Dream: Tabletop Camp

I was in a classroom, probably. I don’t think anyone there was human. I don’t think I was even a person present there, I could simply see the classroom as though I were watching it through a screen because I wasn’t actually there.

They were all kids, that’s for sure. Two of them were capable of time travel.

A black-purple squirrel that could go back in time by dancing on a metal fence-gate. And a sort of poorly-built robot costume that has a computer monitor for a head and aluminum foil air duct tubes for arms and legs. This creature could cause the entire timeline to go backwards.

The squirrel and robot had much conflict, though none of them knew it. Neither of them knew that the others were meddling with the timeline, so they were unable to understand why they couldn’t direct the timeline in the way they wanted because they were unaware that they were essentially pursuing a tug-o-war with the timeline.

Why were they messing with the timeline? The class was trying to decide to vote on who to do something nice for.

The squirrel wanted to help a humanoid moose in a red shirt.

But every rewritten timeline ended up with a different person being voted as the person to do something nice for.

Eventually, both time travelers conceded when a female anthropomorphic… I think that’s a goose? Anyway, she convinced the whole class that they should all equally spread their votes amongst all classmates so that literally everyone in the class is equally tied in 1st place and got to do nice things for each other.

Unfortunately, this help never came into fruition. They built some sort of wooden contraption that must have been a living life-sized doll. The doll conspired to escape the classroom by throwing itself into the garbage and never revealing to the classroom that it was alive.

It was eventually thrown away…

I’m driving on the highway on an island that I’ve never been to before and I’m having trouble figuring out which way to drive on each road.

Oh, did you think there would be a transition? This is a dream. Transitions don’t exist.

I drive down the road, only to realize that all the cars are going towards me. I’m going the wrong way on a one-way street.

So I do some radical driving maneuver to spin my car around without stopping, somehow pressing the brake on my front right tire so the car pivots 180 degrees. Then I make my way to another road, this one has too many lanes but is a bridge that drives over an endless ocean.

I’m on the beach and a long-neck sauropod dinosaur is slowly walking towards me from the ocean. First, its head pops out. I think it might be a whale. But then its neck emerges and I think it could be a plesiosaur. Then the rest of the body emerges and it is clearly a sauropod.

Oh, were you expecting a transition from driving to dinosaurs? Don’t expect transitions from here on out.

I start scrambling up a sandy wall because I fear that the sauropod will crush me. Luckily, two other little boys are also climbing this cliff. They make up before me and pull me up. As we lay on the top of the cliff, out of breath, the ground shakes. The sauropod rears up on its hind legs and lands its front feet on the cliff top, pulling itself up as well.

We all rest on the top of the cliff. Me, the two boys, the dinosaur. I get the feeling that we are camping, I hear the voices of men discussing the positions of our camps. We are in the Eastern campsite. And one of the voices recommends registering new campers for the Northwest campsite. The other laughs. “No one ever goes to the Northwest campsite!” He seems to think it is ridiculous that anyone would want to go there.

I slid down the cliff. I don’t remember why. I can’t climb back up. I try so hard, but it’s just impossible to scale a vertical cliff. Some more sauropods are walking this way. I fear I may be crushed. I decided that I can’t go up this way. I need to get out of the way. I tell the boys waiting at the top of the cliff that I’ll come up a different way. There has got to be a more gentle slope than a sheer cliff face.

The sauropod resting on the top of the cliff warns me about the desert. He doesn’t say what is dangerous about it. But I figure that I’ll be fine.

I circle my way to the other side of the cliff where there is sure to be an easier climb. On the path, the sky grows dark. It is night. But something is off.

When I look up, I don’t see stars, but it isn’t quite as dark as I expect it to be. I would expect pitch black, complete blindness, instead, when I look up, I can barely make out objects in the sky. Massive hemispherical objects that remind me of… lampshades.

On the horizon, I can see massive objects in the distance. Are they plateaus? Mesas? Flat topped structures, but I can’t make out any foundation. Are those horizontal platforms just floating  in midair off the horizon? Looking back, it looks just like the cliff I climbed. But that can’t be right. The campsite wasn’t on a floating platform. How could I have climbed it?

As I travel away from the camp and can now see the desert in the distance, things look strange as they are now small. They don’t quite look like the natural features they were up close. As I get near the desert and the other side of the cliff, I can’t find a gentle slope, instead it is a steep hill that slowly slopes down towards the horizon. It seems that on the horizon, the end of the world, the hill is low enough to the ground to climb.

But as I get close, things don’t get bigger. They stay small. I approach the hill and find that I can step up easily. The hill is a tiny lump in the ground. I look up towards the cliff. So far away, though it seems I can reach it in just a few steps.

