i dreamed i was part of a trio(?) of enterprising orphans or something, but things took a turn for the worse and i decided my only option was to do this ritual to reset the timeline to one where we all succeeded/survived

only it turned out this boy on my team (who looked a little like rook from toastland but tsun and dressed differently) had already previously done the same ritual to prevent x from dying

i pulled the paper out from under the thing keeping it stuck to the ritual plate and tried to write my own wish on top of it during the countdown of time from me messing up what was there, but it was this bad quality paper that made my writing illegible

so i looked around for other possible writing materials while rook irritably urged me on without doing anything to help (i knew he was on my side, he was just this kind of grump) and i think i ended up writing in the margins of a magazine page? or maybe i found a tissue? or tissue came after magazine?

anyway so i wrote that i wanted to reset the timeline and keep our memories intact (so we could avoid ending up here again) but in the process of doing all this i had learned that i, too, was supposed to have died and even now was struggling not to fade

maybe i was x, but for some reason i feel like x was someone else

anyway then there was something about trying to navigate our way out of this incredibly weirdly designed...was it a mall or a parking structure or one of those multistory office buildings with different businesses in it, i don't know

i ran into jones from work, who revealed cool new cards to equip on my team, but it turned out these were fanmade nft accessories which meant i couldn't have them anyway because you needed to scan a qr code and buy them which was bleh

i don't know why in-game video equipment was being sold in the form of black and white pages printed off the computer in really low quality, or why jones was cutting them out? he also tried to convince me that guns are cool (there was a handgun on the computer monitor table thing)

it was one of those old blocky white computers, so you know how those could turn back and forth a tiny bit on the blocky stand they were on? so that's where the gun was balanced

in his defense it was very ornamentally stylish, like the handle was very chinese somehow but it was still clearly a gun and i wasn't having it (i was polite though, rl him is cool)

umm something something i had to use my laptop for something? but i looked away for a minute and when i looked back the wallpaper was official art from some hentai anime (i'm guessing based on the full cast of low-quality hentai girls posed in a way that reminded me of old animes from my youth)

the icons were also hentai now? things were opening and closing and installing on their own? a friend had just convinced someone through lies and possibly bribery to let us hitch a ride on his carriage to some place or other but i suddenly needed to find a computer fixer right now

i didn't know who/how to contact though and was struggling against whatever the hacker was doing when suddenly the livestream program came on? he was doing a livestream on my computer? with his actual face?

he was a black guy with a hoodie and baseball cap and i found out I could mess around still because of everything he'd hacked apparently my mouse/keyboard were still my own? so i moved the camera around and started closing windows and his audience was amused while he argued like i was the one hacking him instead

he typed a message to me like "stop messing with my computer, you bastard!!" even though i could hear him just fine? i typed on a separate notepad "give back my computer, you bastard!!" and kept copying how he talked to me with every reply because i could

i don't remember how negotiations went but i remember him getting increasingly frustrated and then i told him he should strip naked and dance for his audience (he was at a live venue) and his audience started laughing so i assume they approved? i didn't see anything because my brain thankfully censored it

i don't actually know if he did it or if my brain was just considering that possible scenario because sometimes my brain plays different options before settling? anyway i woke up