Why, brain?

So brace yourself y’all for a peek into the weird that is my headspace.

For my afternoon nap I dreamed that I was the head of a team tasked by none other than Julius Caesar himself to lay fiber cable to get him Internet to his palace outside Rome. Bonus weird: I am, in this dream, a man named Garellus, and my team is a mix of architect apprentices and debt slaves (slaves only to work off their debts apparently. There’s a government service that you can go to if you are in debt and voluntarily make yourself a slave of the state and work off your debt. Your family is on welfare minimum while you do this and your wages are garnished for taxes and a few other fees, and these voluntary slaves are assigned to work jobs at rates determined by work, and how well you do, which is determined by the team leader. It can take a long time but your family will not starve, and there’s a lot of rules about your safety and rights. No, I don’t know if this existed outside my brain.) My team worked hard and the wage slaves on it were curious about this new magical thing called the Internet. On our breaks I would show them funny cat, bird and baby videos on my laptop.

We ultimately ran out of cable just at the palace gates. And this dream got even weirder. I guess Caesar really wanted his video streaming because he came out to the gate, frowned and said “fine, you just get what you need to get this done, because Cleopatra and my son are here next week and if she misses her latest isekai anime episode I will never hear the end of it.”

Turns out Brutus sabotaged the amount of cable we were getting (I was expecting Asterix and Obelix to pop out now, but nope.) So I had to find a way around him.

I take my laptop and call up Li Syaoran and Kinomoto Sakura, who are in the middle of their date at Tokyo Tower, for help. They get Eriol in on this because he is ‘closer’. Somehow. In trade for fine garum and a barrel of dolmades from Athens from a specific shop. Eriol wouldn’t explain why that odd price. They make the last meter of cable we have left into two huge spools and sign off, while one of the debt slaves, a merchant named Doma makes arrangements for the things requested (he was in debt because his trade fleet sank, not because he was a fuckup.)

We resumed digging (with shovels) and I woke up because I was too weirded out. I don’t know if we successfully completed the project because I very completely woke up.

I have no idea why I had this dream. I HAVEN’T READ ANY CCS OR ANYTHING ROMAN RELATED IN MONTHS. ಠ_ಠ

8 thoughts on “Why, brain?

  1. Foxfier

    No, I don’t know if this existed outside my brain.

    Sounds like a variation on workhouses/poor houses.

    I am howling, over here. ^.^

    1. Patrick Chester

      Didn’t the Hebrews have some sort of debt slavery system in ancient days? I remember it being mentioned on one thread over on Sarah’s blog sometime ago, but not many details.

      1. R.K. Modena Post author

        If dreaming is because of how the brain sorts recent RL shit, I don’t know where my sleep deprived self got the materials from but it is waaaay more interesting than life in quarantine.

  2. DGM

    What, Caeser couldn’t afford 4G internet service? Clearly the Roman Empire had fallen on hard times.

    Incidentally, I just looked up the definition of “isekai anime.” Kinda sounds like you were in one.

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