dispatchesfromunknownkadath

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

6/16/2025 - Lost in a Tropical Country, Lost in a Lecture Hall

1) Daytime, the sun is shining and the sky is blue. I'm getting off a cruise ship in a foreign, tropical country, and I'm about to get on a tour bus for an excursion. I decide at the last minute to go surfing instead so I find my dad, tell him I'm going, get my board shorts and rash guard on, then rush after the tour bus to say I'm not going on the excursion. I get to the bus, and I tell the tour guide up front I'm not going and I feel bad, embarrassed, and selfish because it seems like the tour was waiting for me.

When I try to find my dad, I get lost: the shops and restaurants and houses all blend together, and I can't see daylight or get my bearings. One shop's exit turns into the entrance for a restaurant, its exit turns into an indoor thoroughfare, etc. and I start to get anxious. One stall has Gundam-themed cookies though that catch my eye, so I take a picture to show Discord later.

Eventually, I make it out onto a large concrete dock surrounded by a chain-link fence. One fence section has been cut out, and out in the distance I can see men climbing onto a boat to steal it. I ignore it and try to find the cruise ship and see it parked at the end of the dock.

Disappointed, I realize I'm right back where I started. I've missed surfing and the tour. I feel like I've wasted my time and gained nothing.

2) Inside, afternoon-ish? I'm alone at the bottom of a set of stairs in a large convention hall. Wasn't I supposed to be going to a lecture? A lecture about what? I open the door at the top of the stairs and I see a large, fancy waiting area for an opera performance. There's red velvet on the walls, red velvet seats, polished golden lighting fixtures, and people--including children--waiting around in fancy dresses and suits. I feel embarrassed and underdressed.

I leave this area, and I'm in a crowd of people waiting for a Critical Role-type show. This area is more of a convention hall: tough blue and black carpet designed for innumerable feet to walk on, natural light from tall glass windows, vast empty spaces, and lots of, well, nerdier and geekier folks sitting on the floor and waiting around in more casual clothes with D&D, video game, and anime motifs. Those kind of live TTRPG shows aren't my thing though, so I move on again.

The next area is more of a business convention: people are in business suits milling around, discussing paperwork or looking at laptops. I catch a glimpse outside a window and see I'm inside of a skyscraper. The sun is shining outside but it's going down; it's mid-afternoon.

I'm lost. I'm going to miss the lecture. I'm not even sure what the lecture is going to be about or who was speaking or, hell, if I even wanted to go. I look on my phone and see all sorts of things happening in the building and none of it is recognizable. Why didn't I plan better? Why didn't I retain any information about this?

Self-recriminating thoughts pile up. I'm not sure why I'm so upset about this.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

6/9/2025 - Watching a Plane Crash

Indeterminate time of day. Heavy rain clouds make a ceiling of dark gray in the sky. I'm standing in front of a large plate glass window--maybe in an airport?--chatting with someone I know when I see a white plane coming in for landing.

It overshoots the runway and starts coming towards a parked plane situated some distance away from the plate glass window. One side of the plane dips, and its wing clips the parked plane before hurtling over the building I'm in. I can hear a large explosion behind me.

A crowd of people and I come out to look at the destruction of the parked plane. The wing seems to be wrecked and the plane's landing gear are bent from the impact so it's laying lopsided on the ground. I look up at the gray sky at the path the landing plane took, but I can't see any fire or smoke, just the brick exterior of the building I was in.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

6/2/2025 - Car Problems on the Highway, Pinned Down, Cockroach-Infested Theater

1) Daytime. I'm driving my car down a highway when I suddenly feel like I'm losing control. I'm not going super fast or speeding as I lose control, I'm slowing down, and I get anxious when I see the other cars barreling towards me. Panicked, I try to hit the gas pedal but my leg won't obey me. I expect to get hit, but I see the other cars slowing down around me and come to a stop. I don't feel relieved; I feel embarrassed.

2) Indeterminate time. Not sure if this is a continuation of 1) or not, but it feels like it. I'm inside some large shipping container looking around, and anxiety fills me as I'm worried that I caused an accident outside.

A large metal container--about my size or larger--falls on top of me, and I can't get up. I feel like I'm being crushed by the weight. The door to the container opens, and people help get the container off of me and help me outside. Either I don't see their faces or I'm too ashamed to look at them, I can't tell which. I expect them to be angry that I caused an accident, but they don't mention it. It doesn't stop me from feeling bad though.

