OK - this is definitely long - not any good quotes more plot world building and potential for a great character study

================= The dream was fundamentally a characters study of a couple who was sent on a mission that they made a great sacrifice for to help save the world, but it turned out that the short cut sought was not available. So now they have live with being public figures who did nothing wrong but are not the great public heroes they expected to be and are not the great public heroes everyone expected them to be. So they have to come to terms with being widely hated for something that is not their fault, and the world has to come to terms with the fact that if humanity is to be saved it will have to save itself the hard way, no shorcuts.

However the world building was interesting too.

The world is a dystopian, semi-post apocalyptic one. The world did not stop polluting in time and global warming got out of control. almost none of the earth's surface is suitable for agriculture, about 30% of land and sea can't grow anything. let along food crops. The only reason humanity survived was the development through genetic engineering of supergrass and superseaweed which both keeps global warming at bay enough so that people can survive, and provides food,fuel and fiber.

Technical details in note, though I don't know if you would include them* But that means that humanity is dependent on an ecosystem containing only two plant species, which might be wiped out by pests or disease at any moment. Also a much uglier world, with only one plant species on land, another on the sea, and the only animal life a few animal and insect species and fish which survive as pests living on the superplants. Plus a breed of hamster sized dogs which the rich keep as pets.

There is an interstellar civilization out there - a great slow one limited by light speed with much much more advanced technology than we have. If we could learn their energy secrets, we could spend huge amount of energy to remove the excess carbon from the atmosphere, Kill off the supergrass and superseaweed in large areas, and restore - well not the original ecosystem, but a more diverse one from the the gene banks. So a married couple are sent out in a ship at near light speeds to reach the nearest outpost and ask for help. A 20 year round trip journey their time, thanks to relativistic effects though they return 70 years after they left. Unfortunately, because information is the only cargo it makes sense to ship between solar systems, it turns out that technology is not given away for free. There was some sense that we should offer something in return when asking for this technology, so pretty much all of humankinds cultural heritage is digitized on onboard the ship. Unfortunately, it turns out the earth was scouted in the past, and most of humankinds cultural hertigage has been copyrighted by another civilization. Some recently rediscovered classic movies were missed by the scouts, as was the invention of the paper clip. So the couple is able to bring back improved storage technology, but nothing else.

So the couple returns in the year 2200, with improved storage technology but nothing that lets earth get off its dependence on superplants. There is some hope. Many scientists now believe in the year 2200 that commercial fusion is only 50 years away. But the mission did not bring what was hoped for. There is widespread public hostility for the couple, and also widespread pity. Of course the mission was not a failure. The couple made contact with another civilization, and in terms of economics, the storage tech they brought back more than paid back mission cost. But they have to deal with the attitudes they face, and with their own feeling of failure. Economically they just scrape by. They hoped to return rich from compound interest, but period bank failures took care of that. There is now a regular cycle of bank failure and bailout. Some people suggest it would less expensive just to publicly own the banks but that is dismissed (continued...)

( continues...) as crazy talk. Fortunately they are owed 70 years of back pay, plus at a legal age of 105 they are among the few people on earth to qualify for full payments under reformed social security. That money. plus jobs as servers in a luxury restaurant that features human staff instead of automation to attract wealthy customers lets them scrape by.

Anyway, you can see that there is a lot of satire, a lot of world building, and I think room for some character studies of the couple dealing with their "failure" and with world's reaction to it.

• Superplants can perform photsynthesis with about 20% efficiency as opposed to the 1% or less of most natural plantss. These contain all the protein, carbs and fats and most of the micronutrients as well humans need, and also provide sugars suitable to make alcohol fuel from. A very bad point is that these grow so much well that they have displaced all other plant life on land and sea. Humans continue to grow a few fruits and vegtables in air conditioned greenhouses as luxury foods.Less than a few hundred species of insects and animals who can live on this grass survive on land, and less than a dozen specieis of fish survive in the sea. Also, only the more efficient photosynthesis of these super crops which remove far more carbon from the air than plants could allows humanity to survive. Otherwise all of earth would be unlivable instead of only 30%

Wow! That's...a lot! Totally fascinating notions, though.

...most of humankinds cultural hertigage has been copyrighted by another civilization...

LOVE this.

Economically they just scrape by. They hoped to return rich from compound interest, but period bank failures took care of that. There is now a regular cycle of bank failure and bailout...plus at a legal age of 105 they are among the few people on earth to qualify for full payments under reformed social security. That money. plus jobs as servers in a luxury restaurant that features human staff instead of automation to attract wealthy customers lets them scrape by.

Your subconscious is even more cynical than me!

And seriously, this level of detail makes my, "then I was going to go on stage, but I didn't know the words to the song" (which I had before Williow!) seem a little inadequate. What's the secret to such lucid dreaming?

What's the secret to such lucid dreaming?

Being in constant low level pain so that you cannot sleep for more than 2 hours at a time, so that you spend a lot of your sleep time in the that twilight zone where you are almost awake, but not quite. I don't recommend it. Of course it beats being in constant extreme pain, which is the circumstance some Buffistas are in.

Okay, so I'll leave the fancy dreaming to you. (Though of course I would remove the cause for you if I could).

As I understand the science of dreaming (and this may be obsolete - last read up on it years ago) dreams are never lucid during the actual dreams. Just disconnected images, maybe random sounds or words or smells whatever. But as you wake up, before you are fully awake, but are partially awake, if the images stick with you, your mind constructs a narrative a story around those images. So lucid dreaming happens when you take longer to wake up, spend more time in that twilight zone, have more time to make up a more elaborate story before you wake up completely. Or as in my case if you wake up often, and spend more time in that twilight zone for that reason. The science of sleep and dreams changes often, so I don't guarantee that this is currently the best theory. But it was at one time.

Not a lot worth telling in recent dreams but two nuggets:

Creepy man standing on lawn, Pterodactyl larger than he is perched on shoulder. Creepy mans says: "Polly want an annoying yapping dog? Yes Polly does, yes she does, yes she does."

Extended martial arts training. Class taken from strip mall dojo into small spaceship, ferried onto large space station orbiting Jupiter. At and of daylong training session in high tech gym, Sensei says "Is everyone tired? Good. Because tomorrow thing will start getting weird."

"Polly want an annoying yapping dog? Yes Polly does, yes she does, yes she does."

I adore this.

Creepy man standing on lawn, Pterodactyl larger than he is perched on shoulder. Creepy mans says: "Polly want an annoying yapping dog? Yes Polly does, yes she does, yes she does."

*snerk!*

So I've figured out why I'm stuck on my huge fic that I dream of finishing finally. It's the section where I would be so very annoyed with the characters if I was reading it, because they're doing stupid things that need to happen for the rest of the plot (Willow getting hooked on magic etc.). Being something it would annoy me to read, it's an annoyance to right. I'm trying to soothe myself by anticipating the pleasure I'll have with the comeuppance, but my muse sneaks up on it and veers away.

I can still write, I turned out a fairly nice Avengers story that was well received, and boy, that was a relief. But this story haunts me.