#smallertotems

Usually, when i think about the kinds of dreams I've had, the last thing I'd want to do is "wake up" into one.  Kind of a pussy way to spend, what, like  33% of your life?

I've got a couple more books from the library. I'm going to start reading them over.

To start with, i'm going to try to open the journal and get the dreams down as soon as I can once I wake up. Maybe it'll amount to something.

Manager Jeeque, SSD

When I got back to my alcove, just before halflight, there was a resonator crystal waiting for me on my bench. It was slender and long, and had a slight sheen to it: it was freshly extruded. Still moist to the touch.  Engineer Horx had produced it maybe an hour before. I could feel his presence as soon as I picked it up, and the rest just unfolded from there. Horx's resonators were always a little more bland and abstract than those of the other Engineers: he was impatient, and unconcerned with niceties, so the thoughts they transduced never had a specific voice- the thoughts just occurred to me as clipped, more visual versions of my own. 

I am to find a Technician I trust, and appoint them lead. I am to have them poll the other Technicians about resistance they're encountering in Region 43X- Δ, and evaluate the reports. It didn't specifically say I was to prepare a summary, but I got the intense sense that Horx expects me to know to do it. From Engineer Horx, this is sort of a compliment. I have never met him, not personally, but I've felt his resonators before, and that is kind of the same thing. I have never been called in for a personal review and destroyed, so I can infer I'm doing an adequate, if not good, job.

So now I have to go meet some Technicians. And talk to them. And in the process of talking to them, somehow keep them distinct in my mind, so that I can identify one of them out of the masses, and call that one my "lead." Perhaps I can mark one with paint or something, so I can spot it in the crowd. Lead Technician. It's like having a chief mop or chief air vent. Just another thing around here which formerly made sense and no longer does.

Manager Jeeque, SSD

I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be tracking here. "Write down your thoughts," the Engineers said. "We'll be able to better help you with your tasks if we can see what you're contemplating." Sounds like hooey, to be frank, no offense intended. But the other Managers are doing it, and I'm now stuck reading the reports they have the Technicians writing, so I don't suppose there is a way out of it.  Manager Skreeve says that some of the clans and guilds are doing something similar as well, so apparently this is some sort of new "fad" spreading throughout the rest of the oinerovoric community. Well, for the record (since I now have to keep a bloody record), I do not approve.

There was a time, not so long ago, when my position within the group was simple: I helped plan small raids into the dreamspaces, designed some ways the Technicians could create emotional discomfort in the dreamer, and then made sure the etheric taps were working properly to collect that excess emotional charge so we could process it for our use. Pretty cut and dried. It was a good job. It was an easy job.  I was good at my job. Now... everything seems to be changing. The Engineers are bringing me these ridiculous, hyper-elaborate requirements documents, which, to my eyes, don't even seem to be focused on gathering emotional charge anymore. Instead, they're fixated on the dream manipulation methods, and are micro-managing how I, and the other Managers, go about laying out the disturbances. What's more, they don't even seem to be that concerned with the etheric yield, or how much excess can be extracted. Or for that matter, at this point, how many of the Technicians even make it back to deliver their payload.

First of all, I don't like the idea that we're sending the munchkins out like some sort of disposable shock troops. The other guilds and tribes and clans and organizations can do that if they want, but THAT is not how we run things!  Second... what is with the documents? You keep the job simple, and you don't need to write this stuff down. It is like there is this whole new layer of bureaucracy added to the process: if I do my job right, and the other Managers do their jobs right, the Engineers don't even need to hear about it. So why are we all of a sudden documenting plans and reviewing design specs? It isn't like the Engineers are answerable to anyone else, and they're more than brilliant enough to keep all the plans resident in memory themselves- it just irks me to suddenly have to deal with metrics and approval processes to get the same job done. Just let me design and implement nightmares, like I've been doing for years, and I'll get the damned job done. 

But this... this whole new process of approvals, and top-down crap... this is starting to be a problem. It is my nature to be a Sleep Disturbance Manager. That is what I am. That is what I do.