December 31, 2015

It was exam week and I walked into a classmate at the supermarket. I asked him how exams were going and he told me that he decided to pick up Japanese in his free time. He said how the alternations seemed to be easier than those found in Romance languages. I mentioned how I loved the relationship between h, b, and p sounds in the language but the point appeared to be lost on him. I went back to reviewing for Spanish.

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There was about 10 or so of us playing a card game called “roots” around the table. The objective involved matching cards together and word associations.

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Having completed the mission myself, I was now the person to administer the test. The test subject’s objective was to reach the bathtub that I was sitting next to. Whenever I touched the water, a blue plastic alarm clock would send out a signal that would force the subject to stutter a phrase while dropping everything else. They eventually found a way to disable the blue clock which allowed them to successfully climb up the set of stairs and reach the bathtub.

Now that we had both passed the test, we were sent off to our next mission while being accompanied by at third agent. While we were sitting in the back of the van, the outsider revealed that they were actually a large cockroach and that their mother would reach us in 15 minutes before jumping out of the door.

My brother and I concluded that our only chance of escaping was by foot so we stopped the van and jumped out as well. Someone asked why my brother always opened the doors to the houses on the street if he was never going to enter them. I looked back to see a figure following us in the distance. However when we turned the corner around the chain-link fence the figure had mysteriously vanished. We looked at the large building that was now in front of us. “This must be a nuclear plant and not a hospital because what kind of hospital uses tap water?” I deduced.

The interior of the building was bustling with people putting their hands in buckets of ice water. A message flashed in front of my eyes suggesting us to lower our body temperatures so that we couldn’t be detected. Apparently everyone here was a volunteer for a research project that entailed potentially being eaten by a large reptilian creature held in captivity.

With my hands in the bucket, I looked at a sticker labeled “Evolution” on the table. Right beneath it seemed to be “reach out for yourself!” written in the dust. When we all shuffled into line, my brother was inquiring whether or not we could “skip this part” of the procedure. Someone next to us was humming a tune while I was meaning to ask the researchers as to how the evolution of large creatures were being managed in the facility.