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2017, 12-15

The Dark Tower – Riddle Me This

I am on board Blaine the monorail. I look around and see that Roland, Eddie, Susanna, and Jake are here. I wonder where MoSh is? It seems like I haven’t seen him around lately. Now Roland is insulting Blaine. He is saying how rude he could be if Blaine was not a mere gadget. He says he could call Blaine a sucker of cocks if he had a mouth. The others are just shocked at this, but I think I might laugh. I stifle my laughter, thinking this might not be the best course of action. Roland and Blaine go back-and-forth for a bit, calling each other rude and stupid, but then they finally come to an agreement. If we can stump Blaine with a riddle, then he has to stop at the end of the track and let us off. If not, he’s just going to slam into the end and turn everyone inside of him into paste. I figured this shouldn’t be a problem for getting everyone off. But it would be best to stall so that we can get the ride across the wastelands. Roland then asks Blaine to leave while we consult with each other. Blaine agrees, and screen at the front of the room turns red.

Roland lays out a plan for how we are going to do this. Roland says we need to judge how good Blaine is at riddling, and we will each tell one riddle. Susanna first, then Jake, then me, then Roland, and Eddie will go last. After we have chosen riddles, Roland touches the screen at the front of the room to indicate to Blaine that we are ready. Blaine seems more than happy to get going on the contest. Susanna tells a very simple riddle that Blaine seems annoyed by. What has four wheels and flies? Blaine response that it is the village garbage wagon. He says if we have no better riddles than that he will regret saving our lives for even a short time. I also can’t help but notice that he hesitates slightly before giving the answer to this riddle in spite of how easy he says it is. Roland then tells a riddle, which Blaine sends the answer back immediately. No hesitation. It is my turn now. Alive without breath, as cold as death, all in mail never clinking, never thirsty ever drinking. Blaine’s answer is immediate. A fish. Jake tells a riddle, and finally Eddie. What is no sooner spoken than broken? Silence.

Blaine is just starting to say something when a sliding door at the back of the compartment opens. Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series walks in. We all do a double take. She says this does not look like the Hogwarts Express. I tell her it isn’t. I tell her I can get her back, however. Blaine insists no one is going to leave unless he says so. I ask Hermione if she has a riddle to tell the train? She asks why she would tell a riddle to a train? I tell her the train is an artificial intelligence, and it likes riddles. We are in a riddling contest. Hermine he said she’s heard of artificial intelligence, but never seen one. I tell her now she has. Hermione tells a riddle. First think of a person who lives in disguise, who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies. Next tell me what's always the last thing to mend, the middle of middle, the end of end? And finally give me the sound often heard during the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together and answer me this, what creature would you be unwilling to kiss? Blaine comes back with an answer immediately. He does concede that that one is very interesting, however, saying that it’s four riddles wrapped up in one. Hermione still wants to know where we are? Eddie just says she came through the wrong door. Blaine says he hopes we learned something useful. He asks if we need more time to consult? Roland says yes. The screen turns red.

Hermione goes to the door she came through, but it closed after she entered. There’s no way to open it from this side. Hermione he doesn’t understand how this is possible. Roland says she must be one of our ka-tet. We decide that Roland will tell riddles to Blaine on his own for a while. He touches the screened indicate he is ready to continue. We ride on while Susanna, Jake, and Hermione try to figure out how to open the door. Eddie seems to have zoned off into some other world inside his mind. Roland cranks out the riddles, and Blaine cranks out answers. I go over and talk to Hermione. I ask if anything strange happened before she came in? She says no, she had just been helping Neville look for his missing toad. She had been opening the door at one of the compartments, but instead of walking into a passenger compartment she walked into here. She hadn’t intended to step into the room, but the train had bumped and sent her stumbling forward. I tell her I will get her back to the Hogwarts Express. Susanna mutters that I am assuming we get out of this alive. Hermione asked what she means by that. Susanna did not mean to say that, and she looks regretful. Hermione at this point is 11 years old, and I don’t think Susanna intended to burden her with the full truth. But now it’s too late, it’s either the truth or lie. Susanna tells Hermione that Blaine is malfunctioning. And if we don’t stump it with a riddle before we reach Topeka, it’s going to run itself off the track and kill us all.

