Hi I had a cool dream. My dream-journal of it is pretty long, though.
tl;dr: It's set in a world where humans live underground because the "angels" on the surface will kill them if they emerge. A scientist finds an addictive hallucinogenic fruit that causes you to hear the recorded thoughts of the dead. This fruit transforms you into a creature if you take it too much, or for too long. It also makes you very autistic, to the point that you end up with fae animal genius brain a lil bit.
Me and my pals decide "oh damn. I want that for me"
it was a good dream. Full journal entry below za cut:
I was visiting a larger settlement from my small camp on the outskirts, in a vast underground cave system. In the settlement, one of the lead scientists (not named in the dream but we'll call her Jennifer for readability) was rearranging the bioscience labs to cordon off a small area to be only accessible by people with permission. She said "You should probably see this," because she trusted me.
Jennifer led me to see "Amelie" (again, not named in the dream, but I'll call her this for readability), one of their cleverest scientists. Amelie had changed radically, and was growing a snout and possibly bat-wing patagium (memory hazy). She was hanging out with two talking bat-things - and this was clear that they were still animals, that they had the mind of an animal, and yet could talk, almost similar to a well-trained parrot - which were keeping her company, and she was talking strangely as well. Amelie's personality and mental structure had changed so she had a strange and cryptic and almost childlike way of acting and socializing. However, her ability to do mental tasks (biological science, art, etc) had not reduced at all and may have even increased (autism^2?). Amelie had to shed, sometimes, like a lizard, and wriggle out of her old skin to grow a new one.
Jennifer explained that Amelie had been like this for weeks, and she had become a "squamate" on a cellular level ("squamate" is the exact word from the dream, do not question the scientific accuracy it's dream-logic). Jennifer said that neither herself, nor any of the trusted scientists she had explained what happened to Amelie to, knew what had caused this. However, somebody (Jennifer? Me? another of the scientists?) speculated that this must be how some people were still living on the surface, how these (half-mythical, suspected to exist but never proven) surface humans could coexist with the angels.
It is implied that the angels are why everyone was forced underground. These are not Evangelion angels, but not biblical ones either. Not to make the dream less interesting, but I suspect my dream had them in mind as something closer to Disassembly Drones from Murder Drones.
I suspected this would lead to some social contention. So, to get on the village elder's good side, I gifted his son a tricked-out schoolbus turned into some sort of vanlife partybus. However, after I left, the village elder filled that bus with giant copper gears, apparently as part of some plot against me (this never came to pass).
I woke up very briefly and went back to sleep.
We had figured out - me and Jennifer and the trusted scientists - what had changed Amelie. There was some strange fruit or fungus that grew in the caves, and it was hallucinogenic. It made people live have flashbacks of or hear (like a voice) the memories of dead humans somehow. This is implied to be because the plant grows into the graves of buried humans and absorbs their brains, distilling the memories to carry them on. I realize this is how the strange talking animals who were keeping Amelie company learned to talk - by experiencing the memories of humans, human speech imprinted upon them. I realized this in the shower. I mean, in the dream, I was taking a shower, and my shower thought was "oh this was how the animals learned to talk." However, in addition to the memories of the dead, this fruit would also make you simply trip out and hallucinate in the normal way.
Amelie had taken these, potentially a very large amount of these. In a small amount it doesn't do anything permanent to you, but in a large amount or repeatedly over time it will start to slow-burn transform you. It will get into your cells and change your genetics. It was learned that over time, you'd become immune to the hallucinogenic effects, but the transformative effects remained. In fact, after you'd spent enough time taking these, you would continue to transform even without eating them, because your body is now fully seeded with the new genetics and is already prepared to change.
A large number of us, the group who knew about what had happened to Amelie, began taking these fruits on purpose. We wanted to change and transform and become like she is. The hallucinogenic effects were very intense but we knew that'd decrease over time and the transformation would remain. Everyone in the settlement had to migrate, because of some imminent threat (unspecified), but we in the transformation cult decided to stay. Some of us approached the last remaining person who planned to leave, the village elder, who was standing on top of a building. We tried to convince him that conflict would not be necessary, that they had to leave the settlement anyway so why not leave it to us? And also that bloodshed would only result in losing people on both our sides.
I believe I woke up again at this point and after this the dream is a lot less coherent.
Some of our transformative group was having some sort of Matrix-like car chase with over-the-top action movie nonsense and a shootout. The highways were laid out like a 3D Sonic level and there were lots of broken sections you had to do a dramatic ramp and arc over with your car. I remember somebody skateboarding on the railings. it was very silly.
I had taken in one of the civillians we had injured in the car chase. When I woke up, I found out that while I was really high from the effects of the fruit I had given her (the civilian) the fruit to "heal" her. It had worked. However, this meant she had eaten some of the fruit. When she woke up she talked about refreshed she felt, and how fun the trip was, and that she wanted more of it. She still looked fully human and I didn't want to transform somebody who didn't realize what was going on, but she was starting to get addicted to the fruit. So, I very carefully found a way to drop her off back at her apartment.