Dream: An Epic of Women and Those That Chase Them (Weekend Edition)
Sunday, February 5th:
I joined Macalester's African Music Ensemble, but not the regular section; it was just an informal group of ten or so. We sat in a circle in the ensemble room. Sowah stood behind me, and I heard him tell me to sing the first few calls. A patter of drums began the piece, then everyone paused and someone glanced at me. I made up some notes and sang whatever words I could remember from their concerts. People scowled and resumed playing. My confusion held embarrassment at bay; I'd only joined minutes beforehand, and no one had taught me anything yet. Sowah told malcubed to do the dance part like he'd done while attending the concert the night before. He stood and began to sway and stomp. elfdope began the next part on a pair of drums.
Later that day, musicin68 and four other ensemble girls made terrain for an upcoming d20 game. The GM kept busy with other preparations, but after a couple a hours he stopped and stared at a girl who'd been making shrubs and other ground cover.
"Wow," he said. "Your details are as small as the miniature's kneecaps."
I thought that was pretty odd, but we all leaned over to look, and he was right. I went back to cutting swoopy shapes from several sheets of gridded Styrofoam. The sheets would get glued together later to make hills, but first I had to cut out holes for all the other objects we'd already fixed in place. It would've been fun, but the sheets kept splitting along the grid lines into jagged pieces, and I had to keep them together carefully with plastic bags so it didn't turn into a tetris puzzle. I wouldn't even get to finish the hills, anyhow; terrain contours was musicin68's job. I pulled the cut sheets out of the black plastic trash bags in which I'd stored them. After fitting the swoopy shapes I'd cut back into the sheets, I wrapped everything up again.
First-year girls at the ensemble dorm chatted and redecorated with stereotypical inattention to the plans of local authority figures. A young woman showed up in an old blue sun dress. She looked to be in her early to mid-twenties, and, if not for the colors, her dress could have been the same age. A bland pattern of rounded shapes wobbled across the threadbare print, deferring all attention to her pert face and short, dark hair. The other girls eyed her with envy and suspicion.
The RA made his rounds for the afternoon, and he kept commenting to me on which of the girls he thought were most worthy of a lay. He actually talked like that; he'd say things like, "I like the way those huge boobs sort of wave when she runs down the hall." I still didn't understand why he was talking to me about it; even though I was older than most of them, I was still part of an ensemble, so I was staying in the same dorm.
Once people had cleared out from making terrain and I was confident no one was watching, I shook my filthy laundry out of a garbage bag into a pile on the floor. Then I scooped up the pile in my arms and carried it away to a hamper somewhere. Ryan, Gen's replacement GM, messed groggily with the sheets; I think he wanted to get a load of laundry together, but he'd only just woken up.
In the midst of his late-night rounds, the RA received a computer-generated notice from the administration. It didn't give a room number, but it said one of the rooms had too many beds. He checked every room, but none were overpopulated. He figured the girls must have accidentally triggered the notice with their almost-sleepovers earlier that night.
Dawn slid between the Venetian blinds and gently woke a woman of indeterminate late-middle age. The spare dining room was peaceful, and she'd slept well on the air mattress. The taller woman woke next, a pretty brunette in her mid-20s. She joined her mother and they smiled at each other, chatting idly. She'd slept on the couch, and she'd been remarkably comfortable, despite being more than eight months pregnant. She stood and walked to the window, then drew up the blinds to greet the day.
The houses across the street looked unfamiliar, and they were much too close to their own. Also, they slid past the window at an alarming pace, along with the trees and street lights. She wondered for a moment where everything was going, then realized the truth.
Back at the dorm, the RA had just come to the same conclusion. He ran down the hall and threw open the door, confirming his suspicions. Physical Plant had foreclosed on the spare dining room, but instead of actually telling him, they'd just set the Maximum Allowed Residents to zero, which triggered the notice. Once the campus was asleep, they hauled the whole room onto a flatbed and carried it away.
