This is the cover art of my second music album! You can listen to it on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3sYgV87DqM

And I know the title is different in the art...last minute ideas happen. Enjoy the music! Below is the storyline to go with the music, enjoy!

1. Velocity - Sounds of High Speed

I visited that strange world in my dream again. Dream worlds are supposed to vanish completely as soon as the dream is over. When you move from one country to another, suddenly it's like the old one stopped existing, like waking up from one dream into another. But I've seen this world in my dream with such consistency that I'm certain it must be real now. Am I crazy?

Everything I saw this time was moving faster than usual. When the world starts to undergo change, it feels as if its speed has increased. If you're too used to the slower speed of parts of the world that remain relatively unchanged, it can be highly jarring, and you can even start to feel as if the world's leaving you behind as it moves onto something new.

...Is the dream world about to leave me behind?

2. Heart of Action - Marigold Alice

I think I'm getting to know my roommate a little better. I got her to think of something we could do every now and again to bond over. I suggested some kind of game, but not a lot is coming to our minds. Something we could play on the floor, easy to clean up, something where we can't easily lose the game pieces in one night, something like that.

I thought back to my weird dreams. The people in it are always playing some kind of game, like they don't have anything else going on, like work. I always have work, these classes keep me busy overnight. Actually, maybe the games are the work for this world...no, that can't be. Games being work would ruin the idea of a game, but then I suppose professional players exist.

I wonder how they know they're on the right path in life.

3. Live the Moment - Ten Seconds Til Midnight

I'm lying awake at night again. I have trouble falling asleep because my future has been on my mind for awhile. Everyone's always encouraging students to work harder to get better grades - which they should - but they push harder and harder that it gets overwhelming. I know why they do that, too, it's because they don't want us to end up doing physical labor - and yet, someone has to do it, don't they?

Honestly, a basic job wouldn't bother me that much. The more basic it is, the more fun you can make out of it yourself with a little creativitiy. I like living in the moment, getting whatever happiness I can out of where I am. Maybe that dream world is having an influence on me - I keep looking at the clock, waiting for it to strike the 12th hour. That's usually when I fall asleep.

Ten seconds left. Nine, eight, seven...

4. Qualifier - Going Overdrive!

I keep saying these dreams are far too elaborate to be just imagination, but my roommate doesn't think so. Artists come up with all kinds of crazy ideas, whether it's the weird paintings that are supposed to be saying something, or the cartoons that get increasingly bizzarre and surreal. I always wondered why you're supposed to 'grow out' of cartoons when surrealism is an actual art movement.

I remember watching a real car-toon as a kid. It was about cars with increasingly surreal designs and attachments. That'd make racing more exciting to people like my roommate - real race cars aren't wildly flying all over the track like in an animated series. Physics just don't work that way. This world is a lot more boring when you think of all the things that just don't work.

But we always work with the things that do work to entertain ourselves.

5. Enamoured - Foxy Love

These dreams...I wonder if they'll affect me somehow. Maybe they've already started to. After all, exposure to new thoughts, new ideas, new imaginative images...they can inspire you, guide you, even. Everyone I know almost seems taught to reject new concepts, out of fear that they'll never be the same again after seeing or hearing something new. But I could be being judgemental.

My roommate seems more open to trying a game every now and again. That could be because of me, because I actually tell her about my dreams now. She doesn't say it outright, but I can tell she's at least amused by the weird images I see. That's better than being thought of as a crazy or disturbed individual. Maybe I really can find a game for us to play together.

The question is, what do we play?

6. Abstract Mind - Iris Alexander

I was able to get a Chess set into our room without anyone noticing. I don't know why I tried to hide it, it wasn't drugs or something. Well, maybe Chess will turn out to hook us...at any rate, it's strictly between me and my roommate for now. We're getting the hang of it and are enjoying ourselves, even if I keep making terrible errors and losing over and over.

The good news is, she never seems to look down on me for losing. Being a Chess player is not popular around here, but if you were found to be a terrible player, that'd be even worse for you. Not for her, though. I just wish I could find a way to win a couple here and there. You're supposed to not care about how many losses you have, but winning would at least tell me I'm decent at the game.

