Well, here it is! Feel free to post your forum dreams here, and we can compare the various portrayals of LD4all in people’s dreams! Interesting, yes?
Here’s an excerpt from one of mine to start us off (it’s a bit long, but everything’s interconnected):
We were now in the city, standing in front of a fairly tall skyscraper. This building looked rather dingy and brown, quite old. Nevertheless, it seemed as good a place to start (warning the world of impending disaster) as any, so we went indoors.
The first few floors were apparently abandoned. They were well-lit, but dusty and crumbling. However, there was an elevator all lit up that looked much more modern than the rest of the building, so we hopped on board. The boy pushed in the button for the top floor, whatever that was.
Barely a moment later, the doors swung open onto a large, dim chamber that was full of arcade equipment. It still looked old and disused. It was a large hall with a low ceiling. Only a few lights were switched on, and even they were very dim. The arcade machines looked as though they were out of order, or perhaps just long abandoned. Some looked very lonely, with their lights flickering forlornly, waiting to be played (but with no willing players). It was a sad place.
Still, it wasn’t completely deserted. I saw several people there, again my own age, talking with each other in the shadows, or playing one of the games. There was one such group fairly close to the lift. The boy and I walked towards them to see what they were playing. As far as I could tell, the game seemed to consist of a small version of the snooker ball triangle set on a vertical frame. Instead of snooker balls, the triangle contained marble-sized recesses in which small wooden balls were placed in strange patterns. I didn’t know the rules of the game, so I couldn’t make sense of the patterns, but I somehow knew the game was called “Moogles”.
The Moogles players were three young men, all of whom turned and looked at me rather dolefully as I approached. Just as I was wondering why they looked so bored, the one nearest me complained that he wished he hadn’t signed up for a Moogles tournament, because it was so long that it had run into the public holiday (It is a public holiday in real life, too!) and he wouldn’t have any free time. From this I got the impression that Moogles tournaments lasted several days without rest.
Just before I turned away, another young man walked past. He didn’t look doleful at all - in fact, I somehow knew that this was Dark Sider from LD4all - and said to the other guys that he liked Pokemon! (“Nah, I’m a Pokemon man through and through,” was his phrase.) He ignored me completely, though, and went straight off again afterwards.
I didn’t see any reason to stay around here (these guys wouldn’t be able to help me save the world), so I headed in the direction Dark Sider had come from. The light soon brightened a bit, and the chamber opened out into a much bigger hall. The floor dropped away, leaving us on a second-storey balcony with no way down to the main hall below. I went to the edge and looked over.
The room was brighter than the arcade, but still relatively dim. The main reason for this was because there were no windows in the room that I could see, and the whole place was lit with artificial yellow lights that cast a very yellow tint over the area. Like the rest of the building, this hall was old, with brownish-yellow carpet and brownish-yellow walls. It was rather devoid of furniture except a few small side tables up against the wall, but there were quite a few people wandering around. Most of them were female, I noticed, and some of them were dressed up formally as if going to a dance or wedding. In fact, I wondered for a moment if this room was a dance hall and this was the preparation for it.
There seemed to be no way down from the balcony, but after a moment one of the women looked up at me on the balcony and beckoned me down to join her. It was Siiw, with black hair and trademark sunglasses (well, those tinted glasses that change colour depending on the light - close enough). The next thing I knew, I was down on the floor of the hall with everybody else. The boy who had been with me until now was left back on the balcony, though. Oh well.
It seemed that the hall was, in fact, LD4all. I didn’t think of it as being a forum as such, but it was a meeting place for LD4all members. Now that I no longer had to peer down from afar, I realised that I had been mistaken in thinking there was going to be a dance. The girls who had seemed to be dressed up looked more casually dressed from down here. Although their clothes hadn’t changed, the change of angle gave me a different perspective somehow.
Siiw very kindly offered to show me around, but the tour lasted less than a minute. There wasn’t much to see, really. Aside from the door at the balcony, there were no doors in the room (although the elevator was here, off to the left in a shadowy alcove), and there still wasn’t much in the way of furniture. Still, it was enough to make me temporarily forget about having to warn everyone about the impending attack of doom, and I decided to just wander around instead.
