another distinctive thing about this plant was its openness.  It was very barren and open.  In fact, Sean's house may have been the only thing on the planet.

 Kind of similar except there was no water or trees. 

Upon arrival Sean tells me that during this season his planet is in constant twilight.  He was happy to boast that his planet was actually in the Guiness Book of World Records for the longest night.  Which by our standards was a couple months.  He explains to me that their sun actually rotates around their planet because it is a very small sun in comparison.

Although we went to his planet to play tennis, we soon begin playing some sort of basketball-ish game.  Here's the skinny on the game: We were indoors and the ground is actually made of a a soft, bouncy padding.  The ball we were playing with was a slightly deflated soccer ball which I think we tried to bounce on occasion.  We were trying to throw this ball into a traditional basketball rim with a backboard.  One trick of the game was that there are clear pieces of plastic draped down somewhat in front of the rim.  These can block your shot if you shoot to high.  After we played for a little bit, Sean's mom stops in and says hello and we decide to go in his house.  

Their house was quite large and unique.  In fact, the entire second floor of their house was a Verizon store.  Sean's mother explained to me that the monthly rent that Verizon pays them is enough to cover most of their mortgage.  She said that they are able to pay the remaining mortgage amount in cash.  Right about then Sean's step father walks in the door from work.

It must have been past closing time because nobody was working when they were showing me the store.

The Darraghs tell me that he is working on a very important project at work.  Essentially they are trying to make gold out of iron.  They had a break through where the thin sheet of iron had accepted some sort of gold seeding but they still needed to figure out how to define the crystal structure in order to make it real usable gold.


He had brought home the sheet and there was some sort of real time touchscreen interface where you could manipulate the crystal structure.  While Sean's step dad was talking, Sean was taking a crack at the crystal structure.  He moved some things here and there and in no time I watched the sheet of iron turn from gray to gold.  Everyone was awestruck and Sean had a "well that was easy" look on his face.

Synthesized gold?

However, upon analysis of the sheet they found that it wasn't real gold.  As it turns out, Sean had turned the sheet of iron into Pyrite or "fools gold," but there was a silver lining.  A whole new market had popped up on his planet.  My dream ended with me watching a commercial advertising bricks of the fools gold.  It was with a bunch of ghetto black dudes trying to sell the fake gold to impress your friends.

 Classy.

-Seth

Winston Eels and the Drill to the Sky

Ok, so its been a while since I've had any dreams worth writing about, but this one definitely qualifies.

I'm standing outside in a very dreary, polluted field.  The air and sky around me are yellowish.  Directly in front of me is what looks like a 6" in diameter fire hose which extends from the ground straight up into the sky.  The hose reaches into pollution clouds to the point that I can't see the upper end or what it connects to.  To my right is a series of small rectangular concrete buildings, strikingly similar to some buildings and my work at AIST.  Also to my right but more behind me was a lady laying down in an outdoor lounge chair drinking tea or something.  She is wearing a big hat and sunglasses.  Both her chair and her drink have umbrellas.  This lady turned out to be Dusty Gillingham's mother, Marie Gillingham.  Dusty and my brother were best friends growing up so I also got to know Dusty's parents quite well.  

This was sort of the color of everything around me.

I know that early on in the dream I was forced to crawl under ground in a very tight space.  I had to crank clockwise on a lever which was connected to the hose in the air.  I remember it being insanely difficult to move it even a little bit.  Once I came back up I noticed a man.

This man was an unfrozen caveman and yes, he did look like the Geico caveman.  I instantly was trying to show him all of our new technology! The only problem was that suddenly there were dozens of small, multi-colored, inflatable, and foam balls that I was supposed to gather up and put into a net.  The problem was that every time I tried putting them in the nets, I would throw them too hard and they would fly over the concrete buildings.  Also around this time I discovered that there was an invisible energy pathway between small buildings that would turn bluish when you walked on them.

 

Just about the time I was ready to explain these energy pathways to the caveman, a little girl and Marie Gillingham tell me that I need to "move the drill deeper!"  What this meant was that I had to climb back down into that tiny underground space and turn the lever again.  I guess the lever was used to control the depth of some drill inside the hose that went up into the sky.  However, instead of drilling down, we were drilling up into the clouds.  As I protested having to go back down to turn the lever, one of my best friends from my highschool, Derek Whipple, is suddenly next to me.  He came from out of nowhere.

As I still delayed having to crawl down to turn the lever I looked up and saw that the hose had disconnected somewhere above the clouds and was falling down.  I was instantly relieved and I said "This means the lever will be easier to turn right?!"

At that point another man ran up to me.  He looked like a man in his early 40s who had been working in a coal mine and wore big round goggles on his forehead.  In regards to the ease at which I could turn the lever "No, it won't be easy because you still have the head pressure"  Meaning that I still have to fight the pressure of the huge column of water that reached endlessly into the sky.

The guy in my dream was younger, dirtier, sweatier, and much more frantic. 

It was at this moment that the top of the hose had finally hit the ground and along with it came a large amount of water that crashed onto the pavement close to where Derek, Marie Gillingham, the caveman, the little girl, the old worker, and I were standing. I recall hearing someone yell something about eels.  Even in my dream I was puzzled by this concern.  Eels? From water out of the sky?

Right then I looked on the ground and about 20 feet in front of me was a long, slender, shadowed figure.  It sort of hopped out of the darkness and into the light where I could see it, or rather them.  The two dreaded eels that hopped out of the shadow were purple and black, slimy, about 2 feet long, and had faces that looked like my childhood pet wiener dog, Winston.  One of the 'Winston eels' immediately started trying to bite my feet.  I found it very difficult to get away, but at least I had on leather boots that it couldn't bit through.  As I kicked it away Derek picked one up and sort of laughed as it bit his hand.  In real life, Winston was notorious for trying to bite people in the legs!  Also, in high school Derek always liked playing with Winston.

Winston Eel

The only problem was that shortly after being bit, Derek said "Hey, I think they are poisonous."  In addition to being poisonous, I was fairly certain these 'Winston eels' also sucked blood like vampires.  I started to worry how poisonous they were when I woke up.

-Seth