Morning of May 23, 2015. Saturday.

I am not sure of the location or more detailed aspects of the setting, though it is in a house that is unfamiliar in layout, though not that defined beyond the immediate perspectives. I seem to be much younger, perhaps as young as twelve or more. The main focus of my dream is a (fictional) strategy game which is somewhat like a composite of Battleship (though one side played at a time for one game), Risk, and the notepaper and pencil game we played in school where one person draws tanks, soldiers, and structures and the other person blindly and quickly draws a random line over the playing field to see what he coincidentally hit. The game field is on a large thin plastic grid on the floor, possibly about fifteen by fifteen squares and maybe about four feet by four feet or smaller in size. It also has land features (at least one stream) that are either already painted on or added somehow. There are mostly plastic toy soldiers, vehicles, and buildings to place, including at least two three by three towers. The play involves the enemy team blindly "firing a missile" from one area on each turn, probably from behind a "wall" as otherwise they would just see the playing field. However, I do not seem to see this feature even though it would have to exist to play as indicated. My older brother Jim (deceased) sits in an armchair at one point and watches us for a time while eating a pizza. (Later, I notice Jim is gone, and hear a few flies buzzing around the residue left on the pizza box.)

One round is played by my team. There are at least four of us; all young males. One boy reminds me of a neighbor from Stadcor Street in Brisbane, though much stockier though his glasses and general facial appearance are mostly the same. At one point, our turn to set things up on our playing field commences. There is a break though, and I am the only one from my team seated in the area, though a member of the other team speaks with me as I move to temporarily sit on the other side. Apparently, there is some sort of odd rule that one member must tell the other team how to use the best strategy to beat them based on at least two or three patterns of the layout (or perhaps more). This does not seem to make sense. Why play a strategy game if you tell the other team the best way to proceed to win? Still, I try to do my best to suggest how the other team should proceed. I make a note of the last columns being a good start (because the area has a number of buildings all across the columns and many soldiers nearby) as well as the second row ahead (from my team's perspective). The boy I talk to seems to be planning it out on a laptop computer. Still, he claims more information is needed for his team to have the advantage and I try to make the playing field's quickest defeat potential clearer.

I eventually return to my position, being the third player from the left. The other team "fires a missile" and it moves all the way through the third column from my left, somehow taking out the bottom bricks from each building (which appears to happen in slow motion). The layout has two three by three towers right together (closer to the enemy's end) and (closer to us) at least a six by three makeshift military building of some kind. What is left of the buildings does not tip or fall after this event though it seems like poor strategy (as in Battleship) to have put so much in one place since the placement of the rest can then more easily be guessed. The boy in the glasses seems rather upset and starts taking some of the pieces off the playing field. Meanwhile, my father (deceased as of February 14, 1979) comes into the room. (Seeing my father alive again after so many years does not trigger even an iota of lucidity.) He seems cheerful and watches us but absentmindedly knocks some pieces aside as he stands on one end of the playing field for a time, fouling up the rest of the game field even though the boy in glasses had already ruined much of the game by taking many of the pieces off.

Eventually, I follow the other boy into a different (smaller) room and notice that the game pieces had transformed (or had always been) the kind of plastic baby blocks of different shapes and with the hollow recesses on either side (such as squares, stars, circles, etc. which the child fits through equally-shaped holes into a container) though I do not really focus on much other than the annoying behavior of the other boy. I notice that some of the blocks (now on the floor) are dirty and so I plan on washing them before they are used in any future game. The boy wrinkles his nose as if he does not like how I smell (though an unpleasant smell is mostly on the blocks). I ask him if there is something wrong with him as I contemplate washing the game pieces/blocks as my dream slowly fades.