A Dream

My dream last night was something of an epic.

When I "woke up", I found myself in a small ward in a hospital. This ward only had three beds in it. I was in one, the one to my left was empty (freshly vacated) and the one to my right had a seven-year-old girl in it. (I later found out the girl's name was...something starting with T. This dream had a weird trend of having everyone's name be a body part, so I'm guessing she was either called Thigh or Tibia.)

The door to my ward was locked, so I didn't have much to do. I woke Tibia, who didn't really say anything. I recall saying something to her along the lines of "I'm glad you're alright." Kind of weird, considering I didn't feel like I was supposed to know her. The ward door opened by itself (must have been past lights-out hours) so I took her hand and walked out. She seemed unsteady, so I tried my best to keep her up.

I had a conversation I don't remember, talking to one of the hospital staff who I think told me the girl's name. That's about when I suddenly flashed do a different point in time.

I was in a bus or something, in the middle of a church parking lot. The only people in the bus were myself and two other passengers, no driver. A large vehicle (a van or something) slams into the side of the bus where all three of us are sitting. The bus is pretty much totaled (somehow) and I find myself on the outside. My first instinct upon gaining control of myself is to run into the bus and grab the other two passengers. As soon as I've done that, I suddenly wonder where Tibia is. I take the van that crashed into us (which has no driver and is in perfect shape) and drive back to the hospital where I was before.

I don't recall if the orderlies and hospital staff helped me find this or not, but my search for Tibia eventually leads me to a strange room on the top floor. On one side of the room are 15 reclined dentist chairs (sans dentist equipment), each one with a teenage girl sitting on top. These girls are wearing pretty much bare minimum of clothing. They all appear to be doing some kind of breathing exercise.

On the other side of the room is a long narrow hallway with a bullseye painted on the end, and one girl is standing there with a gun in her hand and a doctor next to her taking notes. The girl isn't holding the gun correctly at all, and in fact pulls the trigger with it pointing almost 180 degrees from where the target is. Thankfully, it's not loaded. I learned that this is some kind of "genetic memory" test.

Since nobody in the room's watching me, I start poring through the files. The test is supposed to be determining who in the room has retained the knowledge of using firearms from their mother's genetic imprint. I thought it was a bit weird, myself, until I looked at the chairs again and saw Tibia there, now ten years older than when I last saw her. Seeing her like this triggers a bizarre flashback that I'm pretty sure I was not present for.

It feels like it's 1940's Russia, and I'm running through snow, and I've taken the hand of a girl who looks a lot like Tibia. She has a gun in her other hand (a Tokarev, I think) but it's out of ammo. She asks me when we'll "get there" - I have no idea what she means but I say something and she seems to accept the answer. Then I realize she called me "Knuckle." Huh?

I flash-forward to the hospital, still staring at Tibia, and my reflex at this point is to grab her and go. I ask the doctor if he minds if I take her, and surprisingly he offers no resistance. But first, I want to see how she fares at this test, so I pull a revolver from...somewhere...and place it in her hand. She immediately turns to the target and points it straight at the bulls-eye, but then I see her look of fear as she does so, then immediately she lowers the weapon. The doctor noticed this and he wants Tibia back, so I grab her hand and we run for the exit. Orderlies are trying to stop us, but we're too fast. Tibia's got my gun, still, but she's not using it. Apparently she doesn't want her genetic memory taking over.

I'm grabbed by someone. It's the doctor from the test room. He reaches for my face, in that slow doctorly manner, but I elbow him in the gut and break from his grip. Then, I hear the first words Tibia seems to have ever spoken: "Let's go, Knuckle!" They're the words of a broken voice that hasn't spoken in years. We make our escape together and I come to learn that Tibia isn't just her mother's daughter, she's a near exact replica of her, as part of a genetic memory experiment in which the genetic memory is almost the only memory she's got. I don't know how they managed it, but this is about where the dream ended for me, which sucked because I wanted to learn more.

Whatever the case though, this'd be an awesome plotline for an Assassin's Creed sort of game. (Maybe if I did away with the body-part names.)

