We had gathered together in a restaurant and were chatting about some kind of investigation that we were involved in. Someone leaned towards me and said they were going to “let [me] in on a secret.” Apparently the people who we were hanging out with were all blind. “Don’t believe me?” He said, “listen closely to the hissing sounds.” Sure enough, there was a persistent hissing noise coming from most of the people’s lips around us, presumably to aid in their “vision” via noise. “We must mean the world to them”, they added. “Let’s not… get too ahead of ourselves here” I said.

I was playing as a Ranger in Path of Exile 2 with my cousin. My character’s move speed seemed to be unusually slow but I was just glad that my homebrew Ice Shot Volley build didn’t require a full respec to continue playing. My cousin found a hidden doorway in one of the bushes and inside was a sub area that had a large race track that went up and down an incline. Next to the course was a chest that granted a speed boost based on percentage life (capped at 5%). Apparently I already had the bonus and they didn’t stack. I checked the clock and it was 23:30. I told my cousin that I would have to stop soon, maybe around midnight. “Soon”, he joked.

I was chatting with my manager to pass time until the end of my workday and she told me that she had redrawn the entirety of Cowboy Bebop twice.

We went into the climate controlled shed in our yard where my mother’s old oil paintings were stored. However what she had really brought me here for was to show me some of the work from her students. There were several essays which provided critiques on memes and their function as signifiers for belonging. Despite having access to said essays “locally” (we were holding hard copies in our hands), we discovered that they were actually being hosted on third party (Intel) cloud services.

I was watching a live commentary of a game of Starcraft from Artosis. It was a TvP match and the Orange Terran player had pushed their Siege Tanks deep into the Protoss base. The game went on for a few minutes without the Protoss player pushing them out until they sent a group of Dragoons to deal with them very inefficiently. I asked why they didn’t use Zealots instead to deal with the attack. Apparently there was currently a promotion going on to win 10 bucks every time someone asked a question.

I had just arrived at my new office to find out that I had landed the same job as an old friend. Our desks were right next to each other and she helped me get all of my equipment in order. Someone kept swiping the dongle for my keyboard but we eventually managed to recover it. She gave me a small pot of plants which had a bonsai tree accompanied by succulents. “Wow I love this one”, I said while pointing at one of the blue-red leaves of a miniature sedum.

My brother was hosting a party at his new place. It was a minimal, single story, open floor home that had a roof extending over what seemed to be a front yard. A friend was trying to explain a new board game to us that required knowledge of Chinese tongue twisters that went way over my head. The one he provided as an example had something to do with baked breads. There was a group of people playing Apex Legends in VR. They claimed they could identify specific players by the way they ran.

I could hear someone dragging around a suitcase on the other side of the door. “Something is coming and I don’t like it”, I told my friends who were hanging out in my room. The sounds of movement gradually got closer as I ducked behind the bed and armed myself with a metal spoon. Moments later I heard the door open and a short rip of bullets rang through the room. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, but knew that I had done too little.

I headed to the immigration office for an appointment during my lunch break even though there was a high chance that my break wouldn’t be long enough to get anything done. And I was right: there was already a line and I needed to wait for my ticket to be called. I thought about needing to tell my manager about taking extra time off today.

I was jumping from platform to platform on top of the scaffolding that was lined up along the windows. I hopped from one end of the building to the other but was unable to find my way to the next level. I got off from the catwalk and went downstairs to tell my manager that I couldn’t get to the next stage. “I tried going up!” I told him. He let out a sigh as he quickly figured out what was wrong. “That’s exactly what we feared”, he explained, “the answer shouldn’t always be up.” He recommended looking more closely at the environment.