CTHB

The earliest scene that I can remember involved something about a chase through an underground cavern. It was an artificial cavern under New York City, between the subway and the surface, but it looked far larger than it could have been realistically. It looked a lot like the scene in Fellowship of the Ring when the fellowship was running through the great hall in the Moria. The only difference was there were six of them and they looked a lot like the main characters of Friends and they were all in formal evening attire. They were running away from the impending collapse of the cavern floor, right down to having to swing on a cable to reach the other side of an abyss, with one of the tuxedoes people almost falling in. They were pursued, Gollum-like, by someone that looked like a coworker.

Surfacing, I was now running up a ramp that looked a lot like one outside a sports arena, following the Gollum figure, who had somehow morphed to look like one of the people being pursued, which still looked like my coworker somehow, but now looking more normal, rather than Bride of Frankenstein style. I confronted her and came away worse for it. She continued stalking the Friends. I ended up going to a deli.

The deli was on the southern edge of Times Square, except it didn't look like any Times Square we know of. It was somehow now in the 1950's, though I was sure that I'd been in the deli years later, maybe in the 90's. The deli was the one I worked in when I was in high school (except it had a U-shaped counter) and they were just starting to make their original variety of Montreal-style smoked meat--try it at the Budapest Deli in the Byward Market if you're ever in Ottawa. I was somehow aware that I was time traveling and so I was making stupid "prophecies" for the owner... who was played by Tim Curry. I even called him Tim at one point.

At one point, I convinced the counter jockey to comp me a danish--I'll note that the original deli never sold pastries--and all Hell broke loose. There was some kind of announcement that police were called and it seemed like some kind of big thing about this being a police state. The reason for the call was that something had been stolen from the deli. It took awhile for the counter jockey to sheepishly admit that he'd comped me a danish and Tim Curry nodded with understanding. Saying, "We don't give anything out for free," he made me pay for the danish and then ran off to call off the police.

As I was paying for the danish, the lady behind register looked at me funny and thought she knew me. It was a strange interchange between time traveler and someone with reverse deja vu or premonition. I made references to the fact that she would know me in twenty years, said something about an "M Hotel" (a play on W hotels?) that didn't exist but I knew would be visible over her left shoulder in the future. For some reason, she knew that I used to (or will) frequent the place with a regular group of friends, of which she could only name Soo Sun.

While paying for the danish, I was interrupted at one point by a pre-teen girl who asked, "Do you remember me? It's Carolyn." Or Charlotte, I don't remember. I suppose she could have looked like a pre-teen version of a Carolyn I knew back in my sophomore year of college. Truth be told, I had been trying to track her down a few months ago, with no success. I brushed her off with a "not now" gesture and finished my conversation with the cashier.

Stepping outside, my point of view changed. I could see me walking away from the deli and then cut over to a scene where there was a tornado in its infancy. All of a sudden, we were in tornado alley. I saw Carolyn again, sitting in a movie theatre. Everyone else in the theatre was also a pre-teen and wearing white shirts. Watched them all duck down like dominoes, row by row, leaving just Carolyn still seated normally and watching the movie, as if unaware of some particular protocol for an incoming tornado. There was also a middle aged man somewhere else in the theatre doing the same thing. I looked a lot like the casino demolition scene in Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven.

Never saw if it hit, because it was then that I jumped to some final confrontation scene where Tom Hanks was playing a character facing off against something Terminator-like, holding a woman hostage, while all wearing something that looked like World War II combat fatigues. Tom Hanks had some kind of special gun hidden inside a plastic flower watering thing. It was red. The Terminator thing ridiculed him for it. They shot at each other and, while Tom Hanks hit the Terminator, it was ineffective. Tom Hanks took a shot to the thigh and went down.

Then I woke up and discovered that I had overslept to the point where I couldn't go to my Bagua class. I suppose I could still go to Vegas to visit Chris and Sarah to salvage the weekend.