Posting From Some Guy's MY Netbook

This post is being typed from my living room, with no wires attached whatsoever, leeching wi-fi from one of my neighbors (which Windows 7 tells me their router has not even been set up), and I've suddenly run out of ideas for how to end this sentence. Blasted writer's block.

So I've got myself a new netbook - a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012, courtesy of T-Mobile for almost nothing. It means more monthly fees than usual, since I now have (limited?) 3G access (best not to tempt fate though; I'll only use the 3G support if I need it and can't get wi-fi...the terms were slightly unclear over how much I'd get and how much I'd be charged). But in the long run, this costs me vastly less than buying a netbook from Newegg (whose cheapest model is $280).

I'm pretty happy with the hardware, given that it runs Doom quite nicely, and seems to have little problem with OpenGL and Direct3D-based stuff (I bet I could probably run some of my Steam games on here, but again, I'd rather not tempt fate). The one problem: the default operating system is Windows 7 Starter. Which means I get none of the awesome features, and more importantly, I can't change the bloody wallpaper.

Not to worry though. I'll be sticking a more advanced version on here at earliest convenience. (Or I'll Hackintosh it. Or I'll just put Ubuntu or something on it.)

Well, [Insert Swear Word Here]

I spent most of yesterday getting a new desk into my room. This meant leaving my computer unhooked most of the day. Well, big mistake; by the time I had the new desk in and my computer connected to the 'net again, I saw an email from iMatchSkills (my unemployment office's job searching service) that told me a temp agency was looking for people like me.

By the time I'd received this email, said temp agency had already closed for the day. I left them a voice mail and waited.

Today comes around and no reply from the agency. I call them again to find that I was just half an hour too late. They'd already filled their quota for employees just before closing yesterday.

I checked the date on my email message. It came just after noon, meaning that the time I spent moving a god damn desk into my room has actually cost me a job.

Catch 23: The Sequel to Catch 22

A lot of paradoxes are getting in the way of my getting a job.

First, I have no car. I can't buy a car because I have no income. I was offered a job last week that required me to be able to drive a car, as the hours were late enough that public transit was not an option. Well, I have no license, as I don't own a car. And I have no income to buy a car because I don't have a job, and I don't have the job because I don't own a car.

Second, I need a college education. I can't justify going to college because I would need a student loan. I don't want a student loan because I'd end up having to pay it when I get out of college, regardless of whether I have a job or not. College would stop my unemployment benefits (as far as I've read), and in today's Oregon job market, I have no guarantee whatsoever that having a college degree would actually help me get a job. I know at least a few people with college degrees that still can't get a job, not because they lack a degree, but because they're overqualified.

And then there's the eternal conundrum of how often is too often when making follow-up calls for applications or interviews. If I don't call back my prospective employers, they'll forget about me. If I do call them back, I often get the "don't call us, we'll call you" speech. I can't win.

Malachai VS Psychic Boat

A stay at Mal's place caps off with the two of us tag-teaming through the first level of Crysis on Delta difficulty. Delta doesn't make things a hell of a lot harder than Easy in my opinion, but our conditions of tag-teaming dictate that if either player dies, the other takes control.

Making our Cloak-abusing adventure extremely difficult is a certain boat that happens to know exactly where you are whenever you have to switch the cloaking device off to recharge your suit energy. We dubbed the boat Psychic Boat, and it soon became our mission to take the damn thing out at all costs, as not only had Psychic Boat managed to kill the both of us three times in the same area, it also had the uncanny ability to not only pick out protagonist Nomad's position with frightening accuracy and be able to get several good hits with its machine gun, numerous times leaving Malachai's health in the single digits.

It took us roughly one hour to get around the peninsula to a dock which Psychic Boat frequented. My advice to Mal was to just full-auto them with the totally-not-AK-47, as at this early stage of the game, we lacked any explosive ordinance. A quick bullet-hosing of Psychic Boat only served to draw its fire, causing Mal to retreat into the dock house to recharge. Quickly he gathered his thoughts, reloaded, and peeked out again, taking a few quick shots at Psychic Boat's equally-psychic gunner, disabling the boat's effectiveness at sniping with machine gun fire.

With our arch-nemesis out of the picture, the level got a hell of a lot easier. And incidentally, only after capping Psychic Boat did we finally find grenades.