Chicago was flooded. “Jefferson” street was slowly becoming a river. It was shallow, but swimable. A bridge had been built over it, but the supports to that were crumbling. I stood, waiting, watching. People shopped around in the city slowly becoming Venice. Others swam in the forming channels. One woman and several others stood upon the bridge and admired the view. The men noticed bits of concrete falling into the water, and darted off the bridge. The woman panicked, and fell with the bridge. She was alright, and was helped to the edge by swimmers. The water was freezing, as it was winter. A man exited the water with his swimming trunks hanging to low. He didn’t pull them up until someone commented that the mouse was out of the house.
At this time I was reminded that I was traveling somewhere for business. I checked my arms to make sure my tattoos would not be peeking out under my sleeves. I also examined my tattoos. On my right shoulder, I had the Powerpuff Girls. On my left, I had “Cartoon Cold Sunday Night.” (I have no idea what that meant.) I put my sleeves down, and the bus I was waiting for arrived.
I was traveling by Greyhound to wherever it was I was going. The bus was going to “East Ohio,” and making a stop in “Westfield,” which was where I was going. As we traveled, I stared out into the countryside. Many rivers and bridges were in the view, and many of the bridges were being worked on by construction crews. Thankfully, none of the bridges the bus traveled on were being worked on.
Arriving in Westfield, I find myself in a road-apple ridden amusement park. I look for someone who works there, as it is after hours, and I need to speak to the management regarding a job I was assigned. One of the workers is Isha. I greet her, have a good It’s-been-so-long-since-I’ve-seen-you cry, and she leads me to a store.
At the store are other people shopping, but most noticeably are Jorenko, ZRaven, and Squee. Only Jorenko takes active part in shopping with me for Nintendo products. There are several systems of SNES and NES variety piled in a corner next to a TV, along with many games. For some reason, there are BOX SNESs as well as Box NESs.
We decide to test out a couple systems, just to make sure they work. Sure enough they do, and, for some reason, the NES we grabbed was playing a Gamecube Zelda game. It was great looking, and Link looked like a 3d, cel-shaded version of the Animated Series Link. Whoever was playing was repeatedly attacking the already dead moblin from the cinematic we’d just seen.
I ask the people behind the counter for the pricing, and the man says, “We don’t carry that.” The girl grabs a catolog and slams it on the table in front of him. The man returns to his knitting, and the punk-raver girl flips through for the prices. $12 for a box NES, $14 for the top-loader, $31 for the box SNES, $33 for the top-loader.
And that’s where I woke up.