Dream: Vending Machine (05/20/23)
Rating: Unrated (Log) Date: May 20, 2023 Last updated: 2026-04-06
Overview
A short 2023 dream that prefigures the major “Vending Machine Dreams” essay Jack published on Medium two years later. The same machine, the same dark, a person named Ryotaro.
Full Notes
- I was ordering some food and small tags kept coming out of the bottom of the vending machine
- At some point in time, I saw two girls with quite hot tops walking by
- There was a struggle to find Ryotaro as I was left alone in the dark having to find my ways
Reading
The tags: Instead of food, the vending machine dispenses small tags from the bottom. The machine gives you labels instead of nourishment. Jack is trying to order food and getting categorization instead.
Ryotaro: A Japanese name. Likely a reference from anime (Ryotaro Nogami from Kamen Rider Den-O is a recognizable character) or a person from Jack’s Steins Gate / Japanese cultural world. The key detail: Jack is left alone in the dark having to find Ryotaro. Searching in darkness for someone who matters — the isolation and navigation theme runs through Jack’s entire dream archive.
Connection to the 2025 essay: In “Vending Machine Dreams,” Jack writes about reaching into the machine expecting food and getting lighters instead. The 2023 dream is the precursor: the machine gives tags. By 2025 it gives sparks. The machine is the same machine, two years older, with more loaded symbolism.
Ryotaro as Archetype
In Jack’s archive, Japanese names and anime characters often stand in for idealized figures — people worth finding, people who embody something he’s looking for. The struggle to find Ryotaro in the dark echoes the 2021 entry about not being able to “purpose my crazy MIT ideas” to people around him: searching for the right person in an environment that doesn’t offer them easily.