Travel Woes

It is possible that, yesterday, I had a very strange dream. It is also possible that I considered blagging about it then, but did not. Why? These things are impossible to explain.

Nonetheless.

The story begins as I fly to the East Coast, to visit the inexplicable David Zhang at his Dartmouth-towne. (Why am I doing this? It is not clear; but the visit to Mr. Zhang may have been a side-benefit to the main purpose of the trip.) My trip is, unusually, not on a 747 or similar craft, but rather a smaller plane, a propeller-plane. (Probably inspired by this, which the infamous David Watson showed me.) I am somewhat nervous about travelling on the small plane - perhaps I fear incompetence of the pilot; but I land safely.

There is some difficulty on disembarkation, which I have sadly forgotten, and an issue with a guard of some sort once I get on the road; but these obstacles I surpass. My first stop is not Dartmouth, but an intermediate destination: BotCon. A Transformers convention. Why? Not because I'm into Transformers. Because there's this guy who is, and I want to see if I can meet him while I'm there. (Because I'm a big fan of his stuff.)

Note that this makes no sense for two reasons:

1. BotCon is a convention. Conventions have admission fees. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be willing to pay just to meet the dude.
2. In the post which I think is responsible for this part of the dream - this one - the dude explicitly mentions that the BotCon is on the West Coast. Whereas I, travelling to visit Mr. Zhang, am on the East Coast.

Well, dreams are confused. We move on, and into the Con.

So, I look for the guy. ("Walky", he calls himself.) First I'm stuck in this kind of awkward opening presentation in a big hall with lots of fold-up chairs - it's some kind of toy, I guess, being presented by a white-haired dude. I manage to escape into a back area (sort of a garden-terrace-thing?) and look at Walky's Livejournal on my iPhone, trying to figure out where he is. Turns out that he's co-doing the next presentation, so I head back in, see him on the stage...

I'm going to quote from my notes here.

"Then - monsters."

So, the presentation-hall is now mostly empty, dimly lit with a yellow glow. I'm in a dark corner, hiding - I appear to be Garrett. (No light gem.) This is some kind of tutorial - there's a big rock golem striding along, and then a stretch-cat appears. The stretch-cat stretches into the golem, utterly destroying it. Then it begins jumping onto a sort of tower-thing in a corner. (This is demonstrating for me the moves that I'll have to do later - but I guess I've seen this already, so I don't need the tutorial?) I know that I'll have to fight the stretch-cat later - along with its two brothers - so I start destroying the platforms on which the stretch-cat is jumping, using the Slash power from Okami. (I know that I can destroy them because they're marked with a specific graphic from L4D.)

(Look, you knew that this was a weird dream going into it. More warning than I got.)

Shortly thereafter, I wind up in a confrontation with the stretch-cats, in the area where I was using my iPhone earlier. Their master appears, transforming into one of them, and I get into a very painful fight. One cat stretches at me, and another compresses... it hurts like heck! Great big bruises on my neck, that kind of thing. Thankfully, I win the fight, and continue onward to another presentation.

This one's in the same hall as the first two, which has chairs and people again. (I have no idea who's presenting.) Idly examining myself as I sit, I notice a hole in my jeans. I look closer. There's a hole in my leg.

Rather panicked, I get myself to the infirmary, with help of a person sitting nearby. (Why is there an infirmary? Why is it staffed by a stubble-bearded doctor-guy? I have no idea!) He begins to treat me, but I then realize I need to go to the bathroom. He helps me up and walks with me, but we quickly realize that neither of us know where a bathroom is.

Vaguely guessing, I suggest we go down a ramp to some train tracks. En route, we encounter a pair of girls. They're slightly helpful re: bathroom, and accompany us. This is a procession to find the bathroom. And there's still a hole in my leg.

(Upper thigh. Not sure how deep it goes - was afraid to look. Not bleeding or anything.)

Around this point, I briefly panic. I'm taking this trip on Thursday, and I have a final on Friday! I'm either going to have to take a rather expensive trip back down to college for one day, or fail one of my classes! (Agh!) The doctor reassures me, noting that the final is next Friday. (This makes no sense - I have two finals on the specified Friday, and neither of them are the class I was worried about, Computation Linear Algebra - but it's dream logic, move on.)

We cross the tracks - the doctor and the two girls and I - and begin ascending a set of towers above the tracks. (Why? I don't know!) There's a pair of people standing around, Night Elves, NPCs from World of Warcraft - one of them has a more hostile reputation towards me, because she's part-way Infected...

Look, I don't even play World of Warcraft!

This is about as much of a coherent narrative thread as I can piece together, but there's a few other things that showed up at some point. A very strange narrative about people trapped in a small area of BotCon, surrounded by some sort of biological infection/organism/menace, trying to send off a distress message, but foiled by pernicious and difficult-to-detect failures in their systems, even as the infection draws ever closer... I don't appear in that one as a character, I'm just an omniscient watcher. The other unassociated plot thread is one in which I finally arrive at Dartmouth - I remember little from this one. I'm walking around somewhere with the terrifying Mr. Zhang, possibly lost, again...?

Sometimes, a dream is just so weird that it has to be shared.

I hope you enjoyed this one.

(Even though I'm worried that it says a little too much about me.)