I picked up a large bag of crushed up cereal which I was ready to throw out. For some reason this was a controversial decision.

A friend was showing me a pink plastic flip phone that was meant to be a toy for kids. Audio would play out of the tinny speakers whenever any of the keys were pressed. We were both amused and dismayed at the fact that the toy would refuse to operate if it was not connected to the internet.

I was sitting on the bus with a friend as we headed to her new place. She took a photo of a couple of strangers outside the window and asked me if she should post it to her Instagram or Discord server. I picked her Instagram. “Okay whatever you say,” she said.

I was at work when I received an email informing me that I had been charged for the possession of obscene materials and had to report to the nearest correctional facility. I felt a gnawing at my heart as I made my way to the facility somewhere in the middle of the tropical forest. There was an “elevator” that was as deep as a single body and needed one to hold onto a metal grate to ride. I scrolled through /mjg/ and read some posts that were making light of my predicament. Fortunately we were still able to use our devices here, granted that we could only charge them in the daytime while the facility’s solar panels were operational.

We were about to leave the supermarket when we were stopped by someone conducting a survey. He showed me a piece of paper with connect-the-dot images for a cartoon wedge of cheese, broccoli, and a carrot. Underneath each image was a label with scrambled letters. And beneath that were a few basic questions about vegetables that we had to answer in pencil. Somehow I kept starting with the wrong letter and misspelling everything. I suspected it this was a part of the experimental design. The experience made me feel old.

We moved from one abandoned house to another to scavenge for any materials that were left behind. As the sun was setting, we were led into one of the larger wooden structures and marched up the stairs. The crowd in front of us filtered out at each floor as they settled into their respective barracks. Since I was near the back of the line, I was directed to the top floor. It was a little too warm. I wondered if this was punishment for being too slow.

I was on the second floor of a fast food restaurant and coloring in a fantasy map with wax crayons. Beside me was another large sheet of paper with a sketch of Chinese emperor in his traditional yellow robes. I was thinking about all of the things I had to schedule ahead.

I called my parents to ask about their plans for an upcoming visit but I never got a straight answer from them. I sat up in bed and sent a selfie to the Discord server. It was just a daily thing we did. My mom asked me what it was like to remember my dreams from 22. I corrected her and said I remembered them since the age of 5. The earliest was one where I fell into the gap between the ferry and platform while trying to board. She questioned whether there actually was a gap but I said that didn’t matter to my child self. I had memories of having a jump onto the boat.

I was in a moving train car with my mother as we waited for food to be prepared. I wandered to the other end of the car when someone placed a large metal cylinder on a machine tool. Moments later the drill bit punctured the surface of what appeared to be a large battery and a hissing sound came out. I started to feel a dull pressure building up in my ears as I told my mother to get away from the machine. I feared it may have been too late.

I was reading through a Wikipedia page for “eparenthesis”. It was both genetics term related to hybridization and a grammar term for nested parentheses.