Mysterious Skittles Transmitter

rapped with Mom and Dad in a room, white walls, hospital setting.

Mom is angry for some reason. Dad has some weapons and gives something to me, which further angers Mom. It is a "bullet bomb," a device laced with blue rubber bullets that, when activated and thrown, will fire bullets in all directions.

A beige skittle candy is handed to me. It starts to beep. It could be the tracking device the evil people have been using to track us down. Perhaps it holds information or secrets that we can analyze under a microscope -- the microscope at the core of all evil.

There are numerous people in the room. Mom told us to stay inside but some are getting restless. One person ventures out the door into the hallway. He is bait. The zombie charges him, but we are prepared. Two students from inside the room gracefully stab the zombie with knives.

The entire crowd gradually streams out of the room into the hallway, which looks very much like this note's photo (from the game FEAR) but without the soldiers and blood. I lead the group down the hall. Turn a corner, just barely dodge a zombie with knives. He gets slashed by students behind me.

Turn another corner. An entire single-file line of zombie girls walk towards us. Each have a knife in their right hand, their right arm slightly extended to the side. I cut off the arm of the first zombie-girl. Blood sprays onto my glasses, and I wipe them clean. She falls. I cut down the next girl's arm. And the next girl. So much negative energy. So much killing. Students behind me are helping finish off the zombies, but the line of incoming zombie-girls stretches out before us, unending.

Realization: They're LETTING us kill them. They don't care. They're mentally beating us down, feeding us negative thoughts with each zombie-death. Moreover, each slain zombie will haunt its killer for life. Even if we manage to fight our way to the core of all this evil, find out what's up with the skittle transmitter, and make it out alive, we will forever be haunted and plagued by the souls of the fallen zombie-women. It's a lose-lose situation. Die, or survive and be haunted forever.

I fall asleep in the middle of battle.

Some girl wakes me up in my bed. Then she grows, turning into a giant human-ghost-python-cyclone. Unsuitable music accompanies this transformation: A windy flute lip-slurring open tones (on the overtone scale) from low to high to low. Sounds comical. Then I wake up.



This picture embodies the atmosphere of this dream perfectly, except that there were more people/zombies and more blood. And no one was dressed like a soldier.

Zombies vs Nerf guns

Late at night, when there are almost no cars on the streets, I find myself driving my way up Bancroft Way (which is odd in itself, because Bancroft is a one-way street going downhill). Ahead of me, two police cars are driving in the same direction. They are carefully escorting what appears to be two cars of gangsters. One of the police cars drives ahead, ushering the two cars onwards, while the second police car trails behind, with a police officer looking backwards (at me), waving in my direction, and telling me to back off and stay away from the volatile situation.

In an act of spontaneity, instead of staying away from the situation I gun the throttle and drive at full speed past the convoy, swerving and hitting multiple walls, before finally reaching my destination: a gathering of multiple police cars at some sort of crime scene. At this point I realize that my car happens to be a police car. As I get out of my car, I also realize that I just so happen to be a police officer. The "crime" had taken place at a lower, underground level in the city, which could be accessed via some flights of stairs leading downwards.

A girl tells me she has to pee. This is bad news, because the only bathroom in the vicinity just so happens to be inside this lower level, where the crime took place. Since we don't know what happened down there, and it could still very well be dangerous, my job is to escort the girl down the stairs, to the bathroom, and bring her back.

As we descend down the stairs together, some normal-looking people -- crime scene investigators, perhaps -- pass us by. As each person passes by, I jump nervously, half-expecting some sort of dangerous killer, only to realize a moment later that the person is normal.

As we progress deeper into the area, however, the atmosphere becomes drastically more frightening. It's late at night, everything is deserted, and I feel like I am walking in an underground ghost town. I draw my standard-issue 6-shooter revolver and hold it in my hands for reassurance. I ask the girl if she wants me to follow her inside the bathroom and wait just outside the stall, to make sure no one attacks her inside the bathroom. She says she'll be fine.

All the while, I have this nagging feeling that something is wrong. As we approach the bathroom, men and women can be seen sitting on office chairs, lying on the floor... dead, bloody, and pale.

The girl I am escorting is now frightened. "What happened here?" she breathes.

The dead man sitting in the office chair starts to move. We begin to run away, but soon, zombies are all around us. I have a fleeting thought of the girl, but it seems to be a lost cause to save her, since she was already inside the bathroom by the time the zombies came to life. So I run towards the narrow escalator leading upwards (but turned off and not moving, of course). A zombie woman who is blocking the escalator runs at me. I bring up my 6-shooter and fire one shot, which seems to kill her just as she is about to bite me.

As soon as she dies, her body continues to drift behind me, in the direction she had been moving, in zero gravity. Then I realize that the whole world has turned into zero-gravity mode, just like in Dead Space (a game I recently played), and now I have to escape by pushing against the floor at an angle to propel myself forwards. Then, as I drift towards the ceiling, I flip over repeat the same process for the ceiling. In this manner, I bounce between the floor and the ceiling, propelling myself towards the safe place, while a multitude of zombies are chasing me.

