Buzzing

Yet another near miss on Task of the Year! I really need to work on learning to close these. Lots of fun though! Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid Lucid #193: Magic Carpet School I am part of a large parenting group that is exploring a gloomy cavern illuminated by translucent pools of water. After quietly exploring this place for a while, we all wind up back at one of the mom's houses. Somebody suggests that we do a group hug, and we all awkwardly move toward the middle of the room. I notice that <PERSON> from The Office is part of the group. He looks sweaty and awkward and I think, "Hey that guy who plays <PERSON> sure looks sweaty and awkward in person." I do a quick mental check to see whether this is a dream and decide that yes, it definitely is. I walk out of this living room into an elementary school classroom that is in the middle of some kind of lesson. I pass through without interacting with any of the dream characters, wanting to get outside for a Task of the Year attempt. (The Aladdin's lamp task with a magic carpet and three wishes.) Leaving this classroom takes me to a second classroom and I start worrying that I will spend this whole lucid wandering through an endless series of grade school classes. I head for a wall, announcing that "This is a phase outside," before plunging right through. I wind up in the void, but my hands and forearms are still brightly illuminated and clearly visible. I rub my hands together and slowly the void becomes filled with a swirling field of stars. This fades into a scene from the Matrix that has the Youtube logo and controls underneath it, and I see that I am watching a video whose length is "0:98". I briefly wonder if I went to bed wearing VR goggles or something and that the images are penetrating my eyelids. Scenes from The Matrix flash by and the image slowly rotates. Now there is a crackling sound and my vision fills with a series of strange characters that I cannot identify. I feel a sharp tug backward and I wait for the new scene to form. My vision reforms into... another elementary school classroom, this one a little bigger with an adjacent windowed playroom. I head immediately for the exit and I am pleased to find myself in an entrance area. I bolt through a set of glass doors and now I am outside. Immediately I start attempting the lamp summon by "finding" it behind my back, but my hand just keeps coming back empty. After three failures, I am really frustrated by this. On the last attempt my hand comes back with some little piece of dirty, wooden-looking junk about the size of a sugar cube. This time I pretend that this is the lamp but it is just way too small. "Bigger... bigger..." and do a little magician-esque gesture. It plumps up nicely into a real magic lamp! It is way too light to be realistic, but who cares, next step! I rub the lamp, wishing for the magic carpet. I decide to be really specific, saying, "A magic carpet. Make it rolled up." A simple little rolled-up rug appears on the ground. I immediately think, Why did you ask for it rolled up? That is just a pain in the ass. I expect the magic carpet to unroll and it does, so I quickly sit down. As I do, it lifts me up into the air and starts flying leisurely forward. For my second wish, I quickly say "Delicious cookie!" and a tiny little sliver of cookie appears in my hand, like someone had already eaten most of it. I find this awfully stingy for a magic lamp but I stuff it in my mouth. It is chocolate chip, not bad at all. I think about how close I am to completing the task and the excitement gets the best of me. I get one last look at the roof of a one-story building as I float over it before the dream ends.