White Russian

The following is a dream I experienced and wrote about around 2002 when I was ~18 years old.  It has been very mildly edited from its original form.

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There is a game to be played.  A game with warriors.  Many different warriors can be chosen.  There are fighters, thieves, berzerkers, wizards, samurais, archers, and anything else you can think of.  I am looking down on a grid of streets.  On each street, a different type of warrior marches.  Most players build armies out of just a few kinds of warriors.  This time though, the player wants a variety.  I see a ninja.  Ninjas can walk on walls.  Ninjas wear pointy hats.  I am to be a ninja.  I will take off my pointy hat, because it looks kind of gay.

I start out on the ground.  There is a mission that ninjas have to accomplish.  Three ninjas have been chosen for this mission.  Here is Witt, Lemon, and myself.  Here is a tall skyscraper, with a russian turnip roof.

The sky is a dull purple-black colour, and only a few stars light our way as we ascend the building.  It appears as though Witt and Lemon have also cast off their ninja pointy hats.  It sucks being part of a big game.  Sometimes programmers aren't fair and they make you wear a pointy hat.  Sometimes they are more than fair, but then you forget about being part of the game.

Back to the mission at hand.  We are to abduct a Russian girl from the turnip roofed skyscraper.  You see, the men in the turnip roofed skyscraper abducted her in the first place.  They took her from her parents.  Why did they do that?  I don't know.  Why are we supposed to abduct her?  I don't know that either.  I'm just part of the game, not the player.

We've reached the top.  In through the window we go.  Into the bedroom, where she is asleep.  I'm the highest level ninja here, so I do the honours and grab hold of her, covering her mouth.  She still manages to get out a startled yelp though.  Damn, the guards might be alerted.  With my hand still over her mouth, I motion for her to stay silent by doing the whole finger-over-the-mouth-and-saying-"Shhhh" thing.  It seems to work for the moment at least.  I pick her up in my arms and we flee into the next room, which happens to be the bathroom.  Hiding is an important skill for ninjas, and we all activate it now.

My captive and I lay down in the bathtub.  Only now, by the moonlight shining through the window, do I have a chance to see the girl.  She is quite beautiful, about my age, with honey blonde hair, and dark brown eyes that look quite large and scared right now.  She is wearing soft red and blue plaid pyjamas.

Two guards burst into the room, and look around with their flashlights.  They whisper to each other for a moment, and then leave the room.  I am thankful for two things right now: that my ninja friends and I have high level hiding skillz, and that the artificial intelligence of enemies is never very well programmed.  Oh, and a third thing: that there is a beautiful girl wearing pyjamas laying on top of me.  We share a few breaths of relief once they are gone.  I look my quarry in the eyes, once again motion for her to keep silent, and then take my hand off her mouth.

"What do you want with me?" she whispers.  One of the few answers I can't give her.  But without an answer, she may not come easily.  I look to both of my comrades, and then lie to her.

"We're here to take you back to your parents," I say.  Lemon looks at me and shakes his head helplessly.  I half smile and wink back.  I know what I'm doing.  "We have to get out of here," I say.  "Hold on to me," I tell her.

Back outside to the outer walls of the skyscraper, we descend into the darkness.  I hold her tight in my arms, so she doesn't fear falling.

As usual, descending takes less time than ascending.  Once we are safe on the ground, we head for our final checkpoint to end this mission.  It is in a large, flat building; like a mall, but with apartments and hotels and things too.  Like a city inside a building.  It is dark in here, and the walkways are deserted, so we assume that most everyone is sound asleep.  We get to our room.  There are three beds.  The captive Russian girl is asleep in my arms now, so I take her to my bed.  Being a good ninja, and not wanting to be a creep, I decide that I'll stay awake near the window until morning and watch for potential pursuers. 

I awake in my bed.  I'm not sure when I fell asleep, but I'm sure that I did.  I look up from under my blankets.  The room is bright, and the Russian girl is standing at the foot of the bed.  She is wearing a short red and black dress, and she looks even more beautiful in the morning light.  She smiles at me and then abruptly turns and leaves the room.

