Dream - The End Game
I didn't realize that I'd had the same dream before I had it again. The first time I forgot completely.
"Mrs. Green" let me try out her new classroom history simulation game. With "Monty" gone, she needed a way to take his teaching style to the next level.
"You start in the library, and follow your directions from there." I went to the school library, and walked down steps to enter, since it took up two floors. The different areas, the computers, the periodicals, fiction, and non-fiction, were glassed-in separately. There were other people there, and there were directions on my card too:
Twenty to nothing
Nineteen to one
Eighteen to two
Seventeen to three...
I looked back down at my card.
I am Hugo Lafoon were the words.
"I am Hugo Lafoon," I said. "I want to see "Girl With a Pearl Earring". I walked outside and went to France. A moving sidewalk took me there, filled mostly with business travelers, and crowded on both sides with racks of clothes and boxes of shoes of all kinds: Bass pennyloafers, thrift-store dresses, and shiny, expensive shirts labeled "Guccace".
Before I arrived in France, the sidewalk took me through London, where I stopped to buy gifts. At a book store, I almost bought an Eyewitness Guidebook to Poland and a 2004 calendar of scenic Portuguese hilltowns, but put both back on the shelf before I left when I realized that I hadn't brought any money.
I was almost to Paris, when, going over a rise in the crowded conveyor belt, "Mrs. Green" stopped me and handed me a second card.
I am Fatwa al-Mujahideen
"I am Fatwa al-Mujahideen."
I walked off the escalator, and found myself in the middle of a gun battle. I fell on the ground, which was linoleum, and crawled behind the nearest pile of rubble, which included a kitchen island whose countertops were still intact. I imagined the barrel of a rifle staring down at me and found that one was.
"What are you doin' here? We don't like Arabs, and this is a war."
"I am Fatwa al-Mujahideen. I am on the American team."
"Well, if you say so." I stood up and found a man with white hair who wore a white apron. I ran past him and found the nearest bookstore. I took a right turn in a hallway, and entered "Book Room", which had white floors, and was filled with white books about languages. A cardboard box big enough for a refrigerator sat on the floor. It had no top, but was shrink-wrapped. Inside were hundreds of Eyewitness Guides to the French Language.
"I need a French dictionary." I looked up to see "Petra" run out the the room through a second door with a book, and heard the crack of a doorknob breaking. I looked out only to realize that the hallway curved out of sight.
"Did you break this door. Hey?" I turned around to see someone wearing thick glasses who said: "I'm the book lady." She looked more like a certain cookie/snack lady.
I ran out the way I came and realized that I was running down the same library steps. "You're back," "Mrs. Green" said from the foot of the stairs. "As soon as you join the rest of the people in the circle, we can go to the next step of the game. In the old simulations, you stopped somewhere in the past, or at the present. But today, we're moving on to the future and the end of the world. Just join the circle and the world will end. You're the twentieth student."
"Mrs. Green" let me try out her new classroom history simulation game. With "Monty" gone, she needed a way to take his teaching style to the next level.
"You start in the library, and follow your directions from there." I went to the school library, and walked down steps to enter, since it took up two floors. The different areas, the computers, the periodicals, fiction, and non-fiction, were glassed-in separately. There were other people there, and there were directions on my card too:
Twenty to nothing
Nineteen to one
Eighteen to two
Seventeen to three...
I looked back down at my card.
I am Hugo Lafoon were the words.
"I am Hugo Lafoon," I said. "I want to see "Girl With a Pearl Earring". I walked outside and went to France. A moving sidewalk took me there, filled mostly with business travelers, and crowded on both sides with racks of clothes and boxes of shoes of all kinds: Bass pennyloafers, thrift-store dresses, and shiny, expensive shirts labeled "Guccace".
Before I arrived in France, the sidewalk took me through London, where I stopped to buy gifts. At a book store, I almost bought an Eyewitness Guidebook to Poland and a 2004 calendar of scenic Portuguese hilltowns, but put both back on the shelf before I left when I realized that I hadn't brought any money.
I was almost to Paris, when, going over a rise in the crowded conveyor belt, "Mrs. Green" stopped me and handed me a second card.
I am Fatwa al-Mujahideen
"I am Fatwa al-Mujahideen."
I walked off the escalator, and found myself in the middle of a gun battle. I fell on the ground, which was linoleum, and crawled behind the nearest pile of rubble, which included a kitchen island whose countertops were still intact. I imagined the barrel of a rifle staring down at me and found that one was.
"What are you doin' here? We don't like Arabs, and this is a war."
"I am Fatwa al-Mujahideen. I am on the American team."
"Well, if you say so." I stood up and found a man with white hair who wore a white apron. I ran past him and found the nearest bookstore. I took a right turn in a hallway, and entered "Book Room", which had white floors, and was filled with white books about languages. A cardboard box big enough for a refrigerator sat on the floor. It had no top, but was shrink-wrapped. Inside were hundreds of Eyewitness Guides to the French Language.
"I need a French dictionary." I looked up to see "Petra" run out the the room through a second door with a book, and heard the crack of a doorknob breaking. I looked out only to realize that the hallway curved out of sight.
"Did you break this door. Hey?" I turned around to see someone wearing thick glasses who said: "I'm the book lady." She looked more like a certain cookie/snack lady.
I ran out the way I came and realized that I was running down the same library steps. "You're back," "Mrs. Green" said from the foot of the stairs. "As soon as you join the rest of the people in the circle, we can go to the next step of the game. In the old simulations, you stopped somewhere in the past, or at the present. But today, we're moving on to the future and the end of the world. Just join the circle and the world will end. You're the twentieth student."