All in Told by Grampa Walt

S02E161 The Children, Part 8: Charlie to the Rescue!

Guy Hasson
Age: 7.5, Told by Grampa Walt

A condor as big as Bonny’s Revenge descends from above to hover outside the ship’s deck, the one farther from us. Suzy, Joy, Master Mind and I watch from the tunnel as Charlie jumps from the railing to the back of the condor with unusual bravery for such a height.

Joy nods to herself. “He used that condor when we met. She’s his friend.”

The dark demons are a kilometer or so ahead of him, throwing Justin from one to the other.

As Charlie flies on the condor towards the demons, more giant condors appear at his side. There are eleven of them now, creating a V formation in the air, with Charlie at the point of the V.

“Oh, my…” Suzy says. “He’s just a little kid. He’s going to have an aerial battle with demons?”

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S02E160 The Children, Part 7: Helpless Justin

Guy Hasson
Age: 7.5, Told by Grampa Walt

Justin reappears a few moments later, and with him come the dark demons.

We are all watching from the safety of the tunnel, but I hold my breath as soon as I see them. Suzy, near me, gasps. Joy’s hand goes to the holster of the laser pistol at her side, but she doesn’t draw it.

Justin tries to fight the demon with a sword from the weapons cabinet, but he is suddenly inept with a sword.

“Dad! Into the tunnel!” Joy yells at him.

She stands right on the edge of the tunnel, confident that nothing of the dream can make it across.

Justin sees her, and immediately there is a jetpack on his back. He flies forward, as Joy ducks, but one of the huge demons captures him in its huge talons.

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S02E158 The Children, Part 5: Charlie Saves the Day

Guy Hasson
Age: 7.5, Told by Grampa Walt

Charlie looks around helplessly as one of the dark creatures attempts to grab Joy.

Joy leaps out of the way, but it was close.

Joy’s weapon needs to recharge. Justin, whose dreams these are, is an obsessed dreamer and can’t snap out of it. And Master Mind’s weapons aren’t working on them.

Charlie raises his hand as if about to conjure something as a dreamer. But he doesn’t. His mind is clearly a blank.

Master Mind leaps at one of the creatures now flying above the ship, who is trying to grab Joy. He grabs the bottom of its taloned leg and is now rising into the air with the creature.

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S02E157 The Children, Part 4: The Monsters

Guy Hasson
Age: 7.5, Told by Grampa Walt

“My missiles do not wound the monsters,” Master Mind sounds panicky.

“They’ve come for you, Joy!” Justin rolls to the weapons cabinet and goes his body to the fetal position. I have never seen him cower in the Dream.

Joy, on the floor next to the weapons cabinet, launches what looks like a bazooka, but a space bazooka. “Dad! It’s not them!” She aims it at the creatures descending on the ship, and fires at the closest one.

With a zark! sound Joy’s weapon launches a thick, red ray of energy at the closest creature, and it punches a hole in its body. The dark, bat-like creature that’s the size of the ship falls back and into the ocean, dead. “They’re your dream! Make them go away!”

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S02E156 The Children, Part 3: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Guy Hasson
Age: 7.5, Told by Grampa Walt

Master Mind, the killer robot who had been sewn back together, had been standing silently all this time near at the helm of Bonny’s Revenge. He observed silently when Justin appeared, when the kids asked to go on a quest to find Dreamer children, and when Justin had a bad reaction to it.

Now he stands next to Justin, and I hadn’t even noticed that he moved.

“Pirate,” he says. “You have clearly observed a danger in the Dream. I have seen nothing. What stimuli prompted your fear?”

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S02E154 The Children, Part 1: Where Are all the Children

Guy Hasson
Age: 7.5, Told by Grampa Walt

“Look at that,” Charlie points at his Shroom, about ten meters below them. “My Shroom is so far down that you can’t jump to it.”

Joy shrugs. “I think it’s because you appear on Bonny’s Revenge in Dad’s dream. The Shroom just drops without you.”

Charlie nods in agreement.

They look around.

“Do you ever think, Joy,” he says, “about all the dreams and Dreamers we’ve seen?”