3) Nighttime, but inside. I'm with my parents inside a large ballroom billed as a movie theater, about to watch something billed as the sequel to War of the Rohirrim. While there are some clusters of old theater seats, the seating's mostly a haphazard array of old couches, folding chairs, and cheap card tables in front of a simple standup projector screen. The walls are stylized like an older movie theater with ornate columns, sconces, and ornamental plaster, but everything's covered with peeling yellow paint, and the only light is a harsh spotlight on the floor pointing towards the screen. This place looks dingy and disgusting.

I'm sitting down with a bag of popcorn as the movie's about to start, but my mom won't stop talking. I try to shush her because the movie's about to start, but this just piques her and she keeps talking. My dad's not stopping her, and I feel both extremely aggravated but also a nervous tension being next to them.

The spotlight dims, and the movie starts, but instead of a War of the Rohirrim sequel, it looks like a faded home movie of various circus toys, like B-roll footage you'd see from a crappy 70s educational movie. I can't concentrate as to how scammed I feel though, as I suddenly feel something small drop on my head and start to wriggle. I grab what feel on my head and start to have a panic attack, because writhing between my fingers and hair is a cockroach! (I have a fear of cockroaches in real life.)

Instantly, I feel disgusted and anxious, and I leap out of my seat as I feel hyper-aware of every part of my body and the feeling of more cockroaches crawling on me. They're scuttling on my arms and legs, my neck and back. I try to discern in the darkness where exactly they are on me so I can brush them away, but I'm done. I loudly tell my surprised parents I'm leaving and stride towards the "theater's" glass doors and shove them open to go out into the night air.

The moment I'm out, I instantly feel better. The cool air feels refreshing, and I realize I don't feel any more cockroaches on me. I'm dimly aware of someone nearby saying that the home movie was a bold artistic choice for a sequel, but I think it was either a scam by the theater or extremely pretentious.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

4/23/2025 - Minecraft Competition

Night time? I'm sitting on a platform high above a vast, sprawling Minecraft ocean with many islands sprinkled throughout, and I'm looking down. It doesn't feel like I'm an avatar inhabiting this world, but an actual person.

My son and I are competing in some sort of nebulous Minecraft competition along with a large number of other people, though I don't know the rules or what we're competing for. All I know is that we're supposed to build something. This particular Minecraft world is untouched except for a large white obelisk--I'm reminded of the Washington Monument--jutting high into the clouds. I assume it's a marker for the competition.

We're supposed to start, but I look down and find my heart racing at the height. Somehow though, we manage to warp to a small, terraced dirt island next to the water. My son starts to harvest dirt and seeds to make a shelter and crops, but I don't even see any trees for us to start harvesting wood. I leave him there to build a shelter so I can look around.

I find myself at the entrance of a vast subterranean Minecraft cave, but even the top of the outside of the cave is devoid of any trees to get wood from. Even before I have a pickaxe or a sword, I plunge into the cave entrance hoping to at least get some coal, and I'm instantly hit with a sense of dread and despair: torches are all over the place. I'm too late. This cave is probably mined out.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

4/21/2025 - The Car Won't Start Again and Recovering Stolen Goods

Night time, off the side of the road in a fenced-in area next to a short wooden building with its lights on. Feels rural, and almost like an impound lot.

I've opened the large wooden gate that will allow me to leave this place. My car won't start again. There's no rush, but a feeling of annoyance permeates me and I want to get out of here.

While I push the car through the gate and onto the road, I look in the backseat and see a bunch of my stuff is missing: rare games, books, things I got on auction, my backpack. I'm furious, and I storm into the wooden building, which appears to be some kind of eclectic shop.

As I look around the shop, I notice all the things that were missing from my car are on the shelves. There's a bald man with glasses, and I berate him for stealing my stuff and demand he give it all back. He cowers and starts pulling my stuff off the shelves to place in bags as I continue to yell and insult him. He stole my stuff, but I take such glee in catching him red-handed and berating him that a small part of me feels like I'm being overly ugly.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

4/20/2025 - The Car Won't Start

Daytime, sun shining overhead. It's warm out.

I'm with my red car on a paved road (or sidewalk) outside a tall brick building near a large body of water. I'm turning the key in the ignition, and the dashboard lights up, but the car refuses to start. I keep asking myself questions: is there a problem with the battery? The ignition? Is the car itself dying? Panic sets in as I consider these questions. I've had it for so long, I don't want to take the next step and get another car yet.

Getting out of the car and behind it, I try to start pushing it up the road, but more and more people are walking on the road/sidewalk and I'm having trouble moving forward. I get more upset; I'm going to be late for something, people see me struggling, and no one's offering to help, and I'm not sure there's anything to do that would help. I'm not even sure where I'm pushing the car or if help will even be there when I get there, but I keep pushing.