I’m huge. Massive. Maybe Ant Man and the Wasp rubbed off more than I realized. As I walk towards the cliff, I realize these campsites are actually on tables.  They aren’t floating in the sky, but I didn’t see the legs of the table before. I get close and find myself standing in the middle of many tables, each labeled as a campsite of a different cardinal direction. Strangely, the Northwest table is dark and empty. A tiny coffee table that has nothing of interest on it. The other tables are lit by tiny campfires and flashlights and adorned with tiny tents and forests and hills.

I’m inside a building. The low ceiling lights are off. The walls of this room enclose the area, keeping it in darkness. Who knows whether it is really day or night.

I find the eastern camp easily, with the little toy-sized sauropod laying on it. I walk towards it, suddenly conscious of a problem. I’m massive. I can see what I couldn’t see before. How can I re-enter the world I once knew? I look around as though that would help me discover an answer. Through a doorway, I see the opaque, dark silhouette of a man only slightly taller than me move out of my line of sight. The movement seems sudden. Has he been watching me? Who is he?

I jump up towards my Eastern campsite and wish to forget all I saw before. I’m scared and confused and I just want to return to the campsite. I shrink down to my previous size as I land on the campsite.

The world looks normal again. There are no tables, no lamps, no ceiling, no shadowy figures. But as I rejoin the dinosaur and the two boys, I can’t help but wonder, is that shadowy person watching me again, now that I can’t see him. Does he watch over all of the campers? Why can’t I see the world for what it truly is and how was I able to discover it before?

I’m on the beach again. It’s nearing dusk. My family is going swimming but dusk is a dangerous time to be in the ocean. We keep close to the shore. I’m in a canoe. After watching Jaws during vacation, there is no way I’m putting my foot in the water. A dark shadow moves through the water. I fear it could be a shark but this fish ends up being nothing abnormal or large. Just a small hand-sized fish. My little sisters are playing in the water. I wish they wouldn’t splash so much. I worry it could draw predators. But so close to the shore. They’re practically on the beach. Just a foot or two away they’d be on dry land. It’s so shallow that nothing could possibly reach them there.

The sail of a horse-sized black-blue fish breaches the surface of the ocean in the distant horizon. I panic. “Girls, get out of the water!” They don’t quite understand and take painfully long to get onto the beach. I paddle to the shore so fast that my canoe’s momentum continues up the beach a few feet before it stops. As we look out into the ocean, the little girls notice the sail of the fish and complain about how worried I am over nothing. That creature is so far away, there is no reason to be afraid.

Everytime the sail breaches the water, it gets closer. The little girls start making their way back to the water, but I pull them back. I’m not going to let them get back in the water today. As I pull them back out of the water, the horse-sized sail-fish beach itself onto the shore, flapping its fins wildly, trying to get to us. It’s only a few feet from the water, and is unable to move, but it’s so terrifying. We ran along the beach back towards the road. We’re not going to the beach again after this.

We went to the inn. It’s a wooden beach house with a large basement that is just as full of patrons as the ground floor. Downstairs, there is food and drink being served just like upstairs. My youngest sister is with me. We get food and drinks too. There are two trash cans. One is a trash can, the other is a large cushioned chair that everyone places large objects that they don’t want.

There are abandoned strollers and wheelchairs on this large cushioned chair. We stayed there a long time doing nothing. I was just watching over my youngest sister as she wandered around the basement floor. It was just like the sort of task I would be given to watch over my youngest sister during vacation. It felt like we spent hours doing this. Anyway, eventually I lost track of my youngest sister. I checked all over and spent a great deal of time searching in the cushioned chair underneath strollers and wheelchairs.

I was walking back to the inn from the beach with [Redacted] from the [Redacted] family that lived in the neighborhood across the street a few years back before they moved to Arizona. It was night time. We were walking back like we used to do when we walked back together from school. She is black and wears dark-purple clothes, so I can barely see her at night. Her silhouette against the streetlight lets me know that she is still there. I can’t recall if we had any conversation, but we must have because she gives me an inflatable water slide when we reach the inn. We go to our separate rooms, mine with my family, and hers on a different floor with her family.

Later, I find out that she has a Monster Manual and I want to look at it. The book is dark blue and massive. It’s not like any Monster Manual I’ve ever seen. She asks about how I am enjoying the waterslide, and I admit that I haven’t even used it. She seems disappointed by this.

When I return to my room the next time, the waterslide is ripped apart, and inside are two Monster Manuals just like the one I saw that she had. I realize that the book I saw her carrying was ripped out of this waterslide. This waterslide is made of 3 massive Monster Manuals and she ripped it apart to grab one.

