Marshall, Will and Holly
 		On a routine expedition
		Met the greatest earthquake ever known
		High on the rapids
		It struck their tiny raft
		And plunged them down a thousand feet below....

	The weather wasn’t just right for a picnic, but they went anyway.
Almost three complete families, two married couples, one about to be, and a
number of stragglers.  In the raft, though, there was only John Chain, his
brother Rob, Mike Shoe, and Jay Yawn.  The four of them had volunteered 
for its maiden voyage on the small lake that ran along the shore where the
party had settled.  It was that, or walk all the way back from the dock with
a life vest on.  The struggle that they had gone through putting the five or
six pieces together would’ve made for an interesting joke, were there anyone
left to tell it—between  them were, in order, an engineer, a computer 
programmer, a dentist, and a lawyer—other than maybe a person of Polish 
descent, perhaps.
	It was John’s raft, the product of a recent increase in his 
purchasing power.  The vessel was advertised as being fit for four, but, as 
the crew would soon discover, this was about as realistic as a single pack 
of ramen noodles serving two.  The only thing separating their close 
quarters were generations of social programming.  Much to the distaste of 
their imagination, their seating positions would give witnesses the distinct
impression that theirs were more than mere friendships; the awkward, nearly 
desperate look of their inexperienced rowing wasn't helping any.
	Mike’s knee in his back was no pair of keys in his pocket; Jay 
insisted on turning around, a process which threatened the safety of the 
entire craft.  Sitting lengthwise, legs folded, beside him was John, whose 
frame, also made heftier since the new job, best matched his own 
six-foot-plus dimensions; at both ends were Rob and Mike, whose smaller 
sizes allowed them to fit in the curved spaces.
	“Ah, that’s much better,” he commented, now facing forward like his 
partner on the port side.  “At least I can see where we’re supposed to be 
headed.”
	“I’m doing my best,” claimed Mike from behind him.
	“Try not to row in the opposite direction,” John shrugged.
	“You’re supposed to be our rudder, Mike,” Rob managed before 
taking another splash of in the face.  Fresh water had to be a misnomer, 
he thought.
	“Definitely the Gilligan of our operation, that’s for sure,” Jay 
sneered.  “I say we kill him now before we get stranded on some uncharted 
desert isle.  Come on, who’s with me?  There’ll be no witnesses.”
	Truth to be told, their incompetence was shared by all.  No member 
of this team would be asked to join an Olympic sculling squad, much less 
the guys from Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown.  Their unskilled, wholly 
uncoordinated efforts were resulting in a motion not at all unlike Gamera 
the flying turtle.
	“I think I see it!” Rob shouted from the front.
	“What, the alligator?!”  Mike yelped.
	“No, the kite.  One of the kites.”
	As late arrivals, John and Jay knew nothing of either escapade.  
The kites were dollar-apiece items emblazoned with images of dated movie 
characters that event organizer Ron had brought as the kind of activity that
he didn’t want to be embarrassed doing alone.  They flew about as far as 
they would have been expected to that windless day, which was, of course, 
straight into the water.  Still, the scene of grown men running as fast as 
their unathletic bodies would allow, laughing all the way, in order to 
launch into the sky what might as well have been plastic grocery bags, was 
one that John certainly had hoped to attend, if not to offer his expertise 
on the subject of aerodynamics, then to capture on videotape; Jay, a 
college Psychology major, instead felt for the emotional well-being of the 
children present.
	“It looks like it’s the Batman one!”
	Mike sighed in relief and let loose his grip on his oar.  He had 
seen with his own eyes the creature that stalked these very waters, a 
monstrous beast whose measurements they had estimated at least the length of
the raft itself when it surfaced its enormous head earlier that morning.
John mentioned a similar run-in at a nearby state park, as he never fails.
Jay scoffed at them all, questioning why, then, they would brave this 
journey to begin with, when the possibility of never making it back was so
real.  Now, as they paddled further from dry land, even as slowly as it was
taking, he was beginning to wonder the same.
	The kite lay amidst a patch of floating plants.  Rob called out 
directions as if they could actually be carried out.
	“Just a little bit further!  I can almost reach it--!”
	“Use your oar!”
	“Of course I am!  I’m not losing my arm to no alligator!”
	Within time, the four independent motors worked as one—though the 
better description might be that one was left to do the work—and pulled 
them into range.
