Trapped in a dream

Have you ever been trapped in a dream? Besides this one, that is. There are a few ways to interpret that question, so I will pick one.

In the mornings, when I am trying to wake up, I sometimes can not. I am aware of my surroundings, in a vague kind of way, but I can not stop dreaming. My alarm clock becomes part of the dream. "That is the sound of the planet detector going off. Have to fiddle with this switch to stop the noise so we can focus on finding that planet." I believe everyone has had an experience like that, but what about deeper?

After this happens, sometimes I know I am in bed, and I can move around, but I can not physically get out of bed. I toss and turn and flip around, and since I am still dreaming I do not want to get out of bed. I believe it would be dangerous to get out of bed while trapped in a dream, though this is all a dream anyway, so...

I try to snap out of the dream, try to force myself to realize that I am dreaming, but to no avail. Everything I do ends up in the dream. "Dr. Malice, with his hypno-ray, has made me believe that I am in a bed, but really I am on a raft in the middle of a swamp on a distant planet, so if I step out of this bed, I will really step out of my raft to certain doom! Curse you Dr. Malice!" Or "I need to get up in time for a meeting, but the meeting is really a ruse to lure me into a trap! If I get up and go to the meeting, mind sucking aliens will walk through the walls and live up to their name! Luckily I figured this out in time so that I can just stay here in bed." Etc.

Ever have dreams like that? Trapped... and the logic of dreams is not the logic of being awake. In a dream, most anything seems logical, yet upon becoming fully awake, as awake as anyone can become in This Dream, we would say "Rule the world with a chunk of cheddar cheese? I can not believe I worked so hard to tell myself to remember that when I woke up. But it seemed so logical at the time..." or "Call her? In my dream it seemed so real that she liked me, but now that I am awake I can clearly see that she really has no interest in me what so ever. She probably doesn't even know who I am!" Though I really need to work on that last one - it would have prevented me from sending many an embarrassing email...

The Edward