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Vision 1 - The Machine: I wake up. I can't feel my arms and legs. I look at my hands and see crude mechanical manipulators. There is a corpse nearby, broken and bloody. Did I do that? There is shouting outside. I move not because I want to, but because something demands I must. I see another corpse. Some mechanical parts lie on the floor nearby. I know them to be dislodged parts of my hand. I hastily reattach them and pick up the gun nearby, managing to get the jury-rigged fingers around the grip and trigger. The door breaks down behind me and I turn. Bullets slam into my chest. I feel I am required to shoot the... police? Military? They have armoured vests and carry rifles. I refuse, straining against compulsion to drop the gun. I cannot disobey the overarching order to fight. One mechanised punch shatters both forearms of a woman. A knee to the gut almost breaks her in two. A spin and a kick destroys the skull of a man. More bullets hit me. Through the dull thuds of incoming fire, I push out into the corridor. I see a mirror. My face is a mask of steel and cameras.
Vision 2 - The Arcade: I wake up. I see the movie has about an hour left to go but I tire of the violence. I remove the VR set and follow the cheerful, illuminated path into another part of the VR arcade, where I know I will find my girlfriend. She is there. She is playing a colourful fantasy adventure game. It looks like a distant successor to Gauntlet. I join her, choosing to play as the buxom archer. I have some trouble with the adjustment of the VR headset but eventually get it fitting adequately. We play for a while. We flirt. We start getting frisky in-game, our characters neglecting the adventure to pay more attention to each other. We decide to go somewhere private. I move to take off the headset and find I was never wearing one. The world shifts...
Vision 3 - The Laboratory: I wake up. I see doctors drilling into the skull of the woman in front of me and installing silver cables into the hole. There is pressure on top of my head, then it eases. A doctor smiles and tells me my neural interface is good and ready to go. He explains that I may experience some disorientation as the artificial memory syncs with my organic memory and creates a backup. My vision swims.
Vision 4 - The Monster: I wake up. I see a nervous man removing something mechanical, slick with gore, from my head and neck. He is being watched by a group of others in dirty lab coats, all in a similar state of worried anticipation. He says to them that the subject should regain some cognition and former memory. I turn my head and see myself in a reflective surface. I am a monster, a parody of humanity in bloody sinews and muscles arranged almost at random. A few strips of half-melted skin are stretched across my head and torso. I move, pulling myself out of my restraints. The people in the room scream and flee. One hand comes off and I ignore it. I feel no pain, only a dull absence. I stumble - half-run and half-shamble - to a window and smash into it, breaking the glass and falling. The street below is a ruin, full of abandoned cars and trash. There are figures ahead. I know I must escape them. They come after me, in many different shapes yet all like me in their hideous nature. I hear their voices in my head: "You killed her! You gave her to the beast! You did this to us!" I flee past something that might have once been a dog. Its two eyeless, skinless heads gnash at the air. I reach some stairs and something grabs my leg. I feel an impact on the back of my skull.
Vision 5 - The Temple: I wake up. The world around me is organic, a living place, yet ordered and tidy. The walls are formed not from stones but from cells made large and hardened. I follow a long path for what seems like weeks, maybe years. It varies little. I need no drink or food. I keep walking. I follow a spiraling path upward and come to a vast temple sculpted from bone and meat, yet it is beautiful. I walk across the keratinous courtyard and see a figure, faintly glowing. It is a man, naked, yet noble in bearing. His skin is an even red, and he has several long tentacles hanging down from his head and back, waving gently and soothingly. He hovers in the air before me and glows. I feel kindness and compassion radiating from him. He speaks to me: "I am the last man. I stand vigil over where the minds of humanity rest in a shared dream. You have suffered too long. Join them, and be at peace."
Vision 6 - The Room: I wake up. I get out of bed and have a shower. I lie naked on the floor of my room for a while. I get up and get dressed, then post about my nightmare on the internet.
This is really good stuff.
I hate dreams like those... Never know if I've actually woken up or not as my day goes on. It's why I hate sleep.
Especially when you dream about your own death at least ten times in ten different ways in a single night... Only to wake up and find out you've only been out for three hours.
Seriously.... How do you deal with that whole "dream in a dream" crap? Best I got is try to go back to sleep at some point and make sure when I "wake up" it's real that time...
Though, posting on the internet helps. I don't think I can come up with some of the stuff people here say, lol. Of course, if I start watching cat videos, then I get suspicious... -_-.
There were about ten to fifteen fleeting, vague segments interspersed throughout the main five I remember. There was one where I was in a theatre, unable to move, staring at nothing but static for an indeterminible length of time.
Huh. For some reason I thought this thread was a lot older. Reposting to say that I'm a fan of Satoshi Kon's work. In ridiculously belated hindsight, I think that comes out here quite obviously.
Some people have all the coolest dreams. All I get is seeing a doctor because of all the squirrels in my room.
{Visions}
Wait -- you sure this was just a dream?
:-)