He checked on the others; the rooms were still there, but all the beds were empty. He ran outside and skidded to a stop; apart from the missing mother and her pregnant daughter, all of his residents lay on sleeping bags scattered across the lawn, dreaming peacefully. A man in a cloak stood among them; he'd promised to look after them. The RA was no fool, though; he knew the cloaked man for a vampire at once, and charged him headlong. Doors flew open behind him as his feet hit the grass, and a half-dozen students stumbled quickly out of the campus bar to defend their undead master. The vampire knocked the RA back onto the sidewalk, and his minions descended in a mob. Armed with pool cues and sharpened chair legs, they tried to hold him down long enough to put a stake through his heart, because they knew the RA was also a vampire. But they were partly drunk and poorly trained; he casually beat them back. I ran out and knocked down two with spinning kicks, then stalked closer to the last, scrawny minion. I blew across his face, and the boy fell heavily to the concrete. The RA quickly closed with the cloaked vampire and leveled him with a series of sweeps and kicks. None of his residents were injured.
Days later, I stumbled across a trustee meeting in an obscure corner of the campus just as it was breaking up. Uriah walked out from a gate in an opaque fence and shook hands with a slick man in a suit. Uriah wore a pinstriped gray-brown suit that made him look unusually tall. A few other alumni and staff wandered out, followed by the trustees. Students weren't allowed back there, but the gate was still open so I slipped in to look around behind that mysterious fence. I found a very pleasant garden covered in folding chairs. A man in his eighties stood and gathered his things, then hesitantly took a step forward, a wary eye on the jutting limbs of a dozen metal chairs. Sensing an opportunity, I approached him and set his hand on my shoulder, then offered to lead him out past the crowds. He acquiesced, and I helped him along a trail of packed earth. Our path climbed past rows and rows of a low, leafy crop on a long hill; a portable irrigation rig stood quietly nearby. Soon he directed me to take him into the secured section of an administrative building. Jackpot.
He thanked me and wandered into the office warrens, and I ducked around a corner where I wouldn't be noticed. Just then, a reinforced door slid open and a woman with curly white hair emerged. Without waiting to consider, I dashed past the door the moment her back was turned and raced up the steps. I mean, I'd never even heard of this room.
The long staircase opened directly into the floor of the room above. The back end of the stairs were guarded by a wall of corrugated steel to keep people from falling in... like the little slanted huts on top of old buildings, but without the roof and door. I jumped and grabbed the top of the wall, then swung myself around to the outside. The open stairs dominated the length of the room, leaving about eight feet of floor space around the edges. Sturdy wooden bookcases coated in royal blue enamel lined the outer walls and the corrugated barrier around the stairs. I hung from the front of one case and sidled hand-over-hand around the room. The cases were more than twice my height, and even standing on top of them, I could barely have touched the ceiling.
I dropped to the floor near a steel desk and file cabinet in that almost-green gray that makes me think of the 20's. No computer, but a typewriter and some sort of stamp or punch with a long lever handle. Neat stacks of unusual formsheavy card stock, A4 or smallerstood at attention on the desk. Must get out before that old lady comes back, I thought. I raced around the room and stopped by an open closet behind the steps. A huge sack of heavy white canvas stood in the closet door, pistachios brimming from its open mouth. I gleefully scooped a handful into my pocket. Running for the steps, I passed a few other sacks, one of peanuts, another of some small, black seed. Funny I didn't see those on the way in. The old woman stopped me before I got to the stairs.
Months later, I'd become an efficient part of her system. She'd been really cool about me sneaking into the place, offered not to report it if I took a work-study job as her filing assistant. She ran the secured library of records, and everything was still processed by hand because it was better that way. I mostly sorted things into piles for her to process and carried things back and forth between another small closet I hadn't noticed before. She smiled a lot, and we got along pretty well.
She had to leave for a week or two, and she put me in charge in her absence. A few days later I invited some friends up to see the library. We stood by a double-width doorway at the left end of the wall at the head of the stairs. Beyond lay an unpainted chamber about the size of a small classroom. The floor was a couple feet higher, and three pillarsunadorned I-beamsbroke up the space oddly, preventing any normal disposition of office furniture. A small pile of scrap metal and other detritus sprawled near the far wall.
"Have a look around [the library]," I said, "but whatever you do, don't go through that doorway."
"Why not?" asked the first man, stepping up and into the room. The chamber immediately began to vibrate as hidden motors hummed.
