I was Philip K. Dick.
I had arranged a kind of competitiveevent, much like a
celebrity who is central to a reality game show, amongst a covert group of
strangers.These were predominantly businessmen of some shady variety. There
were several women that were involved in this enterprise, even if only,
at times, I think, in a hands-off way or as spectators. The most important of
these was an archetypal girlfriend who was stern but gentle as a motivator– in
short, what I had asked Sahar to be for Stanlislosh with regard to the
conception of the Poetry Club.
The dream could be divided in two
parts, although in this instance no solid or justifiable line could be drawn
betwixt them.
In the first part, the goal of my
arrangement was my own education. I was compeled, by virtue of the agreement,
to master, or at least to learn, a plethora of distinct attributes, among which
was the proper development of electronic music.
Financial and other such concerns may have belonged to the
list, al-though this may be an extrapolation.
The basis
of the arrangement, as was only beknownst to me and my Lady MacBeth, was that
it was a hoax.Yet my ambition,as in MacBeth, always sagged, and for this reason
she was often disappointed. I had to hide a good deal from her to avoid
her pestering. There was a very vivid image I can recall wherein
I stood at the top of a long slide that descended into a backyard. The event
was most lucidly and vividly reminiscent of one of the parties that my parents’
Russian friends would hold and to whichI would becomepeledto go as achild.
The girlfriend(orspouse), if I am not mistaken,stood at the top of this slide or to the side,
compelling meto ride it. However, she might have stood at the bottom. The
latter is exceedingly likely. It must have been at this point that she took the
form of Brianna. Given that realisation, her position at the top of the slide,
juxtaposing the prompt to descend but with less irony than fate, would appear
surpassingly veritable.
The second part was a direct continuation of the first. The
transition was seamless. The entire focus of the dream and its pivotal
(and,really, singular)theme became money – seamlessly, as though that had been
the truly underlying matter all along.
The
businessmen wereall entrepreneurs of mafioso character. The lucidity of the
dream enhanced as I approachedthe waking state.As though in a twilight-zone
between dream and waking intellect, I gained control over the
events,although, with almost dramatic irony,the danger of preoccupation did not
feel any less stressful.
My plan to
dupe the business-people with my cleverness became elucidated and clear,
although in retrospect it is still dubious.
We had all agreed to deposit money in one place:A warehouse
that I either ownedor was renting. Like East Egg or Republic City in the Legend
of Korra, I could see this plain gray building from across a bay, although this bay was markedly less concave
than either the bay (?) in The Great
Gatsby or the water body in the Legend of Korra.
Each of the participants would contribute
a sum of his money and store it within an individual safe designated for that
participant. All six of the safes were in a small chamber within the
ware-house.In truth. The entire warehouse may have been no larger than this
chamber. It may, also, have been just barely larger, with a narrow corri
dor circumventing it, akin to the first building in‘Bioshock’.
Each
participant would be free to add however much money he wanted to to his
vault.At no point was he allowed to withdraw. This was done over the course of
a week, I think.At 10:00pm on Friday, I believe ( 10:00 pm I remember having
decided upon, Without a Doubt)the bank would be closed.At 2pm the following day
(probably, on second thought, Friday, if I am to draw parallels between my
plan for this week and the dream, according to which the closing time would
have been 10 pm on Thursday),the money
would be counted. If the sum of all deposits were to exceed one million USD, I
would lay claim to them all.
I knew that my
ruse would not catch all of them unawares. I had my own safe as part of the
arrangement, and, as far as I can remember, this was made clear to the others.
The
one who caught onto my plan was the most burly and uncompromising of the crime
lords.His personality was probably most akin
to (and most probably drawn from)
the mafioso persona Jeffery Carter wore in his elementary and middle
school years.
I must have known, intuitively, that he was my
greatest threat, but the concern I had seemed insubstantial.
At 10:00pm, having returned home in time, I entered
a secret underground(and presumably, in retrospect, underwater)tunnel that
ran straight along a prismic passage
from my small beach home to the warehouse.
No one, presumably, knew of
this passage.If they realized that they had been cheated or otherwise simply
recognized that they had lost, regardless of whether or not they knew that I
had been the one to deposit an inordinate and decisive sum,they would surely
try to confront me about this injustice or otherwise simply steal back their
money before 2pm.
Counting predominantly on the
latter possibility, I endeavoured to make off with my winnings early. I did not
intend to flee with the money, if memory serves. I would merely show them the
million-plus dollars on Friday as proof of victory.
As I crossed over to the safes by
tunnel at 10 pm, the mafioso businessman crossed the bay
by motorboat, intent upon the same destin-ation. As the observer of
these events, I saw this, but as the protagonist in the tunnel,true
to dramatic irony, I did not.
Within
seconds of my arrival within the muted amber walls of the warehouse
interior, smashing from the starboard wall indicated
startlingly that my rival was trying to break through.
I
held him off briefly by sheer but futile physical force. Finally and quickly, I
took the money and ran, realizing at that moment that the corridor I had dug
and was now running along would lead back to my house incriminatingly, hoping
to hell that my rivals would not scour the warehouse and find the trap door.
dm.A.A.
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