I was meeting with alumni from my highschool and they were asking what I thought about my career. I didn’t know how to answer them as I felt embarrassed about not really feeling anything for my work. They hinted at how it was a shame that I never did anything with my expertise or college credentials. I turned towards and looked at my coworker who sat beside me.

We were preparing for an upcoming test in math class. Our teacher was administering the class through a video call as he was simultaneously teaching multiple other classes. Someone asked what we needed to know for the test. “Everything”, he said. He added that the students on where he was only needed 1 hour 30 minutes for their test and expected the same from us. I hadn’t reviewed for the test at all up until this point and was frantically flipping through the textbook.

I was playtesting a new RPG that was set in a small medieval fantasy town surrounded by wilderness. The layout of the town and the woods around it was procedurally generated. There was a map overlay that revealed spots of interest in the town which revealed some interesting areas like a pigsty that was in a basement instead of being outdoors. Other players were looking for the most efficient way to grind experience from the wolves that respawned in nearby areas.

There was a flap of flesh in front of my left front tooth which was starting to peel off. I felt around my teeth with my tongue and noticed that they were chipped underneath. I tasted blood leaking out from my gums. I told my mother about my teeth deteriorating.

We were on the 12th floor and the dogs were barking because they wanted to jump across to the neighbor’s balcony. My parents were talking about the next generation and how my cousin’s daughter was showing an interest in photography. I watched her with a camera in her hands, trying to take a shot of our dogs from the balcony railing. I had only looked away for a brief moment before she had suddenly disappeared. A pair of green shoes lay where she had once stood.

The description of the blog said that she was “falling for an old lover”. There were a bunch of new posts that had been tagged with my name. I couldn’t stop scrolling to read more until I came across one that read: “Things that were sent with warmth now send a chill reminder of the life we could have had together”.

I had somehow ended up in a room of our house that I had never been in before. I looked around at the bare concrete walls, some of which were painted a light pink. The room seemed to be a suite with its own bathroom connected to a small corridor between two open spaces. I kept wondering how I could’ve missed this rather expansive room all this time.

I was sitting in the classroom when my boss wanted my opinion about a new paid time off system he wanted to implement. He was considering between a monthly 10 hour quota or a one where time off would deduct from printer credits. I told him that the credits would create weird incentives. He look up and asked the room if anyone had phones that were “clamped”, or locked down with MDM. One person responded.

I was digging out a waterfall in Minecraft with my brother. We had directed the water around our base which also sat at the edge of a cliff. Before digging out the final blocks to let the water flow over the edge, I had already built a large metal and glass structure as scaffolding around the waterfall. However it didn’t take long afterwards before I noticed that it didn’t look very good and started taking it apart. I heard my brother shout from the top of the falls that he liked it how it was before. I shouted back in agreement as I continued destroying the blocks.

I took my phone out to look for a bike route back to campus. One of the routes had a detour that added an extra day of travel time despite it only being a slight deviation on the map.