walking down a desolate road, we encounter a group of telephone repairmen. They are fixing up the copper as we walk by. Stopping at one of the poles, I notice that it isn’t set into the ground.
“Why isn’t this stabilized into the surface?” I ask.
“It’s just the way AT&T told us to do it.” Says one of the workers.
“What about an earthquake? This thing is just resting on the road. It’ll topple over into traffic with even a gust of wind!”
He looks back at me like nobody thought of that but as if the idea isn’t significant.
“I wonder what they did with all the millions the government gave them to do this thing right.” I ponder. Then we all cursed AT&T as we walk away.
“Down with AT&T, fascist bastards!”

In the field next to us, we notice a swarm of giant bumble bees. They are living there like a massive bee city. They are flying over to the next block and picking up things we can’t make out from here, bringing them back to their hive. We walk further toward the pick-up spot for the bees goods and realize that the next block is a miniature city with miniature people. The people are being carried away by the bees. They run and hide and plan strange defenses that seem to do no good. In the distance, we notice the next block is made of giant flowers with multiple pollen bulbs on each stalk. It looks like the garden of flowers was made for the bees, if only the city of people weren’t in the way.

We lure a few of the bees to the field of flowers. They orgasm in the flower bed for a while before returning to their hive, telling all the others, which then proceed to drop the little people and move on over the city to their proper destination. We too move on.

Later at a music store, I’m looking for a new album–something I haven’t done in years. A friend who works at the counter tells me about this new one. It’s a two disc DVD set, audio album, mini-series, comic book and novella all in one. I flip through it and as I’m reading the comic-magazine, it changes in my hands to be a DVD case or an album or a comic.
“It’s made of a new nano-polycarbonate-artificial-life material. It responds to what you want it to be at the moment you touch it. then it shifts between 3-4 forms. Neat huh?” Says my friend.
“Yeah, neat. Cool story too. There’s everything in here behemoths and gods but mixed into a modern world. I dig it. Gotta go catch a movie. Later.”
I walk out the door and the street shifts in a strange way. It’s almost like Vertigo but then I realize it’s a hill forming on the road to the right. Cars start coming down the street, shocked at the sudden drop but they all make it down safely.

At the theater, I hand the counter-girl my id and she prints out a movie ticket along with a cruise ticket. The name on the ticket says CorbinDalles (all one word) and I tell her that there are two things wrong with my ticket. First, the name should have a space in it. Second, that isn’t my name. She points to the girl next to me and indeed it’s Milla Jovovich who is holding up a multi-pass. I shrug and head into the theater. I was expecting to get the cruise ticket along with the movie stub. It’s part of my mission. I need to get on that ship and join up with my counterparts.
Half-way through the movie, just when it was getting good, the theater becomes a dock and I’m boarding the ship. I can see my mates on board—about half a dozen of them. There’s a guy who looks a lot like Bruce Willis, except he’s dressed as a goth and he’s Chinese. He also has prawns instead of fingers on both hands. There’s a seedy looking guy who I know to be the one that pulled off ‘the job’. He has our money. There are the Ukrainian brothers and the German sisters.

On the boat, we exchange our greetings and the guy who pulled the job pulls away to go below deck, fetching our money. When he returns, he has a wry grin, no money and a machine gun. Oh, the disappointment we all feel. It’s apparent in all of us. The man who was once to be our friend and who now had a gun on us goes down with a thud as the prawn fingered menace tackles him, swift as sight.

I think we all die then or, at least, they all do. I find myself in an underworld, looking at my old friends, piled up in a corner like old toys.

More later…