Guest Post - The One With The Rabbit Possession

Guest dream by my partner and co-adventurer - The One With The Rabbit Possession

Guen and Greg had been invited to a meeting in a countryside inn. The building was a squat, two-storey block, whitewashed and set slightly into a steep hillside in the middle of nothing but farmland. The inside was over-decorated with chintzy knick-knacks, floral plates and teacups and the like and filled with the sort of quiet regulars that you might expect in an out-of-the-way country pub.

 

The meeting they’d been summoned to was less ordinary. The Doctor and all of the past and present companions had been invited to council in the Inn’s saferoom. And some safefroom it was: The mirrored walls were feet thick and without windows, the door was impenetrable, thick and armed with a very solid lock. In the centre of the room was a long oval table, around which were seated many of the companions including Greg and the ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston).

Before the meeting was started, Guen remembered something she had left in the front rooms of the Inn and went to retrieve it. Almost immediately after she had left the room one of the companions that she did not recognise, a good looking, shorter man, with a tanned face and strong black hair rose and addressed the assembled group.

                “I will now seal the room” – He told them, and the group took their seats so the secret and protected meeting could begin. But the tanned man stepped out of the room completely and slammed the door closed.

Watching from a distance, hidden by other inn guests, Guen watched him lock the door* securely and felt cold dread. The doctor and the companions were trapped in a cell designed to withstand any attack and their jailer was walking off scott free.

But she didn’t have time to do anything about it right now, the other inn guests were behaving weirdly. Guen raced back to join a friend she’d made, a younger blonde girl. Never having been a companion, the girl had not been in the meeting and was now silent and afraid: The pub goers were possessed and their behaviour was changing rapidly and becoming more and more hostile. Guen grabbed her hand and they fled the front rooms.

The pair raced along the balcony that skirted the building, many, many metres off the ground**. The possessed mob tried to grab at them through the windows and Guen and the girl fought them off with planks of wood.

Finally, they scrabbled up onto the roof-top garden of the inn but the horde has found a way up there as well. But, here they changed. Their attack stopped and, although still trying to nibble and nip the other girl, they began to attempt to lick Guen on the hands and on the shins.

At this point the tenth Doctor appeared, and seeing through the change of behaviour of the dangerous guests he said “It’s OK now. They’re all possessed by the soul of your dead rabbit."

And, with that assurance in mind, Guen woke up.

*I hope it was wood – Sonic doesn’t do wood.

 **Many, many metres up on a two storey building – Tardis Inn much?

The One With With The Odd Stereotypes

Walking home. Nothing exciting. Just starting to get dark. There's a march happening in the city centre. Students or something, campaigning for or against something, very worthwhile, I'm sure.

One thing I am paying attention to is Guen's dress. It's black with tiny blue flowers on it. Very floaty, but fitted at the waist. Perfect for a warm summer evening.

Dribs and drabs of post-march...er...marchers, wonder past us carrying rolled-up banners under their arms, plus or minus face paint.

One particularly vocal lady with close-cropped blonde hair, in scruffy cargo/jean things with a dark grey t-shirt filled with with rather too much belly and showing the faded black and white logo of some chick-rock band or other, is attempting to stir the dissent of her two marching sisters who were regarding her with more and more embarrassment as the trio walk past us.

I don't remember the exact wording other than "Worthless Scum", but the sentiments stuck with me, in her mind not only were men the root of all evil, but their monuments should be torn down, pictures of them torn up and all women who had ever loved or lusted after one exiled from society. Her marching sisters were less than convinced and moved like people torn between supporting their friend and distancing themselves from a noisy lunatic. The trio disappear from view.

Lovely.

Arm in arm, Guen and I turn a corner to walk through the double-doored "airlock" into the shopping centre which constituted part of the walk home. It was a pair of doors that worked as a valve, only opening inwards so as to control the flow of people in the centre. Trying to make the airlock look less sterile the mall had put a couple of large pot palms in the ocrners and painted a deep dark red onto the walls. One of which currently prevented the backward escape of the two moderates, being verbally pinned up againste it and yelled at by their portly, blond-cropped comrade.

