Chopsticks

I am visiting an amusement park with my family. I ride on a ride that consists of a long indoor slide which carries me through rooms in a building. I stop myself by grabbing the edges of the slide, and then start climbing backwards up the slide. I climb all the way out of the building, but then horrible things happen. I realise that it's a trap - I'm not actually outside the building at all, but in a room designed to look like the outside. I rip apart the walls of the room, which are made of flimsy Styrofoam covered with fabric. Now I really am outdoors again.

I am in an auditorium, waiting for some kind of presentation to be projected on the blank wall at the front. It keeps getting delayed, and I and the other audience members are getting impatient. I go through a door in the wall at the front, looking for someone to complain to. The door opens into a large dimly-lit room like a gymnasium. It is empty except for an attractive woman wearing tight motorcycle leathers, who is just disappearing through another door. I follow and find myself on a curved staircase going up. I climb it and at the top is the projection booth of another auditorium. The woman I saw is nowhere to be seen but there are several similar ones here. They are in charge of projecting the show, which for this auditorium really *is* about to begin. I leave the projection room and take a seat as the presentation begins. I complain to the man sitting next to me that the screen is at the wrong angle, interfering with the view from where we are sitting, and he agrees.

I am walking North along the great highway, with my two business partners. Our business is we're gangsters. We are going to hunt down one of our enemies and forcibly relieve him of some valuable possession. We stop at an interchange on the highway, and decide not to go any farther. This interchange is decorated by a piece of artwork on a pedestal. It is a large statue of the Goddess Venus, facing a wall on which is hung an ornately-framed painting. The statue is made of brass, tarnished in an ugly green pattern. Venus's bare breasts look like rotten cantelopes. One of my partners climbs the statue's pedestal and removes the painting from the wall. I see that it depicts another Goddess with her arm raised, pointing (when the painting hangs in place) out of the canvas at Venus. On the back of the painting there are objects fastened in waterproof bags. There are a few tens of thousands of dollars in cash, and something which my partner identifies as a pair of antique enamel chopsticks. They are decorated with a pattern of birds and flowers, and look as good as new despite being hundreds of years old. He says they are worth approximately $165,000. This is the valuable item we were going to rob from our enemy.

I am leaving the mall with my other business partner, not the one who found the enamel chopsticks. This man is burning the tips of a pair of ordinary bamboo chopsticks. One of our enemies is hiding in the parking lot. My partner is going to torture him with the bamboo chopsticks. I don't want to watch. Torture disgusts me. I say that I will wait at the corner of the building and he can meet me there when he finishes. While I am standing at the corner I see that there is a police station diagonally across from the mall. They know we're here! I cannot wait here. I write a message for my partner on the wall by blackening individual bricks with a felt marker, like pixels, to spell out words. Then I start running. I expect him to call me by cell phone so that we can meet in a safe place. I run diagonally across the playing field of the school near the mall. I am not too concerned because I have a head start. I change directions and run between the towering buildings of an apartment complex.

I am running down a long corridor. The left-hand wall is made up of huge glass windows, and outside I can see an idyllic park-like setting of deciduous trees and reflecting pools. At a T-junction I encounter a white-haired man. He looks like a combination of the Colonel from Kentucky Fried Chicken, with the Duke from the anime Metropolis. He will probably turn me in to the police, but maybe I can talk him out of it. I ask him where he's from, and claim to be from there myself.

He shows me his invention, his life's work. It is a machine for allowing humans to hear microscopic sounds and voices. He has an extensive collection of newspaper clippings about himself and his attempts to sell and promote the machine. The stories all depict him as an amusing crank. The machine has a large hollow white plastic bubble made of a material approximately the same as that of a plastic milk bottle, attached to a long conical handle made of some old-fashioned plastic. It has the nature of fiberglass-filled Bakelite but it is soft and fragile like chocolate. The handle is a long triangular piece wrapped in a spiral to form a cone. It is broken, showing a rough jagged surface. The inventor fusses over it and somehow manages to fit the broken pieces together before handing it to me.

I stand in front of several glass drums containing minuscule beings whose voices I will attempt to hear with the invention. I press the white bubble down on the top of my head, hard enough to squish it (bubble, not head) somewhat out of shape, holding it with the handle. There is a cord from the end of the handle to some machinery on a table, and the inventor operates the machinery. The bubble starts to vibrate. Phosphenes cover most of my vision, everything goes silent, and I feel that I am being lifted out of my shoes to float in mid-air. Dimly I can see the inventor placing the machine's stethoscope-like pickup on one of the glass drums. Sure enough, I can hear the voices of the beings inside. It really works! I am impressed, and offer some words of encouragement.

I am reading a comic book. In the story, a hunter has just arrived at the mouth of a cave wherein several almost-human cave men are hiding. They see him and are frightened. Then he rips off his skin, revealing underneath a squat naked humanoid creature, still wielding a spear. The cave men try to run away but are trapped in the back of the cave. Then the creature that the hunter has become rips off its skin again, and out of the skin come about a dozen tiny imps with big fangs. They have protruding organs in their crotches that appear to be for some other purpose, not reproduction. They massacre the cave men and eat the corpses. Then they merge their bodies together, becoming the original hunter.

I am talking to the inventor again. I tell him that his machine made my scrotum tingle when I tried it, and I'm concerned that it might have reproductive side-effects. He is convinced that the health effects of his machine can only be positive. But he welcomes scientific study of it.