Dream Diary: Of Alien Pharaohs and Human Rebels

My dream last night:

A people, who are not of our kind, have arrived to invade Earth. Their origins are unknown to me, but they wear pharaonic garb so I shall refer to them as the Pharaohs. Among the humans, a small revolutionary movement has developed. Their work is made doubly difficult, for in addition to the Pharaohs, Earth is also occupied by undead. The undead eat any creature whose body emits heat. They live in underground tunnels, each inside its own cocoon, emerging from their cocoons at very regular intervals to sense around their general area for body heat. When they sense body heat, they leave the warmth of their cocoon to hunt the nearby creature and eat it. When they do not sense heat, they go back into their cocoon to hibernate until the next food-sensing time arrives; less than an hour away.

Among the human rebels was a female scientist. I partially watched this dream through her eyes. She discovered that the Pharaohs had widely distributed canisters that had the potential to destroy all. She knew that if she could find a way to remove the effect of these canisters that she could possibly spoil their evil plot to take over Earth.

Flash-forward to another point in history a long time in the future: This same woman stumbles on a strange canister that was buried underground and has a flash of a memory as if from another life. Something inside her tells her that in times long gone, the fact that this canister was buried underground saved the world.

Flash back: Scientist lady gets a sudden déja-vu feeling that she has seen these canisters before, perhaps in another life or in another time. She realizes that she is on the right track and that, even though she is not sure why, if she buries the canisters in the undead tunnels the world will be saved.

But she must first know the undeads’ food-sensing schedules. She cannot go underground when an undead is out of its cocoon or she will be sensed and attacked for feeding. She finds an underground cocoon. It is large and dangles from the top of a tunnel, holding onto a piece of earth at its top. She somehow manages to gather a general understanding of this undead’s schedule. The undead emerges from its cocoon, senses for body heat, finds none, and so slithers back into the warmth of its fuzzy home. The scientist scurries down into the depths of the tunnels, knowing she has little time before the undead re-emerges to hide the canister in the far depths of the tunnel.

She repeats this process time and time again as she manages to get hold of more canisters. Every canister is hidden in a different tunnel.

Flash to view the scenes of this dream from the eyes of another. It’s a strange creature; human but not. She has the head of a human, the emotions and thoughts of a human, yet the rest of her body is that of a spider: a head lying on top a small body from which emerge eight very long and thin legs. Has radiation from the canisters changed her this way? I do not know but I speculate. Spiderlady knows the undeads’ schedules too. After one has just emerged she scurries down deep into the tunnel. She knows something lies there far beyond the reach of the undead’s heat sensors. It is a dying, rotting octopus. Spiderlady is hungry and eating rotten-almost-dead meat is of no concern to her. She reaches the octopus, its guts open and dangling, its chest almost imperceptibly moving up and down, and she ravages on its meat, taking big bloody bites from its flesh. Someone arrives. It’s a human. They seem to know each other or at the very least they do not fear each other. The human is surprised that she is eating rotting flesh and comments on it. “One does what one must to survive,” she says, her mouth still full of octopus flesh as she digs into the octopus for another bite. The octopus seems resigned to its fate. It’s almost as if it feels comforted to know that in its final minutes of life it is able to do good for another creature.

Then the news comes on. The octopus is lying in a small cave at the end of a tunnel and a big flat screen TV hangs on the far wall. The three of them, the human, spiderlady, and octopus turn their attention to the television screen. The king of the Pharaohs is sitting on his throne and announces that the time has come to formally take over Earth. The three of them know they have little time left to play their necessary roles with the rebels to save the world.

End of dream.

Now, you tell me, what the heck goes on in this brain of mine for it to come up with messed up crap like that?? If my conscious mind could do this, I’d be writing the best novels ever.