good morning. last night i dreamt that i was in some strange cyberpunk high rise mega city structure. it was clearly larger than a normal building but i only ever experienced four levels of a small chunk, near the South Wall of the building.
At the fourth level were residences and apartments. for reasons, the stairs to reach this level were only accessible through the back rooms of the kitchens on level three, which also had a sizeable wedding chapel in it. on level two was a public park of sorts that felt like it was sunny but probably just had a lot of artificial light going on. and at the bottom level were prison cells where everything had a price ticker attached to it - turn on the water faucet? ticker goes up. cameras everywhere would crane around and follow you. the worst part was that you needed to go through level one to get to any other level.
so i woke up on a park bench on level two in my bath robe and needed to get actual clothes on (even though most passersby complimented my fashion choice in a weirdly supportive way). but i couldn't get through the kitchen to go upstairs to my apartment because there was a wedding procession in progress. so i kinda just sat there in my bath robe and watched and congratulated random people because i couldn't tell who was getting married that day.
once I got into some practical clothes, I briefly played what i was told was the new Grand Theft Auto game, whose storyline takes an absolutely wild turn. i had come in, in media res, so i have no idea how i got there, but Michael from 5 is the main character again and for some reason he's stuck in this amateur Source Engine like map with random pedestrians and cars stuck in mid air everywhere. Michael is able to talk but in slow motion; it's clear that being in this dimension is bad for your health over time, but the only way out is to "ping" somebody you know is in the real world by calling them on your phone. this also apparently is bad for your health, but Michael's contact understands and says "ping me, damn it, I don't care, it's the only way." this eventually leads to the game's ultimate gimmick and the most hidden twist of all: via this strange dimension, Michael is able to travel through "time" and access the cities of every previous 3D GTA game, even if there is nothing to really do there. I guess they pull a Spider Verse thing and have him run into Carl Johnson who says the thing etc etc.
I stop playing the game because it's "time to go." I join a couple of family members at the mall, where employees are carrying around big heavy marble installations (like entire running fountains with surrounding bench seating). Another employee is "testing" the seats by skateboard grinding on them. Somebody else is testing an effects machine that fills the floor with thick pink clouds. I find my mom at a weird cafe, where all the walls and floors are black carpet, and she is sitting on the floor playing Sim City 2000 for the Sega Saturn.
I watch baseball, briefly. Somebody is entering cheat codes into a live broadcast game. One of them is "shotgun mode" which displays a warning - "All effects will be multiplied like a shotgun blast in this mode, good and bad, for you and everybody else. This can have incredible and disastrous effects on the entire season. Are you sure?" They answer yes. A batter approaches the box. The pitcher throws 8 fast balls at once; the batter connects with all of them, sending half out of the park, but also sending the pitcher and all three base men with them. It's a grand slam. The score board now reads "Home: A lot, Away: Orbit."
We all exit the mall into an abandoned rail yard and start getting into protracted gun fights with Fallout 3 raiders. We all have sawed off shotguns that do not hit anything. A bandit leader approaches us with a fearsome creation: a sawed off shotgun minigun of sorts. It is eight double barrel shotguns attached to what looks like an oversized shower head in a circle, stuck on the end of a weed whacker, which is fired (in full auto somehow) by pulling a starter cord. Like our shotguns, it does not hit anything. Dad fires his at point blank at a random raider. The raider does not die; the blast ejects all of his inventory items and clothes in a circle around him.
I awaken feeling like that GTA game might actually get me to play it.
