Like the office, Dream Columbus has little to do with real Columbus. In this case there is an old town that functions much like Colonial Williamsburg as a "living history" attraction; indeed, I peruse a map that shows a main entry gate with access via tram from parking lots. The attraction area is a vast semi-open plaza, maybe a city block wide and three blocks long, with small permanent or semi-permanent structures dotted throughout, like concessions, "in this historic building" buildings, and so forth. The city has its regular residents as well, and they are very much in evidence—the commerce here is surprisingly universal, not "tourist shopping" versus "resident shopping".
I am sure I enjoyed myself in Columbus but that's not the point of this story. The fun begins when I make to leave. I say goodbye to the acquaintances I have made and depart the general store to head out to the airport. On the way to the "metro", I mentally say goodbye to all the sights I have grown to love. It occurs to me: I really want to move to Columbus! The architecture Brain provides is aggressively quirky: here's a bright blue 5-story building with stylized (non-functional) flying buttresses; right next door is a slightly shorter library with a terra cotta rotunda. The cityscapes and vistas are just gorgeous. It's like the majority of public and commercial buildings were designed to be eye candy! I realize just how familiar all these wildly decorative buildings have become: I used to admire them every day but now I realize they are just background. I make myself stop and appreciate them anew.
Like an idiot, I miss my stop on the rail line; unfortunately, that means I end up crossing the river. (Here Cbus bears a slight resemblance to Dream San Francisco, with its vast network of high-speed freeways looping around the Bay approach, 200 feet in the air.) Now I'm going to be late for the flight home and probably miss it. Dammit.
I get off at the next rail station and immediately attempt to get from the eastbound to the westbound platform. It is impossible to do so. On the westbound side to get from ground level to the platform one must climb a series of concrete abutments protruding from one wall; but the abutments get wider and closer to the opposite wall the higher up one gets, and at a certain point my ribcage is too wide to go further. I go back down and start asking people how in the hell one is meant to get to the westbound platform—obviously I am missing something. I can also see not one but two lines of humans, scores or hundreds of them, queued up as if waiting for the platform to be accessible.
Absolutely no one can explain how one boards a westbound train at this station. One guy emphatically insists the only way up is the climb that proved too narrow.
While I am contemplating my problem, a woman in one of the queues starts to sing. Some folky traditional tune, possibly an outback campfire song because she sounds either Aussie or Kiwi. We exchange pleasantries and talk about folk music. Somehow she turns into a Brit by the end of the scene, and I realize very belatedly her companion is actually an American. Are they even traveling together? Possibly they have just made each other's acquaintance. I ask him how long they have "been over here" then realize the question likely doesn't make sense.
My phone squeaks at me asking whether I want to check in for my flight.
I'm still at the rail station and looking for assistance or information. There are some young savage-as-fuck punks hanging around; some have skateboards, but the one who engages me does not. He is in his early 20s, blond, large frame, wearing a skirt and looking a little gladiatorial. He looks like William Seed.
And he is an asshole whose entire purpose in engaging me it to point out that he has no intention of helping me or providing any information. I try an extra gambit or two to get him to help because (a) I need help and (b) his physical presence is commanding and pleasant; but finally I am frustrated by his pointed dick-being and I call him a cunt. Repeatedly. As I depart the station, which now appears to be St. Pancras in London, I'm still hollering at him that he's a cunt. But he appears not to have even noticed; he was too busy mocking me himself to hear me calling him a cunt. So I go back to the station so I can call him a cunt some more.
This time he hears me and it is clear he means to punish me for it. I think he means to pound me, but instead he pulls a weird doodad out of malletspace, puts it to his lips, and begins singing darts at me. The first one hits just inside my right eye and sticks there, near the bridge of my nose. It is needle-thin and merely stings a bit. The possibility of poison doesn't even occur to me. Dude sings several more darts my way but I manage to duck most of them. I flee.
I find another west-bound conveyance and I board it, thinking it is a train. It is not. It is a bus. I am not sure I have cash for the fare, but driver does not ask for fare anyway. The bus travels scary-fast through wild mountainous countryside (Cbus is nowhere in sight throughout), into and out of tiny tunnels that look like they couldn't possibly fit the bus; and it finally drops me in a sci-fi landscape in which various huge machines moving around through fields and hills. Some of them look vaguely like this:
The entire time I've been in Cbus I cannot find any contact information for V— and it is stressing me out. I believe I am supposed to deliver a revised version of the thing I faxed him before I left but I can't find the fax number or any other datum. I check everything I can think of on my phone: recent incoming and outgoing calls, texts, social media, even my photos.
A guy who is almost but not quite Mark McKinney is looking at my photos and videos over my shoulder. I have some recently shot videos of a street performance in the "living history" area, with performers dancing in elaborate costumes and headdresses (also puppets). NotMark says, "Those are great shots. Who's the terrific animator?" I scour his face for several seconds to see if he's kidding, but he's perfectly deadpan. I tell him, "Actually, these are all live action" and he immediately "No duhs" me. I hate humans.