To my right and in the water, there's a white car submerged to its roof. There are people in the water surrounding it, cheering and hoisting drinks, and they look so happy that I briefly think about just pushing my own car in and being done with it.

"That'd be wasteful though, and I've had this car for so long," I think to myself, and I keep pushing.

Eventually, the road/sidewalk ends and I'm pushing the car through mud. I'm getting dirtier and my clothes are getting muddy, and it takes more and more effort to push the car any further.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

Writing - A Post That Hit Me Hard: Human Moments

Hello, my name is Justy.

I'm resurrecting this old dream journal blog of mine (again) because I have thoughts and dreams that I really want to get down, because, well, have you ever had a thought or a dream that you thought was really great, but when you try to remember it, it was gone? I feel like that sometimes. Looking back over my old dreams, some are clear as day, others are fuzzy, and others still I can't remember dreaming. However, since I wrote them down on here, I can remember them even though I don't remember them.

That brings me to the Bluesky post up at the top here. I was scrolling Bluesky this morning while I was eating my post-workout breakfast, saw this post from someone I followed, and my scrolling came to a dead stop. Like the title says, it hit me hard. It made me recall a bunch of Internet things from the 1990s-2010s that, at the time, felt like fluff--silly Flash games, forum threads, chat rooms, dead fora run by friends as a lark and then forgotten about, pictures, experiences in MUDs, the MUDs themselves, whole webpages and webrings, even custom maps in games like Counter-Strike and Warcraft 3--but that are basically gone forever.

It didn't make me feel like I wasted my time. Far from it, I remember these moments I had with other people online fondly, but... those moments are gone. Maybe some of my real life friends recall a few of them but for the most part, I'm the only one that does. That made me indescribably sad in a way that, to describe it clinically, my poor expressive capabilities make hard to articulate.

Yes, there is the Internet Archive, but as I kept thinking about it, I thought of the refrain I heard most growing up around the Internet: everything on the Internet was permanent. As I replied to the post above, we're collectively learning that that's not the case. The Internet has been siloed off from the 1990s Wild West of bad HTML and Geocities pages to comment pages and platforms that can be easily turned off. Pages can be deactivated. Patreons can be closed.

And that's just at the amateur level! Whole platforms and sites filled with uncountable man-hours of hard work can be bought by people who don't understand them and degraded/denuded into irrelevance. Articles can be migrated from platform to platform until they break. Art like movies or TV shows can be lost to licensing squabbles or horse trading between streaming services until it can only be viewed either on an (itself-degrading) physical medium or pirated.

As I finished my breakfast and went to take my shower so I could get ready for work, I thought about all this as it relates to A.I. and got more upset. Multiple times over the holidays I saw that Coca-Cola ad made by A.I. and I just had this visceral revulsion to it. It was--like all A.I. images or movies I've seen--too slick, too clean. A regurgitated facsimile of human creativity to simulate warmth that did the exact opposite and left me dispirited. There was also the news that Meta was coming out with A.I. profiles, with the one they proudly touted on Instagram being a queer POC A.I. posting A.I. pictures of donating fake coats to a fake clothing drive. Disgusting. Totally disgusting.

I thought about all this in the shower, and well... I confess: I cried a bit.

I'm not doing too well lately mentally, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that during the low parts of my life, it was some of these (sometimes-silly, sometimes-meaningful) human moments online that brought a smile to my face. These moments sustained me during emotional downturns in my real life, and I feel like the rulers of the Internet now are trying to actively prevent these interactions.

As I prepped for the work day, I felt like I really had to write this all down somewhere or tell someone about it, just to get the thoughts out of my head. But where?

So I came back to my dormant dream journal Tumblr.

While lots of animals seem to dream, I feel as though ascribing meaning and feeling to dreams is a human thing and thus writing my reactions to the post above here felt the most human. I want to get back into recording my dreams, as wild and chaotic (and boring to others, admittingly) as they are. It makes me feel things. It makes me feel human.

When I got to work, I texted my wife to tell her I loved her. I saw another Bluesky post from someone I followed that desperately needed $20 for bus fare and a charging cable. I donated. I went on Discord to the Discord I use to talk to my friends and said I hoped they had a good day. I said the same thing on another Discord I'm on with some people from Bluesky (all of us previously from Twitter and previously from SomethingAwful's forums). I went on an Evangelion Discord (Evageeks, I'm a huge Evangelion fan) I'm on and said that, while I've seen the main Evangelion releases multiple times, that I can't always put into words the things I'm seeing or the questions I have, and expressed appreciation to the members that they're friendly and tolerant when I attempt.

I don't know.

Human moments online.