Off in a corner to the right I came across a group of five young men. They caught my eye because they were all posing in a line, as if having their photo taken. They weren’t, though. They were all the same height and all had black hair. Three of them had long hair that went a little past their shoulders, and for a few long moments I was sorely tempted to tell them to get a haircut, since it looked terrible on all of them. However, I eventually decided against it because they looked like they were in a band, and everybody knows that musicians are practically required to have bad hairdos. Mind you, these were particularly bad ones because every one of the guys had put gel, mousse or even wax through their hair, even the short-haired ones. They looked very greasy and sleazy due to this.
So I held my tongue on that, but still went up to talk to them about their band (if they had one) and if I could join it. I was so enthusiastic I even came up with a name for our combined band then and there. It was “Steel Plan”, and I was extremely proud of it as a name. Well, it turned out they were all in a band together, but that they were all singers because none of them could play instruments! They thought it was a great idea for me to join, because I could play the keyboard for them and write the music. This made me happy mainly because it meant I would get to use “Steel Plan” for the band name!
At this point, one of the guys with short hair introduced himself to me and promptly began to tell me about how good-looking he was. To be fair, he was very attractive, aside from his greasy waxed hair, far more so than any of the others. He had flawless skin, very nice features, etc. Pity about the ego.
“Look at my eyes,” he was saying, “and these perfect cheeks, and these lips, and this makeup…” I got a bit worried when he mentioned the makeup, and had a closer look at his face, but thankfully could not see that he was wearing any. The other short-haired guy, who had a large round mole in the center of his eyebrows, shot him such a disgusted look as well, obviously not impressed with his vanity. It was quite funny. The three long-haired men seemed rather devoid of personality compared to the other two, and I didn’t notice them so much.
I left the five guys at this point, fully intending to come back and start up Steel Plan with them later. But for now I remembered I had to warn people about the invaders. I ran into Siiw again and told her about the invading country and how I had to warn everyone, whereupon she directed me to the elevator. She told me to take it down two floors.
This I did. The elevator opened out into, of all things, a supermarket! Unlike the rest of the building, the supermarket seemed new and modern, with bright fluorescent lights, and was full of people busy shopping. I didn’t see how it was going to help me get out word of the attackers (though in hindsight I suppose I could have found the PA system), and started searching for an exit. For some reason the elevator would not take me down any further.
A quick search yielded no stairs, but before I could do anything else, I bumped into my real life mother. She was shopping and made me take the shopping trolley, which had shampoo and vegetables - including cauliflower (talk about random) - in it. She also began questioning me as to why I was there, but I was very defensive of LD4all and did not want her to know about it. The excuse I gave was partially true, mainly about my ambitions for Steel Plan, but I left out the part about LD4all. She could tell I was leaving something out, however, and started yelling at me and saying I was a hopeless failure if I had to lie to her. She didn’t even believe the part about Steel Plan, which really hurt my feelings, because I thought it was such a wonderful idea!
A long and hurtful argument ensued, which mostly involved me defensively trying to explain myself but not being listened to. At the end of it, my mother stalked off and left me with the shopping trolley. I was so mad at her - particularly because of the way she insulted Steel Plan - by this point that I seriously considered smashing up the vegetables to spite her. I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it, though, and punched the trolley instead as hard as I could. Both it and I survived the encounter.
I pushed the trolley around for a while aimlessly, then eventually went back to the elevator and to the LD4all level. It looked very different upon my return - now it seemed more like a huge aeroplane hangar, with one side open to air, and the rest made of red brick, with bits of rendered concrete and metal beams punctuating the walls here and there. It was very noisy and full of people rushing around. In fact, it looked a lot like some kind of military place where important decisions were made. It was definitely the kind of place where I’d find people to whom I could give my warning. And yet, it was still LD4all, in some strange way.
I went up to a man in his mid-twenties and began to talk to him, since he looked important. He also seemed very kind and competant. But, this is where I woke up.