Third Impact
Recurring dream, probably at least six times to date.
It starts with me. I'm in an airport, waiting in line to check in a flight at a counter. This already tells me I have a ticket for an international flight; if I had a domestic flight, I'd have had to check in at one of the kiosks outside. The woman behind me at the counter asks for my e-ticket and passport. She looks at both, and slows her actions drastically for a second. "I'm sorry," she says, "but I can't let you take this trip. Would you like a round-trip ticket to New York?"
I give her that "Are you fucking serious?" look. "I have a one-way ticket to Japan." I state flatly. "I'm moving there. I have a job there. I'm set."
"You're not getting there."
"Why not? I paid for it."
She points to a monitor hanging from the ceiling behind me. The news is on. What I see is a real-life rendition of the Third Impact (from Eva, of course). Some news footage looks like some real-life renditions of scenes from Saikano. (Yes, very otaku, thanks.) Explosions, complete devastation, not even microbial life left alive. Much of Asia has been wiped off the face of the earth. Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and it doesn't end there. I drop everything I'd been holding on to. My future and the lives of millions of people were razed when I was sleeping. I think about my work visa stuck inside my passport. Japan, the country so important it has to take up two pages in a passport. And now the other thing that would have been stuck in it, opposite the visa...
It is always the same, only with different people as the protagonist, going to different countries, with slightly different dialogue, with different airline agents, different displays of emotion. Sometimes it's saymark2, sometimes it's relevantpink. Sometimes it's Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam. It's not as simple as "there goes my job offer." It's a life, millions of them. Fucking gone, obliterated in a real-life Dead Sea that will have to be shielded by thick barriers from the rest of humankind. No words I can type can begin to explain the devastation, or how real it feels.
It starts with me. I'm in an airport, waiting in line to check in a flight at a counter. This already tells me I have a ticket for an international flight; if I had a domestic flight, I'd have had to check in at one of the kiosks outside. The woman behind me at the counter asks for my e-ticket and passport. She looks at both, and slows her actions drastically for a second. "I'm sorry," she says, "but I can't let you take this trip. Would you like a round-trip ticket to New York?"
I give her that "Are you fucking serious?" look. "I have a one-way ticket to Japan." I state flatly. "I'm moving there. I have a job there. I'm set."
"You're not getting there."
"Why not? I paid for it."
She points to a monitor hanging from the ceiling behind me. The news is on. What I see is a real-life rendition of the Third Impact (from Eva, of course). Some news footage looks like some real-life renditions of scenes from Saikano. (Yes, very otaku, thanks.) Explosions, complete devastation, not even microbial life left alive. Much of Asia has been wiped off the face of the earth. Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and it doesn't end there. I drop everything I'd been holding on to. My future and the lives of millions of people were razed when I was sleeping. I think about my work visa stuck inside my passport. Japan, the country so important it has to take up two pages in a passport. And now the other thing that would have been stuck in it, opposite the visa...
It is always the same, only with different people as the protagonist, going to different countries, with slightly different dialogue, with different airline agents, different displays of emotion. Sometimes it's saymark2, sometimes it's relevantpink. Sometimes it's Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam. It's not as simple as "there goes my job offer." It's a life, millions of them. Fucking gone, obliterated in a real-life Dead Sea that will have to be shielded by thick barriers from the rest of humankind. No words I can type can begin to explain the devastation, or how real it feels.