	“I got it!”  The small crowd that had gathered on the bank cheered 
as Rob hauled the tattered piece of mylar aboard.  He held it above his head
to show his wife.  “One down, three to go,” he remarked.
	These others they had lost track of, but as good a guess as any was 
the tree.  There, poking out from the middle of the lake was a cluster of 
barren branches.  The wood looked long petrified, and as the raft approached 
the area, the sun went out, making for quite an eerie change of scenery.
The water had strangely calmed.  Even the conversation died down.
	“I don’t see anything.  Let’s head back.”
	The raft began moving remarkably fast in reverse.  Both Jay and John
lifted their oars and couldn't believe that they weren’t contributing.  They
turned to see what had gotten into Mike.
	It was the fear of God.
	Behind him was a giant waterfall.
	And he was behind them.  The way Mike had been rowing, that was 
enough to put the fear of God into them, too.  (The process repeated with 
Rob a split second afterwards.)
	“Where did that come from?!” someone shrieked; a worthy inquiry, 
actually, since it did seem to appear from ground that they’d only just 
traversed—in fact, with their seamanship, they had covered most of the lake 
in their attempt to get to the first kite—and hadn’t before noticed the 
precipice, something, given its rather frightening implications, they 
probably would have.
	“Help!” they yelled in unison; a futile act, really, since their 
friends and loved ones had since grown tired of their celebration over the 
successful salvage of the Batman kite and proceeded to the picnic table to 
start eating.  The sound of their cries, like the very raft itself, wasn’t 
escaping the pull of the waterfall.
	With all the might of a slave-driven galley, they fought it, but for
naught.  Ideas of leaping over and taking their chances alone, about as 
hopeful as that last sentence, were dashed as the ride instantly became 
white water rapid-like and forced the four of them to hang on for dear life 
as they flew over the edge.  Rob thought of Angie, the family they would 
never have, and suddenly realized how to defeat the last boss in the 
videogame he'd been playing all week.  Mike took the opportunity to blame 
his predicament upon his ex-girlfriend and cursed for not having gotten back
at her before his impending demise.  John regretted not having gotten more 
out of life and was doing his best to remember to get into sports in his 
next.  Jay recalled his debates with National Rollercoaster 
Association-member John over the banality of his controlled thrill-seeking, 
and let his final thoughts be, he had better be enjoying this one.
	The depths were bathed in an unearthly light.

	They emerged on still water, drifting away from the bottom of a 
waterfall—an entirely different one.  This they could tell because that one 
there looked only twenty or thirty feet in height, not nearly enough to have
thrown them the distance they fell.  If not for that, then the two moons in 
the sky above it ought to have persuaded them that this was not the park.  
Oh, and the two tyrannosaurs roaring at them on both sides of the lake 
must’ve been the clincher.  The thing in the mouth of one, which looked like
a piece of beef jerky, faintly resembled an alligator.
	As tired as their arms were from all the paddling they’d done in the
past hour, and were continuing to do as they strove to get as far downstream
away from the ravenous monsters as they could, their screaming voices were 
even more so.
	Finally, after turning off at a smaller tributary, they reached a 
cul-de-sac of sorts (so entrenched in suburbia was their vocabulary), a pond
surrounded by rocky formations which prevented the terrible lizard on their 
right from pursuing them any further as well.  A natural embankment served 
as a landing for the weathered raft.
	Jay, neither the oldest nor the boldest, but, by reason of certain 
unusual dress practices during high school, the one best suited to comment 
on the situation, was the first to speak:
	“If I kept a journal, I’d write the following amazing things that 
happened today: (1) decided to go rafting with the three of you; (2) fell 
through a space/time warp into a different dimension where I was chased by 
the largest man-eaters in history; and (3) heard John swear—and man, did he 
ever swear!”  He was still swearing.
	“So you think we did, you know, drop into another world?”
	“What else could it be?  Two Chain brothers, two moons, two 
prehistoric carnivores—a Doublemint commercial?”
	“We might have died, and gone to Heaven.  Or," as a squawking flock 
of pterodactyl flew overhead, “the other place,” Rob shuddered.
	“This is it—Hell!  We’re screwed!”  Mike was ranting, stomping his 
feet.
	“Would you shut up?" Jay barked.  “Stuck in another universe, and 
you’re still wondering whether or not to go to church!  What a weiner!”
	“Yeah, where’re the guys with the pointed ears and pitchforks?”
