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... in which I relate another dream:
Change
Boy was I in high demand last night. I was to the city and back so many times that, by the end of the night, I was getting into trouble for not having the correct change for public transport fares. And believe me; it was worse than it sounds.
The highlight of my night was probably The Play, so let’s ignore everything before that, except those few details that are still relevant. That pretty much leaves us with two small bunches of details we can talk about; the first about the play itself, the second about my night so far. The first bunch is full of details about the play; things like the fact that it was written by my paternal grandmother, who passed away several years ago, and that it has been kept by my uncle until now, it’s great unveiling. The second bunch is a lot smaller, consisting of only one detail, and one that has already been mentioned: I was running low on coins for bus and train fares.
The Play was magnificent. It was held in my local Catholic church, the one connected to my old primary school, and most of the cast were locals; kids from the school, their parents, regulars at the church, my family. I couldn’t tell you who was in it exactly, and I couldn’t tell you what it was about or anything else specific about The Play because the simple truth is this: all I remember about it is that it was fantastic. You should remind me later to give you a copy of the script, though reading it won’t be as good as seeing it performed live for the first time. We were the first virgins deflowered, and no one will ever know what it was like.
At intermission I turned around. I’d been sitting in the front pew, with a member of my family sitting in each successive pew behind me, and I was surprised to find that everyone else in the first five pews had left already. It was just my family and I. There were others behind us, of course – the church had been packed when The Play started – but now the left side of the congregation/audience had been taken away to confession. For a moment, I registered the oddness of a play being held in a church forcing confession to happen elsewhere (could the play not be performed at some other time?) but it was a fleeting thought and soon forgotten.
After The Play, I helped stack chairs away into the school hall. The children’s choir often uses a lot of the school’s little stackable chairs, and they get pulled out every now and then for other uses in the church, like The Washing of The Feet. I guess we just overbooked the church.
Once all the chairs were packed away, I went home. I only live in the next street, so it’s a quick walk, but things do occasionally happen on the way. Something happened last night, but I can’t for the life of me remember – I think it was a bad something, though, and that there’s a reason I can’t remember. I don’t really want to keep pressing the memory for answers, so I think I’ll leave it at that for now.
Everyone in my family that had gone to watch The Play came back to our place and we all started talking about it. We were telling each other our favourite parts, analysing things, and generally having a good time when I got a phone call telling me I was needed in the city. Somewhere around Central.
The bus I normally catch, my favourite bus in the whole world for all its convenience, goes straight to Central via my University. I scrounged up the last of my coins – one bus fare’s worth and about thirty five cents – and knew I’d need to get some money out and buy something before I came home so that I’d have coins to give my transport technician instead of notes.
Again, I can’t tell you what I did in or around Central. All I know is that I walked out of the quadrangle at my Uni like I’d just gotten off my bus and made my way to Central. All I can assume is that whatever I was called in to do had been done on campus. I was ready for home again.
Of course, I still I needed to find an ATM to get money so that I could buy something so that I could get change. Because we all know that my favourite type of plan is the convoluted type of plan with multiple unnecessary steps. So I made my way to Central thinking I’d find an ATM, a small food shop and both my proverbial and literal tickets home, all in the same place. I could have used the ATM on campus, as well as one of the stores, but I wanted to use the train. You know the one down past KFC? With the funky one-person shuttles? Oh, you don’t? Well, they’re like a waterslide, but without the water, and all the tubes are at ground level with sharper corners to turn. On second thoughts, waterslides don't generally have corners, but curves. Anyway. There's a little pier with a metal railing that goes down a level and connects to the shuttle door, the shuttle being set into a shute that goes off to the right and turns sharply left. The shuttle itself looks like it’s barely big enough for a person to sit, but you'll find that there’s actually an entire room down there; it’s not quite as big as a hotel room, but it does have a closet, a sleeping area, and possibly even a bathroom. The shuttle station is a lot of concrete and clear glass and darkness, but there’s such novelty to it that I can’t resist.
I attempted the maze that is Central for who knows how long trying to find an ATM until I stumbled upon a sign. “ATM -->” it read, pointing down a corridor. Further along that corridor there was another sign pointing me towards the off ramp.
The signs had led me to a weirdly blue domed area. It was the thick, dark, gel-like blue of technology, with the atmosphere of an underwater realm. There were several stations within the dome and they were all roped off, connected by walkways with very sailor-esque wood and rope. It was definitely an interesting find in the bowels of Central Station.
I walked to the back of the domed area to find an ATM, but couldn’t. There were none. At least, none in the conventional sense – there were people in their stations, reclining in their blue bank business chairs, staring at their substandard 80s computers, all with clients. I waited until one of them was free, and went up to him.
“Um, can I use you as an ATM?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure!” was his eager reply.
