welcome to my sandstorm

I was hiking somewhere near Globe, AZ and got caught in a sudden sandstorm. Any building looked good through dirt-crusted eyes. I felt my way around the corrugated structure, found an opening and slipped inside.

It was pitch black and there was a giant cartoon dog on the wall. At first I thought it was talking to me, but then I saw the three children sitting on the couch in the darkness, lit only by cartoon-dog-light. I kept to the shadows, found another door, then a black hallway.

A group of commandos came pounding up the hall after me. As they approached, images appeared on the walls around them. I pressed my body up against a tall curtain and they rushed right past me, barking orders and cusswords at each other. They went into a room up ahead and started shooting and shouting. I sneaked a peek through the door, and saw they were in a cave full of demons. Things rushed at them, they fired, things burst, but I could see it was all on the walls. None of it real. Of all the places I could have found shelter, I chose some crazy VR gallery, and unless the system knew I was there, I couldn't participate in any of the games.

I rushed to find the front desk, to buy a ticket. One of the games on the list was Sandstorm, which I thought ironic at first, but then I rushed outside and found that the storm was made of pixels about an inch wide. I wondered why I hadn't noticed that earlier. Maybe the reality server was having a glitch. I turned around to get a refund but the arcade was just a gaping maw in the earth.

I checked and double-checked my firewalls, then dove down into the emptiness.

--- from a dream 4/10/07