New ones to make up for the ones only I remember.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

9/22/2018 - Destroying the Giant Robot, Upset During the Zombie Attack

It’s not looking like I’m going to get down this dusty road without a fight. I’m standing in front of a wooden building during a sunny day, and in front of me is a hulking robot fifteen feet tall or more. It has a “head” but no eyes or facial features, just one red rounded rectangle recessed that is almost the height of the “head”. It raises its big metal arms like it’s going to crush me.

I don’t have a gun or a weapon to fight back with, but I raise my hands at the robot like finger guns and silver lights/sparkles shoot out. They seem extremely accurate and powerful, as each shot takes off more and more of the robot’s “head”. I shoot one sparkle into the red area, and the top of the robot starts on fire and generates smoke. The robot falls backwards on the ground, destroyed.

Something is coming towards my area, so I can’t rest. It’s dark now; how is it night already? All I can find outside of the building are abandoned carnival game stalls, and they have nothing that I can use to defend myself. I decide to lock myself in the building.

This place seems to be an art supply shop on a cliff by the sea. I search the shelves for something that could help me, but all I find are paintbrushes, markers, canvases, etc. Meanwhile, I can hear pounding on the doors at the front of the shop. I see a horde of zombies trying to get in. It’s not looking good, but the shop is connected to a garage, maybe there’s a car I can use to escape? I’ll check.

As I get closer to the side door to the garage, I hear crazed but yippy dog barks. Inside, a man holding a red axe has pinned down a white Jack Russell terrier.  The man’s back is towards me. I can tell the dog is infected; it’s acting berserk and its eyes are yellow and red. The man holds the axe up to the dog’s head. I know what he’s going to do. 

“You were a good boy, you were always a good boy. I’m here for you, I’m here for you,” the man says, his voice wavering. 

I can’t look. I turn away and hear a final yelp and then nothing. I start to cry uncontrollably. 

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

9/12/2018 - Escape to the Wooden Plane

“I can’t let them see me,” I think to myself as a run towards a large metal crate. I’m holding a sniper rifle and trying to decide what to do next. There’s a loading ramp nearby leading down, and I hear several mechanical sounds coming closer. Looking through the sniper scope, I see two spherical robots slowly walking towards my position!

They’d be kind of cute if they didn’t seem to pose a threat to me. Both robots are several times taller than me, and have a round sphere body with two arms and two legs. Two bright eyes in the middle make them look like cutesy robots that you’d see in a Kirby game. 

I take aim, and fire at the eye portion of the front robot, but the bullets bounce harmlessly off. The rifle clicks. No more ammo. Seeing no other option, I ditch the rifle and run towards a small cliff. 

There are rapid footsteps behind me, and I see two men in black robes chasing after me. The cultists have found me! They futilely throw rocks at me and curse as I dive off the cliff and into the water. 

I swim a short ways down and surface near a dock where a wooden boat shaped like a plane is moored. Rather than being made of wooden boards, this boat/plane looks like logs have been arranged vertically and lashed together. It’s very unusual, and I wonder how it’s supposed to move. 

As I go inside, I realize that my attackers aren’t following me. I think it’s safe in here.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

9/10/2018 - A Lucid Moment

Gasping for breath, I pull myself out of the water onto solid ground. I’m exhausted and soaking wet, but I can’t remember what happened or where I came from. Even though I’m still taking deep gasping breaths, I pick myself up and amble off to try to get more information about where I am.

Passing through a glass doorway, I find myself in the brightly-lit produce section of a grocery store. The colors of all the fresh fruits and vegetables catches my eye, but how did I get here?

People are shopping and pushing carts, but it dawns on me that none of this is real. I go lucid in an instant, and the dreamscape becomes clearer and more distinct. This lucidity feels stronger than normal. 

I raise my hand and concentrate hard. The shoppers stop moving, seemingly frozen in time.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

9/4/2018 - The Water Is About to Come In

I’m anxious. I seem to be on the first floor of the two-floor room that I stay in when I go to Costa Rica, but something is wrong. I hear the staccato sound of raindrops hitting the rooftops. It sounds like a torrential downpour out there, but I feel like I need to get out of here.

Quickly, I run upstairs to the deck to look outside. Instead of the beach, I see nothing but water. The water has already reached a foot above the bottom of the door.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

9/3/2018 - The Dungeon

It’s dark in here. The walls of this dungeon are made from roughly-hewn gray stone bricks, mildewed from neglect. Instinctively, I know this dungeon is a square with a large square column in the middle. 

Cautiously, I sneak through the dungeon, keeping my ears open for any noises. Suddenly, I hear a clattering nearby, and I see a skeleton moving towards me with its arms outstretched!

