This dream is from January 18, 2007
The last dream I had this morning was just really random but quite funny. It takes place back in Wichita. I had just finished painting my Sister's/Brother's old room a flat white when my Mother came in to announce that she had already signed a renter’s agreement for the room. We had been working on it all summer to get it livable again after years of abuse by my siblings. It had been through over a decade of torture that resulted in numerous jagged nails jutting out from the wall, exposed support beams, and stained carpet. You name it, they did it. I spent all summer fixing the room up (didn't know I was that handy). So Mom asks me to come out and meet the new inhabitants of my sibling's old room. I go wash my hands in the bathroom across the hall to rid myself of the wet paint and come out to the living room to meet the new renters. I come to find out its Kathryn, the techie/gamer from the digital lab I work in, and her husband Jack.
"Mom, this is the Kathryn that I work with that I've mentioned on occasion", I say.
"Really? That great! Now I can have someone give me regular updates on you", she says back. "And to celebrate, I made deep-friend lasagna balls for everyone." (I have no idea how my brain thought of that one... would be fun to try and come up with a recipe for it though) Sure enough, she goes into the kitchen and comes out with her crystal punch bowl full of these medium sized fried balls. I was a little unsure of them when I first saw them, but after trying one I changed my mind. They tasted just like lasagna… like really, really good lasagna. It had the ricotta and mozzarella cheese, a noodle layer (think of a really round ravioli with an extra layer of noodle), a savory tomato sauce, and ground beef. We all compliment her on her delicious recipe. Then out of nowhere my father comes into the living room (didn't see that one coming) and announces that we are all going to the movie theatre.
"What movie?" I ask.
"We aren't going to watch a movie, we are all going to play an video game on the movie screen", he says. Normally I wouldn't have gone along with my Father, but since I've never had the chance to play on a screen that large, I decide "why not?"When we get to the Pink Palace (it’s this actual movie theatre we used to go to in Wichita that was painted this fluorescent shade of pink) its jam-packed with people to see a docu-drama about ABBA called "Dancing Queens" (Think Dreamgirls meets ABBA). My father waves his hands at the guy at the ticket counter and he nods and disappears for a second. He comes back into his booth, points to his left and we see a very large black man dressed in a red suit motioning for us to follow him. My father tells us to enjoy ourselves and then he leaves. So Kathryn, Jack, and I follow the man to the farthest theatre on the right side and sit in the front row of the stadium style seats. Then this pasty-looking white kid with bad acne comes over to us and hands us these odd looking controllers. They are kind of shaped like a really wide staple gun with a lot of buttons, a joystick, a mini-camera, and a trigger. It’s really hard to describe how it worked so if this description is confusing, I apologize ahead of time. The trigger was on the underside on the right side, so you had to use your right index finger for it. You used your right thumb for a series of buttons on the topside. The buttons were color coded red, yellow, blue, and green. The joystick was on the top of the controller on the left side, you had to use your thumb for that. Now your fingers on your left hand, that are on the underside of the controller rested on another set of buttons kind of how you would rest your fingers on a clarinet or recorder (a finger on a hole), these ones were colored purple, black, brown, and white. Without giving us a lesson on what buttons do what and what game we were to be playing, the kid disappeared through a door at the top of the theatre and the lights dimmed. When the screen lights up we discover that we are playing "Dino Thrasher: Heaven's Saviors" (Again I have no idea where this came from). It was an action/adventure/RPG game that was kind of like a cross between the SNES game "Zombies Ate My Neighbors" and the arcade game "Gauntlet" only with much better graphics. The premise of the game was that Satan had come to earth and his demons were possessing people. Instead of sending down angels to rid the land of this evil, he send a team (up to 4 players) of velociraptors to tear through those possessed by demons and slowly make our way through the various cities to reach Satan and take him out. It’s a pretty ludicrous premise but it was fun to play. You start by taking a photo of yourself (or whoever I guess) with the mini-camera built into the base of the controller and the computer designs your raptor to share some visual characteristics with you. So mine had black skin (I have black hair), a beard (don't ask me), and a nose ring. Jack and Kathryn’s were really funny looking because both or their raptors had long blond/brown hair pulled into ponytails. So after you had your "look" you got to select what kind of powers you had. I chose to be a healer, Jack chose to have mental powers like telekinesis and mind control, and Kathryn chose to be the muscle of the group with super strength and agility. So the controls for this game worked as so. The joystick is how you moved around. The trigger was the "accept" button in menu mode and also the button to cast your spell or ability. The red, yellow, and blue buttons were various attacks while the green was jump. The under-buttons on the left side (purple, black, brown, and white) are the buttons that you assigned your abilities to. The game starts out in New York City in central park. Jesus told us that we had to find the head demon of the city, a giant demon-gorilla that we would probably find in Manhattan (probably… Jesus didn't know?). So we started it by having to fight our way out of Central Park. Kathryn picked up the game play very quickly, but part of that was because her super strength didn’t have to be cast on somebody, she could just turn it on or off. Jack and I had to figure out how to cast our powers on others (or ourselves) which involved setting targets. Like most role-playing games we had the equivalent of mana, or “the Holy Spirit” as it was called in this game. Every time you used your powers your “Holiness” would go down and would have to recharge unless you had an instant power up like holy water. The rest of the dream was essentially us tearing apart the possessed on our quest to banish Satan from the earth. Again stupid but funny premise, not to mention the game play was pretty sweet.
