I received a message on Discord from a friend updating me on her trip home. She said she felt a lot less lonely than she had expected, and that it was actually a little overwhelming. She sent me a short clip of a car driving out of a parking lot but everything beyond the parking lot itself looked like it was procedurally generated.

I was getting breakfast at the snack bar near the entrance of our school. I had gotten the daily special which was some granola topped with yogurt and fruit. I finished eating right before classes were about to begin as trucks started unloading at the front gate. I had to be careful not to trip over the various ramps and traffic cones as I made my way to class.

I was watching the Tatami Galaxy projected onto a black curtain in a dark room. It was getting late go I decided to pause the episode and stop for the night when the credits started rolling. I walked through the curtains into the kitchen which still had its lights on. When I came out of the restroom, I saw that my uncle had already woken up.

I was traversing across a vast desert under the night sky in Deep Rock Galactic. I told my friend that I was checking out an abandoned base while he worked somewhere else. I was in an open area deep within the fortress when I suddenly found myself surrounded by glowing red visors from all directions. I dashed out of there as everyone started shooting lasers.

I was lining up in a Hawaiian restaurant named “Bai Hinas” and I spent most of my time looking at the menu. I still didn’t know what I wanted to get when I got to the front of the line. Not wanting to hold up the line any longer, I quickly chose the chicken leg rice with teriyaki sauce. I had spent so much of my attention thinking about what to order that I forgot to say that I wanted it for takeout until it was already being served on a plate. Not wanting to make a big deal out of it, I decided to sit down and dine in instead.

We were walking down a long set of wooden stairs in the mountains until we got to a parking lot and rest area. My coworker had to leave for work, while a friend was asking me questions about what we did. It was now my responsibility to show her around.

It was right about lunch time and we had a multi-level cafeteria not far from the cabins. I walked up to the third floor and there was a butcher displaying a selection of meats on the counter. I picked out a beef shank and waited until someone behind the display noticed me. “Do you want that on the grill?” she asked.

I was looking at apartments in a college town even though I wasn’t intending to continue my education. I was worried about how I was supposed to find new friends. My dad warned against approaching academia. I asked him why - after all there may still be individual courses that I wanted to take.

What used to be the beach was now a reservoir used for supplying coal plants with water. We stepped over the platforms floating over the surprisingly clear water. It was clean enough that we could actually see the machinery under the water to our left. On our right was a row of shacks made out of driftwood, some of them still hanging surfboards from when the place was inhabited. I recalled to my friends how my last school had nearly relocated to this spot.

We were walking through the garden when I went down some steps to look into the pond. The walkways were made out of red bricks and the vegetation was a dark green. I spotted an orange frog clinging onto the wall and walked towards it for a closer look. In a split second, the frog leaped onto my jeans and off again, leaving a stain of frog eggs (which looked more like fish eggs) on my pants.

I quickly rushed to the faucet to rinse off the roe, while telling my friend that the frog was carrying eggs all over its body (which made it look orange). “Oh yeah, he has eggs in his backpack”, she responded.

I was on a school trip and our scheduled day was ending at a high-end hotel that overlooked the city. Some classmates beside me were talking about the religious landscape in Syria. It was still really hot even though it was already 6:30 in the evening. Our group was the only group that hadn’t eaten dinner yet because we were late touring some guy’s office. I wanted to find a thermometer before the day ended so that I could record the temperature along with my dream later.