She wasn't happy. Her chubby cheeks blotched red with fury. She was livid that ladies weren't siding with her. I *can't* imagine why, thought I to myself as I strode ahead of Guen to open the door at the far end for her. As I hefted the door open I turned to look back and my blood ran cold.

The blonde mentalist had a pair of kitchen scissors open and was pressing one blade to her friend's throat while swinging another blade around in a dangerously confined space. Guen was trapped between the closed "In-Only" outside door and a knife wielding lunatic. Knowing I couldn't reach her or reason with the lunatic, I leaned past the inner door and shouted for help.

Hearing the shouts, three heroic girls came running. All tall, athletic and courageous they pushed past me. One wasted no time subduing the assailant, her dark skin, obvious musculature and rampant black hair a stark contrast to the the pale-skinned corpulence topped with a yellow buzz-cut. The other two went to help the two other marchers, while I went to retrieve Guenevere, who'd tried to hide behind a 5ft palm.

Huge, brown, worried eyes peered at me as I uncovered her face from behind a protective mop of hair.

A stark image to wake up with... 
     

The One With The Pearlised Urchins...

Right, once again, quick as I can. This time I have to go get on my bike for a couple of hours, but I have time enough to write this out, I think. I'll lop off the beginning, which is pretty unintelligible and I think may be leftover chaos from an earlier dream.

The One With The Pearlised Urchins

The internal conflict was raging, but I didn't say anything. Not that it mattered, Guen had seen my expression and "suggested" we head back home, quietly guiding me away before I either punched the guy or jumped in the boat to capsize it or bought his entire stock. Neither of us were sure which I would have done.

The guy, a tanned boat-dweller with tattered trousers held up with string, had a small wooden boat and an obvious skill for free-diving. The evidence was a collection of 8-10 GLORIOUS marine gastropods from the reef. Vast and baroque Queen conchs, spiny spider shells and massive tritons amongst others more incredible than I could name. Just one of them was worth hours spent studying it.

They were alive, constantly trying to haul themselves upright and off the boat and the adjacent dock. But every time they a grip the boat-man would jab them with a blade to make them retract their foot and their movements were getting slower and weaker as they ran out of oxygen.

You can see why Guen hauled me away.

We wondered back to the house that the family was renting. A light coloured American style beach-house with three storeys and a porch large enough for 10 to dine around a long table. I sat on a white-cotton-covered double in the front-most top-floor room, feeling a mixture of guilt that I hadn't acted and guilt that I'd felt it was my right to dictate how this man made his living. Guen, probably to distract me, pointed out a number of interesting bikinis wondering by on the beach below and we sat enjoying the warm breeze blowing through the open, circular windows and admiring the beach population's many ways of filling swimwear.

Guen's distraction tactics have never failed and we returned downstairs to find that the younger members of the present family, that being Chris and Lucy, Lauren, Flo and Ben had gone down the beach a little to swim where the shingle turned to sand. After aiding my father and grandfather with some quick repairs to the VW Camper that my grandparents had arrived in, Guen and I set off in pursuit.

(Art by the talented: Declan O'Doherty at http://declanod.wordpress.com/)

While walking along I saw a dog playing with a whelk, the size of a shoe. It was old and dead and beaten by the waves. I re-considered the man in the boat. All of the shells were going to die anyway. They were all huge adults that had done their breeding. Why not die and leave a beautiful shell for study and admiration instead of dying to leave a knackered-out piece of CACO3 for the dogs to run after? But I just couldn't agree with him.

Just as we reached the shingle/sand transition I noticed tiny shining coins on the floor. Bending down for a closer look, they were circular fragments of urchin shell, but shining with the opalescent hue of mother-of-pearl nacre. Incredible! No urchin in the world makes mother-of-pearl! What on earth was going on?

Just then, I looked up, I'd heard Chris call my voice from the middle of a water fight between him and Ben, while Lauren, Flo and Lucy looked on in that faux-unimpressed way that women can get during a water-fight. The fight ended and Chris waded over while Guen and I dropped our clothing by theirs.

When he got to me, he handed me something. A tiny piece of urchin shell about the size of a postage stamp.   -  "I found this and thought you might find it interesting" He said. "I didn't know urchins made pearl..."

