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All the sudden in the middle of band practice with Operation Ivy, but it is like Quantum Leap sort of – I knew i had gone back in time but was not so shocked or disoriented, just went along with it / know it is a band practice when i look outward and see that there is no audience, just a space of seats n someone’s house? or a warehouse type jawn, dim green aether

Everyone’s really young; feels really cool to be in Jesse’s presence and singing along with him / scene changes. someone a couple times, or a couple different people ask me who i am. i dont know how to answer them / Walking around some quiet town i ask a few different people at different times where we are, and they each give the same response, “Small Town”, and with this air as if it is more of an unspokenly understood moniker than a name proper.

theres a severe mysterious air each time. keep thinking of w/L m8 Juniper as im writing this, but also feel that i am thinking of her in-dream a lot as well (or she is even present somewhere) – possibly due to the whole vibe; traipsing almost aimlessly about with a buncha punx not giving a fuck – its warm here/

We are walking around outside. the landscape feels and looks like southwest u.s. We feel alive, and camaraderie. this is one of the times i inquire as to where we are. very coolly and matter-of-factly, someone (Jessie?) says as we’re walking, “Small Town”, very simply. if this is how it is, it is acceptable to me

Suddenly have or realize i have my board in my hand, and upon this realizing start boarding straightway into the street. a push seems to give much more speed than usual. i veer hard to the right to dodge this brown caddy or buick that im sixing upon really fast

Just before getting right on it i realize im not gonna make the cut i’d intended, just behind the rear bumper, heading straight for the left rear flank of the car

I presciently sense and “see” myself slamming into the side of this moving car, so just as im about to collide with it i leap onto the the trunk, letting my board soar beneath the car as i dash ninja style over the top and toward the front of the car

My board emerges from beneath the long brown sedan unscathed. i alight on the pavement and scoop it up, giving a cursorily polite wave, trying my best to convey that i wouldnt have leapt onto the car if i didnt feel like i had to, and not directly at the driver, just in the general direction of the front of the cabin. the car moves on

Getting back on my board (cant sense any others anymore) i come to a high wire-fence gate, the fence sprawling in either direction. i stop there and put my face to the gate to look through. there is someone standing there, a few yards away on the other side, in an empty area with what seems like bunkers in the background. i sense they have been waiting for me. just part of crew(?). no, more familiar than that.

After having long deep convo in a mini ball-pit with Aggie about the safekeeping of autistic children, started a tabletop card game with AJ, Gilbert, Aggie, and someone else to the right, seemed like looking like an older Mark P___

In ball-pit, which was in a corner of a fancy house just past the kitchen where i had been “helping” Cooper make some dinner, Aggie and i are playing She asks me something about the prescription i had just acquired [iwl, for an infection]. i’d left it on the kitchen counter and we talked about the importance of not having it in my pocket when i get into a ball-pit, b/c kids could find the pills and possibly get into them

It feels like this is our first time meeting ever, and i want to make a good impression on her b/c i like her and think she’s really cool.

Still playing in the pit, that has this like black meshy/plastic net around it, we start somehow talking about Judge Judy, how she’s a compassionate hard-ass. Aggie says she’s been on the air for like ten years or something. i said i was surprised her skin is still on her bones, and that she seems like she likes children; i feel as if the former comment may have been in bad taste, and felt silly for making it, though seems to not be a big deal, and we keep playing in the ball-pit a bit longer, her more so in one corner of it, myself mostly in the middle.

(Distinctly remember during conversation, doing a really fun diving manoeuvre, then pretending like i was swimming in a pool, doing the swim move with the alternating big circle arms where u turn yr head from side to side. i think Aggie found this amusing.)

∙ ∙ ∙

Dont quite remember getting out of the pit, but i am out of it, back in the kitchen area, which is connected to the pit and only a few paces away (such that the ball-pit is visible from the kitchen and vice-versa).

Cooper is not there anymore, and actually i don’t even sense anyone else. Walking over to my backpack i see that my antibiotic prescrip has been removed form the counter and placed in the backpack, likely by Aggie. A little smirk passes over my face

I saunter back past the ball pit into a completely separate room by way of an open doorway. in the middle of this room, itself its own space adjacent to a sitting parlour with couches and a big tv & such, there is a long dining table, with mostly occupied seats around it. Aggie has come in just ahead of me and is moving around the table to find a chair. i vocalise that i like the chair(s) at one of the ends of the table, at the same moment she seems to be setting into the one im looking at. However, upon my articulation she, in the same movement, slides gracefully into one of the seats on the side of the table opposing the door, placing herself next to Gilbert

I move to sit in the end-seat that Aggie vacated, but im suddenly at the opposite end. to my left is AJ, from whom i feel a joy-happiness radiating, which in turn makes me feel same. to AJ’s left is Gilbert, who also seems jolly, then Aggie, and her & Gilbert are dialoguing. There seems to be no one in the other end seat opposite “me”.