Somewhat later and without any context, I am exploring a garage or workshop alone. I am under some obligation to do what I am doing, which is climb (again through narrow spaces) up onto a platform in the center of the room where lies some crucial machinery. It looks like a carnival ride and a mad scientist's laboratory had a love child. At the last stage of my climb, I knock a large glass jar to the floor; it breaks and I decide to leave it. I realize this is at least the second time I have caused property damage in my travels through Cbus. (Cannot remember exactly what the first time was, but.)
I exit through a heretofore untried door and into an alley. I know that the broken jar matters to somebody—but nobody will know it was me. The back alley is unfamiliar to me; it is the space between a dozen or more domiciles, many of the residents of which are hanging out in their backyards. I aim to look like I belong there, and like I know where I'm going. I do not. I head the wrong way. Will I have to make a conspicuous about-face? Or is there a narrow alley to the street? Never mind, because en route I encounter a woman I know and she sets me up on some sort of repair work. She has a sort of spider or snarl made out of old TV antennae, and she tells me it is completely in the wrong shape and can I fix it for her? I mess around with the contraption on the hood of her car for a while. I never really get anywhere with it.
I go back to the hotel. I have missed my flight, which was actually last night, so I am definitely staying an extra day at least. I realize it's almost a day since Paul expected me home and I haven't called him. I need to do that first! Also I have not alerted the front desk I'm staying an extra day—but they haven't kicked me out. I expect this incoming call on the hotel phone is the front desk hollering at me, but it is only a cold marketing call.
If it's not apparent, my failure to make my flight and, worse, to contact V— about work stuff hangs like a sword of Damocles throughout everything described above. It was a stressful night. Holidays, I guess.
This time he hears me and it is clear he means to punish me for it. I think he means to pound me, but instead he pulls a weird doodad out of malletspace, puts it to his lips, and begins singing darts at me. The first one hits just inside my right eye and sticks there, near the bridge of my nose. It is needle-thin and merely stings a bit. The possibility of poison doesn't even occur to me. Dude sings several more darts my way but I manage to duck most of them. I flee.
I find another west-bound conveyance and I board it, thinking it is a train. It is not. It is a bus. I am not sure I have cash for the fare, but driver does not ask for fare anyway. The bus travels scary-fast through wild mountainous countryside (Cbus is nowhere in sight throughout), into and out of tiny tunnels that look like they couldn't possibly fit the bus; and it finally drops me in a sci-fi landscape in which various huge machines moving around through fields and hills. Some of them look vaguely like this:
The entire time I've been in Cbus I cannot find any contact information for V— and it is stressing me out. I believe I am supposed to deliver a revised version of the thing I faxed him before I left but I can't find the fax number or any other datum. I check everything I can think of on my phone: recent incoming and outgoing calls, texts, social media, even my photos.
A guy who is almost but not quite Mark McKinney is looking at my photos and videos over my shoulder. I have some recently shot videos of a street performance in the "living history" area, with performers dancing in elaborate costumes and headdresses (also puppets). NotMark says, "Those are great shots. Who's the terrific animator?" I scour his face for several seconds to see if he's kidding, but he's perfectly deadpan. I tell him, "Actually, these are all live action" and he immediately "No duhs" me. I hate humans.
Somewhat later and without any context, I am exploring a garage or workshop alone. I am under some obligation to do what I am doing, which is climb (again through narrow spaces) up onto a platform in the center of the room where lies some crucial machinery. It looks like a carnival ride and a mad scientist's laboratory had a love child. At the last stage of my climb, I knock a large glass jar to the floor; it breaks and I decide to leave it. I realize this is at least the second time I have caused property damage in my travels through Cbus. (Cannot remember exactly what the first time was, but.)
I exit through a heretofore untried door and into an alley. I know that the broken jar matters to somebody—but nobody will know it was me. The back alley is unfamiliar to me; it is the space between a dozen or more domiciles, many of the residents of which are hanging out in their backyards. I aim to look like I belong there, and like I know where I'm going. I do not. I head the wrong way. Will I have to make a conspicuous about-face? Or is there a narrow alley to the street? Never mind, because en route I encounter a woman I know and she sets me up on some sort of repair work. She has a sort of spider or snarl made out of old TV antennae, and she tells me it is completely in the wrong shape and can I fix it for her? I mess around with the contraption on the hood of her car for a while. I never really get anywhere with it.
I go back to the hotel. I have missed my flight, which was actually last night, so I am definitely staying an extra day at least. I realize it's almost a day since Paul expected me home and I haven't called him. I need to do that first! Also I have not alerted the front desk I'm staying an extra day—but they haven't kicked me out. I expect this incoming call on the hotel phone is the front desk hollering at me, but it is only a cold marketing call.
If it's not apparent, my failure to make my flight and, worse, to contact V— about work stuff hangs like a sword of Damocles throughout everything described above. It was a stressful night. Holidays, I guess.
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