it has totally faded out. I did not write it down quickly enough. but I was dreaming, about a gathering in a large house around a long rectangular table, and someone challenging me to a duel, and rapiers being involved. lighting... was like batman returns. that is the way my life is lit.

it was very tense, but relaxing at the same time, becuase it was so familiar. yes, this is a dream I have had many times, or the environment of the dream has recurred over and over. yes, yes, this is what happens. I wondered why I did not recall it before. I was happy I would get to write it here.

then I woke up and there were ants and dogs and humans.

we were arrayed inside a building, waiting for a raid. we could see them outside, preparing to come in the door. they were in suits. the building decor was mostly white. I was on the upper balcony, peering out through the front door from behind the bannisters. one guy, leading them but not in charge? I knew him, anyhow. he was thin, with dark hair and a skinny dark tie.

they were obviously ready to come in. I got tired of waiting. I grabbed a silver gun from the person next to me, and sighted, and fired. the result sort of spun lazily around. it was a flare gun but shot little flares. the guy laughed at me. disgusted, I got my own gun, sighted, and fired. the bullet punched through the glass without shattering, and hit him in the lower left side. he looked up at me, annoyed but apparently not wounded terribly. must have had a vest on.

the first part of the dream is very badly faded. I was living in a coastal town and working with people who had beeen mindwiped. I was trying to get them to overcome the wipe. one of the guys had been a punter in college, and he intimidated me. his post-wipe name was something french like "reloux".

one of the other guys was someone I had worked with in the past, and I was sad this had happened. I dubbed him "redoux" but this didn't really jog his memory. there was a confrontation in front of a chain link fence during which I admitted the punter guy had always intimidated me.

afterwards we were supposed to go work in this house near the ocean. actually it was a house I had dreamed about before.

then in the second part of the dream I had to go to the doctor, and it didn't do any good. and the rest of the dream was far more clear.

I was living in a big house, with plaster walls and panelling that came halfway up. I forgot what that sort of decor is called. old. anyhow the plaster part of the walls was textured, and much painted.

I was there with karine and mo, and this part of the house was dark, ill-lit, with no windows. there was a hallway with yellowy lights, that led back from the front rooms and then took a left turn. it almost had a hotel-like feeling. I got it in my head that I was painting the plaster part.

I got all the paint together and a roller with a long handle. I had to paint the ceiling first and got the roller wet before I remembered something. I leaned the roller against the moulding at the bottom of the plaster part (I REALLY can't remember the name of it, it bugs me) and it left a pink mark.

mo had cautioned me on the paint colour - I guess the big house was jointly owned by a bunch of us - and now I saw it on the wall, she was right. it was a pink slightly darker than pepto-bismol. I was sure I wanted the walls that colour, still, but seeing it on the moulding pissed me off (I wanted it creme) and also made me wonder if perhaps painting the ceiling that colour was a bad idea.

I was in my living room, but it was much more sparesely furnished than it is now. I had a friend there. he was very young, and filipino, and had a bandana around his head. he was sitting at the end out the couch towards the door. there was a lot of street work going on outside.

I went outside and spoke to one of the men, then came back in. the queen is coming, I told my friend. she is coming to visit, and to personally thank you for your contribution. as I said it I realized that most of the streetwork was tv crews laying the yellow-and-black cables necessary to accomodate their uplinks.

my friend was alarmed, in the way clandestine operatives get alarmed by official acknowledgement. I will be ineffective if people know who I am, he said. it will be ok I replied... although with the TV crews I was startiing to have my doubts.

I was staying in some hotel with a lot of royals. I don't know how I fell in with them, but I was formally a guest of theirs. their view of the world was interesting. at one point I looked at a panel that concealed a lot of different safes. each one had a 1/4" hole drilled in it. as if it was common for guests and servants to at least make the attempt. I waited until a good time, and tried it too, but all I succeeded in doing was clearing debris from the hole.

the floor below where we were staying had a gym. I really felt the need to work out, and a lot of the royals who were teens / 20s did too. I thought I would go to the gym and one of them mentioned how sad it was that it would not Do for them to be seen in a place where regular folk changed their clothes or were taking sauna.

at some point I left and was in an urban environment. I went to my loft, which I shared with one other person. there was a storefront too. when we got there the store front had been taken over by images and advertising for star wars III - all this stuff with darth vader and a volcano and weird heavy space-like mechanics and posters.

I was seated at a round table, in a rather dim room. there was a light over the table, hanging form the ceiling. at the table with me were cynsa and mo. cynsa said to me, wouldn't it be neat, if the way [some unremembered work problem solution] it could be extended, was to have the numbers be fully imaginary? that would be so fucking cool. mo was not impressed. I could tell where cynsa was coming from, and understood her fascination, or rather the reason behind it, her lack of understanding of higher math and why someone missing that knowledge would be think that the attribute of coolness would belong to inmaginary numbers. it was spoken like a true science fiction fan.

I tried to think of a way to explain, and started out saying I studied imanginary numbers in college... and then I paused, thinking, this is not the correct terminology. I looked at mo, and just as I was about to corrrect myself and say it, she said, complex analysis. I went on to explain that no matter how you extend the numberline, you do not hit imaginary numbers.