This continues for a while, until Blaine says we’re running out of time. I noticed Eddie still seems zoned into another dimension. After Roland runs out of riddles, Jake tell some from his book. Blaine solves all of those very easily as well. Then I tell if riddles that I remember. Blaine answers all of those as well. Even a couple that I thought might have been rather secure in their dimension. Hermione even has a few riddles. Blaine is apparently not fooled by riddles from the Harry Potter world. It seems that we are now out of riddles. Blaine asks everyone here once more if we have any riddles? He asks Roland of Gilead, Oy of Midworld, Jake New York, Susanna of New York, Raven Outworld, and Hermione of Outworld. The only one he conspicuously skips is Eddie. And yet it is Eddie that speaks up and says he has a few riddles to pass the time.

Eddie hesitates for a bit, and then asks the same riddle we started with. What has four wheels and flies? Blaine is clearly annoyed. He says that Eddie is too stupid to even remember that one has already been told. It’s the village garbage wagon. And yet, in spite of the fact that this riddle has already been told, Blaine gives off the slightest pause before answering. Eddie asks Blaine another one. A big moron and a little moron walk out onto a bridge. The big moron falls off. Why didn’t the little moron fall off? There are some strange clicking noises, and then Blaine starts bitching. He whines that is not a proper riddle and says he will not answer. Roland says if Blaine refuses to answer, he has lost the contest. Roland asks if this means Blaine cries off? Blaine says no. He seems to stammer a bit, and then says the little moron didn’t fall off because he was a little more on. He says he feels soiled from answering that riddle. Eddie rubs his finger and his thumb together, and when Blaine asks, Eddie says that is the world’s smallest violin, playing My Heart Pumps Purple Piss For You. This goes on for a bit longer. Lights in the room are flashing, the walls are not staying opaque, and I think Eddie may have broken Blaine’s brain. Voice of little Blaine keeps telling Eddie to stop, says that he’s killing Blaine, but what exactly was Blaine trying to do to everyone on board? So Eddie keeps telling his bad riddles, why did the dead baby cross the road? Because it was stapled the chicken.

Finally it seems the Blaine circuits have completely shorted out. The walls become permanently opaque, the lights go dim except for some emergency lights, and the train is now just coasting forward. We are going to crash. Everyone gathers at the back of the room, and I create a stasis bubble around all of us. So when we crash, in spite of things flying around the room in disarray, no one is hurt. The door that Hermione entered through is even forced open. We force it open the rest the way, and I see the Hogwarts express on the other side. Hermione goes quickly through, and then something collapses blocking the way. A ladder drops down from an escape patch in the ceiling. I am figuring we are all going to go through it, but instead I wake up.

We were at this big party, and Emma Watson was there. It wasn't like a huge Hollywood party, it was more like a large family reunion, so people weren't lining up to get her autographs but rather going up and talking to her ever so often, and she always had people asking her questions and talking to her. Anyways, it was outside, and it kind of looked like it was by the baseball fields at Marrymore Park underneath some trees. But there was a giant swampy river running next to us. At one point, Emma and I were looking at something on a computer together at the same time, and talking about it. My mom and my stepdad and some of my stepdad's relatives were sitting around us, and my mom said something really stupid and embarrassing and Emma obviously heard it. I responded "No, Mom…" and then mumbled "Jesus Christ…" which offended my stepdad, and he said something to me, but I don't remember what it was. Emma chuckled and got distracted by something and stood up and walked away towards some other people. I wanted to say something like, "Don't go" or "come back" but I didn't want her to think I was too excited that she was there.

At one point, everyone at the party was listening to this very gothic, symphonic metal band, which had something like 3 female voices singing the verses at the same time (which now that I think about it, is an interesting idea…). The certain song they were listening to seemed like a normal gothic-ish, symphonic metal song with normal gothic lyrics, except all of a sudden, the lyrics mentioned the exact name of my band (which is a pretty unusual name) and people immediately turned to me and said "Ooh they dissed your band" or something along those lines. Emma had heard all the commotion about this, and I saw her smile and let out a little polite chuckle. I asked some guy to turn the song back to the part where they sang the name of my band, and listened to it again. I heard my band's name again but I could make out what context they were putting it in. I was very annoyed and so I posted got my phone and posted a link to my band's Facebook or soundcloud or something, so people could actually hear us and see how much better we are than this stupid band who mentioned us. 3 people commented on it, and out of those 3 comments, Emma Watson had left a comment that said something like "2 years studio? " which I perceived to mean that she wanted to take guitar lessons from me for 2 years/wanted me to record the guitar on her next 2 CD's in the studio for 2 years/was going to pay for me to record my CD in a professional studio for the next 2 years. I think I might have looked up and seen her across the room smiling at me or something, or maybe that is just what I had imagined when I saw the smiley face in her comment.

