Geek Dreams

Here's an interesting (well, to me) addendum to my recent yammerings about my sleeping habits. This morning (right before I woke up at the Too Damned Early Hour mentioned before) I had one of those dreams that practically screams "you know you've been watching too much television when..."

In my dream, I was watching Farscape, only at the same time I was messing around with my virtual country on the Jennifer Government Nation States website, which I mentioned a couple of posts back. (Interestingly, this immediately struck me as far and away the most implausible element of the dream. My favorite show is on, and I'm allowing myself to be distracted by a silly web game? Please.) Anyway, on the show, Scorpius was droning on with a bunch of exposition about how the Scarrans were going to overrun this planet they (we?) were on, and how terrible that would be and yadda yadda, yadda. Like I said, it was exposition, and it was pretty dull, so I wasn't paying all that much attention to it (in fact, I remember thinking how unusual it was to get boring exposition like that on Farscape). Here's the thing, though: he wasn't doing it on the television. He was actually standing right there in the doorway to the room I was in. For some reason, this did not strike me as the slightest bit strange. In any case, I probably really should have been paying attention, because just then some Scarrans came charging in. (I want to say there were three of them, but I'm not really entirely sure.) By this point, I'd somehow ceased to be me and had instead become John Crichton. I'm not completely sure exactly when that happened. The Scarrans, of course, started chasing me, and I was running from them through the rooms of this big, rambling, dilapidated house. Which was completely pitch dark (I'm not at all sure just when that happened, either). I do remember suddenly realizing that of course Scarrans are going to be able to see in the dark. Not that there was any evidence for that on the TV show, but aren't all monsters chasing you through dark rooms always able to see better than you are? And given my -- er, given Crichton's -- luck, it seemed pretty much inevitable. Oh, yeah, and the entire house was also full of trash. Well, not trash, exactly, but there was all this paper everywhere, like the previous occupants had simply dumped 40 years worth of junk mail and receipts and other assorted paperish debris on the floor. It rustled when I ran over it and stuck to my feet (I guess I must have been barefoot) and slowed me down. I was nevertheless able to run from the Scarrans for a while, but all too quickly I began to sense them getting very close to me. Whether I heard them or felt the heat or what, I couldn't tell you. I just knew. They were practically breathing down my neck, and I couldn't even see them! At this point, I finally began to panic, and I started yelling, in considerable distress and despair, "Scorpius! Scorpius, what do I do?" (Which is certainly something that would disturb me to hear coming out of Crichton's mouth.) He didn't answer me, though. And at that point, I woke up.

Interestingly, I almost never get being-chased-by-monsters dreams, but when I do, they do seem to be TV monsters. I remember dreaming that the Cybermen were after me once.

Man, I'd love to take this one onto Sci-Fi's stupid Dream Team show. "Well, gee, Annabelle and Michael, I think I can actually handle this one myself. See, the Scarrans represent the excutives at Sci-Fi..." Heh. Either that, or there's been some bizarre cosmic wire-crossing and I'm actually getting dreams that were supposed to go to a completely different, completely fictional person...