I was in the "Goblin's Folly" museum, which paid tribute to the short story that I had MSTed several years ago. Apparently, the original story had won such widespread notoriety that people started to write satirical fanfiction using its characters. Over time, the stories became serious and an entire universe was created to support the characters and plotlines. The museum lobby started with the original story printed on huge posters and hung from free-standing boards, much like at science conferences. After this initial part, you crossed a bridge, and to both sides were life-size replicas of portions of the story world, with a castle on the left and a village on the right. The first floor was one large room, so when you crossed the bridge, you were at another long setup of posters, this time with the early fanfiction. Off in the corners, you could see that the museum was being rented out to biotech companies, as there were ads on the boards and vendor booths to the side. Down the stairs were the latest stories, all very serious and of rather high quality. There was small table displaying a satirical history of the original story, including asking for people to MST it. I was really upset that they had completely left mine out of the museum.

The basement of the museum suddenly became the basement of a good friend (no one in real life), and it was really lavish. He was showing us around, and even the guest bedroom had a giant two-wall aquarium with dozens of fish. The beds were elegant and there was a full entertainment system on the wall in front of them.

As I turned to head back upstairs, I realized that I was in a life-sized video game. Everything looked real, but I knew that I and my friends had superpowers that would come out looking like those old Final Fantasy games from the 80s. The three people in my group were cartoon characters from Doraemon (which I've been watching quite a bit of in real life in Cantonese on YouTube), including Doraemon himself. In a room just off the stairwell was a giant monster that resembled the ogre from Lord of the Rings. We took turns firing our weapons at it and dodging its shots, and it took nearly everything we had to defeat him. After a long rest to recharge, we started up the stairs. From that point, we could see down into the adjacent room, and another ogre was coming down a second set of stairs in the back. So we quickly rushed down and dispatched it, only to see two more ogres headed our way, and we didn't have time to recharge. In any case, we had barely made it out the last two times using everything we had. So Doraemon thought for a long time and suddenly struck on an idea. He took out the flying propellers that you put on your head (it's in the show) and we all started dropping large rocks on the ogres. I have no idea where we got the rocks from, but all of a sudden we were out of the basement and flying through the air above the neighborhood. One of the group was attached to the rope at the bottom under Doraemon, and got flown (comically) into electrical wiring.

Suddenly I was in a bakery in Hong Kong, sitting at the front counter where three young women were rolling dough and selling goods. The shop was square, but the steel counter bent off to the right where a number of flour-covered men in chef hats were busy. As I sat and listened to the girls, I could tell two of them were Americans from the accent in their Cantonese, and later they started speaking in perfect English. So I found out the shop had hired them recently, and I started thinking that I'd like to make a little money while I was there. I asked one of the chefs, a young guy with typical blue collar Hong Kong features, if I could do some odd jobs around the place for the two weeks I would be in the country. It marked the first time I can remember that I spoke in full Cantonese in a dream. I kept asking even though he kept saying no, until I said I'd really be willing to do anything, no matter how small ("sup sup suy suy") just to gain some experience. Then he called over the owner, who laughed and said he had the perfect job for me. The young guy laughed as well when the owner told me I'd be washing everyone's jeans. Somehow I knew that the owner was running an illegal horse racing ring, and that washing the jeans would mean smelling horse manure for hours. So I said come on, I'm on to you. Give me something else.

Then I was driving a large SUV through my old neighborhood in Naperville with the young chef in the passenger seat. I headed straight for one of the houses opposite from mine, and he started yelling that I wasn't going to be able to stop in time. I very calmly hit the brakes as the SUV crunched into the side of the house, leaving a huge dent in it. I then veered off and slammed into my next-door neighbor's house, caving in the front, before doing the same to the side of my family's place. I jumped out and went in to where I had lived ten years ago in real life (though it seemed recent in the dream) and went upstairs. I explained to my sister that I was very tired and just wanted to wake up from this dream already. So I lay down on my old bed, closed my eyes, and did just that.

posted by Larry at 10:42 AM