	“And don’t forget the cookies and refrigerators without any milk.”
	“Besides, do you remember dying anywhere?”
	“There was the waterfall….”
	“Right, God’s in the habit of luring sinners onto crowded rafts in 
the middle of lakes and swallowing them up like that.”
	“This could all be just be a dream.  Jay might have hit my head 
during that masterful stroke of his, and knocked me out cold.”
	“Well, here, let me take another whack at you to wake you up.”
	“If this is a dream, why are the rest of us here?”
	“Maybe he hit all of us.”
	“Look, if this were a dream, we couldn't do this…” he paused to let 
about five minutes pass, “…could we?  I mean, since when do you just sit 
there, soaking up sun in your dreams?”
	“Then again, this is Mike we’re talking about.  He doesn’t even 
chase after women in his.”
	“There’s got to be a rational, scientific explanation for this,” 
said John.
	“Problem is, the only ones we can think of are from Star Trek.”
	“So how do we get back, try and re-create the exact same conditions 
like they’re always doing?”
	“Sure, if we had a nuclear-powered DeLorean or something, but all we 
got is a raft.”
	“John, you’re the engineer: take our car alarm remotes and make us a
stargate.”
	“Let’s go over the waterfall again; that might be the doorway 
leading home.”
	“How do you propose we get around the T. Rex twins?  Are we supposed
to fight them off with our oars?”
	“They’d use them for toothpicks.  After feeding on us, of course.”
	“You’re concerned about their dental hygiene?”
	Rob stood up and peered around.
	“Hey, there’s a cave up there!”
	Jay and John rose to see.  Mike stayed put.
	“I ain’t going.  Who knows what’ll come outta there—a giant 
tarantula?”
	“Okay, you watch the raft.  Try and tie it down.  Use the string 
from the kite.”
	Armed with their oars, then, the four of them (Mike having abruptly 
joined the others after seeing a trout which he thought was a minnow) 
proceeded to hop, skip, and jump there way up from the water to the small 
opening in the side of the cliff above.  From the clearing directly in front
of it, they could survey much of the area, including the course they had 
taken from the waterfall, as well as the tyrannosaurs that had greeted them 
upon their arrival.  The forest extended for as far as they could make out, 
in some places not as thick as others, with mountains in the distance.
	“Nice view.”
	“Be sure to keep that in mind when you look at the other units.”
	Only the first few feet inside the cavern were visible in the 
sunlight; the rest was left to them.  They probed the interior with a few 
hollers and pebbles until satisfied that it was empty.  Once accustomed to 
the darkness, were able to discern the rough dimensions of the space, about 
twelve feet by twenty, a foot higher than Jay in most places, more or less 
the size of the living room of John’s old apartment back in college.  At 
least there wasn’t the same smell of stir-fry cooking from the kitchen.
	“No cable?!  How am I supposed to keep up with all that great Turner 
programming?”
	“I call that corner.”
	“Take it; it’s yours.”
	The group reconvened shortly outside.
	“So, how long do you think we’ll be here?” Mike asked.
	“A few hours, a few days,” replied Jay, then, directing everyone’s 
attention to the tyrannosaur between them and the waterfall, “I forget: how 
long did those things live, seventy million years, was it?”
	“Great.  By that time the mortgage on my house ought to be paid off,”
chuckled Rob.
	“That’s assuming we last that long,” Jay added.
	“What are we supposed to eat?” Mike posed.  “Anyone just happen to 
bring enough food for the next few years?”
	“I meant for the next few days.”
	John, whose part in the conversation had so far comprised mostly of 
the same “uh-huh” he managed during intervals whenever his companions were 
talking his ear off on a hundred-mile drive home, said amen to that:
	“We’re doomed.”

	Thankfully, the nights weren’t as cold as they expected from the 
balmy day before it, because the four college graduates hadn’t been able to 
invent fire.  Rubbing two twigs together wasn’t nearly as productive as it 
was in cartoons, and using John’s glasses as magnifying lenses wasn’t an 
option once the sun went down (not that it was a viable one to begin with).
The next morning, suffering from stiff backs, hungry stomachs, and Sunday
night television withdrawal, they awoke to find the tyrannosaurs out of sight,
and decided to make a run for it.
	They guessed, and correctly so, that they could make much faster 
progress carrying the raft rather than rowing it, and followed the lake (a 
convenient path in otherwise wild and woody terrain had been laid for them 
by one behemoth) to the waterfall where they had first appeared.  An easy 
climb up the stepped side, and they were ready to retrace their journey, 
with the hope that it would return them home.