"No, [Steve]," said the thin woman; who'd already figured out it was the trash compactor. She took a single step in, then reached and grabbed his hand to yank him back out. Just then, a bulkhead of reinforced steel slid down in the doorway, impossibly fast, like the doors on the first Death Star. It opened again a second later, but I knew it wouldn't stay open long; the ceiling was already grinding downwards. We couldn't see the first man or the woman, or any of the trash, for that matter. Everything was buried under two feet of smooth, damp clay. I found a piece of rebar to jam the mechanism, then the second man and I stepped up to the lintel. We punched our hands into the thick gray muck, rooting for something solid. Moments later we found our friends and dragged them gasping from the clay, then everyone tumbled back into the library. I'm pretty sure I sent them home to wash their clothes.
Seconds after the librarian's return, a group of people walked up the stairs behind her. They all wore strange chokers or armbands made of tiny interlocking pieces of plastic in primary colors. Some wore simple headbands, others had elaborate jewelry. I didn't notice the plastic bits at first, but whenever I looked away I could see them in the corner of my eye. They bustled around the library unchallenged, inspecting equipment and records. A tall man in a gray general's uniform stared at me, then turned to my curly-haired employer.
"What's he doing here?" he asked.
A subordinate in a dark brown leather duster and matching wide-brimmed hat grabbed me by the collar and yanked me closer. A narrow plastic band hugged his scalp. A pair of thin red chains ran down from his temples, over his cheekbones, and followed his jawline to meet under his chin; I could tell when he talked they were adhered to his skin. The plastic was new, but I recognized the faux cowboy as kenfrequed.
"Yeah," he shouted. "We can't have humans in here! He'll see the whole plan!"
Another group marched stiffly up the stairs. They had ten times as many of the tiny plastic chains, but there were no people inside them. Standing still, they might have passed as modern sculptures. It was clear, though, that the empty armatures moved under their own power, and no current technology to do that could possibly be concealed in their meager skeletons. Oddly, they weren't all people; there was at least one beagle, and I think another was a wheelbarrow.
kenfrequed dropped me as the General grabbed him and hauled him into a nearby closet. I heard the General shouting something at him about keeping his mouth shut. I wondered whether kenfrequed's cowboy outfit included a revolver.
"Of course he's heard too much now," the General shouted. "I ought to have you both shot."
They rejoined the rest of us and the General sighed. Apparently, the librarian wasn't a concern. She must be one of them. Probably their best creation, with the least plastic showing. The old lady stood stoically silent. He can't shoot us in here, can he? They'd hear it downstairs. Maybe they'll throw us in the crusher. Wait, that'd be good; I changed the programming after my friends got stuck. The door would close, and then we could escape through the [exhaust port] before the clay came down.... Maybe I can convince him to crush us.
Wait. Did I actually reprogram the crusher, or did I just think about it?
Heavily tinted windows from floor to ceiling kept my beachfront alcove shady and private, even if someone tried to stare in. I preferred it that way; I didn't fit with the football and hot dog crowd, and I was pretty sure they wouldn't like me much better. It was quiet, too; they could shout plays and tackle right outside the windows and I'd never hear a thing. My new attendant arrived, and I stood to greet her in my pajamas. She'd been recently appointed by whichever branch of the government handles those things.
Her long hair was gently featheredprobably a new cut. I thought of it as brown, but I suppose it was at that light end, somewhere near wet hay, that people keep telling me is blond. She let it hang across the sides of her face, but it couldn't hide her blush. She smiled with full lips as her eyes sparkled demurely. She stood about five-foot-seven, full-figured and gorgeous. Probably thought she was seven pounds overweight, silly girl. As soon as she spoke, I could tell she was smart. She knew this stuff backwards and forwards; three times better than I did, probably, but then I only did it, I didn't have to understand it. I desperately wanted to seduce her immediately, but she was 23six years my seniorso I figured it would take a while. Maybe I'd lie low for a week.
I mean, technically, they're only supposed to keep us fed and healthy, that sort of thing... and, of course, they keep an eye on us while we sleep. They're pleasant, they do the fancy medical stuff, and make sure everything goes smoothly. Thing is, they're with us practically all day, and on call the rest of the time. There aren't many of us, so there aren't many openings for attendants, and with National Security and all, we get some good people. And some of them are knockouts. Can't blame a guy for tryin', right?
Anyhow, I sat back down on the cloth hammock-thing.... Is it still a hammock if it's anchored on all four sides? I wanted to chat, but I got sleepy again all of a sudden. Maybe I'm just... comfortable.... Or maybe she slipped me the drugs already. Oh well, back to work, I thought, drifting to sleep. My country is counting on me.