Continuing clockwise around the table, in the next seat is – a person or entity, or no one? yet also maybe a feel is there – it feels like “someone” is there who is watching, but that no one else in the room is aware of, and to the left of this seat, and to my “right” is the male-seeming person who is wearing glasses and has a bald shiny head, pointy nose and looks like Mark P____, but doesnt feel like him

Everyone is in good spirits and we are about to play a game together. At first there doesnt seem to be anything on this table except this laptop in front of me; it has a swiveling screen, on which is displayed some difficult-to-understand instructions for the game, and we enthusiastically start going over them together

Even in explanation the rules seem a bit convoluted, but we’re gonna go ahead and play it by ear. AJ seems the most knowledgeable, to have the best grasp of things, or at least is the most helpful to me, going over little things that i express that i dont quite get

Someone suggests that we just dive right in and learn by doing. Aggie says all i have to do is ____ ____ ____, or name so-and-so, say these words aloud, etc. Im just going with the flow and we’re all slowly starting to sync up

∙ ∙ ∙

Suddenly the table is a-strew with cards that are just a little larger than standard tarot cards, and to each person their own set. it seems that Mark has brough them out, almost as if he had forgotten that they were available

The cards are part of the game we are about to play, but it is understood that i am not to have any b/c i am to participate via the computer. i cant tell if this is b/c there arent enough cards of if this is just how the game works

I begin doing on the computer what i assume everyone else is doing with cards, and the room starts to be pushed out of view as it is overtaken by the screen-view – like the/”my” p.o.v. is slowly zooming into the computer screen until it is the only view

Im on a character generation screen/section – and it doesnt feel like im manipulating a computer at all, but rather just using my mind, or willing choices to be made

One of the first things to be selected is a race. The setting is very dungeony, with torches casting an orange glow on damp, dank looking stone; the option sections are framed by ornate designs that look medi-eval mysterious, a little creepy but mysterious

I select a race called the “RHEALL”; i feel a connexion with the way the character looks – a ruddy, cat-like humanoid race with long prehensile tails, and sharp claws. They also have metal (iron?) armour, of the same rust-red hue, sparse, but seems to fit onto their bodies at certain points to augment the attributes they already have. My character she has red iron claws over (or in place of?) her natural felid claws

There doesnt seem to be much to the character generation, and suddenly we are in-game. Looking around, seems like castle grounds, nighttime. There are trees interspersed throughout, coexisting with magnificent and mammoth structures made of sleepy grey stone. A torch is alite here and there, and there are many levels, such that there must be stone stairs & corridors a-plenty

The play-view is third-person, and im getting my bearings in-play; it very much eels like im playing a game, and yet not playing a game

Im testing our movement – back, forth, running, jumping, how to strike – and once i have a grasp of these basic elements i go to the left to another screen where it feels like a gathering ground for the players, also like the spot from where we are to set out and begin the mission or campaign

I decide that i’m not quite ready yet, and sense that not all the others are ready either anyway, so i go back to the screen where (i suppose) i spawned, and i go to the right onto a further different screen

This area seems like a training ground, especially when these stone golems start aggressing toward me. I ready “my”self – more in mindset b/c i dont feel any controls, yet my body does feel like her body. (I did notice before that i spawned with an additional weapon, a long trident-like staff, possibly of our choosing, and we are robed as if some monk type character)

The stone golem is upon us and we hack away at it, quickly dispatching it. another is coming from further right (and the view now feels like a side-scroller). we engage with this one as well, trying to discover the limits and/or abilities of our weapon, looking for connecting combos and different kinds of strikes. This golem is dispatched just as easily but they both do their fair share of damage

My mind turns briefly to my mates. I start to head left again when i see an elephant, a rearing bull elephant, about to leap from behind a shrubbery. with my newfound grasp of movement i dash back to the right in hopes of finding some means of recouping my energy

The screen changes again and the gameplay is back to 3D third-person. with my lance, i discover i can slash some of the smaller shrubs, widdling them down, and on the first one, to our surprise, a pokeball pops out. i walk over to it and manoeuvre down, which motion picks it up, hoping that in doing im doing the correct motion until i see her make motion of storing in on her person. I cant wait to tell the others, it seems sort of strange that a pokeball would appear in this castlevania-type atmosphere

I repeat the action a few times, finding a small dagger, picking it up, and something else

Im on a high stone bridge overlooking some open grounds below – very high. Suddenly it feels like im losing control of my character [like esp. on the N64 when one’s controller becomes unplugged mid-movement].

Like the pokeball i wonder if this could be a glitch – shes sort of stutter-stepping erratically and slowly moving toward the edge right before/after the bridge proper. She starts to take out and throw the pokeball – i do my best to angle it onto the bridge b/c i dont want tow waste what might be a rare find. i sense a modicum of control and try to maintain it, but it slips away, and she chucks the pokeball over the side. but the glitch is not over, and to my dread & dismay, not a beat after the pokeball is thrown, she falls over the edge of the bridge. I think “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” as shes falling for a really log time, until her body lands atop the shingled roof of a one-story building. Her body goes limp and starts to slide off the roof in that eerie dimensionally disproportionate pixel way.

I see the pokeball, which had hit the ground only a second before, still rolling slowly across some dirt and grass. it comes to a stop. nothing happens