I reach down to my belt, and I grab the handle of a weapon that I have slung there. It’s a flat wooden club that flares out at the end. It has a white plastic crossguard, and the weapon resembles something you’d use in sword training. 

The skeleton seems unarmored, so I swing the club downward along one of its collarbones. Its bones shatter and splinter all the way down through the ribcage, and the skeleton stops moving! That wasn’t so hard. I keep moving.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

8/26/2018 - Strange Effects from the Wrong Potion

The layout of this place is strange; there are beds and furniture arranged seemingly at random throughout the rooms here, but no one is around. It seems like kids are definitely living here, but I don’t see any around. 

I reach up to grab a red Solo cup with my drink in it and take a sip. My insides feel hot and I start to feel really weird. My nails start to become long and manicured, I can feel my hair grow and my face change, and my clothes turn frilly and pink. I have the body of what looks like a young woman! Moreover, she looks like a J-pop idol!

As I’m trying to process what happened, the actual girl comes in and says that she specially prepared that potion for a backup singer for her group. As she’s saying this, I notice that there’s another red Solo cup near the one I picked up. I must’ve grabbed the wrong one! She mentions that it should wear off in several hours.

Instead of feeling angry at myself, I feel kind of... good? It feels like this could be a new and interesting experience, and I like feeling pretty like this for once. There’s even a Halloween party I could go to and surprise people! 

I wander in my new form through the collection of beds and furniture, and I find a very old computer that’s turned to a command-line screen. It says it has 200MB of storage space.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

8/18/2018 - Attacked by a Snake!

With the sound of creaking hinges, the wooden door to the treehouse I’m in opens up to a rickety wooden bridge, overhung with leaves. I have to get to the treehouse on the other side of the bridge, but there aren’t any handrails or ropes to brace myself. I’m so high up that I don’t want to risk it. I better head back.

As I try to back up though, the door slams shut and won’t open! I hear a hiss above me, and concealed within the leaves is a large green snake! Its yellow eyes size me up, and it flicks its tongue out. 

It bears its fangs at me, and I snap my hand out and grab it behind the head. The snake is still acting hostile, but it doesn’t have enough leverage to lean down and bite my hand. A clear liquid shoots out from its mouth, but it can’t seem to aim it in my direction. Venom!

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

8/16/2018 - You Were Supposed to Take Care of My Dog!

"Ugh, how tacky,” I think to myself as I survey the gold ringed marble pillars in the top floor of this rich-looking hotel. Everything is covered in gold (gold plating?). I had to come here during a cocktail party for a singular reason: a celebrity wanted to keep my little dog for a while, and I’m picking her up. 

As I’m walking towards the door of the celebrity’s suite, I see my dog running towards me excitedly. I get mad; why was she running around without a leash? I knock on the celebrity’s door, and a middle-age-ish blonde woman--she seems like a celebrity, but I don’t know who she is--answers in a cocktail dress. 

When I point out she was supposed to take of my dog, she waves me away. She already seems drunk. I carry my dog back to the elevator angry, but I’m glad she’s not hurt. 

On my way though, I stuff my face with some of the fancy foods and desserts. If the lady couldn’t take care of my dog, I’m not going to honor her fancy party etiquette!

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

8/15/2018 - Race With the Controllers

Brief session. I’m out on a city street holding an Xbox 360 controller, and I realize that I’m in a race. I put my right knee down to the ground, and I suddenly start to levitate! Somehow, I know I have to keep holding onto the controller. 

Slowly, I start to pick up speed, and I climb a small green hill up to the city street. Faster and faster I go, before I end up in a wood-paneled room in a house. I think I won.

[dispatchesfromunknownkadath]

8/14/2018 - The Underwater Cavern, A Creature Freed, a Lucid Moment

I’m swimming downwards into a large underwater cavern, its bottom covered with piles of large rocks. Breathing doesn’t seem to be a problem, and the cavern itself has enough light to see by. 

Suddenly, as if some plug had been pulled, the water drains out, leaving only wet piles of rocks. I stand on one pile made of stone slabs, and kick the top rock off. A large humanoid rock creature emerges, its stone body covered with red tribal-tattoo-like markings. It has an angry expression, but it seems non-hostile. It looks at me, then ambles off. 

Descending from the rock pile, I see photos and writings arranged in a glass case along one wall of the cavern. Somehow, I realize that I’m within a dream and go lucid, but the dreamscape itself is very weak and unstable. I muster my concentration and raise my hand in front of one of the writings, intent on changing it.

The words blend together, warping through sheer mental force into an inky vortex. This is all I can manage, but it’s something. I feel pride in it.