He sat me down, sat himself down, and wasted no time; in seconds he was asking me questions to make sure I was allowed to withdraw my own funds. Protocol, security, whatever you call it, I will always prefer the PIN over it. His first question was “Why do you need the money?” and I had a sudden flash of memory of my sister and I sitting on a bench in the school hall earlier that night while the chairs had been stacked. Before then, I hadn’t remembered that happening. I figured it was part of some “sleeper cell” like training, and let it go.
The ATMan finally decided I was allowed to get my own money out after telling me it was ten minutes to midnight and that I shouldn’t be out this late. He gave me a $10 note. I wanted so badly to tell him that ATMs don’t give out 10s, only 20s and 50s, but I resisted thinking he might take his/my money back. He also gave me coins enough for train travel, so I retroactively didn’t argue even more.
What struck me as odd (not that it was the only thing that night, but… you know) as I left the weirdly blue domed area was that, to my left, there was a window that showed the same entrance to the quad that I’d used earlier. Obviously, somehow, I’d left the bowels of Central and was now aboveground again, back where I’d started. No wonder it had taken a couple of hours to do everything I’d done since The Play.
After stumbling back down into the underground of Central Station, I got a little lost. I wandered through corridor after corridor, coming to what I now realise was dangerously close to trespassing on yet another previous dreamscape (the first was the shuttle, which I’d ridden with Shane and found an evil twin in the closet). I finally reached a dank, horrible, tiny little tunnel that I figured had to be the right way down to the concourse, purely because it was disgusting and nothing would be more my luck.
As I walked the tunnel, I noticed that there were doors along the walls, all marked with a giant white number. I noticed them somewhere between doors 50 and 46 when I came upon an open one. I looked back and noticed that in fact all of them were open, but that I must have missed them because of the angles and the darkness. Every door had behind it a toilet; most were broken, all were old and unclean. I figured I didn’t really want to stay in this tunnel much longer, so I kept going. I came out into what I think was a unisex bathroom – while there were urinals in there, there was a sense that it wasn’t a male only bathroom.
I deal mainly in vibes.
This should be no surprise.
What should be a surprise, and most certainly a surprise to me, was that my ability to fly kicked in at this point. Except that it’s not so much an ability to fly as a tendency to float. Like a helium balloon. All I can say is that I’m glad bathroom ceilings are cleaner than bathroom floors, especially the floors of dingy, mouldy bathrooms. Hitting the ceiling repeatedly did convince me that I was finally underground again though, as there was something about the architecture that suggested to me “underground-ruins-of-a-long-lost-dungeon come railway bathroom”. It was all in the archwork, you just need a keen eye and a tendency to float closer to the ceiling than you’d like.
That’s not to say I don’t like the idea of flying, or even the odd floating business I do from time to time get involved in. I love not touching the ground. It’s just that I also tend to lack directional control when floating; either I levitate on the spot by pushing against the air beneath my hands, or I have no grip, no tread, no hold nor control over what keeps me up and moving or whatever force it is that allows me to turn or even stop - basically, I don't havr power steering or brakes. It makes all my turns wide, and all my stops… well, not. However, after many attempts, I was finally able to get back down to the ground and with a surprisingly simple thought – ‘I want to be down’ – just very angrily. And, with the ability to control movement again at my disposal, I made my way to the concourse.
Except that I was on the wrong side. Some stupid architect had made it far too easy to get on the wrong side of the turnstiles without buying a ticket, and I’d inadvertently found the path. I went up to the guards on the turnstiles (who were all on my side looking my way for some reason – shouldn’t they have been watching for people coming through without tickets?) and said hi.
“Do you have a ticket?” asked the bright woman in the middle, while her male counterguards stood where they were. Or sat where they were, I guess, seeing as the woman and one of the men were actually sitting on the turnstiles.
“Uh… no, I came in off the street on the wrong side and need to buy one” and I started to point to the ticket seller. It was at that point that I noticed something was wrong; the concourse had been replaced by a bowling alley, so the ticket seller wasn’t behind a little glass window, but was at the front desk. It was all pretty though, with everything in black and red, shrouded in a darkness that was so lightly enlightened that it had an indigo edge to it.
The woman’s face fell at my answer, and became a look of disappointment and frustration… more frustration than disappointment, really. “You have to go through and buy two tickets now.” What she didn’t say was the why – because she didn’t believe my story. I felt like trying to tell her about the toilet corridor, but somehow I didn’t think she’d believe me.
I went through and lined up. I fished in my wallet for the note the ATMan gave me and, finding it, looked up to find that CJ Cregg had replaced the guy at the ticket counter. She was giving some sort of speech and everyone that had been lined up to buy a ticket had become her audience.
There was no way I was going to get a ticket now, so I decided to get the bus.
