Last night, I dreamed I was working on something with a bunch of very competent women, and I asked one of them, "Of all the computer systems that have become self aware, have any of them identified as female?"
She answered, but the two examples she gave were more ghost stories than anything except computers. The first one was brief and I don't remember it, but the second one changed so that I was experiencing it rather than being told about it. A woman I knew well (possibly the same one) beckoned me to come with her. We got into the car, and her driving was extremely good, but very scary - like something out of a movie car chase. I think I screamed a few times, or at least squeaked (only within the dream) but I enjoyed it, too. I don't think she said anything at all; by then I was suspecting she was a ghost on the theory that no normal human could drive like that, though I'd seen her alive shortly before.. At last she skidded diagonally into a very small parking spot, and beckoned me to follow her into a house (which looked like one of the rowhouses across the street from my parents, at the far end of the block). We walked in, walked through the living room and dining room right behind an older woman who was happily chattering on the phone to a friend about some plans for the day. She appeared not to notice us. We walked though some more rooms, around a corner and up some stairs (the inside of this house was bigger than the rowhouses really are). She took me to a bathroom where I saw an indistinct shape on the floor of the shower. Apparently I wasn't wearing my glasses or contacts, and everything was even fuzzier than it would really be without them. I didn't want to look too closely, but I realized that the object on the floor was a dead man, that the woman downstairs had killed him, and that the woman who had brought me had just died herself and was now on a mission to bring justice to this man. (No idea why he couldn't be his own rescuer.) Obviously what I was supposed to do was to call the police; the only question was, should I stay in the house and call them from my cell phone? I knew it would be dangerous to stay there long, in case the murderess found me in her house. Or should I attempt to sneak back past her, get out of the house and then call? But I had no idea why the woman hadn't noticed us on the way up, or why she wouldn't spot me on my way back out.
While I was trying to figure that out, I woke up, and was very glad to find myself in my bed with nothing much going on. It was about 3:45. I'd packed for rowing, though I'd been considering sleeping in a little and erging instead. But Rudder wasn't there to curl up to, to convince my subconscious that the dream was over and everything was OK, and enough fear was left over from the dream that I kept thinking someone could break in with me alone in the house - not something I worry about, except when I'm lying awake at 3AM. Or 3:45. So I lay there for a few more minutes, enjoying at least being able to stay in bed, and then I got up and went rowing.
I know where some of the images come from. There was a whole bit, a much better part of the dream, where I was working with the women before my question about female AIs. I figure it stems from all the WisCon discussions going on over at LiveJournal, and in fact I posted a little more there about it. My parents' house and neighborhood shows up a lot in my dreams, since I lived there until I left home, and I did once walk into a house across the street and go upstairs to find a dead man. In that case, though, his wife hadn't killed him; he'd had a stroke or heart attack and she ran outside yelling for help. My mom and I went over and I tried to breathe for him (having had CPR training a fwe years before) but it was too late. I've no idea where the ghost-woman with the short dark hair came from, though, or why ghosts are crazy drivers.
It was a good rowing day, at least. I had the lake nearly to myself - with Rudder, She-Hulk, and the Cubemate out of town only a couple of others were out that early, and I got to practice with my new rigging in the sunrise. As everyone knows, sunrise is very good for banishing ghosts.