I joined Macalester's African Music Ensemble, but not the regular section; it was just an informal group of ten or so. We sat in a circle in the ensemble room. Sowah stood behind me, and I heard him tell me to sing the first few calls. A patter of drums began the piece, then everyone paused and someone glanced at me. I made up some notes and sang whatever words I could remember from their concerts. People scowled and resumed playing. My confusion held embarrassment at bay; I'd only joined minutes beforehand, and no one had taught me anything yet. Sowah told malcubed to do the dance part like he'd done while attending the concert the night before. He stood and began to sway and stomp. elfdope began the next part on a pair of drums.
Later that day, musicin68 and four other ensemble girls made terrain for an upcoming d20 game. The GM kept busy with other preparations, but after a couple a hours he stopped and stared at a girl who'd been making shrubs and other ground cover.
"Wow," he said. "Your details are as small as the miniature's kneecaps."
I thought that was pretty odd, but we all leaned over to look, and he was right. I went back to cutting swoopy shapes from several sheets of gridded Styrofoam. The sheets would get glued together later to make hills, but first I had to cut out holes for all the other objects we'd already fixed in place. It would've been fun, but the sheets kept splitting along the grid lines into jagged pieces, and I had to keep them together carefully with plastic bags so it didn't turn into a tetris puzzle. I wouldn't even get to finish the hills, anyhow; terrain contours was musicin68's job. I pulled the cut sheets out of the black plastic trash bags in which I'd stored them. After fitting the swoopy shapes I'd cut back into the sheets, I wrapped everything up again.
First-year girls at the ensemble dorm chatted and redecorated with stereotypical inattention to the plans of local authority figures. A young woman showed up in an old blue sun dress. She looked to be in her early to mid-twenties, and, if not for the colors, her dress could have been the same age. A bland pattern of rounded shapes wobbled across the threadbare print, deferring all attention to her pert face and short, dark hair. The other girls eyed her with envy and suspicion.
The RA made his rounds for the afternoon, and he kept commenting to me on which of the girls he thought were most worthy of a lay. He actually talked like that; he'd say things like, "I like the way those huge boobs sort of wave when she runs down the hall." I still didn't understand why he was talking to me about it; even though I was older than most of them, I was still part of an ensemble, so I was staying in the same dorm.
Once people had cleared out from making terrain and I was confident no one was watching, I shook my filthy laundry out of a garbage bag into a pile on the floor. Then I scooped up the pile in my arms and carried it away to a hamper somewhere. Ryan, Gen's replacement GM, messed groggily with the sheets; I think he wanted to get a load of laundry together, but he'd only just woken up.
In the midst of his late-night rounds, the RA received a computer-generated notice from the administration. It didn't give a room number, but it said one of the rooms had too many beds. He checked every room, but none were overpopulated. He figured the girls must have accidentally triggered the notice with their almost-sleepovers earlier that night.
Dawn slid between the Venetian blinds and gently woke a woman of indeterminate late-middle age. The spare dining room was peaceful, and she'd slept well on the air mattress. The taller woman woke next, a pretty brunette in her mid-20s. She joined her mother and they smiled at each other, chatting idly. She'd slept on the couch, and she'd been remarkably comfortable, despite being more than eight months pregnant. She stood and walked to the window, then drew up the blinds to greet the day.
The houses across the street looked unfamiliar, and they were much too close to their own. Also, they slid past the window at an alarming pace, along with the trees and street lights. She wondered for a moment where everything was going, then realized the truth.
Back at the dorm, the RA had just come to the same conclusion. He ran down the hall and threw open the door, confirming his suspicions. Physical Plant had foreclosed on the spare dining room, but instead of actually telling him, they'd just set the Maximum Allowed Residents to zero, which triggered the notice. Once the campus was asleep, they hauled the whole room onto a flatbed and carried it away.