I get up, and change my black ninja suit for the clothes that are laid out for me.  The programmers have made the arrangements for us, and we have everything we need.  I leave the room and go to the kitchen, where we all sit down and have breakfast.  Afterwards, the girl asks me if we can take her somewhere.  Not wanting to upset her, and not quite knowing what we're supposed to do with her now, I say yes.  Off we go.

She walks close beside me.  I put my arm around her waist.  She puts her head on my shoulder.  I love feeling close to someone like this.  I temporarily languish in bliss, until suddenly Witt calls for me from behind.  Since it's probably something work-related, I tell Lemon to watch our friend while I find out what's up.

Once we are far enough away to transfer potentially secret information, he tells me what's up, and this is where it all started to go wrong.  It wasn't work related.  Rather, he had a joint to smoke. And I, being a pothead myself, just couldn't refuse.  We smoked it.  Now theres something you should know about intoxicating substances in the game world: they don't actually get you high.  Rather, they just change the game somewhat.  This joint changed the game for the worst.

I looked ahead, only to see Lemon starting to put the moves on my girl.  He had his arm around her. So I headed up to them, and gave Lemon the evil eye.  Thankfully, he backed off and she came over to me.  We continued our walk the same way we had before Witt interrupted, except I was having a hard time focusing because of the weed.

We finally came near her destination.  We went down a very short, unused side corridor, and through a rusted door.  We found stairs leading down to a dank cellar.  We descended the stairs, but the problem was that the stairs were getting increasingly smaller and further down.  Since I was still wearing my ninja sandals, and since I had lost my ninja skills when I got stoned, I couldn't make it any further without falling.  So, in my dazy mind, I decided to have Witt and Lemon escort her to her destination while I went back to get some shoes.

I kissed her on the forehead goodbye, and left for my journey for shoes.  Two things happened to me on the way back: I forgot the way back, and then I forgot what I was doing.  Confused but undaunted, I decided to wander around aimlessly.  I stopped at a street vendor and bought a watch strap.  I'm not sure why.

I continued wandering, and eventually I came upon the Russian girl.  There was something odd going on though, because she looked slightly different, and she wasn't with Witt and Lemon.  She was with another girl.  I felt a glowing swell of love for the Russian girl, so I didn't make a big deal of the situation.

"I'm lost," I admitted to her.

"Well, I think I know the way back," she said. "Just follow me."

I did.  It turned out that she didn't know the way back to our place.  It turned out, however, that she knew the way back to some sort of old run down motel place.  We went inside.

"You want any?" she asked me.

Still dazed from the weed, I nevertheless caught on to what kind of place this was.  "Yeah..." I said, reaching for my wallet.  I'd never done coke before, but I wasn't afraid to try new things.

Just as we were about to make the exchange, an old, fat, ugly, troll woman burst in the room.  To distract her from what was really going on, the girls each lit up a smoke.

"No smoking in here. Take it outside," she said.  We took it outside.

Outside was nice, despite being surrounded by tall brick walls; the sun was bright and the sky was blue.  There was a perfect groves of trees with a small stream running through.  Flowers were scattered throughout the grass, and birds were singing in the trees.  It was as if someone stole a block out of urban Eden.

I noticed that the other girl was nowhere to be seen.  It was only me and my captive.  I put my arm around her waist, and she put her head on my shoulder.  We walked up a small stone path and came to a little picnic table.

She took out the cocaine.  Something amazing occured to me.  I took out the block of hash that I had thought was a watch strap.  She smiled at me, and I smiled back.  Life was good.  We started the session.

We do all of the drugs; time stops; I realize one thing: I love this girl.  I'll never even know her name, and I love her more than anything in the world.

I realize another: she's parts of the game.  She's not real.  Neither am I.  Programmers like things to be stable and predictable.  Love and drugs are chaotic.  Programmers don't like them, or else they simply can't program them.  But they can delete the parts of the game which use them.

I hate this game that I'm a part of.  I hate it to hell!  It's a game that I've never wanted to be a part of.  I can't make my own game.  Neither of us can...  So, in a haze of cocaine and hashish, my love and I sit here, at a picnic table, waiting for the end.  Because we know it will come.  We can only hope that, when it does come, we can be together forever, through the endless oblivion that awaits.  That's all that matters.