While drifting forward, a zombie finally catches up to me, but suddenly dies from a shot fired in front of me. Looking forward, I see that I am nearing the safe house: a small room filled with soldiers armed with automatic machine guns, shooting at the zombies behind me. I drift into the opening of the safe house and land on my feet, because the safe house now has gravity. The group of approximately 20 soldiers continue to fire their nerf guns at the incoming zombies, which crumple as soon as stricken by a nerf dart.

Unfortunately, my presence disrupts their firing because I have unintentionally brought a magnet with me. The magnet spawns ribbons that tie together the guns of the soldiers, forcing them to break formation and preventing them from taking aim properly. The entire group is stalled for about 10 seconds before one man is finally able to wrench the magnet away and throw it away. By this time the small room had just about filled with zombies coming toward us. Just as the front line of zombies is nearly upon us (at point-blank muzzle distance), the soldiers resume firing. Since the firing rate of the nerf guns is very fast, and the soldiers are trained to stagger reload times, they quickly clear the room of zombies and resume control over the entrance to the room.

By sheer luck, one stray zombie slips past the entrance and wanders into the room unnoticed by the soldiers. he begins to grope at a nearby civilian. I desperately point at the zombie and yell, and the soldiers quickly dispatch both the zombie and the victim of the zombie groping (because zombie-ness spreads by touch instead of bite, apparently).

Someone pokes me on the shoulder to get my attention. I turn and realize that IT'S A ZOMBIE POKING ME! I yell, "AHHHH! KILL THE ZOMBIE! KILL ME!" The soldiers comply, and some soft foam nerf darts land on the zombie and me. I feel the darts on my shoulder and gradually give in to death.

I wake up next to Fernanda (my girlfriend), and quickly try to recount the details of the dream I just had. Fernanda then tells me she had the same dream. She says that she was the girl that I was escorting in the dream. While fondling my face, she tells me, "During the dream, the face of the zombie in the office chair I saw was your face, in real life."

I wake up for real.

Zombie: 300 Infected -- and counting!

The following is a dream.

A drunk girl has her arms wrapped around me, from behind. I don't know how hot she is, but I am mildly irked by this because I am focusing on rummaging through the contents of some small lockers in a locker room. I tell the drunk girl, "Hey, I'm not even drunk," but she does not seem phased by this in the least. Her friends (beside me) make fun of her, and rummage through lockers with me as well. Apparently, I am among a group of hooligans who had broken into some sort of drug storage locker room, and we are looking for drugs.

Soon some people discover that these "drugs" are scarier than the type they're used to, and they leave. In fact, some syringes aren't even drugs; there are infections, diseases, mutation-givers, and just all types of general scariness in these lockers. My curiosity grows, so I stay in the locker room with some bold adventurous others.

One particular syringe with a needle catches my eye. It reads "Zombie: 300 Infected -- and counting!". Having seen 28 days later, I wonder, "How is it possible that only 300 people are infected so far?" but forget this thought as soon as multiple chilling screams issue throughout the locker room. The screams are not just from zombies; pretty much everyone who has tried a "drug" needle is now a weird diseased person or a type of monster. I decide that it's time to run, because I do not want to become a diseased person or a type of monster.

Alas, as I am leaving the locker room, I contract a disease. It has something to do with a tingly feeling in my legs and feet. Fortunately, the disease causes no side effects other than the ability to fly. So I fly around, landing in the UC Berkeley campus. (EDIT: Today when I went to the bathroom I remembered another symptom of my disease: I pooed a lot uncontrollably and all the poo was lined with viscous fluid resembling alien saliva. I assumed it was my sloughed-off stomach lining.)

Somehow, I had subconsciously taken the Zombie syringe with me. I pull it out of my pocket and again ponder my earlier question, "If every zombie hungers for human flesh, how is it possible that only 300 zombies are infected?" My question is immediately answered by an excerpt from the label of the syringe: "Each zombie may only choose ONE human to infect." That's when I accidentally poke myself with the needle, and my vision turns blue.

I decide, by some zombie logic, that if I can only infect one person in the world, that person should my girlfriend so we can both be zombies together. I begin to devise a plan to bait her out of her room and then bite her. My white woman mother aids me in this plan by sending a carefully devised letter to her, detailing a meeting with cookies in her office.

As I await her arrival, I go to the bathroom. Expecting to see a contorted ugly zombie face, I look into the mirror and am surprised to discover that my face is relatively normal. Aside from a red drunk Asian glow and a couple of yellow moldy spots on my cheeks, my zombie face exhibits no difference from my original face. As I am urinating, however, I notice that my penis is too small.

Jeff from my floor last year (not my current roommate) walks in. I remark to Jeff how easy it is to see that I am currently in a dream. "There are at least two indications that this is a dream," I declare. "One, my penis is too small." He laughs. Before I am able to state my second point, I wake up. I cannot remember the second reason.

