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

 
Three Games At Once
10-28-1999

I was scoping the land. For what I'm not sure. It was snowy, icey territory, and I may have been looking for a firm place to lay a foundation. Some other guy scoffed in my choice of direction, but I ignored him and went on, eventually coming to a place where the snow was brown. I descended a small slope and got caught in a small snowslide.

I ended up to my waist in a calm river with some bald, half-naked natives and a tour group. The water was warm, and a ravine closed us in. We walked forward a bit and came to a waterfall. The current wasn't strong enough to drag us over. My sister appeared and asked, "We're supposed to follow them over this waterfall?" I think I responded, and then jumped over. It was a nice drop. I didn't even scream like some of the others. We came to another water fall. This time I saw one of the natives go over on his back, head-first, so I tried it, too. I couldn't see where I was falling...just empty blue sky above me. The fall was so long that I felt like I was just floating, and I wondered if this was what skydiving was like. Eventually I hit the water, and I wondered if the water was deep enough so that I wouldn't crack my head on the bottom. I didn't, but I felt the river floor, and it was both rocky and slimy. I was pretty deep down and it took me a moment to surface again. I wondered if there was a ski lift to take us back to the top of the mountain.

I was a badass woman breaking into a high-tech military complex. I'd taken out a bit of resistance, but I couldn't find the 'key' to the next 'level'. I even searched some monument to some goddess, which was just a big, Greek-like female head imbedded in a wall. I was sure I'd find it there.

Then I looked at someone else's screen and saw that they were much further along than me. The woman stood against a background of different bases in the game. The ones she'd conquered all moved around behind her, such as a tank and a big transforming robot thing, but others did not. The guy pointed out another robot thing off to the left, showing me what the next level likely was.

I suddenly remembered the theme song to a commercial for a monthly mail-order kid's book called "My Book". It had words and everything, and I was really convinced I was remembering something from my childhood that I never had before. Maybe I was, but I've forgotten it now. I pictured a stuffed animal thing arriving at someone's door and handing a big red book to a little kid and his mom. I thought was a great thing that would be for my kids someday...or maybe not. Maybe I'd just stick with Sesame Street.

I put the game away because a little girl wanted to play. She was a lot like Emma, a sweet little kid I know. I took her from the daycare place and exchanged a word or two with a girl who was a cross between Molly and the Sara that lived in my house a few years ago. We ran around DM2 for a while, playing tag or hide-and-seek or something, before I had to go to the bathroom. As I was going, a door opened up to my side into the garage, and Mr. Wolfgram was there. "Oh, I'm sorry Eric, I didn't see you there. Here, let me take a picture." I had a pillow over my legs for privacy, and I was watching something on a TV in the corner of the room. Other people came around and I got annoyed.

Back at the daycare center, some guy told me how Emma's dad asked him if all those files on the system were Emma's. He guiltily admitted they were. I decided I had to write my dream down before I forgot it, so I took Emma back and started hooking up the game system so I could type it up. Emma watched me mess with all the plugs and stuff, then asked if she could play hopscotch while I typed. I said that would be fine, that it wouldn't bother me. "I like to have three games going at once," she said, and then she squeezed me from around the neck. I didn't understand her infatuation with me.

I walked outside into the street. It was night. I was with two other men, but we took different routes. Emma followed me. We all converged at the same intersection and stopped to let traffic to by. When it lightened up, one of them made gestures. Finally Emma started to cross the street, too. The man said, "I figured she could understand the motions by now." A car almost turned into us, and I saw that the Molly/Sara girl was in the passenger seat, telling her mom, the driver, to stop. She had a bored/frustrated look on her face.


posted by Phlegm at 11/24/2003