Change
Boy was I in high demand last night. I was to the city and back so many times that, by the end of the night, I was getting into trouble for not having the correct change for public transport fares. And believe me; it was worse than it sounds.
The highlight of my night was probably The Play, so let’s ignore everything before that, except those few details that are still relevant. That pretty much leaves us with two small bunches of details we can talk about; the first about the play itself, the second about my night so far. The first bunch is full of details about the play; things like the fact that it was written by my paternal grandmother, who passed away several years ago, and that it has been kept by my uncle until now, it’s great unveiling. The second bunch is a lot smaller, consisting of only one detail, and one that has already been mentioned: I was running low on coins for bus and train fares.
The Play was magnificent. It was held in my local Catholic church, the one connected to my old primary school, and most of the cast were locals; kids from the school, their parents, regulars at the church, my family. I couldn’t tell you who was in it exactly, and I couldn’t tell you what it was about or anything else specific about The Play because the simple truth is this: all I remember about it is that it was fantastic. You should remind me later to give you a copy of the script, though reading it won’t be as good as seeing it performed live for the first time. We were the first virgins deflowered, and no one will ever know what it was like.
At intermission I turned around. I’d been sitting in the front pew, with a member of my family sitting in each successive pew behind me, and I was surprised to find that everyone else in the first five pews had left already. It was just my family and I. There were others behind us, of course – the church had been packed when The Play started – but now the left side of the congregation/audience had been taken away to confession. For a moment, I registered the oddness of a play being held in a church forcing confession to happen elsewhere (could the play not be performed at some other time?) but it was a fleeting thought and soon forgotten.
After The Play, I helped stack chairs away into the school hall. The children’s choir often uses a lot of the school’s little stackable chairs, and they get pulled out every now and then for other uses in the church, like The Washing of The Feet. I guess we just overbooked the church.
Once all the chairs were packed away, I went home. I only live in the next street, so it’s a quick walk, but things do occasionally happen on the way. Something happened last night, but I can’t for the life of me remember – I think it was a bad something, though, and that there’s a reason I can’t remember. I don’t really want to keep pressing the memory for answers, so I think I’ll leave it at that for now.
Everyone in my family that had gone to watch The Play came back to our place and we all started talking about it. We were telling each other our favourite parts, analysing things, and generally having a good time when I got a phone call telling me I was needed in the city. Somewhere around Central.
The bus I normally catch, my favourite bus in the whole world for all its convenience, goes straight to Central via my University. I scrounged up the last of my coins – one bus fare’s worth and about thirty five cents – and knew I’d need to get some money out and buy something before I came home so that I’d have coins to give my transport technician instead of notes.
Again, I can’t tell you what I did in or around Central. All I know is that I walked out of the quadrangle at my Uni like I’d just gotten off my bus and made my way to Central. All I can assume is that whatever I was called in to do had been done on campus. I was ready for home again.
Of course, I still I needed to find an ATM to get money so that I could buy something so that I could get change. Because we all know that my favourite type of plan is the convoluted type of plan with multiple unnecessary steps. So I made my way to Central thinking I’d find an ATM, a small food shop and both my proverbial and literal tickets home, all in the same place. I could have used the ATM on campus, as well as one of the stores, but I wanted to use the train. You know the one down past KFC? With the funky one-person shuttles? Oh, you don’t? Well, they’re like a waterslide, but without the water, and all the tubes are at ground level with sharper corners to turn. On second thoughts, waterslides don't generally have corners, but curves. Anyway. There's a little pier with a metal railing that goes down a level and connects to the shuttle door, the shuttle being set into a shute that goes off to the right and turns sharply left. The shuttle itself looks like it’s barely big enough for a person to sit, but you'll find that there’s actually an entire room down there; it’s not quite as big as a hotel room, but it does have a closet, a sleeping area, and possibly even a bathroom. The shuttle station is a lot of concrete and clear glass and darkness, but there’s such novelty to it that I can’t resist.
I attempted the maze that is Central for who knows how long trying to find an ATM until I stumbled upon a sign. “ATM -->” it read, pointing down a corridor. Further along that corridor there was another sign pointing me towards the off ramp.
The signs had led me to a weirdly blue domed area. It was the thick, dark, gel-like blue of technology, with the atmosphere of an underwater realm. There were several stations within the dome and they were all roped off, connected by walkways with very sailor-esque wood and rope. It was definitely an interesting find in the bowels of Central Station.
I walked to the back of the domed area to find an ATM, but couldn’t. There were none. At least, none in the conventional sense – there were people in their stations, reclining in their blue bank business chairs, staring at their substandard 80s computers, all with clients. I waited until one of them was free, and went up to him.
“Um, can I use you as an ATM?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure!” was his eager reply.
