james_

The balloon was huge, like an inflatable everest. I don't remember the climb, but I remember getting to the top and seeing the tent. A white hemicylinder, about twenty feet long and as white as the landscape surrounding it. I lay down on the elastic floor, radically sloped, and slept.

On a whim I travelled, and it was to New York that I came. My companion was male, a father figure or a colleague, and he brought me to a man named Gaeol. This man had scaled the balloon many times, although he was only young, and was the owner of the tent that I had rested in. His home was simple, decorated in khaki and pale grey with a sofa that looked as comfortable as any bed I had seen. And so I slept.

I sat in the cafe with the two girls. The one who got away, and the one who never came. I played with my pocket knife under the table as they laughed with each other, gently teasing me, trying to make me choose, until at last I did.
"Will you please come with me" I said to the future, and left the past behind. Smiling serenely as she watched me walk away.

We danced.

And then my companion and I, seemingly much older, performed an experiment. Something to do with eggs that had thick shells and rolled down a tiny rollercoaster in a wooden cart. Some broke, some not. At the conclusion we debated whether to share the results. The girl was there, aged as we were, and she listened to us converse. He wanted to keep the information to himself, but I convinced him that it was too important and that we should tell everyone.

And so we went out again to the streets of New York. There was a shop selling beautiful meerschaum pipes, light as sea foam, and behind a curtain were shelves filled with cannabis pipes. We turned around to go, but found ourselves at a different curtain, behind which were people relaxing and playing pool.
"Where you chased here?" One asked,
"No"
"Come join us"
So we stood and watched as they played, and they drank their beer. It felt comfortable to be in their company although we didn't say much.
And then there was another curtain, much bigger than the last. And the people behind it were unwelcoming, rude, jeering at us from a distance. My companion donned a gasmask, and rolled in a canister that belched smoke.

And then we were in this shopping mall, one huge department store. We looked at the stereo speakers - futuristic, slimline and powerful. There were three lifts behind them, Black doors, glowing red buttons and gold trim, so I pressed the call button. Timers on top of the lifts told us how long we would have to wait: The middle lift would not come, the left said 45 and the right 2. A woman came over to me and apologised, saying we could not use the lifts.
"I'm sorry, these are the wrong lifts, aren't they" I said, and she left.
I felt anger at being denied the right to travel in them, and expressed this to my companion as we left the mall.

On the street again, and there were three letters we had to deliver to Coney Island. In this place, my companion told me, people just hand their letters to anyone that's going that way. Each of the letters had a date on it: 07/06/10
"What are the dates on them?" I asked
"I wrote those" came the reply.
We were standing near a coast, maybe a boardwalk, and it was here that my companion left me to walk through the wall of fire.

I can't help but feel this means something.