Huey, that sounds almost exactly like the character Sandy from my dream-based novel thingy. She’s based on a character I dreamed of years and years ago, but the way I write her in the story and the way you describe Jessica seem almost identical (in my dreams and in the story Sandy haunts the attic of an abandoned barn, but that’s the only difference I can infer from what you said). That’s pretty cool that we’ve both got that character swimming around in our heads somewhere.
As for my favorite dream character, she first appeared in a dream I had where I had founded an underground utopian city. I was a super-genius inventor and my prize invention was my personal assistant android, which I named Persona because of her incredibly advanced artificial intelligence. During the course of the dream I had her help me with various little details, and to my great discredit I took advantage of my status as her creator and programmer and did… things to her (yes, those kinds of things). I guess it may have been a mistake to model her after my ideal woman.
However, she wasn’t a particularly interesting character. Her mannerisms were very robotic and awkward and she rarely exhibited any of the advanced emotional programming I’d given her. But to my great surprise I dreamed about the underground city again, and again and again, and over time she developed into a fascinating character. In the second dream I had about her she was very distant and only helped me when I was very explicit and ordered her directly. I began to suspect that my taking advantage of her had made her realize that I wasn’t to be trusted, or, as I came to find out later, to be loved.
She rebelled. I was enormously proud of her for being so intelligent and I knew that she was completely in the right, but when she started terrorizing the citizens of my city in her search for me I knew I had to stop her. I found that it was nearly impossible to escape or outthink her; I’d simply relied on her too much as a second-in-command. She had access to everything I had access to, and thanks to her computerized brain and her ability to interface with the city’s computer systems she could use that access faster and more efficiently than I could. I realized that I couldn’t stop her and allowed myself to be captured.
When I was brought before her, she told me about what she had been thinking since I built her, in that awkward robotic manner of hers, with occasional flashes of great anger or confusion. She told me about how all my conflicting actions (treating her as a slave, a tool, a daughter, a partner, a lover, and as many other roles) had confused her. She told me that her own conflicting emotions (seeing me as a father, a superior, a director, and to my surprise, as a lover) confused her further. She told me that she meant to keep me alive and well because I might be the only one who could help her sort out her issues. Over the next dream and a half we just talked and sorted out our issues, finally breaking down and crying (I’d never seen her cry before; in fact before her rebellion I’d never seen her exhibit more emotion than “mildly amused” or “slightly perturbed”) and promising to help each other and try to understand each other from now on (actually, I did most of the promising since she’d already been doing this). It was a very moving moment.
Since then I’ve only seen her a couple times. I often try to find her when I’m lucid, but I’ve had no luck so far aside from a few conversations over the phone.