Since my version of a dream diary is posting here:
I was a member of that ship from Star Trek. I think; it may not have been the Enterprise itself, since it seemed a lot sleeker and more re-entry friendly. Anyways, a ship came out of no-where, crashed with us, and wound up taking four of us away (2 redshirts, someone capable of sending a distress beacon, and me). It crashed into a planet, the alien pilot died, and while the yellow-shirted guy tried to get a beacon set up, I brought the red-shirts to investigate the planet. It was basically the American perception of Africa, hot muggy and mostly flat with some random mountains, equally divided between swamps and savanna, with dirt roads and large collections of hovels made of scrap metal at every intersection. Some of which were abandoned, some of which had way more people than should fit there; all of which had dark skin and half of which were buck naked. We happened to land in one such settlement, near a market. I discovered that a popular form of art being sold were strips of cloth (4"x12") with strong dyes soaked into the cloth in very small drops; it resembled a pixelated photograph. Most of them depicted white-skinned priests being punished in some way, whether having boiling oil poured on them, being burnt at the stake, or being fed to wild animals. So I asked about them and learned that there was a giant church on the planet that constantly taxed the people and misused the money, which resulted in only the priests being able to afford food every day; so I went back to our crashed vessel that kidnapped us and asked the yellow-shirted guy to hold off on the beacon for a while, I had a plan.
So we treked across the planet, sticking to roads and hiding in abandoned settlements whenever someone went by. We had a guide who would test certain things, such as whether the bars on that window would move if we needed to, and then I would shove all 19 bars to the side like a curtain and go through, offending him and blowing our element of surprise, but then pretending to be all alone, answering the questions of the wandering priests with guile and cleverness; they'd leave in the direction of the church and once it was clear I'd call out my team and we'd keep going. When we reached the church, I had the others wait outside, while I joined a line for "offering", AKA taxes, with a bunch of local money in my hand. I put the money into the tray when it was my turn, the priests pulled it to their side of the window (which looked like a ticket booth) and held up the money as if to say "That's all? Really? Cheapskate," and then put the empty tray back out and handed the money off to another priest.
I left the church smiling at a mission accomplished. I had coated the money in a contact poison, the antidote to which was being bitten by a certain kind of spider that I had found at our crash site. I had already been bitten, and certainly all the locals who were paying their taxes had been bitten (they were everywhere, but NOT anywhere in or near the church because the priests preached that spiders were evil), and the priests probably HADN'T been bitten, ever. I fell over briefly, because even with the spider venom in your veins the poison I made still acted as a muscle relaxant, but the screams inside the church let me know that the priests were experiencing wild sneezing fits, seizures, and loss of bowel control. In a few hours the toxin would reach their brains, and affect the parts of the brain that were responsible for greed and generosity, so that after being completely humiliated, they'd experience a change of heart and give all that money back.
Once I had recovered from my brief lack of movement, the yellow-shirt activated the beacon, and we climbed into a ship that we stole from the church while all the priests were flailing about on the floor. We flew into the atmosphere, and while we were up there the not-quite-the-Enterprise flew down to meet us, and we docked together. Then we flew up into space while everyone that had been abducted from the ship transferred ships.
Author
Topic: The Dream Thread (Read 610388 times)