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S02E152 The Gym, Part 3, The Red Dragon

Guy Hasson
Age: 6, Told by Grampa Walt

Joy had just asked Lukas, the man into whose dream we have walked for the first time just a few moments ago, to say ‘Dragon Father’, and now that he has, she’s excited.

“You know the Red Dragon!”

Lukas looks at her, still thrown for a loop over everything that’s happened. “Dragon? What… is… What do you mean?”

I make sure I’m right behind Joy, protecting her. With Justin out of this dream, I want to get out of here as soon as possible. “Joy,” I put a hand on her shoulder. “How can he know the Red Dragon? She was in your father’s dream.”

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S02E151 The Gym, Part 2, Gym Exercises

Guy Hasson
Age: 6, Told by Grampa Walt

Joy and Charlie approach Justin and the weight-lifting Dreamer in the barbell area.

Justin points to a barbell, “Charlie, see that barbell over there? It’s really heavy. Right?” This last one is aimed at the Dreamer.

“Ja,” the Dreamer says, still shocked at what he had seen Justin do, adding in a German accent, “Heavy.”

“What I want you to do is imagine that it is super super light. But you can’t change what it looks like. It has to look like this. Do you understand?”

Charlie nods and approaches one of the heavier barbells. He concentrates while looking at it intensely. Then he reaches down and touches it to test it. He laughs then raises it with one finger.

The Dreamer gasps, shocked.

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S02E150 The Gym, Part 1: The Weightlifter

Guy Hasson
Age: 6, Told by Grampa Walt

This dream looks harmless enough. And yet, we are prepared: Justin, Master Mind, and Charlie are all ready to protect Joy should something happen. And then there’s me, the excess baggage who can’t protect anyone.

We exit Charlie’s elevator in this new dream. This is a city street. People are walking around harmlessly, and no danger seems to be about. The chatter on the street appears to be German. Are we in Germany? I’m not sure.

“That’s the center,” Justin points to a two-story building with glass walls. Inside, we can see a gym. “Let’s go!”

We enter the gym, and although there are quite a few people working out, the man in the middle of the room is the one with the Dreamer’s shadow.

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S02E148: Anime Battle, Part 3: Putting Master Mind in a Corner

Guy Hasson
Age: 6, Told by Grampa Walt

Justin is in a terrible mood the second we get out of the dream with the mecha suits battle.

“Dad, let’s try that dream!” Joy points to a Shroom to her immediate left.

Justin’s lips are closed tight, and he shakes his head. “We’re going home,” he manages to say.

I have only seen him this angry when he was a kid, and during those times he wouldn’t say more than a few syllables in hours.

Joy tries to argue, but Justin ignores her. “Master Mind, Dad, let’s go!” He activates his jetpack and flies off the Shroom.

Master Mind looks at Joy, who is miffed at being ignored. Then he follows Justin upwa

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S02E147: Anime Battle, Part 2: Taking a Shot

Guy Hasson
Age: 6, Told by Grampa Walt

“Dad, Dad, Dad! Pleeeeez!” Joy clings to Justin’s clothes as we stand in the tunnel, looking at a full blown space war and two mecha exoskeletons taken out of what Justin has identified as an Anime TV show battle each other. “Put me in! Let me help her!”

Charlie steps to the edge. “Maybe I should go in?”

Just as he does so a laser cannon from the big alien ship blows up a small fighter spaceship and it explodes.

“Nope, nope, nope,” Charlie takes a step back.

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S02E146: Anime Battle, Part 1: The Mecha Suits

Guy Hasson
Age: 6, Told by Grampa Walt

A giant blue-green exoskeleton lands on top of the alien ship. Inside, I can see a woman with long black hair, but she’s too far away.

The giant alien ship, green, all full of bumps and large antennae, makes its way through an asteroid storm. From behind the asteroids, multiple alien ships appear. These are small, maneuver fast, and fire lasers at the big ship.

The giant exoskeleton makes its way, step by step, towards a pretty big bump: No doubt the way inside.

But then a huge doorway opens in that bump, and a mean-looking red exoskeleton appears.

