When I started using the anti-smoking patch last week, I was told that I would have strange dreams. As a person who enjoys dreaming, I took that warning with enthusiasm, but my dreams are already strange.

Like everyone else, my subconscious replays the events of the day and calls up my secret desires and fears from the deep recesses of the brain. I also get a fair share of grand adventure and inter-stellar travel. I have journeyed to distant galaxies, explored marine kingdoms at the bottom of the Pacific, befriended dragons and battled menacing necromancers. I have seen a good number of secretive worlds that are otherwise only accessible by rabbit-holes or a wardrobes. I have been many things, taken on many different personas. Indeed, I have a very engaging inner universe.

Last night, I was Major Motoko Kusanagi, rolling through a ravaged Japan inside a spider-tank. I was having a great time until I was cornered in an abandoned warehouse dodging enemy fire while frantically trying to repair my uplink so I can radio for back-up. When I woke up from that, it was roughly 3 am. No matter, I just went back to sleep.

"Connection lost. Connection lost." Repeats the tank's computer system while I endure another hail of armor-piercing bullets. This again? How interesting. I ended up returning to the exact same point in the earlier dream.

Eh... its happened before.

When I woke up a second time, I couldn't help but I wonder. The Major is a cyborg. Do I have a secret wish of one day swapping my inner anatomy for circuits and steel while constantly pondering what it means to be human? Is this what my subconscious is trying to tell me?

I think I watch too much science fiction. I am such a geek.