Wait. I think I have an idea.

7. Deck Shuffle - Give Luck A Chance!

Apparently adding a luck element to Chess was not as good of an idea as I thought. The idea was to randomly choose a type of piece to move, and you could only move that type on that turn. It turned out that strategy basically goes away completely when you do that, as my roommate rightfully pointed out. So adding luck to a game with no luck was not the best plan.

So I suggested random starting positions, shuffling the first row of pieces. At this point, my roommate got annoyed and said the game is fine the way it is. Then I told her about a version of Chess where you can steal the enemy's own pieces and use them yourself. That got her attention a little more. It's good to come up with variations of a game you're already enjoying.

Even if it does make things a little more random.

8. Embrace - Heart of Shooting

Okay, how does this sound: Chess but your pawns are Archers, if they move, the piece two spaces ahead is captured straight away. Well, I'm actually not the one who came up with that, it was actually my roommate. She created something! I don't know if I should feel shocked that she came up with a new idea herself, she just didn't seem like the type when we started playing...

This is actually a lot of fun. Now I'm scribbling piece ideas in my notebook, I'm playing out moves in my head elsewhere. And it's all so much fun. I don't think I've ever thought up something like this before - let alone have someone to share it with. I feel like we're really warming up to each other. Maybe it's time we got someone else to share it with, too.

Well...that's probably a long ways off.

9. White Square - Red Queen

I caught myself thinking about a move I made the previous night in a game. I'm starting to worry now. This is so much fun that it's practically all I really want to do with my time. Can't work be like this too? Maybe I should take a break from it. Another game, maybe. But I can't think of anything else. I hope my roommate isn't feeling the same. I think I'd feel responsible.

But if the game is so much fun, why do I feel this way? Spending the rest of my life on it sounds terrible, and nobody would ever think that's a good idea for me, either. There must be a way around this - a way to turn work into a game. They always seem to intentionally make work less fun any way they can, but it makes people not want to work! It's a frustrating contradiction.

But is there an answer to it?

10. Diamond In The Rough - Delphi Andrea

I think I'm calm now. I guess I got a little excited. I feel fine now, though. Not sure about my roommate, who's avoiding talk of Chess for now. She might be going through the same thing - best to let her calm down for the time being. I didn't think a game could excite us this much, get us to worry for our own health as we entrenched ourselves in it more and more.

We haven't stopped playing. Just took a break for a little while, then started coming up with new pieces again. We're still able to do our work - even faster now, since we're working on it together. We may even have a way to make the work more fun. For example, we came up with a math game to play using a deck of cards, and a war game to help with geography.

That's probably even more strange than any dream I've had.

11. World Map - Magical Realm

A thought struck me while working on geography. There's so many places out there in the world, yet we're never taught anything beyond the fact that they exist. At least, not here, we aren't. Other places could be different. If other places exist, wouldn't we want to know what's there? See it for ourselves? Then again, that may be exactly why we don't.

If we traveled to other places, we'd inevitably bring our home into theirs, the ideas and thoughts mixing together, just like with me and my roommate. As ideas are exchanged, places and people change. They wouldn't be like they were before, and there'd be no way to know if the change was ultimately positive. If that's the logic behind it, I can kind of understand.

Doesn't make it less unsettling, though...

12. Lost Tension - Drawn Endgame

For the first time, this evening's game ended in a draw. We're not sure how that happened, and I can't tell if she's disappointed or relieved. I didn't really think either of us was ahead at that time. Now, there are some conflicts in the world that I wish ended in draws. No winner or loser, just the sudden impulse to think deeply about what had happened throughout the game.

Between the two of us, we are lucky to have games. We've even started settling arguments with the game. We do not end up angry over not winning, either. Completing an amazing game or watching your opponent come up with a clever strategy relieves any tension there may or may not be between us. It seems like the ideal outcome to any conflict. We are lucky, indeed.

Now how to share this with the rest of the world...