Powerful Friends

Date: 5/28/2017

Ordinarily, I only log my dreams when I can remember what happened in them with a certain degree of clarity. My memory of this dream lacks that satisfying level of clarity in several scenes, but what I do remember seems worthy of documenting -- if only for my own reference. I remember that this dream began with a group of friends who had resigned themselves to experiencing strange things after dealing with oddities their entire lives. One of them could see and interact with spirits to the point where he sometimes needed his human friends to point out when his new acquaintances weren't of the living variety. He worked in a school, and feared the undead only AFTER he learned he'd been speaking to them. He also had a side job as an exorcist, working with one of his friends -- a girl who always knew when he was speaking to ghosts. She claimed to be disgusted by gossip and drama, but always knew what the ghosts were still hanging around for because she kept track of their interpersonal drama. I vaguely remember her being unhappy when she helped an old lady pass on by... exposing her late husband's affairs? I think? The third friend in the group joined their adventures when he could, but he had a tendency to involuntarily travel between points in time and space, often ending up in places that messed with his mind. He was often either in another place, or recovering from his trip. His destinations included a few that were far in his own future, some that were in Old West times, and many that were in alternate realities altogether. He always knew which was which, but never how long he'd stay or if he'd get to return to his friends. Sometimes, I could have sworn he was in the realities of things that were only fictional movies and shows in his home dimension, but I can't remember if I ever had that suspicion confirmed or not. He was definitely in a superhero reality once, kind of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but... I don't know if it was a movie series in his home dimension or not. I also remember him going to a future where he had a young daughter a few times? And always being unspeakably sad when he returned home? Whether because he knew something about the daughter's fate (like she didn't live past a certain age or something), or just missed her when he was apart from her, I'm not sure. Eventually, he ended up in a superhero reality where he had a son of middle school age instead of a daughter. The son was named Oliver, or Ollie. A lot happened in this universe; a lot that I saw in detail, but can't remember super well, and a lot that was implied but never actually shown. At some point, there was a sort of... it was a war, between humans and an extraterrestrial species that wanted to evade their own potential extinction by using humans as new bodily vessels. It just wasn't waged the way wars normally are. The other species seemed to have the same ability to travel dimensions that Ollie's father possessed. They waged war quietly, across generations and dimensions. It was a war, but in some periods of time and places in the multiverse, it also wasn't a war at all. At one point, there was a battle in a laboratory where one of Ollie's father's researcher friends worked. Ollie was there to spend time with his father, and to act as one of their internal lines of defense. He had... some kind of power, along with his friends. Later, they all piloted a giant robot much like Voltron, but at the time it wasn't really clear what his powers were. Telepathy, perhaps? Mild telekinesis? I really don't know. Whatever they were, he was sure that they would be put to the test once the research facility was attacked. Which it was, of course. Superheroes from various dimensions rushed to help, there was fighting everywhere, but Ollie was left to fend for himself in the chaos. He was cornered by a young extraterrestrial, who fought him until the two ended up inside a machine in the lab. Ollie fought to get free, and the enemy scrambled to make the machine work, and the two began melting -- fusing together into one. It was Ollie's father who called for reinforcements, and one of their greatest allies who took the call and interrupted the machine just before Ollie was overtaken and melted away entirely. It was, of course, still too late to properly rescue Ollie. He was now two people, merged into the body of a single red-haired middle school boy -- now with a few physical features he hadn't possessed before, like a little extra height and a slightly sharpened jawline and arms that were just a tiny bit longer than before. The enemy had succeeded in evading his illness by overtaking Ollie's body. Ollie, meanwhile, had succeeded in preserving his own existence. The two were not dead. Many wished they were; on both sides of the war. Ollie and his new headmate actually adjusted to their new existence rather abruptly. Both had a whole new world to explore, and someone to talk with about it, and they settled into their new role as pioneers of a potential way to save both their species. For the most part, the one I'll call Exy was content just to take a back seat and let Ollie control their shared body while he asked questions or answered Ollie's. The human planet had so many new things to admire and to watch and to learn, he was glad to just process it all at his own pace while Ollie did the actual living for them. Ollie was happy with this arrangement because he had a plethora of new powers to play with. Every aspect of the reality around him was now like a VR computer game. He could select things by looking at them, move them with a wave of his hands, and alter their properties with a little concentration and some guidance from Exy. He could even check on and after his OWN properties if he allowed himself to slip into a "maintenance mode" state by passing out and entering a mental space where he and Exy could interact as separate individuals in projections of their own bodies. I felt all of this, and to pass out while in a dream is a VERY unusual sensation. It happened some three or four times throughout the dream, and it never got any less weird. Ollie had several other new powers as well, including flight. He loved being able to fly almost as much as his other powers, and he and Exy bonded over that quickly. As awkward as their existence was, and as many factions as spoke out against them, they were actually very close friends and ended up being very content together in their shared body. From here, the dream became far less clear. Several Norse gods were at war with each other, a dire wolf and a fox god became grudging allies, Exy's people fought the gods, Ollie/Exy and his robot piloting friends defeated a plague of giant cockroach demons (each was the size of a house) and his friends finally understood through the telepathic connection their robot provided just how strange and tense being two people had been for Ollie himself, one Norse god betrayed the others with wine and a trip into a cave system owned by another god wherein he committed murder, several of Exy's people successfully overtook human bodies, one of them ended up getting the illness his species had been evading anyway, Ollie and Exy's way seemed to be the only one that was working, Ollie's father hopped back and forth between different realities a few times and tried to bring his alternate reality daughter with him to meet Ollie but failed. That's all I can remember. The fun Ollie/Exy had flying, the strange sensation of passing out through them in-dream, and the smug expression of that random fire wolf are the things I remember best. Everything else is visually clear, but... chaotic, really.