The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
Size of That Ant
5-22-1999

I was with some people in the desert, climbing a plateau actually. Well, scaling its sides, travelling horizontally, not actually coming up over the edge. It got harder as we went. Finally a man in black (like from Matrix) poked his head over the edge and found us. "Hi there," I said. Another one was climbing up from below, converging on us. "Get up here," he demanded. After some more scaling, we made it.

He took us underground to a secret place where a banquet was being held in some royal person's honor. My cousin was this person, and she was serving appetizers. I went to grab one and she incredulously looked at me, knowing I didn't belong there, and wouldn't let me have one. Music was playing. Someone explained to me that they were planning a secret strike.

We heard scratching near one of the walls. The music died down and everyone stopped in their tracks. We could see a shadow beyond, digging. Someone grabbed a shovel and dug up some dirt, threw it on the wall. The figure on the other side was the enemy. They didn't know we were here. He started talking to someone else, and we could hear all their plans. I had a vision of a guy in a skull-like mask.

They decided to train my friends and I in martial arts. We watched some videos and jumped around some.

At the end of the banquet, and in light of the enemy's new plans, they were at a loss of what to do. Someone walked down the aisle and said, "I think my newly trained team can handle it," meaning us.

Somehow I had decided to do my thesis back in Michigan in my old lab. So I went up there. Pam (grad student in that lab) was sitting at a table with some guy I'd never seen, in the dark. I sat down and noticed she had a tea packet the size of a cereal box. She'd filled a Styrofoam cup with hot water and was going to pour the entire thing in, saturating it assumably. As she did, tons of little orange tang-like grains spilled onto the table. I pressed my finger on a few, then up to my mouth -- tasted orangey. There was a gel box with an agarose gel in it. I thought they were going to pour some into that, too, but they didn't. Instead what didn't fall into the water turned into larger chunks, and Pam and the other guy munched away on it.

I told Pam about my situation. Then she asked if I'd gone to my exit interview yet for my lab. Said that I was supposed to talk to my PI about how the rotation went and so on. As I opened a drawer, I said, "Oh, well you mean HERE maybe." She kept on talking about things I had to do, and my response every time was, "Maybe HERE, yes..." as if it didn't apply to me. I thought about how I would once again have a good Quake connection if I came here.

Suddenly a bunch of people walked by in the hall, and everyone in lab followed. We were evacuating for some reason. I found myself walking behind Cynthia. I sang to myself, "You've got no place to go." Cynthia turned around and asked what I was talking about. Not wanting to reveal the true nature of my reason (which is obvious), I told her it was the song from some Michael J. Fox movie.

We climbed a spiral staircase, which I considered climbing instead of ascending, but decided against it. It led outside and turned into three sets of bleachers. I stuck to mine, the middle column, but when I got to the top, my head got stuck because the set of bleachers above me cut too close. So I had to turn back down. The reason I didn't go on the right side bleachers was because one could see they ended quickly and didn't make it to the top, yet people were at the top already. As I went down, someone yelled, "Robson, right there!" and I slapped myself, seeing they'd just jumped from the middle one on over. I ran, jumped, and bounded up the bleachers, beating several other people yet. Reese was up there. He said, "You used to always win back in the day, because you used to be able to squeeze through that crack." "Oh YEAH!" I said. I looked around. Apparently this was an old school of mine, but I confessed I didn't recognize it. There was a school building to my left and some dense growth to my right.

I caught a balloon and took to the air, floating above all the playing kids. I shouted to Reese, "Wow look at the size of that ant!" but then realized it was really a very large beetle. I saw another one. Then I pulled one out of thin air and threw it on the ground, watching it overtake some kid. I thought that was neat.

There was a part where I met up with my mom, my uncle, and my cousin (aforementioned cousin's brother). He was going to fly to Mars in a pod the size of a chair. I said he would be pretty cramped by the time he got back. Then I remember someone commenting that magic wasn't real. I got pissed, went out to the road, and used my willpower to telekinetically hurl snow from the trees all over the place.


posted by Phlegm at 11/24/2003