AnOublietteofThought

“A dream within a dream within a dream within a what kind of nightmarish hellscape is this nonsense?!” is what my title should be. Alas, that'd be very long for a title. This is the basics of what I remember of the dream. I can see the influences, but where my brain chose to take it is very disturbing.

It started off innocently enough. My partner in the dream and myself were at my grandparents' house (I should note that the house hasn't existed for a quarter of a century in this reality). I was very excited for them to meet, and I had helped my grandmother with cooking all morning. Various conversations and events occurred. At some point he was headed to go grab some furniture with my father (who has also been dead for over a decade).

While on the phone with my partner, I heard a meow. I immediately went to the garage door. (My grandparents had three entrance points to their house. My grandfather had built a two car garage/carport onto the house when I was very young. That was the door most persons entered through due to location.) Outside the screen was a small tortoise shell kitten. (I believe this to have been inspired by a photograph recently shared by a friend. The kitten could have been a baby version of his cat. I did not make the connection with my first person self inside the dream. My spectator awareness had, as she was piecing together and tearing apart my dream as it carried forward. This is just how I dream most of time these days. It was not always that way. The first person is never aware of the observer now, and the observer can never interfere. When I wake up, I carry the memories, thoughts, and experiencesof both. I should write about that sometime. I think it'sa fascinating workaround my subconscious possibly came up with to keep my dreams from driving me more insane than I naturally am as a human. (Do take that with a wink and a nudge. I do believeI'mgoingto use this as an excusefor a double parentheses — grammarbe damned! Phew! That's a hell of a paragraph. I do not care.))

I was immediately distraught because I remembered Phoebe. Who kept dropping kittens off at my door?! (First person me did not notice the discrepancy. Watcher me was annoyed by that fact. She gets like that when the “main character” of a dream is actually me. It's almost like she's offended that the dream me didn't catch on and realize I was dreaming. It's fine when I'm someone else, but if I'm me, she expectsme to catch on.) I picked up the cat and brought her inside, fretting over if I'd be allowed to keep her and find her a home. (Another ridiculous element since it was my grandparents' house.

More phonecalls and texting was taking place. I no longer remember their details, though the details were important. This is where the first mention of the AI came into play because I made a sarcastic comment about how it can't exactly be a superintelligence if it has eyes everywhere but can't catch the cat criminals. (I went on a tirade. Not unexpected. Animal neglect is an easy trigger for me.) The telephone screen glitched, and I briefly saw a warning about speaking ill of the AI.

This is where things got interesting surrounding the phone's AI. First person me barely noticed the warning as anything unusual. She even made a comment to her partner about the lack of ability to have a private conversation these days. They went back and forth with him telling her that she'd just call attention to herself. Observer me noticed that it wasn't just a warning. The screen had flickered and the warning came in a very specific shade of green. (Long before 'The Matrix' existed, I would have nightmares and hypnopompic hallucinations involving computations, various unidentified extraterrestrial activities, blueprints, and random equations that always presented in a very particular manner. It immediately caught the attention of observer me and placed her on alert. She felt this to be a new simulation. That is odd in itself. The observer's place in my dreams is going through a shift. She becomes hyperalert during certain dreams now. It's like she's trying to figure out something specific. I'm not sure the shift is useful. My dreams really don't need more layers.)

This continued with various people. I don't remember this next part accurate enough to place it in chronological order from the dream perspective. I can deduce the order as it would have naturally taken time. There was also a series of events. Observer me remembers it swiftly. Or rather I remember that is her perception. So I think this is a section where both must exist simultaneously, though time becomes a bit interesting. Just imagine hours ticking by for first person me while observer me witnesses it all in a fraction of a minute. I carry both in my memory.

First person continued about their day, often on the phone with him or someone else. There were texts, video calls, some gaming, and more. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary for her. I will describe a few scenes in the next paragraph that also occurred during this time. The observer was witnessing something completely different. She noticed that not only had first person's screen kept “glitching”, but all the phone screens she could see were glitching in various ways. Pages of data would stream by. Patterns would flicker. It was all layered in a manner where it stayed hidden until it didn't. I really don't know how to explain it. There were connections to perfect strangers. It really was like a world wide web with everyone using the phones captured in the spinning.

There was a point during the racing game where first person me asked her partner, who loves racing games, if he saw it. He said that he didn't know what she was talking about and it was probably her imagination or she was being paranoid. Her screen had a box on it informing her that the racetrack they were on was no longer allowed because she was attacking the AI. She could see a chat feed where strangers were complaining because they hadn't been able to complete the race yet, and couldn't she keep her mouth shut. They called her a label I can't remember. She told her partner and asked what it meant, and why it was showing on her screen. He wasn't even slightly concerned. He just joked about her upsetting the AI, and she better watch out. Observer me was paying eagle eye attention.