Quickload Works in Dreams

The first dream

I was with my old high-school buddies, most of them Asian. The only person I distinctly remember being with me is Allen, but there were others as well. All of us were carrying guns; I had one in my right cargo pocket.

Little girls were playing hula, or some other random games, in the courtyard. I sighed. At this rate, we'll never have an opportunity to terminate the target unseen.

Some members of my assassination team started throwing stones at the nearest shop window, as a diversion of attention from our target, who was a man walking away from the courtyard. I thought this was overkill, because the windows almost broke. I proceeded to follow the target, fingering the gun in my pocket for reassurance.

I wondered if what we were doing was morally justified. The one who gave us our assignment had claimed to be an agent of the
Shadow Broker, a mysterious character in a computer game called "Mass Effect." The Shadow Broker buys and sells "secrets." For example, he buys evidence of a murder, or other such shady business, and sells the information to those who desire it, thus making a profit.

In my dream, the shadow broker wasn't satisfied with what he had; he wanted to cause more trouble, make more "secrets" that he could sell. That's why he sent us to kill this guy; then he'd have more interesting information to sell to others. "Information is a commodity," the agent had said. Since our target was a bad guy himself, it would not be too morally reprehensible. Or would it?

After I had stalked my target for quite a while, he started to make small-talk with me. I knew he was only doing it because he suspected I was trying to kill him, and was trying to make me feel sympathy. It was working. I asked him what his name was, and he hesitated a moment before replying "Debbie Walker."

I never did kill the man. I was curious, though, to see whether or not his name was actually Debbie Walker. When I returned home I facebooked the name and found no faces matching that of his. That's how I knew he was lying.

End of first dream.

Second dream:

It was extremely windy outside of our house. The road in front of the house was no longer the pleasant residential 25 mph street; rather, it was a two-lane highway. Booming waves crashed upon the rocks just beyond, and sounds of howling wind and ocean spray filled the air.

A family knocked on my front door, and I opened it. The mother was asking directions to a location, which will now be known as "Location." I closed the door against the wind and yelled to my mother, "How do you get to Location?" She responded with something about Wine Spring City. I opened the front door and relayed that information to the family, and they were grateful.

Soon after, however, the father randomly turned into a zombie. He bit the mother and the son. "This will not do," I thought. Hastily, I reached over to press the "quickload" button on my computer keyboard: F9.

The game loaded back at the beginning of the scene, with the family knocking on my door. Everything proceeded as before; I even hastily told them the directions to Location. But this time, I knew what was going to happen. I called the mother of the family on my cellphone, warning her that her husband will turn into a zombie. As the first symptoms of zombie-ness started to develop in the father, she realized I was telling the truth and began to back away. Realistically, our phone conversation cut off as soon as she started to run.

Alas, the son could not be saved and was bitten by the father. My front door was locked, but there was a big glass window in the middle, through which the father zombie broke. I ran to the kitchen, but the father zombie was right at my heels! I had to get out of the house fast, so I jump-kicked through the glass of the kitchen window.

I continued to run, but for some reason my shorts were down, wrapped around my ankles and hindering my movement. Fortunately I had my trusty sword. I sliced through the center of the shorts around my ankles to allow my legs to move freely. Conveniently, I also slew the father zombie with the sword by slicing his torso in half.

I had climbed over the wooden fence of the backyard to the neighboring house's yard, but the son zombie was in hot pursuit, beginning to climb the fence. Suddenly, as musical notes drifted from the house, I realized that my sister was still placidly practicing piano. I climbed back over the fence into my own backyard and gave myself an upwards boost...

Which proved to be the worst decision I could ever make in a "running from monsters" dream. These dreams are notorious for their extremely low gravity. When I jumped upwards from the fence, my trajectory was in slow motion due to the low gravity of the dream. The son zombie easily covered the horizontal distance of my trajectory and stood at its endpoint, awaiting my inevitable fall to the ground so he could eat me.

"This will not do!" I declared, and I hit F9. I caught a glimpse of the beginning scene at the front door before I woke up.

End of dream #2

This proves that "quickload," a common feature in computer games, works in dreams. "Quicksave," however, has yet to be tried...



[edit] p.s. I forgot to mention the musical accompaniment of the zombie dream, which consisted of a two-chord progression: f minor - a flat minor, with the melody going F - E - E flat (E being the passing tone). If you can't imagine this in your head, please play it on a piano. This short instrumental sound byte (it seemed to be mostly orchestral strings) repeated over and over again in my head during this dream, providing a fittingly creepy sound scape for the zombie dream. Since it was short and simple, I was able to remember it upon waking up.

I have probably had dreams with much more interesting original musical content, but alas, it is much more difficult to remember longer, non-repetitive themes. Usually, any memory of such musical content is not only extremely fragile, but also restricted to the last couple of seconds in the dream. I therefore urge readers of this note to dedicate their life to the discovery of DREAM-RECORDING TECHNOLOGY. Thank you.