I am the second son to the king. So I always feel like I am getting left out. The heir to the throne doesn’t make it any better. One day, the heir to the throne leaves the castle and walks down the mountain into the city, but he gets lost because he has never been outside the castle. Luckily, a nice anthropomorphic rabbit guides him back. The rabbit helps him at first because it thinks that he is the destined Prague. I don’t know what that means and neither did the heir prince, but the heir prince corrected the rabbit by informing him that he is the heir prince, not the destined Prague.

I don’t want to be left out of this experience so I plan to leave the city as well. The heir prince knows this so he tells the rabbit that I am the destined Prague and that he should lead me further into the city instead of back to the castle.

So when I leave the castle and the rabbit meets up with me, it guides me to a school playground. Which I realize is not the castle and question the rabbit about why I am here.

I am in the school playground with my father. We are here on a group activity. Who knows why, it’s just why we’re here. There is a very dangerous staircase. The hand rail has the poles that hold it up on the outside of it instead of underneath it. So when people run their hand along the pole, they have to move their hand out of the way to continue onwards because there is a pole in the way, lifting the railing.

So why is it dangerous? Because people don’t care about that and run down the stairs at full speed with their hand on the railing, causing their wrist to break off.

Dad warns me to not do it. So I don’t do it. I Don't even touch the rail as I walk down the stairs.

I am walking through the neighborhood with my older sister. There is a busy road that I don’t want to cross because there are so many cars lined up, waiting to cross the intersection. But I need to cross because most of the cars are waiting for me. Some are impatient and passing by anyway, but the longer I wait, the more cars will be waiting for me, and the more impatient they pass and the more dangerous it will get. So I ran across. As I run across, I find myself going up a steep incline and scream out “Caldera!” I don’t think this is a caldera, whatever that is, it’s clearly a mini-volcano. I know this because it erupts and rains down brimstone.

I am back in the campsite with the dinosaur and the two boys, but things are different. The shadowy figure that was watching me knows that I know the truth and wants me gone. I can tell because I can hear the whispering of massive shadowy figures conspiring from all around me. I can’t quite see them, but where they are, the sky seems darker.

A massive wooden pole like a telephone pole is staked into the campground. I know this must be the work of the shadowy figures acting behind the scenes but the boys and the dinosaur don’t seem to care or find it strange. I hear the loud sound of someone ripping out tape. I feel myself being lifted into the air as the yellow scotch tape is lined across the pole and am placed against the tape, unable to move.

This attempt to get rid of me seems overly complicated and ultimately doesn’t work. I think it’s a little girl that climbs up the pole and bites off the scotch tape, freeing me. I fell onwards to the floor. But I grow to a massive size and land on the floor, not the table campsite. The shadowy figures appear to be normal people. The little girl that saved me is also here. The once-shadowy figures flee, escaping down slides to some destinations unknown to me. I go down a slide and the little girl goes down a separate slide.

I find myself in some desert and can’t remember how I arrived there. I travel through the desert, climbing up some hill until I see the location of a local goddess ruling a tiny village.

As I enter the area, I feel myself grow to the massive size that allows me to see things as they really are.

A Door opens and closes, pushing tiny people around at the entrance of the village, preventing any from escaping. Some few do make it out, though they are few and far between.

I turn to the village, and return the small size, seeing things as everyone else sees them. The goddess rejoices at me being a new member of their village. She loves new recruits to her civilization.

I realize that no one here realizes that this woman is a goddess. Though I can sometimes see the truth, she urges souls into creation, into existence. Most come into the world as children, but there is a little girl, is that the same girl that saved me? Who is still  in this sort of pre-life dimension? Sitting at the end of a slide with a bunch of children. The babies slowly waddle out the bottom of the slide into reality, but the little girl has been there so long, she has grown beyond being a baby and is there and unwilling to move into reality. No one is sure why. Not even the little girl. Whenever people ask her, she always just says “I’m waiting.” What is she waiting for? Nobody knows.

When I walk over, her eyes light up. She leaves the slide and eners reality. The local goddess, who was already glad that I joined the village, is now ecstatic that I finally managed to convince this stubborn little girl into entering life. The goddess decides to throw a party.

But the little girl doesn’t seem too happy. She seems stern and serious. She walks up to the goddess and stabs her.

Everyone is shocked, myself included.

The little girl grabs my hand and starts running.

The girl leads me into a forest and warns me that I must not smell the troll or else it will sense us. I’m not quite sure what she means until a hill-sized troll rises from the forest and raises its fists above its head. It brings its fists down upon us and… I entered the village as though for the first time.

Something must have broken when I entered this village. Everytime I die, I enter the village for the first time. The goddess is glad that I have joined her village. I still can’t grasp the strangeness of the entrance being a giant door that I can only sometimes see, a door that opens and closes repeatedly, pushing everyone inside.

Everytime the little girl sees me after I enter the village for the first time, she enters reality. The goddess always tries to throw a party but the little girl always stabs her and leads me towards the forest.