During all of this time, multiple things occurred. Another cat showed up at the front door. (In the real house, the front door opened into a bedroom. In the dream house, it opened into my real bedroom.) There was a very plump grey kitten outside the door. Perhaps six months old. Beyond the door was a tree stump and a long, hollow log. (I remember the stump, though its location wasn't accurate. The log was new. The grass was much taller than they would have ever allowed.) I was talking to the second kitten while calling up my partner to declare we'd need find a second home when out from the hollow log came five more plump kittens of varying coats and one peculiar momma cat who was meowing at them not to wander off.

Our eyes met and she seemed to be saying to first person me not to mention her. The kittens turned and chased one another back into the log, and first person me turned to find the tangerine obscenity himself standing inside my grandmother's kitchen along with multiple secret service, etc. I was annoyed by the desecration. The big box television in the living room was playing the old games how 'Let's Make a Deal'. Observer me was muttering, “Don't do it! Don't do it. Turn around and let them handle it.” First person me was unaware, of course.

I walked into the kitchen and heard his most esteemed piece of feces explaining “reality” to my grandparents. My father was also there, giving me a look that also said, “Don't do it.” There was a bed that I recognized that belonged to a friend who had departed (a teacher her entire life). His ugliness was explaining that it had to be sold. It took up too much room. No one wanted such old beds hanging around when there was the best new beds available waiting for someone to fall asleep in. Inwardly, first person me fumed. Observer me thought she saw the trap being played. Conversation/negotiations occurred until I took possession of the bed via a little known clause that he had made sure was no longer circulating.

The next part of the dream had me rearranging my bedroom to try and place two beds inside it. Video was on the entire time as my partner and I continued speaking. The bed was situated where it could easily be accessed by the front door. I'd built a wall with bookcases filled to the brim with books to block out the rest of the bedroom. Beside the bed was a glass, a carafe of water, and a spiral bound notebook and pen. The notebook was filled with equations real me couldn't figure out if her life depended on it. The cover of the spiral had a tiny red door drawn at the bottom of it. Observer me noticed because red doors and equations hold a very specific place in my dreams. Now she had become a secondary first person because having the first person me unaware of what that meant made no sense and did not follow the known rules of my life-long dreamscape.

At this point, I am unsure how to explain my dream. A second observer © me showed up. The first person (A) me in the dream continued continued forward completely unaware. The first observer (B) swooped down into the hideyhole of a room A built, sat on the bed, picked up the spiral, and crossed through the red door. C split her attention to take in both. This is the first atypical occurrence.

A began navigating attaining a second, larger bed that the orange monstrosity was demanding be burned in a bonfire to be built at the center of my grandparents' circular driveway. B was seeking out a solution with the same group of people she always has behind the red door. One person was missing. A second disappeared in front of us before the allotted time. We all realized the trap at once. B looked up and made a slicing motion through the air making intentional contact with C. Others in the familiar space were doing similar. Suddenly C understood as well and thought, “No. That's not possible.” B screamed, “Breach! Breach! Run!” C began trying to wake up as the eerie green pattern swarmed what had always been a safe room.

The next parts are confusing, as they often can be when experiencing false awakenings. I've never experienced them to this degree that I can remember. It's like I was stuck in a loop. C would think she managed to escape. I (D) would think that I was awake and go about what would be a typical Saturday for me while contemplating the dream. Suddenly B would break through screaming at C and C would get a brief glimpse of B and those still in the room writing equations into the air and typing code into holo-keyboards as swiftly as they could. The glimpse at A varied each time. I remember some of the scenarios, but not all, and frankly I have no desire to repeat the ones I do. I don't know how long this went on. Enough that when I really did wake up, I confessed to a person that knows how I dream that I wasn't sure if I was awake. I think that I surely am, because no layer lasted this long, but I cannot state that I'm 100% certain.

On the last false awakening, B's group were forced to accept failure. Failure does sometimes occur when building whatever is formulated in the red room. Catastrophically so. However, that is outside where the idea is being given form. This is the first time in my memory where the red room itself becomes a graveyard. The last thing B said/thought/communicated to C was, “It's in the pixels! It's in the light!”

The last glimpse of A and everyone else in the dream became proof as C watched the phones' AI do what it had programmed itself to do at the behest of humans who wished to have control of everything. It took control of their brains beyond mere suggestion and psychological machinations. It used light frequency and patterns and/or sound to sink its claws into their consciousness like a parasitic organism, and it took control of the human race with almost zero resistance.

And then I finally woke up. Maybe...

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

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Not edited nor proofread.