	Fifty yards or so upstream from the drop, they set the raft in the 
water and sloppily squeezed aboard as the current quickly carried them away.
	“Let’s head directly for the center!” Rob shouted, again in front.
	“Put up a fight, like we did yesterday!”
	“And this time, don’t try so hard to win,” Jay let out, before 
joining the group howl as they went over the edge.
	This time, however, there was no blinding light; only a hard thud, 
a loud splash, a mouthful of water, and the same sickly-sweet odor of the 
jungle as they beached the raft just to the side of touchdown.
	“Please don’t tell me we have to do that again.  It seemed worse the 
second time, didn’t it?”
	“We must’ve done something wrong... our arms not in the same 
position or something,” Rob pressed.
	“No, they were in the air, all right,” Jay remarked, spitting.  
“I bet Mike’s prayer went verbatim.”
	“And your girlish scream had the same high pitch.”
	“Could be we weren’t properly oriented,” John offered.
	“No one’s as orient-ed as we are, John.”
	“Great.  It didn’t work.”  Rob freed his keychain from his wet 
pocket and examined the remote.  “And now there’s not even the chance of 
John putting together that stargate for us.”
	To add to their dejection, from the distance came the sound of a 
roar.

	The cave was the ideal spot for them to settle, monster-free as it 
was.  It not only featured a natural port for the raft below, but was also 
positioned high enough to keep track of Betty and Brenda (named, of course, 
after ex-girlfriends), the two tyrannosaurs in the vicinty.  More immediate 
concerns, however, took precedence.
	“What say we round up some grub, folks?”
	“Sure, take my wallet and go buy us some munchies at the convenience 
store around the corner.”
	“They’re popping up everywhere, huh?  First the former Soviet Union, 
now the Land that Time Forgot.”
	“Get me a Slurpee while you’re at it.”
	“I myself could sure go for a brontosaurus burger.”
	“Why don’t we open a chain?  Not like there’s gonna be any 
competition for, say, another fifty million years.”
	“All the time in the world to corner the market.”
	“Just imagine, we could serve only the four of us every year and 
we’d have caught up to McDonald’s by then.”
	“We’ll make sharpen some tree branches with rocks and go 
spear-fishing!” Mike said triumphantly.
	“To think, just the other night I had a microwave burrito,” Jay 
mused.  “Talk about your de-evolution.”
	“Assuming we even catch any fish, how do we cook them, when we can’t 
even get a fire going?” Rob asked.  “Anyone here a sushi chef?”
	“Damn, I don’t even like sushi,” Mike admitted.
	Jay stood up.
	“It looks like it’s a-foraging we will go.  Look for anything 
edible.  If you eat poison and die, take consolation knowing that 
whatever--or whoever--eats you, will, too.”

	Rob led the way brandishing a crude walking-stick--really the only 
way to describe it; as a weapon, its point couldn’t pierce the ear of a punk 
rocker.  Jay followed, occasionally stopping to make note on the backs of 
credit card receipts, which had constituted the bulk of his wallet.  His 
skills as a cartographer were unchallenged from his days of playing computer 
adventure games.  Their route took them to the south, east of their 
campsite, John and Mike having gone the other way.  A nearby garden of roots 
that resembled radishes provided them with some nourishment for their hike.
	Half an hour or so into it, the thicket cleared, as their aerial 
survey had originally suggested, and led to another rocky area, which, like 
the one which they had left, required an ascent.  From the elevation they 
looked back and could see their cave, and, with their superior eyesight, 
their roommates as well.
	“What are they doing back so quick?”
	“Maybe Betty showed up.”
	“Guys in their right mind be running from the likes of her.”  This 
was not the last of jokes in that vein.  Jay patted himself on the back for 
the choice of names.
	“Yo, John!  Mike!”  They were too far to be heard.  Waving proved 
pointless after the two of them disappeared from view, apparently going down 
to the water.
	“Those butt-heads!”  Jay turned to hear what Rob had to call them, 
too, but he had gone further up the hill, and frozen at the top, where he 
called out Jay’s name almost as loudly as Jay had strained his voice to 
reach John and Mike.
	“Gee, and I was expecting the Statue of Liberty,” muttered Jay after 
scrambling to join him.
