Which Is Where We Are Now

Talking with ??. He’d like to play a video, but his old player is broken.

I take it to Best Buy to have them look at it. I’m thinking the player is so old that I might end up having to buy a new player. I’m not even sure if they sell them any more.

Turns out, none of the hardware was bad; I just need to upgrade the software; the upgrade is available online.

The Best Buy clerk shows me a laptop with the screen displaying the site I need to download from. I’m surprised they didn’t just go ahead and download and install it. I’m surprised that they are using some random driver site. I know they know the site is one they can trust, despite it being some random site. They must have a database of these sites and issues for all kinds of problems.

I look at the browser and there are many tabs open. It’s overwhelming.

I’m very coy and I seduce one girl, then another. They are dorm-mates in the house with me.
We are in a military barracks in some tropical region. Still, the barracks are spacious, clean, and simple.

Tammy (childhood dog) walks away from the barracks; she seems lost. I follow Tammy… out the fort, onto streets; I travel the paths next to streets.
Willa comes by in a plastic toy car. It’s a strange moment: neither of us is entirely excited to see one another; we resignedly say our hellos and a goodbyes.

I follow Tammy to the military city. A giant deluxe hummer as wide as the two-lane road is exiting. I grit my teeth as Tammy walks right across its path; however, the driver sees her and waited before moving the vehicle. As I walk in, I’m arrested for being AWOL (being late). I am interrogated by a chubby man and then his superior: a Condi Rice type of woman. I’m Hawkeye Pierce. I explain I was drafted into this. She corrects me. I re-explain I was drafted into this, then hired myself out as a soldier after the war.

Back at Pizza Hut.

I’m helping out with a lady doing prep work. In my helping, I disturb some personal items she had laying on the table. I move on to the cut table.

This theme of helping only to be overwhelmed and hurting the people I try to help repeats a number of times; I forget the details.

At the cut table, the pizzas are stacking up at the oven belt’s end. I’m not cutting them fast enough. Nazer is there, with his professional no-nonsense, completely above the game and in control.

Then, dairy items start protruding out. A whole long rack of milk bottles, cakes, breads stand in a cool refrigerated room which was pushing out a crowd of molten pizza a second ago. It takes some time for me to investigate the items and to grasp the totality of the change.

I’m in the library. I look for something to checkout; eventually, I decide against checking out anything.

As I leave and turn a corner, I see two teenagers, a white and black boy, steal books from behind the librarians as they help patrons checkout their books. The stealing is going inside to outside, back and forth; it’s all visible because the library has lots of glass in their walls.

Why steal from a public library??

Should I call the police? Yes. I call the police.

They go up the street. I chase after them. A policeman drives up; he knows I made the call.

Two older guys — thin, white, intelligent, college-age men — are walking around the park where the land is level. The are the brains behind the operation. Also involved are a group of small children, innocents.

I confront the black kid. He pulls out a gun. Somehow I manage to get the gun away from him. It turns out the gun is just a bee-bee gun.

Cut to in the school room, perhaps in a church. I talk about the stealing to the students, who are children of various ages.

I explain the two men arraigned it as a social protest of some sort. As I say this, I’m reminded of my own youthful demonstrations and I feel a pang of embarrassed regret at myself.

The black and white kid are in the class! It’s a strange, subtle confrontation with them here.

It’s hard to keep the students’ attentions; so, as much I want to explain the details completely, I try to wrap it up to preserve some semblance of effective communication.

I go to an adjacent interior room to get some object. I find something like a white orb in a small cubby area; I turn off the lights. Wait, there are teachers there, especially an older black lady. Lights back on.

I wake up thinking the Arthurian legend about the sword in the stone is referring to one’s true, scrawny self calling the shots, despite the seeming inappropriateness.