I don't remember how this next part happened, because I can't remember how we got into the situation but; at one point, I was down in this giant cellar or something and I had to get out. All of a sudden I saw this brown cup, filled with some water, which was tilted at a 45 degree angle. I heard this voice saying "Go into the cup" or "remember the cup" or something, so I put my face into the cup. The next thing I know, I'm in a room with Emma Watson kneeling down holding the brown cup and I'm standing next to her. The room was designed like the very back of a cargo plane, where they place stuff to drop out of the plane when flying. We kind of just looked at each other for a second, and then I woke up. I think.

07/10/10

I'm an employee at a convenience store or pharmacy. I have to restock the book section; there are fewer books on the shelves every time I look back at them.

I grab a box from the back and open it up in the comics aisle. It occurs to me that I have no idea what went where, or even which books were out here to begin with. Rather than call my boss over such a trivial matter, I happily start arranging my own favorites on the shelf.

Oddly, the comic books seem to be about 15x15 inches across, and the shelves are sized to fit them. Even in the dream, I think this seems a little off.

Later, I find out that Quickton has enacted a new law: hair colour has been declared illegal. I immediately dye my hair blue.

---

I'm at a lake. A girl dares me to swim under the dock and pick up a pebble she just dropped in. I jump into the water. Beneath the surface, it's perfectly clear, and I look around, exploring the caves and crevices that make up this underwater world. Finally, I grab the odd-coloured stone - it's pink or purple - and head back to the surface.

Standing with a group of people in the woods, I watch Dumbledore give a speech about a competition that's going to happen. It's similar to the Triwizard Tournament from the fourth book, but more people are involved. Each of the houses gets representation, and there are a whole bunch of different areas - including chess tournaments - that not everyone will be competing in. Furthermore, you can be selected to represent a house that you're not a part of.

I'm Harry Potter, and obviously, I'm in Gryffindor. I already know how the rest of the dream is going to turn out, though; I'm going to be chosen for Slytherin. There's no other possible outcome.

I observe Hermione freaking out over something, but I'm feeling very calm and cold, and so I leave her be. I'm much more interested in the competition.

Later, as myself, I talk to a family friend at the campground I spent most of my summers in. It's windy, and she's worried about their tents flying away. I tell her that the storm is about to get a lot worse. I know this because I'm from the future.

"Are you absolutely sure?"

"As long as I don't step on any butterflies."

Butterflies. Scare Factor: 1.

ETA: I took this as a sign that I should die my hair blue today. So I did.

I'm Harry Potter, in what's sort of a pre-2005 video game environment. We've shifted into a circular hall in some sort of grand manor - an inheritance from my family. I've been using it as a base, as I'm on the run from a million and one different organizations. The hall runs in a circle, and the inner doors are decorated by massive arches that jut out from the stone walls.

I meet with my friends on the second floor, outlining a plan to get back at our opponents.

I choose Hermione from a list of avatars and I'm jumping around on the landings above the doors.

shift, and I'm at my childhood elementary school, looking up at the big brick building and vaulting over dark blue fences. I know that I'm dreaming. The entranceway is one story tall, an impossible leap. I'm concerned that I won't be able to make it, as I've been having trouble defying gravity lately. However, I call up the will, and effortlessly make the jump onto the roof. When I land, I can still feel the upward momentum. I feel like I should be floating, but I have both feet on the ground.

Back to being Harry, as a child, I talk to a woman who's coming out of a house. The entrance is lit up brightly behind her, and everything is blurry. The house is where a clump of bushes should be. I talk to her, and she invites me in. I think she's Lily.

Zoom out to view a fleet of battleships approaching Earth.

Gravity. Scare Factor: 2.