May 2, 2016

I was late to our room assignment meeting as I entered the house and had to pick from a selection of three potential roommates. On each person’s door was a blue bar which lit up, indicating that they were already taken. I walked into the room at the end of the hall belonging to someone by the name of “Brandon”. There was a large bed in the middle of the room with a row of desk space along the two walls on the side. On the desks there was a total of four desktop computers and I wondered what one person could possibly be doing with so many. Running a server, perhaps? A large window was on the left.

I backed out of the room to check the one to the left. It belonged to an elderly man and on his bulletin board was a postcard describing how he always appreciates having comic strips mailed to him. The next door down led to a room with two beds and the floor was lined up with volumes upon volumes of comics and manga. “You wouldn’t want to be with this guy” someone warned. “His mind is in a block” he added cryptically.

Soon people were crowding into the room at the end of the hall looking at the computer screen in the rightmost corner. The display was embedded inside of a pumpkin and was showing a cinematic trailer for a video game. Sooner or later we started lining up all the way out of the house and were each offered meal worms by someone who was walking by. The person to the left of me turned one down as they were “eating in twenty minutes”. I politely declined when I was offered the same.

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By brother and I walked through the field when I saw a tall bike infused with wires and vines. I pointed out what I assumed to be an art installation to my brother. We were soon walking between two rows of low-hanging transmission towers. My brother grabbed onto a wire and accidentally “unplugged” it, leading to a brief electrical shortage in the neighborhood ahead before he plugged it back in. Our dad called us from the house about several hundred meters in front of us.