And there, right there in my hand, was the answer to my quandary: The shells in the boat belonged to their wearers and we had no right to them. But also, we had no need of them. A tiny broken fragment could hold scientific curiosity, artistic wonder and emotional resonance, all in a tiny package that would be missed by no-one.

The One With Lieutenant-Commander Doig...

...was one of three dreams I remember from last night. I have about a 4/10 on detail for all of them, so, I'll give you a quick run-down of the other two and then a bit more detail on the last one (which, chronologically, occurred in the middle).

The One When I'm Sherlock Holmes - Very simple premise: I am Sherlock Holmes, played by Benedict Cumberbatch and a fantastic grey greatcoat with slightly darker grey scarf, and I am fleeing hostile gunmen down back alleys. An unbroken line of sight means my untimely demise due to lead poisoning. Simple. Chuck into the mix the standard dream-type lack of running ability and alleyways filled with time consuming tangle-type obstacles and you've got a pretty archetypal running-the-fuck-away type dream.

The One with M. Night Shyamalan - Was short and intense. It was set in the hallway at the base of the stairs at my Mum's house in Basinstoke, where my mother the inventor (IRL) had called in the help of M. Night Shyamalan the next-door neighbour and also inventor (not-IRL) to go over some plans for a child's buggy (stroller for our USAsian pals) which had to be made of a gel. After a little use of Wikipaedia, I pointed out that gel could be any of a number of substances and didn't have to be standard Jelly (USAsian: Jello). My mother agreed, stating quite plainly that the "Buggy didn't have to be transparent". Well, *OBVIOUSLY!*. But MNS disagreed. Insisted that we stick to the oldschool and use Jelly. Argument ensued. I poked him with a 2H (4H possibly?) pencil, which I'd sharpened for sketching out buggies, but the lead was off-centre and that had annoyed me. Drew blood. Woke up.

Which brings us to the One With Lt Cdr Doig - Setting: Royal Naval Base - 2035 (ish). All warfare and peacekeeping missions are done by drones (aerial and land-based) controlled remotely from a command centre in the UK. I passed-out of the cadets to a placement in Drone-Control (DC) due to quick reflexes and lateral thinking. On this day, I have advocated that a group of cadets be allowed a single days observation privilege in DC to inspire them to continued excellence in the academy.

Needless to day, all does not go as planned. The group of cadets are late, poorly turned-out and do not listen attentively as the Commodore IC (played by Mr Ralph Fiennes) reels off an inspirational less than 2 metres from them. One of them, acting on a severe and obvious hangover (and being played by my cousin Erica. Sorry Erica) goes to far as to vomit within inches of the Cdre's incredibly shiny shoes.

All eyes are now on me, as my suggested group visit rapidly descends into chaos. The cadets are wandering all over DC, playing with controls, getting in the way, breaking things. As more and more officers are taken from their posts to control the unruly youths, more and more drones in the field will be going dead or unresponsive.

Which wouldn't be a problem, normally: They can be put onto auto-pilot. But one of them, an exceedingly difficult station being run by Lt cdr Doig mission (I can't remember if it was a very powerful drone, or a very delicate mission) can't be left unattended. And with a fire now having broken out and ASBO-Youf running riot, the long-legged and very-beautiful Lieutenant-Commander Doig (played, in full-uniform, by my stunning house-mate Guen) has been forced to abandon her post.

Not a problem, think I, jumping into the nearest seat with a terminal. The system is set up so that any terminal can be used on any drone. You use a program something like a browser to select the link that opens a pop-up window and control the drone from that pop-up.

But, unfortunately for me, Lt-cdr Doig is a very competent programmer, she's written an embedded executable onto "her" drone's control page, which hijacks my terminal and starts to re-configure all of the settings to her preferences. Screen colours and contrast, cursor speed and control aspect ratio. The mouse changes to black cross-hairs. Very accurate, but not very visible. The UI is now yellows, oranges and ochres. The information scroll rate is *far* higher than I can process and every time I try to change a setting back to something I can understand, the executable auto-heals. A very clever, time-saving move in a crisis where she is forced to act from another terminal, but very difficult for me to control the tense situation developing on the other end of the line. So, tense, in fact, that I woke up.