As the physical body rests and the mind is relieved of real world duties for a time, new connections and assimilations happen in the soulscape. The mental imagery accompanying this can sometimes be bizarre. For the newly-bound members of Addie's Blood Family, It is a night of very strange dreams indeed.

  I wandered a barren rocky place for a long time. Finally, my feet led me to a valley where five other souls awaited me.

  I entered their circle and we took each others' hands. As soon as the circuit was completed, I reeled with vertigo and nausea, dropping down into a crouch. It was like I was 'seeing' double, triple, even more. ESP was going wild!

  On my knees, I retched and retched until there was nothing left in my stomach. The others didn't react; just held my hands tightly. Finally everything went black for a moment and my ESP skill came back to normal, like nothing had happened.

  Still on my knees, I felt Addie's hands slide under my arms and she lifted me up like a child. She held me for a moment then set me back on my feet. Leaning forward, she planted a kiss on the scarred lid of my missing eye. Following I know not what compulsion, I lean in and kiss her forehead, above and between her eyes.

  Then the world went strange, melting into nothingness around me. My consciousness faded away with it.

  Did I mention that we were all naked?

  I wandered through an orchard, collecting fruit. There were many different kinds: oranges, apples, pears, coconuts, pumpkins...

  Wait. Do pumpkins grow on trees? Is a pumpkin a fruit? A vegetable? A berry? I filled my arms. Wandered towards a barn at the end of the rows of trees. It was strangely shaped, like a hexagon.

  The bottom floor of this barn was a big, wide open space. On the edges of the space, I could see six sets of stairs. One on each of the six walls. There I found my Family. All standing in a circle, waiting for me. As soon as I joined them, they started whining about how hungry they were. Taking a piece of fruit, I threw it at Rio.

  Weirdness. As I tossed the fruit, it disappeared into thin air, then reappeared again in Rio's hand. I tossed an apple to Addie, same thing. Then Penelope, Saki and Nix. I gave a panicked gasp as Nix' fruit left my hand because I knew he wouldn't see it to catch it. But it just disappeared and reappeared in his hand like it had with the others.

  I finished distributing the fruit, keeping some for myself. The others wandered off, each heading for a different stairway. No one was going toward the stairs directly opposite the barn's entrance, so I went that way. Climbing the stairs, I found a large room shaped like a pie piece - exactly one-sixth the size of the floor below. Inside were shelves, bins, chests, and cabinets of all shapes and sizes.

  I dumped my fruit into a bin, keeping one apple. On one of the shelves near the door, I saw the pyramid I had collected earlier along with everything else I had stored in my inventory.

  I took a bite of the apple. Really tasty. Then I started getting sleepy. Oh crap! Was it poisoned? I'd make a lousy Snow White, honest! The barn faded to black and disappeared as I passed out.

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  Did I mention that we were all naked?

  I woke up on a plain of words. I remembered laying in bed reading and a sharp pain in my nose as I drifted off and dropped the book on my face. Now I'm here, standing on paper with an endless progression of words dancing and swirling around me on its surface.

  Interesting. I try reading the flowing lines of text. The letters making up the words seem random. They were in many different scripts and alphabets. There were pictograms, hieroglyphs, ideograms, runes and more. I started getting a headache. Was this a personalized Library of Babel?

  As I looked around, the rune for falling caught my eye. I took a step toward it and tripped.

  Instead of hitting the ground I sank down through it, landing perfectly in a soft armchair next to a table with a lamp glowing a soft yellow. It was in an octagonal room - walls lined with empty bookshelves. Scattered about the room were other chairs, sofas, tables, and study carrels.

  The others from my Family were also here: Addie, Nix, Kari, Saki, and Rio. They were all wandering around, looking at the shelves like they were looking for books, but there were none there.

  I stood up, at the same time noticing that I held the book I had been reading as I fell asleep in my hand. I carefully reached out and placed it on a shelf. Then, abruptly, I fell through the floor and into oblivion.

  Did I mention that we were all naked?

  I was floating in space, wand in hand. Wielding it like a conductor's baton, I directed the movements of numerous motes of light as they drew fantastical figures in the air. Geometric structures grew into shape around me. Glyphs and symbols and words flowed around the construct, anchored the corners, and decorated the surfaces. Magic energy flowed everywhere. Spirit, Mana, Primal. Even Demonic. The flows were anchored by people. Dim shapes at the periphery of my vision. Like living batteries for a toy of unimaginable proportion.

  I smiled as I worked. I felt more engaged than I had ever felt before. At one with my work.

  Work I was doing in the nude for some reason.

  I floated through my Mind Palace, idly reaching out to spin and twirl the mental images I had created for different bits of information. It was always a lot of fun for me to just wander around here.

  When I was little, I had trouble remembering things. I think it was because of the beatings, my head being a primary target for some of my tormentors. As a sort of mental self-defense, I had constructed this place to escape to and soon learned that I could hide things here so I wouldn't forget them.

  Over time, my Mind Palace grew and thrived. Encoding information through images was a struggle at first. Over time, though, it became something I could do automatically, without conscious effort.

  I spend a lot of time here. Visiting every night to see what’s new. This is critical for me to be able to recall information. I take new things and connect them to existing information. I end up with a multi-dimensional representation of what I know about the world around me.

  As I wandered, I noticed something new. A connection which I hadn't made myself. A blood red glowing cable of light, pulsing like a heartbeat. I touched it and was sucked into a stream of data.

  I woke up laying down on a sofa upholstered in a mind-bending paisley pattern. As I sat up, Kari handed me a glass of cold orange juice which I guzzled gratefully. Oh crap! It was raw pumpkin juice! The others were sitting around a table nearby.

  Next to me was a group of six study carrels, each equipped with a data terminal. Even from this distance I recognized a slowly gyrating 3D representation of my Mind Palace on each of the screens. I got up and touched one of the keyboards. The floor fell out from under me and everything went black.

  Did I mention that we were all dressed like Looney Tunes characters? Kari was the Tasmanian Devil, Saki was Tweety Bird, Nix was Elmer Fudd, Penelope was the Road Runner, Addie was Bugs Bunny and I was Wile E. Coyote. Weird.

  Why is everyone running around naked? And why do I have rabbit ears? I should know better than to binge on chocolate before going to bed....