I woke up in the dark to the sound of my landlady banging at the door. She wasn’t supposed to be home for another couple of months. I heard her shouting from the outside of the room that my study permit had expired and that my student status was no longer valid.

I was attending an orientation session for an ESL class and the speaker started by asking us to not dream of settling in the US.

I was sitting in the cafeteria watching the news report that the US had collapsed. “I never thought we’d see the day”, someone said. The country had been struck by a series of secession crises along with a collapse of the economy. The Canadian dollar was now once again equal with its American counterpart.

I was wandering around the school campus with my brother in search of his backpack. We walked through the unlit halls to look through the various lost and found locations with little success. As we neared the end of our unfruitful search, he asked me, “Don’t you have a dental appointment to go to?” “I do?” I responded, frozen in shock by the possibility that I had forgotten a prior arrangement.

I was cleaning the second floor of a mall with a handheld vacuum cleaner. I traced around the corners of the wall with my pitifully small Dyson, weaving past a restaurant worker who was armed with a broom.

I was running through the school halls and each of the classrooms I ran past had makeshift bathrooms set up. The graduation ceremony was today but seats were not assigned and I didn’t have people to sit with. I tried to at least look for people who were in the same class as me.

I had a test today and I was going to be late. I needed to run across a construction site to get to class. But before that I had to send an email with a photo of myself as confirmation. It was 7:50. The image kept failing to attach.

I was on my way home from the office but missed my bus as I got to the ground floor. (Un)fortunately I had also forgotten my phone and had to go back up the elevator. I pressed floors 3, 5, and 7 upon entering the elevator. A black cat greeted me when I stepped out.

I was staying at my grandmother’s place with my dad. He had brought my old piano along for me to play. I scrolled through a Facebook page with a very antiquated user interface. An old classmate was pregnant and “wanted love in hugs”. There was a super old “Rate Your Friends” app on the sidebar alongside status updates from over 10 years ago. Among them were updates from a trip to Japan and some photos from a martial arts class. They were the last posts on the platform. I teared up a little.

I got a Discord message from someone who was apparently a classmate from middle school. They said they had been attracted to me but I had to admit that their name was not ringing any bells.