Dream CXXXIV

I was working as a tourist in an unbelievably vast megalopolis, where the buildings stretched for hundreds of stories into a gray, overcast sky.  I was writing the adventures of a comic book character, a vampire version of Spider-Man.  In his latest adventure, he was waiting for the vampire version of Superman to show up.

For authenticity's sake, I had to write these stories while around two hundred stories up, near the top of the buildings in this area of the city.  I knew it would be time to return to the ground level soon, so I started back down to where the bus would arrive.

A light snow had fallen, coating everything with a soft, ash-like layer.  Before the bus arrived, I noticed that my chair from the bus was outside, so I would have to install it when the bus arrived, but I was too cold to retrieve it.  When the bus pulled up to the stop, I told the bus driver that I would stand for the return journey.

A friend of mine called me over, and said that I could share her chair.  We curled up together and slept on the way back.

Sometime later, we had apparently arrived where the bus needed to take us--neither of our respective homes, but another work place.  She and I were writing other comic book characters, this time in an elevator shaft several hundred stories up--somewhere in the mid- to upper teens.  Both of us simultaneously dropped the books we were using for reference and they hurled on down the shaft, descending to a rather frightening depth, silently.

Although the books didn't contain any secrets, and could be replaced, we knew it would be expensive and the publishers would be unhappy, so we started clambering down the stairs adjacent to the elevator shaft to retrieve them.

Every now and then, the shaft would turn at an oblique angle, so that in order to climb down using the hand-holds, we had to press ourselves very tightly against the side we were climbing down; if our feet slipped, we'd be left dangling over the shaft.

Eventually we reached the bottom, and saw that the books had fallen through a vent and were another couple of stories beneath our feet.  Fortunately there was a maintenance man nearby, tending a small group of children.  We asked him if he could retrieve our books and with a sigh, he agreed he would.

As he went down to get them, he scowled slightly at us and muttered things we couldn't quite make out, but assumed were complaints.  We both apologized profusely, and as he brought up our books he gave us a slight smile and we knew he wasn't really mad at us.

Later, in a lobby of some kind, she and I somehow got completely drunk and were laughing about our writing jobs.  Pointing at a schematic of the elevator shaft, I said, "I can't write this character, he's too high," and we both collapsed into giggles, thinking of marijuana humor.

I pointed at level 893 and said, "Now, if this character was here, you'd say, 'Wow, that guy is really high,'" and we giggled again.  Then I pointed at level 1800, near where we had been, and said, "Well, he's just gotten much higher."  More giggling ensued.

Then I pointed even further up, somewhere in the levels so far above that the numbering itself was vague, and I said, "Well, I can't write this guy now, he's too high," and we giggled again, before a dark cloud of insight settled over us both, and we instantly sobered up.

It was indeed, too high.  So high that nothing could be known about the area.  How had we managed to create and write stories when we were up there?  Why had we only written them in the elevator shaft, and never gone out onto one of the floors?

We sat down at a marble table in the lobby, lost in our own thoughts.  She seemed more disturbed than I, so I touched her hand and said, "Don't worry too much about it.  We wrote best-sellers!"