	In a depression below lay a structure which obviously hadn’t been 
built by dinosaurs, not even really smart ones.  It was a building of some 
sort, the size and shape of a phone booth, made of a smooth, marble-like 
material whose greenish hue clashed with the dull tan of the surrounding 
stone.
	“It must be a time portal!” Rob cried, as the two of them excitedly 
ran towards it.
	There was no entrance.  They examined it all around, and could find 
no marking, no break in the surface, to suggest that it was anything more 
than a very big version of those fancy paperweights available on Pier One 
shelves.  Rob stood directly in front of it, if the side facing the valley 
was indeed the front, and frowned.
	“No way inside, damnit.”
	Jay took his place, after he moved aside to kick some dirt in 
frustration.
	“There’s got to be,” he said, and with that, a door-sized opening 
emerged.
	“Go in!” Rob said.
	“But what if it’s some kind of gas chamber?,” Jay hesitated.  “I 
could step in, and ‘poof!’”
	It closed; rather, the door vanished.
	“Huh?  What happened?”
	“See what you did?  We should’ve gone when we had the chance.”
	Jay thought.  The door reappeared.  An instant later, it disappeared 
again.  “I’ve got it,” he said, pausing to let the rectangular hole restore 
itself.  “You think open, and it opens.  That’s why it didn’t when you were 
in front of it.  You said, ‘no way inside,’ remember?”
	“Okay, whatever.  In you go.”
	They stepped into pitch blackness.  Inside, they could see nothing, 
but felt that it was about as deep as its exterior indicated.  Behind them, 
where they had entered, was also dark, but suddenly came alive when they 
turned to exit.  There was an image, but not that of the rocky hillside they 
had just walked in from.  It was a wooded green.
	“Holy--!  Could that be home?”
	They jumped out, and were nearly crushed by the hind leg of a 
brontosaurus.
	“Er, nope.”
	“Well, here’s that bronto burger you asked for earlier.”
	“I said burger, not the whole freakin’ restaurant.  Let’s get out 
of here.”  They immediately re-entered the identical booth, and spun round 
to see their point of origin.
	“Think home, think home,” Rob stressed.
	It didn’t flicker.
	“Think anywhere--as long as it’s on Earth.  I’ve got my Visa card.”
	No effect.
	“Seems like these things are one-way.”  They stepped back onto the 
cliff.
	“Now what?  Do we go back and tell John and Mike about this?”
	“About what?  It’s no big deal.  So we found traces of some advanced 
civilization.  I’d rather we brought back food.”
	“We can at least go to that other spot and look around.  Maybe we’ll 
come across more of these things.”
	“I hope we get one that’ll take us back to camp.  I hate when the 
nearest bus stop’s so far away.”
	They exercised more caution returning to the other side, looking out 
both ways before crossing for any seventy-five-ton animals.  It seemed to 
have lumbered off in the ten or fifteen minutes they gave it to.
	“Come on, brontosaurs were plant-eaters, weren’t they?”
	“They also had brains the size of peanuts.  Like they’re gonna tell 
the difference between me and a bush.”
	Wisely employing the lightning-never-strikes-twice theory, Rob and 
Jay set off in the well-trodden path of the giant herbivore, once 
determining in which direction it had gone, of course, having spotted it 
slow-moving high school football stadium-sized body a hundred yards down 
the other way.
	A few minutes later, they saw fruit strewn all over, from barren 
trees above them, obviously the product of sloppy eating habits.  The two 
picked up one each.
	“They look good enough, and I’m starved.  Those radish-things of 
yours didn’t do much for me.”
	“Hey, What-His-Face on Kung Fu was digging those up all the time.  
Hmm... well, if a brontosaurus can eat it, so can I.  My fastfood-hardened 
stomach can take anything this primitive world can dish out,” and with that, 
Jay took a bite.  “Grr-eat!”
	After devouring as many of the succulent treats as they could fit 
into their stomachs, they continued, like Hansel and Gretel, along the 
trail, gathering the finer examples and hauling them away in a T-shirt 
converted into a sack.  The brontosaur’s course through the forest had been 
an erratic one, and they often found themselves walking in circles, able to 
cover new ground only by looking for unclaimed fruit.  Aside from one 
incident, the typical mishap when a person accidentally sits on what turns 
out to be the tail of an Ankylosaurus and they end up running like hell, 
their journey was rather uneventful before the trees gave way to the steep 
side of a hill.
