December 22, 2016

A small child wore a pair of pink sunglasses while looking at a dog going upwards from the bottom of the escalator. We continued to look at the child standing in the middle of the mall, the child who aspired to be more like the dog. In a fit of frustration, the kid tried to get on all fours but whenever he did so his sunglasses would fall off and he had to stand up to readjust them. The dog continued to look at the child through its own pair of sunglasses.

We decided to go up as well and the person at the entrance told us that the videos they watched online sometimes acted at prophecies. I ran out of the door to find myself near the basketball courts of my old elementary school, except now all of the outdoor tiles were replaced with foam padding.

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It was early morning and people were hesitantly trickling into the classroom at the end of the hall. There was a projector screen on one wall and the room was devoid of windows. It was the end of the year and everyone was handed a small bag of bright yellow tablets as we walked through the door.

“I love how everybody is coming in” a professor sitting to the side of the door commented. We had all come here for some kind of review session even through there was no final exam for the class. When everybody got settled, the lesson began with the professor telling everyone not to ask nor tell her about the numbers and labels that were printed on our bags.

Behind the projector screen was a blackboard that seemed to be able to be pulled upwards forever. It was a physical infinitely scrolling board. Some people including myself had opened our bags to taste the sugary substances handed to us. “You guys already started eating?” someone in the room asked. The professor told us it was okay as long as we were paying attention, only to add “Clark is listening, I know”, as I spilled some of the powder onto my clothes.

Someone read out loud one of the comments on the scrolling board: “can you do recursion up a branch?” to which people in the room laughed. Another person claimed that they loved recursion. People started talking among themselves while a cartoon episode started to play at the front of the classroom. It was too noisy however to hear what any of the title characters, Elrya and Era, were talking about.