“So coooool” Joy says.

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S02E145 The New Dream Protocol, Part 2: The Class

Guy Hasson
Age: 6, Told by Grampa Walt

“I don’t know what this university is,” he says .”But look over here. There are palm trees. Over here there are fountains.”

I look around. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s not a university?”

Justin points to the young twenty-year-olds walking around with backpacks. ”It’s a university. Also, I heard them speak. I think that’s Arabic.”

Charlie points to their shadows. “They’re all dreams,” he says.

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S02E144 The New Dream Protocol, Part 1

Guy Hasson
Age: 6, Told by Grampa Walt

Over the last two months Joy, Justin, Master Mind, Charlie and I have covered quite a few dreams in our immediate surroundings. They’re always different. Some are dangerous. Some are harmless. Many don’t speak English or French and we can’t find a way to communicate well.

Now we’re traveling a bit further away, going five Shrooms in one direction.

“All right,” Justin says, as he peeks into the tunnel. “Let’s go in. Me, Charlie, Joy, Master Mind, then Dad.”

It’s the same order as always. Two Dreamers first who can deal with anything and/or die without anything happening to them. Then Joy, because you can’t keep her further back than that. Then Master Mind to protect her. Then me, because I’m a grandpa and a dream and I can get hurt.

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S02E143 The Power of the Dreamer, Part 5, Ow!

Guy Hasson
Age: 8.5, Told by Grampa Walt

The kids calm down a bit. Joy seems to have forgotten that we think she is not treated like a child. Charlie has stopped trying to change the way he looks. The adults, by which I mean the Dreamers, are not back yet from their various adventures. And the kids sit down where they started, legs hanging out of the railing, and looking at Joy’s scraped knee.

For some reason, Charlie accidentally touches her knee.

“Ow,” he says, as if it hurt him. “Sorry.”

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S02E142 The Power of the Dreamer, Part 4, Old Charlie, Old Joy

Guy Hasson
Age: 8.5, Told by Grampa Walt

Joy makes an unhappy face. “I wish I could be a grownup. People would stop treating me like a kid!”

Charlie looks at her with shock. “Who treats you like a kid?”

“Everyone treats me like a kid! Everyone!”

Charlie shakes his head almost violently. “Joy. No one treats you like a kid. Your dad lets you go on adventures! He lets you drive Bonnie’s Revenge. You can go into strange places. You do super dangerous things and no one tells you anything. You don’t have to go to school. You don’t have to do homework. You don’t have to do almost anything that kids have to do. Everyone treats you like an adult!”

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S02E141 The Power of the Dreamer, Part 3, Charlie’s Growth Spurt

Guy Hasson
Age: 8.5, Told by Grampa Walt

“Ooh, you know what!” Charlie, now bearded and moustached, tells Joy amidst the two of them laughing.

“What, what?”

“I think… I think…” he concentrates and his beard and moustache disappear. He finally looks like a kid again. That was too strange to look at.

“What if I can be a grownup?”

“A grownup?!”

“Old. Like your dad or something.”

“Ooh! Do it!”

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S02E140 The Power of the Dreamer, Part 2, Charlie Goes Crazy

Guy Hasson
Age: 8.5, Told by Grampa Walt

“I-know-I-know-I-know!” Charlie tells Joy.

They’ve just finished inventing various scrapes and gashes that Charlie makes appear on his body. He makes them appear, they laugh, it doesn’t hurt, and he makes them go away.

“What-what-what!” Joy is speaking at twice her normal speed.

“I’ll make myself bald!”

Joy opens her mouth in shock. “Can you do that?”

“I don’t know. Let’s try!”

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S02E139 The Power of the Dreamer, Part 1: Blood!

Guy Hasson
Age: 8.5, Told by Grampa Walt

Charlie and Joy are sitting on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge, legs hanging out.

All five dreamers have gone to do various things, leaving Joy and Charlie under Master Mind’s care.

We are flying among the clouds and the dream is serene for a change.

“Does it hurt?” Charlie points to a scrape that Joy has on her knee from yesterday’s adventure.

“Not too much,” she says.

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