I was at home, which appears to be a 4-room apartment. My father is using my
rice cooker. He doesn't know to put the top on when he makes rice and I have to tell him. He can't find the top and he and my mom are yelling back from one room to another. My sisters are yelling for them to be quiet. The cover to the rice cooker is found in my sister's room and placed on the rice cooker. I decide to go out.
I was in Amherst, at the bus stop in the center of town. As I was waiting for the bus, many people suddenly began flocking to the bus stop. One guy with long hair is there too. All the girls at the bus stop beg him to sing. At first, he declines, saying that he has not sang in too long. After some more coaxing he gives in. They brought a portable radio, square in shape with a 8 inch square speaker and a karaoke microphone, with them and they give that to him. He breaks into song and everyone cheers, except me- I am nonplussed.
Subsequently, the bus arrives. We board the bus and ride uneventfully to Northamton, where the buildings are all made of stone and look something like those in an Italian town. At Northamton I board a train, which has rollercoaster-style seats on an open flatbed- that is to say, there is no top to the train, at least when we departed the station. My brother is on the train, as is a young child who speaks Chinese to us.
When we inquire the reason that he is on the train, he tells us that he is an orphan who has been adopted here- he has found a family and he is going to meet them. However as the train is leaving the station, he notices a file of children, most of whom are no older than five, who stare wistfully at us as they are led from the station. He realizes that they are orphans like he is and they are being sent home, for they have not found families. With tears in his eyes he jumps over the rows of seats until he is in the last one. Then he stares at the children as we depart the station. I tell him that he should not forget where he has come from and he agrees, saying that it would be wrong to forget where he came from and also saying that it would be wrong to forget the sight of the other children being sent away.
The train, now covered-over, speeds through farm country. Each passenger has two seats to himself, and so everyone is sleeping. My brother is sitting behind me. I talk a little with him but he is sleepy. I sit down and begin to dream.
In my dream, I am dreaming that I am playing a computer game starring myself, Wu Bai and Sammi Cheng:
We are driving a freighter truck, which somehow becomes a giant square helicopter, that looks a lot like Springer in the Transformers movie, which is to say, it has a square body and is futuristic-looking with a lot of protrusions. Wu Bai is piloting. Sammi- who is the representative of some sort of large company that has employed Wu Bai and myself- apparently knows where we are going, but me and Wu Bai do not. We are flying over a plain i think.
We arrive at a lake and are instructed to land there. Wu Bai refuses. Something feels fishy. We are not going to land our helicopter in a lake. I load shells into my shotgun, which has three short barrels, and I point it at the back of her head. Wu Bai pulls the helicopter higher into the air, whereupon we notice that the lake's water is not real at all, but rather is water that has become trapped by the tops of some sort of incredibly dense foliage. I climb down to investigate. I slip through the trees, which are seven or eight feet thick and arrive at a place where the trees seperate out to be much wider apart. It is dark here and the floor is made of stone, out of which the trees are growing. There is equipment scattered all around.
Apparently this is some sort of test facility owned by the company that had hired me and Wu Bai. However there have been problems, apparently, as there is a dead guard on the ground and some broken machinery as well. The place where i came down is behind some cover, but I had not brought my shotgun as i feared that it would be made wet by the lake's water. So i run out from my sheltered position to grab the guard's pistol only to see a guard running at me out of a long black stone passage. His gun is drawn and he looks stern, his uniform like that of a state trooper. He looks like one of the guards from half-life in fact.I put my hands up, the guard looks pleased, but it looks false, as though he is trying to coerce me into doing something. I think to myself, in my dream-within-a dream that this guard is going to kill me soon and I am going to have to reset the game. He leads me into the passage, which opens onto a corridor. I can see a large room filled with people on operating tables covered in sheets. I am certain that the guard will kill me.
He takes me into a side room that looks out on the main room. There is an operating table in the room. A doctor, who looks and sounds like one of the hostages from counterstrike, comes in- he places a heavy shoulder harness and handcuffs on me and tells me that they are going to give me some sort of medicine, which again i take to mean that they are going to poison me to death. The guard leaves. At that point the doctor turns his back to me to prepare the shot. I think to myself, "well, I am going to die soon and have to restart the game, but I might as well try to get out of this first and have a look around so that the next time I come through I will know where to go." So I rip a handle off of the operating table and, reasoning that i am playing a video game and need not hold back anything, use it as a hook, thrusting it through the back of the doctor's neck and out the other side. I then hang him on the wall by his hooked neck. He bleeds and makes choking noises. I am thinking that maybe i should reset the game anyway so that i can avoid getting caught in the first place.
Then I woke up