Dream: Ed's Hobby Has Cool Gear (Weekend Edition)
Saturday morning:
The last poker table had shrunk to four players. Alyssa was nearly out when a well-played hand put her firmly back in the running. Meanwhile, sinister_dr_x explained the purpose of incrementing the blind by hands to elfdope while they both slipped on the coats of their tuxedos. xcorvis buttoned his scarlet vest and listened.
The poker crowd's debate over tournament rules fell to a distant murmur as I entered the small art gallery in Janet-Wallace. I followed the sculpture from skylit greenery to a dim room where bronze abstractions crouched in the corners. A small, triangular window drew my eye. I peered through the opening and started at the pair of older adults looking back at me. They must be parents, I thought.
I found a doorway in the shadows and walked around the wall to the other side of the window. Cloudy light covered the outdoor sculpture garden, a wet light that dampened the red brick walkways as if a morning shower had paused here hours ago. Two plastic geese, almost as tall as me, stood by the wall, their beaks pressed against the window. The human masks strapped to their faces peeked blankly inside. Nearby, an art professor strolled with a couple of real parents, showing off his recent works.
They stopped beside an ugly ceramic sphere, a little bigger than a basketball. Whorls of orange twisted out from its jungle-drab green glaze. The father made a knowing comment about the three sections, which irritated the professor. He nodded, though, and lifted three pieces from the sphere. They were seamless together, but slid easily apart. The green and orange coloring went all the way through the smooth edges of the sections; it must not be ceramic, maybe rubber or plastic.
The professor flipped the antler-like shells onto the ground, overlapping them so they interlocked in a convex cross-pattern. The third piece snapped into place above the other two. He helped the father position his foot on the top plate and clamped it to his shoe. The curved sides flexed gently as he put his weight on one foot.
I headed for 94 while sinister_dr_x chatted quietly with my other passengers. I turned the wheel to adjust for an odd jag in the snowy on-ramp, and the car swung suddenly out of control. We spun in clockwise circles as we slid toward the highway; people screamed or shouted or grabbed things. I nudged the wheel again and we straightened out, then merged smoothly into traffic.
I searched the high school for Alyssa, finding her then losing her again. She was wandering just ahead of me, not really hiding, but I couldn't seem to keep track of her. Ed infiltrated the high school in the next wing over, creeping from locker to locker. He was mostly certain the floor tiles were pressure plates for the security system, so he climbed along the walls. He hung from lockers and other hardware, his chrome spider boots sticking easily to the bricks. (He'd built them from the innards of the green-orange sphere.)
The school hallway stopped at a pair of fire doors. I stepped through and found another twenty feet of hallway and more double doors, then followed Alyssa's voice into the machine room on my right. She stood naked behind a boiler or a transformer, curiously inspecting its workings. More voices took me back to the hallway, where xcorvis, sinister_dr_x, and elfdope joked about a wedding. They all wore black tuxedos with scarlet vests and bow ties. I didn't have one, but I was wearing my Air Traffic uniform, which is also black with red trim, so that was okay. I asked them to wait and went back to the boiler room.
"The guys are outside," I said. "If you wait, I can get you some clothes."
"Why?" she asked.
"Well... you're naked," I explained.
"So?"
The last poker table had shrunk to four players. Alyssa was nearly out when a well-played hand put her firmly back in the running. Meanwhile, sinister_dr_x explained the purpose of incrementing the blind by hands to elfdope while they both slipped on the coats of their tuxedos. xcorvis buttoned his scarlet vest and listened.
The poker crowd's debate over tournament rules fell to a distant murmur as I entered the small art gallery in Janet-Wallace. I followed the sculpture from skylit greenery to a dim room where bronze abstractions crouched in the corners. A small, triangular window drew my eye. I peered through the opening and started at the pair of older adults looking back at me. They must be parents, I thought.
I found a doorway in the shadows and walked around the wall to the other side of the window. Cloudy light covered the outdoor sculpture garden, a wet light that dampened the red brick walkways as if a morning shower had paused here hours ago. Two plastic geese, almost as tall as me, stood by the wall, their beaks pressed against the window. The human masks strapped to their faces peeked blankly inside. Nearby, an art professor strolled with a couple of real parents, showing off his recent works.
They stopped beside an ugly ceramic sphere, a little bigger than a basketball. Whorls of orange twisted out from its jungle-drab green glaze. The father made a knowing comment about the three sections, which irritated the professor. He nodded, though, and lifted three pieces from the sphere. They were seamless together, but slid easily apart. The green and orange coloring went all the way through the smooth edges of the sections; it must not be ceramic, maybe rubber or plastic.
The professor flipped the antler-like shells onto the ground, overlapping them so they interlocked in a convex cross-pattern. The third piece snapped into place above the other two. He helped the father position his foot on the top plate and clamped it to his shoe. The curved sides flexed gently as he put his weight on one foot.
I headed for 94 while sinister_dr_x chatted quietly with my other passengers. I turned the wheel to adjust for an odd jag in the snowy on-ramp, and the car swung suddenly out of control. We spun in clockwise circles as we slid toward the highway; people screamed or shouted or grabbed things. I nudged the wheel again and we straightened out, then merged smoothly into traffic.
I searched the high school for Alyssa, finding her then losing her again. She was wandering just ahead of me, not really hiding, but I couldn't seem to keep track of her. Ed infiltrated the high school in the next wing over, creeping from locker to locker. He was mostly certain the floor tiles were pressure plates for the security system, so he climbed along the walls. He hung from lockers and other hardware, his chrome spider boots sticking easily to the bricks. (He'd built them from the innards of the green-orange sphere.)
The school hallway stopped at a pair of fire doors. I stepped through and found another twenty feet of hallway and more double doors, then followed Alyssa's voice into the machine room on my right. She stood naked behind a boiler or a transformer, curiously inspecting its workings. More voices took me back to the hallway, where xcorvis, sinister_dr_x, and elfdope joked about a wedding. They all wore black tuxedos with scarlet vests and bow ties. I didn't have one, but I was wearing my Air Traffic uniform, which is also black with red trim, so that was okay. I asked them to wait and went back to the boiler room.
"The guys are outside," I said. "If you wait, I can get you some clothes."
"Why?" she asked.
"Well... you're naked," I explained.
"So?"