In A Dream World

The Museum

In Saskatoon there is a museum to celebrate the early growth of the city, and inside there is a main street lined with cars and small buildings, a pharmacy, a schoolhouse, and even a little smithy known to host blacksmithing demonstrations every now and then. If you venture deeper you'll find trains and tractors and other such things, some buggies, a kitchen, and an old violin hanging in a glass case. But if you visit the version my mind remembers at midnight - when stories like skyscrapers are built from mere threads of reality - you could venture still deeper and find a dark labyrinth of skywalks and starways, all hanging above a dark and severely radioactive floor. 

The day was happy enough when I found myself and two comrades inside that dark labyrinth, though from inside you would see nothing of either day or night. There we were, wandering along those skywalks, observing the dark floor below and slowly working our way down to it one stairway at a time, when it became apparent we were not strictly alone in this vast room. As it turned out, a small collection of live dinosaurs had found their way in, and were also meandering the walks. There were some smaller ones, roughly the size of a large dog, some closer to that of a cow, some herbivores, and even a few raptors. Naturally, that last one scared all of us considerably, and the raptors were no more friendly than the movies would have us believe, though clearly much slower, as we managed to outrun them well enough to lose them completely. So it was for the better part of the day, seeing a group of dinosaurs, realizing half of them wanted to eat us, and running away. Just as we had gotten within 10 feet of the bottom floor, we spotted on that floor a large T-rex eyeing us up for a snack, and quickly made our way back to higher ground where we were out of reach. 

Finally, after many encounters with many groups of dinosaurs, we made our way down the last stairway. At the bottom, roughly two feet off the floor, was a small landing, before another two stairs met up with the blackness. On this landing stood an old man, and next to him sat a pair of very black, very sparkly rubber boots. The man explained to us that the floor below us was incredibly radioactive, and if we touched it, we would die immediately. The boots, however, were of some magical quality that would protect the wearer completely from the radiation, and thus why they were set on this landing so near to the floor. Now, there were three of us, but only one set of boots, so we decided to each take a turn exploring the deadly floor with the boots, with a giddiness not unlike what one might expect if you suddenly found yourself able to fly if you are only to wear a certain hat. Nevertheless, there is only so much fun to be had when you know there are two others behind you eagerly awaiting their turn, so before long we set the boots aside, said goodbye to the old man, and returned up the stairs to find our way out. 

The way out was clearly not nearly as complicated as the way down, because before I knew it, I was back in the normal areas of the museum, walking down main street towards the exit. It soon became clear that my entourage had gotten lost in the crowd, but by this point that did not concern me, as we were beyond any danger. So onward I walked, when suddenly on the side of the street I spotted a bright green Honda Fit, quite out of place in this world of old things. I walked over to investigate, and was immediately hit with a sales pitch. As it turned out, this car was for sale. Being that it was a much nicer car than what I currently owned, I thought it prudent to inquire of the price, which I was told to be five-thousand dollars. This was beyond my budget by a margin of two-thousand at least, but the man insisted that his price was firm. I was just about to walk away when my uncle, who himself is in no great financial state, walked by and offered to buy the car for me outright. Naturally, knowing something of his finances, I tried to persuade him otherwise, but he would not be refused, and before I could properly deny him his offer, I was the owner of a shiny new car. Feeling both a little excited and a little guilty, I attempted to enter the car. At that moment, by some miracle or magic that I shall never hope to know, the majority of the car transformed at once into a bed. The bedframe maintained the green colour, and a somewhat car-like appearance, but the car was now a bed. At first I was only slightly deterred by this development, but soon discovered that the mattress was very much in the way of the steering wheel. This irked me considerably, but just as I was about to voice my frustration, I opened my eyes and found myself in a dark room, laying in a real bed not made from cars, and very much more grounded in reality that 10 seconds earlier. It was all, of course, a dream.