7.01.2025

California. A trip over 20 years ago with a girlfriend but in this version there's a series of puzzles to solve, traps, like it's a video game. Each level is a specific dungeon, from the campsite to driving the twisty roads through the Redwoods. Saboteurs are about, villains whose purpose is to complicate the narrative. We have a safe space, a trailer, she's being patient with me as I learn how to shop for furniture and decorate. She's telling me we can afford to be a little bit elegant but I'm only concerned about stockpiling for whatever challenge comes next. The safe space has been infiltrated, I tell her, and now there's this other guy who thinks he's part of our crew but we don't want him there so we send him on a quest almost certain to result in his death. He descends into an arroyo and we wave goodbye. Good luck on your death quest! A new figure materializes on the canyon's lip. An avatar of our deity or storyteller, maybe, and he looks pissed. That guy, the guy we sent to his death, I explain, he's an idiot. The god-rep nods. He is an idiot, he says. There's something in his expression that says this isn't finished. My own culpability is yet to be established. We should go back to camp, I say. He nods again. You should go back to camp, he says.