He checked on the others; the rooms were still there, but all the beds were empty. He ran outside and skidded to a stop; apart from the missing mother and her pregnant daughter, all of his residents lay on sleeping bags scattered across the lawn, dreaming peacefully. A man in a cloak stood among them; he'd promised to look after them. The RA was no fool, though; he knew the cloaked man for a vampire at once, and charged him headlong. Doors flew open behind him as his feet hit the grass, and a half-dozen students stumbled quickly out of the campus bar to defend their undead master. The vampire knocked the RA back onto the sidewalk, and his minions descended in a mob. Armed with pool cues and sharpened chair legs, they tried to hold him down long enough to put a stake through his heart, because they knew the RA was also a vampire. But they were partly drunk and poorly trained; he casually beat them back. I ran out and knocked down two with spinning kicks, then stalked closer to the last, scrawny minion. I blew across his face, and the boy fell heavily to the concrete. The RA quickly closed with the cloaked vampire and leveled him with a series of sweeps and kicks. None of his residents were injured.
Days later, I stumbled across a trustee meeting in an obscure corner of the campus just as it was breaking up. Uriah walked out from a gate in an opaque fence and shook hands with a slick man in a suit. Uriah wore a pinstriped gray-brown suit that made him look unusually tall. A few other alumni and staff wandered out, followed by the trustees. Students weren't allowed back there, but the gate was still open so I slipped in to look around behind that mysterious fence. I found a very pleasant garden covered in folding chairs. A man in his eighties stood and gathered his things, then hesitantly took a step forward, a wary eye on the jutting limbs of a dozen metal chairs. Sensing an opportunity, I approached him and set his hand on my shoulder, then offered to lead him out past the crowds. He acquiesced, and I helped him along a trail of packed earth. Our path climbed past rows and rows of a low, leafy crop on a long hill; a portable irrigation rig stood quietly nearby. Soon he directed me to take him into the secured section of an administrative building. Jackpot.
He thanked me and wandered into the office warrens, and I ducked around a corner where I wouldn't be noticed. Just then, a reinforced door slid open and a woman with curly white hair emerged. Without waiting to consider, I dashed past the door the moment her back was turned and raced up the steps. I mean, I'd never even heard of this room.
The long staircase opened directly into the floor of the room above. The back end of the stairs were guarded by a wall of corrugated steel to keep people from falling in... like the little slanted huts on top of old buildings, but without the roof and door. I jumped and grabbed the top of the wall, then swung myself around to the outside. The open stairs dominated the length of the room, leaving about eight feet of floor space around the edges. Sturdy wooden bookcases coated in royal blue enamel lined the outer walls and the corrugated barrier around the stairs. I hung from the front of one case and sidled hand-over-hand around the room. The cases were more than twice my height, and even standing on top of them, I could barely have touched the ceiling.
I dropped to the floor near a steel desk and file cabinet in that almost-green gray that makes me think of the 20's. No computer, but a typewriter and some sort of stamp or punch with a long lever handle. Neat stacks of unusual formsheavy card stock, A4 or smallerstood at attention on the desk. Must get out before that old lady comes back, I thought. I raced around the room and stopped by an open closet behind the steps. A huge sack of heavy white canvas stood in the closet door, pistachios brimming from its open mouth. I gleefully scooped a handful into my pocket. Running for the steps, I passed a few other sacks, one of peanuts, another of some small, black seed. Funny I didn't see those on the way in. The old woman stopped me before I got to the stairs.
Months later, I'd become an efficient part of her system. She'd been really cool about me sneaking into the place, offered not to report it if I took a work-study job as her filing assistant. She ran the secured library of records, and everything was still processed by hand because it was better that way. I mostly sorted things into piles for her to process and carried things back and forth between another small closet I hadn't noticed before. She smiled a lot, and we got along pretty well.
She had to leave for a week or two, and she put me in charge in her absence. A few days later I invited some friends up to see the library. We stood by a double-width doorway at the left end of the wall at the head of the stairs. Beyond lay an unpainted chamber about the size of a small classroom. The floor was a couple feet higher, and three pillarsunadorned I-beamsbroke up the space oddly, preventing any normal disposition of office furniture. A small pile of scrap metal and other detritus sprawled near the far wall.
"Have a look around [the library]," I said, "but whatever you do, don't go through that doorway."
"Why not?" asked the first man, stepping up and into the room. The chamber immediately began to vibrate as hidden motors hummed.