He sat me down, sat himself down, and wasted no time; in seconds he was asking me questions to make sure I was allowed to withdraw my own funds. Protocol, security, whatever you call it, I will always prefer the PIN over it. His first question was “Why do you need the money?” and I had a sudden flash of memory of my sister and I sitting on a bench in the school hall earlier that night while the chairs had been stacked. Before then, I hadn’t remembered that happening. I figured it was part of some “sleeper cell” like training, and let it go.
The ATMan finally decided I was allowed to get my own money out after telling me it was ten minutes to midnight and that I shouldn’t be out this late. He gave me a $10 note. I wanted so badly to tell him that ATMs don’t give out 10s, only 20s and 50s, but I resisted thinking he might take his/my money back. He also gave me coins enough for train travel, so I retroactively didn’t argue even more.
What struck me as odd (not that it was the only thing that night, but… you know) as I left the weirdly blue domed area was that, to my left, there was a window that showed the same entrance to the quad that I’d used earlier. Obviously, somehow, I’d left the bowels of Central and was now aboveground again, back where I’d started. No wonder it had taken a couple of hours to do everything I’d done since The Play.
After stumbling back down into the underground of Central Station, I got a little lost. I wandered through corridor after corridor, coming to what I now realise was dangerously close to trespassing on yet another previous dreamscape (the first was the shuttle, which I’d ridden with Shane and found an evil twin in the closet). I finally reached a dank, horrible, tiny little tunnel that I figured had to be the right way down to the concourse, purely because it was disgusting and nothing would be more my luck.
As I walked the tunnel, I noticed that there were doors along the walls, all marked with a giant white number. I noticed them somewhere between doors 50 and 46 when I came upon an open one. I looked back and noticed that in fact all of them were open, but that I must have missed them because of the angles and the darkness. Every door had behind it a toilet; most were broken, all were old and unclean. I figured I didn’t really want to stay in this tunnel much longer, so I kept going. I came out into what I think was a unisex bathroom – while there were urinals in there, there was a sense that it wasn’t a male only bathroom.
I deal mainly in vibes.
This should be no surprise.
What should be a surprise, and most certainly a surprise to me, was that my ability to fly kicked in at this point. Except that it’s not so much an ability to fly as a tendency to float. Like a helium balloon. All I can say is that I’m glad bathroom ceilings are cleaner than bathroom floors, especially the floors of dingy, mouldy bathrooms. Hitting the ceiling repeatedly did convince me that I was finally underground again though, as there was something about the architecture that suggested to me “underground-ruins-of-a-long-lost-dungeon come railway bathroom”. It was all in the archwork, you just need a keen eye and a tendency to float closer to the ceiling than you’d like.
That’s not to say I don’t like the idea of flying, or even the odd floating business I do from time to time get involved in. I love not touching the ground. It’s just that I also tend to lack directional control when floating; either I levitate on the spot by pushing against the air beneath my hands, or I have no grip, no tread, no hold nor control over what keeps me up and moving or whatever force it is that allows me to turn or even stop - basically, I don't havr power steering or brakes. It makes all my turns wide, and all my stops… well, not. However, after many attempts, I was finally able to get back down to the ground and with a surprisingly simple thought – ‘I want to be down’ – just very angrily. And, with the ability to control movement again at my disposal, I made my way to the concourse.
Except that I was on the wrong side. Some stupid architect had made it far too easy to get on the wrong side of the turnstiles without buying a ticket, and I’d inadvertently found the path. I went up to the guards on the turnstiles (who were all on my side looking my way for some reason – shouldn’t they have been watching for people coming through without tickets?) and said hi.
“Do you have a ticket?” asked the bright woman in the middle, while her male counterguards stood where they were. Or sat where they were, I guess, seeing as the woman and one of the men were actually sitting on the turnstiles.
“Uh… no, I came in off the street on the wrong side and need to buy one” and I started to point to the ticket seller. It was at that point that I noticed something was wrong; the concourse had been replaced by a bowling alley, so the ticket seller wasn’t behind a little glass window, but was at the front desk. It was all pretty though, with everything in black and red, shrouded in a darkness that was so lightly enlightened that it had an indigo edge to it.
The woman’s face fell at my answer, and became a look of disappointment and frustration… more frustration than disappointment, really. “You have to go through and buy two tickets now.” What she didn’t say was the why – because she didn’t believe my story. I felt like trying to tell her about the toilet corridor, but somehow I didn’t think she’d believe me.
I went through and lined up. I fished in my wallet for the note the ATMan gave me and, finding it, looked up to find that CJ Cregg had replaced the guy at the ticket counter. She was giving some sort of speech and everyone that had been lined up to buy a ticket had become her audience.
There was no way I was going to get a ticket now, so I decided to get the bus.
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