It takes several tries. We usually get farther through the forest each time. I’ve eventually discovered what she means when she says “If you smell the troll, it will sense you, it will know where you are.”

I need to hold my breath while within smelling distance of the troll because if I smell its scent it will know where I am. The troll either has poor eyesight or is blind. It can only pinpoint our location or even know of our existence while we can smell it. Seems like the opposite of smell-o-vision. You’d think it would be the troll detecting us by smelling us, but it is detecting us by smelling it.

We make it past the forest. We are high up on a sandy hill. There are other sandy hills. I get the distinct feeling that these hills are really just furniture, but I can’t quite grasp why I feel this way. I see a familiar looking cliff that is the Eastern campsite that has the two boys and the dinosaur.

I don’t think I ever said this, but the sauropod is a green long-necked dinosaur. Kind of like the dinosaur from the Sinclair gas station. I hear a voice in my mind that the little girl doesn’t hear. The voice says something like “You’re finally here.” I gasp. Big mistake. We are just a little outside of the troll’s smell-radius, but gasping allowed me to smell it anyway, alerting the troll to our location. We try to run, but it smashes us with its fists.

I made it to the end of the forest a few more times. Each time, I hear the voice in my head saying “You’re finally here.” Why do I keep dying? It isn’t the troll getting me anymore, I’ve learned how to get past it without incident most times. Well, the goddess didn’t die. She chases after us in hot pursuit everytime. When she gets close enough, we’re done for. I’m always running, so I’m not facing the goddess to see how she kills us, and I don’t feel anything in this dream so I don’t know what type of pain she would cause to be able to discern the cause of death.

Everytime we get to the end of the forest and hear the voice, we run in whatever direction I choose, though the little girl is always the one that leads. We run through tight maze-like hallways that each are impressively decorated. When we enter a different forest at the bottom of the hill, the walls are covered in wall paper that almost makes it seem like we’re in a forest, but the ceiling and the repeating pattern and equidistant spacing reveal to me that this is a man-made building, not a forest. Sometimes, we run down the canyon, a similar maze of hallways is there as well. I see sand on all sides, but it’s just wallpaper, I know because the dunes and cliffs repeat and are equidistant in their repetition, and there is a low ceiling here as well.

I can never tell just how much the little girl recognizes as fake. I never have time to ask her how much she knows since we are always running, always out of breath. We never have time to plan out routes, we simply pick a random direction and every turn in the maze of hallways.

Sometimes we make as far as a large clock tower… wait a second. I am realizing now that the wooden structure that I call a clocktower, though it doesn’t resemble a clocktower much beyond it having a clock, is actually just a massive grandfather clock with a swinging pendulum and chimes and everything.

Anyway, sometimes we make it to the grandfather clock, clocktower. There, we find a little girl, even younger than the little girl that is with me. The little girl in the watchtower doesn’t move much. She is alive, but she seems in a state of depression and doesn’t respond to anything. A short check of the structure reveals items on top of the clock that don’t belong to a little girl. These are objects like an adult toothbrush, hair brush, shampoo. I know these must belong to her mother because she already has all the toiletries she needs, so these can’t be hers.

On a sandy hill not too far away, there is a god that has only recently shown up in the place. It is known that this god is recent because no stories have come up about being yet.

As I wander through the world, death after death, I slowly hear stories about the gods and goddesses. I know that they can be killed because a meteor killed one because of a war or something. I don’t quite understand why the story of the Northwest god matters. People keep talking about how he died and no god has shown up in his land to replace him yet.

Anyway, on the sandy hill that I can see clearly from the clocktower, there is some multi-armed masked white and a blue large humanoid creature. It is a god of some sort. It’s the new one. We get there every few deaths, but every time we get there, the god there kills us. He is particularly violent, attacking anyone that gets close. I’m not sure how we die, it seems he merely punches us with one of his langly long spider-like arms, but it doesn’t seem like it would be a particularly powerful attack.

A few deaths later, I’ve caught wind of a quest to find a particular god of plants. I think I’ve gotten close a few times because I reached an actual forest a few times, and this forest is at the bottom of the hills, so it’s in the valley, and it has a swing set and playground and massive bulbous flowers. But I can never figure out where to go from there. I hear in my voice the story of the Northwest god every time I get there, so I feel like it’s an indication of progress just like hearing the voice in my head says “You’re finally here.”

I didn’t complete whatever quest I was supposed to complete in this dream because my brother woke me up to type in the password to some computer. That’s the big problem of being in charge of the password for every computer. Then everyone wakes me up to type in the password.

What I’ve realized is that every hill is a piece of furniture. Every piece of furniture is ruled over by a god. Some pieces of furniture have lost their god and are now abandoned, like the Northwest table and campsite.