"No, [Steve]," said the thin woman; who'd already figured out it was the trash compactor. She took a single step in, then reached and grabbed his hand to yank him back out. Just then, a bulkhead of reinforced steel slid down in the doorway, impossibly fast, like the doors on the first Death Star. It opened again a second later, but I knew it wouldn't stay open long; the ceiling was already grinding downwards. We couldn't see the first man or the woman, or any of the trash, for that matter. Everything was buried under two feet of smooth, damp clay. I found a piece of rebar to jam the mechanism, then the second man and I stepped up to the lintel. We punched our hands into the thick gray muck, rooting for something solid. Moments later we found our friends and dragged them gasping from the clay, then everyone tumbled back into the library. I'm pretty sure I sent them home to wash their clothes.
Seconds after the librarian's return, a group of people walked up the stairs behind her. They all wore strange chokers or armbands made of tiny interlocking pieces of plastic in primary colors. Some wore simple headbands, others had elaborate jewelry. I didn't notice the plastic bits at first, but whenever I looked away I could see them in the corner of my eye. They bustled around the library unchallenged, inspecting equipment and records. A tall man in a gray general's uniform stared at me, then turned to my curly-haired employer.
"What's he doing here?" he asked.
A subordinate in a dark brown leather duster and matching wide-brimmed hat grabbed me by the collar and yanked me closer. A narrow plastic band hugged his scalp. A pair of thin red chains ran down from his temples, over his cheekbones, and followed his jawline to meet under his chin; I could tell when he talked they were adhered to his skin. The plastic was new, but I recognized the faux cowboy as kenfrequed.
"Yeah," he shouted. "We can't have humans in here! He'll see the whole plan!"
Another group marched stiffly up the stairs. They had ten times as many of the tiny plastic chains, but there were no people inside them. Standing still, they might have passed as modern sculptures. It was clear, though, that the empty armatures moved under their own power, and no current technology to do that could possibly be concealed in their meager skeletons. Oddly, they weren't all people; there was at least one beagle, and I think another was a wheelbarrow.
kenfrequed dropped me as the General grabbed him and hauled him into a nearby closet. I heard the General shouting something at him about keeping his mouth shut. I wondered whether kenfrequed's cowboy outfit included a revolver.
"Of course he's heard too much now," the General shouted. "I ought to have you both shot."
They rejoined the rest of us and the General sighed. Apparently, the librarian wasn't a concern. She must be one of them. Probably their best creation, with the least plastic showing. The old lady stood stoically silent. He can't shoot us in here, can he? They'd hear it downstairs. Maybe they'll throw us in the crusher. Wait, that'd be good; I changed the programming after my friends got stuck. The door would close, and then we could escape through the [exhaust port] before the clay came down.... Maybe I can convince him to crush us.
Wait. Did I actually reprogram the crusher, or did I just think about it?
Heavily tinted windows from floor to ceiling kept my beachfront alcove shady and private, even if someone tried to stare in. I preferred it that way; I didn't fit with the football and hot dog crowd, and I was pretty sure they wouldn't like me much better. It was quiet, too; they could shout plays and tackle right outside the windows and I'd never hear a thing. My new attendant arrived, and I stood to greet her in my pajamas. She'd been recently appointed by whichever branch of the government handles those things.
Her long hair was gently featheredprobably a new cut. I thought of it as brown, but I suppose it was at that light end, somewhere near wet hay, that people keep telling me is blond. She let it hang across the sides of her face, but it couldn't hide her blush. She smiled with full lips as her eyes sparkled demurely. She stood about five-foot-seven, full-figured and gorgeous. Probably thought she was seven pounds overweight, silly girl. As soon as she spoke, I could tell she was smart. She knew this stuff backwards and forwards; three times better than I did, probably, but then I only did it, I didn't have to understand it. I desperately wanted to seduce her immediately, but she was 23six years my seniorso I figured it would take a while. Maybe I'd lie low for a week.
I mean, technically, they're only supposed to keep us fed and healthy, that sort of thing... and, of course, they keep an eye on us while we sleep. They're pleasant, they do the fancy medical stuff, and make sure everything goes smoothly. Thing is, they're with us practically all day, and on call the rest of the time. There aren't many of us, so there aren't many openings for attendants, and with National Security and all, we get some good people. And some of them are knockouts. Can't blame a guy for tryin', right?
Anyhow, I sat back down on the cloth hammock-thing.... Is it still a hammock if it's anchored on all four sides? I wanted to chat, but I got sleepy again all of a sudden. Maybe I'm just... comfortable.... Or maybe she slipped me the drugs already. Oh well, back to work, I thought, drifting to sleep. My country is counting on me.