I'm lost in the Library Labyrinth. The stacks are 3-4 meters high, needing ladders to reach the upper shelves. Dim light at ground level, dark above. And in that dark atop the shelves, Sinister Librarians rustle and skitter and hiss.

A hard blow to my head! A heavy, squirming... man? Not quite. He's blue-skinned, with writhing antennae like a slug. An Andorian. Pugnacious, mistrusting Earth people. They're in a weighty 19th Century novel. The Librarians pulled him out, and tossed him down on my head! The drop is long; he hit hard. We're both half stunned.

But he blames me, not the Librarians. Even for an Andorian, this guy's paranoid. Just fights, won't listen--certain I'm an enemy. He stabs at me with a sharp footlong knife. No, weird loops of steel like a huge safety pin, with wicked twin prongs, like a broken fork or trident.

A bident?

He tries to kill me; I fend him off. Pry the bident away from him at last, and jab him back. "How do you like it? Back off!"

Nope. Talk won't solve my Andorian problem. He clings, tries to choke me, gropes as if to pull out a second knife/fork/pin. I'm reluctant to stab him deep, but keep poking him. Has to hurt, but he won't let go.

At last the Evil Librarians send a rope down with a flopping bundle. I fend him off long enough to get a look. It's a Ponderous Tome! A fat cookbook carefully tied open to a page with a recipe... for killing, gutting, cleaning and cooking Andorians.

How helpful they are with my Andorian problem! Which they caused.

I don't want to kill him, but he clings tight, strangling me. At last, desperate, I cut deep--slice his chest and belly open. He weakens, but STILL fights on...

...and I wake, sweaty and shaking.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Lost in a library-maze:
  1. Saw an old Star Trek: Enterprise show, set in a dim-lit labyrinth--with brutal, suspicious, blue Andorians. Whose suspicions turned out to be right.
  2. Read a bit of Ken Akamatsu's manga Negima!; Yue & friends explore their school library. A very big library. With book-cliffs, waterfalls, and dinosaurs...
• Evil librarians: When I worked at Stanford, they repainted the library interior (oil paint!) during work hours, and put the required sensor upwind where it'd falsely show clean air. We were ordered to keep working, breathed solvents for days... and got sick. Stanford insisted all health claims go through a doctor THEY paid. He denied solvent poisoning was even POSSIBLE. First time I'd met a doctor not just arrogant or failing to listen but flat-out lying for money. I was sick a year. I think the dream echoes this to flag some problem as 1: institutional, 2: deadly. But what?
• Bident: Biden! Accused by President Trump of nepotism in Ukraine, distracting the country from impeachment charges against Trump for his dirty Ukrainian laundry.
• Librarians drop a Bident on my head: the Democratic party elite loathes populists like Bernie Sanders, tries to force-feed us Biden, just as they did Clinton in 2016. Which turned out so well.
• Bident's a 19th Century character: well, practically. He means well, but Joe is a bit out of date.
• Offered a recipe to cook and eat him: I'm usually vegetarian, but at my sister's, I ate salmon. Crave the oils in coldwater fish like mackerel and salmon--seems to reduce inflammation--but I feel sorry for the fish. Meat is murder, Wayan!
• Relentless grappling, attacks even as he's dying:
  1. For years I've had recurring flu-like attacks--chills, fever, sore joints. Antibiotics helped a lot, but even a year failed to totally kill it off. Whatever this infection is, it's tough!
  2. Last year I deduced I had hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which (among other delights) can weaken the immune system. Forced my doctors to run the checklist, and they had to admit it was EDS. It's genetic, so I tested my sisters today--they have crappy healthplans so no one else will! They dreaded facing their symptoms, as if talking made it realer. I felt guilty for torturing them. But I was relentless--relentless as my infection. Justifiably, it turned out. They both had all the markers for hEDS! A syndrome hitting just 1 in 5000--but in my family it's 3 out of 3. Glad now I insisted.
• ACTION 1: Be ruthless: guiltlessly kill parasites, eat fish, gnaw bones, bully sisters, defy doctors who don't do their homework... whatever it takes to beat hEDS.
• ACTION 2: Don't vote for Biden in the presidential primary. My dreams think Joe is an old-fashioned character who just won't listen. If he's the nominee, sure, Biden's way better than Trump. But who isn't?

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites