17th June 19 - Presents

I am walking along a canyon, dusty orange stone around me, warm clear blue sky creating a nice contrast. I have several friends with me (J&H&Bu&Du), and we're talking about the plans for the holiday we are about to go on.

We continue walking and talking until we get to J's parents house, which is just an open part of the canyon somehow. Almost as if to prove that this is their house, his dad wanders by in a pair of speedos. The others start playing a game I am unfamiliar with; they're throwing a knobbly black ball down through a square cut hole in the floor, and whoever is below is trying to bounce it back up by hitting the floor.

I stay up top and watch the game only for my Nan to appear. She has been dead for a year but here she is and she's bringing presents, which I feel I should have remembered was happening somehow.

I open the first. It's flat and bendy, it turns out it is a Digimon video game on some sort of tablet that moves and feels like hard cloth. Underneath is another of the strange tablets, this time with a Lego video game on. The tablets are bright blue and feel like they are made from the same plastic weave of an IKEA bag.

I am genuinely pleased with those, I feel like I really underestimated my Nan, but there are more presents to go. One is a steering wheel for the PC (I have one of those already, whoops), and the last of another game, this one about university.

I'm genuinely pleased with this university game too, and my Nan requests to see it. I set it up and start going through the starter menus. Which uni do I pick? Well if it's a first game, clearly an easy one, which means getting rid of my first two choices of Cardiff and somewhere else. I settle on a university and start playing.

I'm in a long corridor in what feels like an old fashioned representation of a university. There are lockers all along one wall, and on the other wall are a row of empty divided spaces. The spaces remind me of the dog spaces you are allocated at a dog show, just enough room for a crate/cage. I feel like these are the allocated living spaces, though I'm not quite sure how that could be.

I'm gaining points just stood here, just being in university is enough to count as working and studying, but I'm aware my points are going down every so often and I'm not sure why. I decide to look around and walk along the corridor to the bathroom. I am looking for secrets, or some sort of message I say to my Nan, the bathroom or shower stalls will have them, I'm sure.

The bathroom complex is vast and non gender specific. There aren't many people around, but I do see a few ladies showering, and a few men heading to and fro the urinals nearby. I hastily move on until I find a shower stall with a door. I head inside and find no graffiti or messages anywhere. I'm definitely expecting something though, so I stay and eventually someone walks up to the door and knocks (da, da da da, da... da da), before chuckling (in a man's voice) before walking away.

I decide to leave the bathroom area, and head back to the place I started. There's a man and a girl there waiting for me. The man is tall, dark skin, fluffy black hair, he seems like staff. The girl is short, blonde hair tied in a bun, with striking eyeliner. She reminds me of Veruca from Buffy. She seems like a student, maybe 19, 20, which is shortly confirmed.

The man says that to prevent my points from going down I would need to attend lectures periodically, and that the unnamed girl would show me the ropes. He leaves us to it, and the girl who's name I never hear nor do I ever ask, doesn't really give me much in the way of any signals as to what we should do next.

We walk and take in the uni. As stated earlier, it seems old or old fashioned. Cold tiled floors, yellow stone pillars everywhere, tall cold ceilings, lacquered brick walls. It's starting to get quite busy now, with students going from place to place, others milling and chatting.

I come across a group of huddled students, one of them getting the focus of attention. It's a friend of mine (Is), and he's interaction with four floating screens. Moving his hands over them is producing various musical notes, and I recognise them quickly as being piano - he's using these screens to learn piano somehow quicker than normal.

I don't get to learn anything about the process at all as a large posee of older adults appears. I think they are staff. They are all wearing bland suits, apart from the leader, who is wearing what appears to be a tie-dye coloured suit. It's Lee Mack and he doesn't look happy. Whatever Is is doing is presumably not allowed here, and the mob looms close, poised to act.

I woke up.