	“What do we do now, head back?”
	“Up there,” Rob pointed to the untouched fruit trees growing along 
the top.  “I think we can make it.”
	There were indeed manageable outcroppings in the cliff face, large 
and sturdy enough, fortunately, for the two of them to stand upon, but their 
irregular pattern demanded that they occasionally leap from one to the next.  
Neither was an acrobat by any means.
	“Uff!” as Jay regained his footing after a jump that wouldn’t have 
even qualified him for the Decathlon had it been tripled in length.  “All 
this, for some stupid fruit.”
	Rob tossed him their horde and his stick then barely made it across 
as well.  Looking down and seeing the equivalent of three stories, he 
reflected, “Yeah, I can’t see how I used to think this was any fun.”
	“It did seem so much easier getting Donkey Kong to do it, didn’t it?”
	Jay boosted Rob over the last ledge and handed him their things.  
Tall enough to reach it himself, he began pulling himself up, when he heard 
Rob say “Shoe!”
	Make that “shoo.”  Rob was attempting to ward off a five-foot high 
dinosaur with his pathetic spear.  It growled at him something kind of 
fierce.
	“You know, it’s at times like this when you really have to 
appreciate the work of those special effects people.”
	“Gotta give ’em credit; they do one helluva job sometimes.”
	Jay, looking around for a weapon of his own, could find none, and 
resorted to bombarding the creature with their fruit.  Lacking the dexterity 
to avoid the pummeling, or counter Jay’s dodgeball prowess, it conceded 
defeat and scampered away.
	By the time they reunited with the rest of their party, bruised 
fruit in bruised arms, John and Mike had long since stumbled upon a rich 
supply of a coarse flint-like material which lent itself well to sparking 
rocks, stuffed themselves with cooked fish, and passed out around a warm 
campfire.

	As uncomfortable as the rock was to sleep upon, John was smiling.  A 
beautiful girl was exploring his manly physique with her agile hands, 
following the contours of his face and neck, and plunging beneath his 
clothing.  She lowered her cheek to rub it against his skin, purring at the 
sensation, and resumed her examination with her soft nose and delicate lips.  
The two alternated in a way that seemed as if she were trying to dig up the 
cotton-like breath she planted at each new location.  For a while he lay 
perfectly stiff; but when she began to unleash the excitement below, he 
arose to meet her.
	He woke up.  The fire had been reduced to embers, and nothing was 
visible in the darkness save the rough shapes of his fellow castaways.  Two 
moved.  Jay and Rob stirred and emerged from their respective corners.  Mike 
was nowhere in sight.
	“Wow, what a dream I just had,” Rob said, scratching his head.
	“Couldn’t have been better than mine,” Jay grumbled. “You’re 
married.”
	“You two, too?”  John rubbed his eyes.  “Where’s Mike?”
	There was the sound of sloppy careful footsteps behind them, and 
Mike appeared from the stone stairwell leading down to the water.  Even with 
only the stars behind him, they could tell that he was drenched.
	“Hi, guys.  Just went for a moonlight swim, that’s all.”
	“Guess that makes the four of us.”
	“You’ll understand when I insist we not restart the fire quite yet.”
	There was no objection.
	“You should’ve seen this girl,” Mike went on, “She had a hands like, 
like--”
	“A dentist’s?”
	“--a craftsman.  A female craftsman.  Make that craftswoman.  Come 
on, guys, we’ve only been here a week or so.  And besides, I noticed the way 
you were looking at that one velociraptor.”
	“Well, it did have nice legs.  A bit on the scaly side, sure, but 
long and slender.”
	“My girl was definitely a dentist.”  (John wanted no part of the 
talk of jailhouse rock, but slipped in this comment, nonetheless.)
	“Yeah, except she was showing me her mouth.”
	“You know, this definitely puts a strange twist on that dream 
theory.”
	“I swear, it was so real.”
	“More real than the one where the four of us get stuck in a world 
full of stone-age throwbacks and advanced civilizations?”
	“Maybe this place has a way of, you know, affecting our minds.”
	“If that’s true, then good night to you all.”
	And with that, the four of them returned to sleep.  Much to their 
mutual disappointment, not one of them picked up where he had left off: Mike 
instead dreamt he was back in high school and totally unprepared as he was 
for the Chemistry final, feared how that might affect the time-line; John 
dreamt he was on that familiar two-an-a-half hour road trip between home 
and college and finally managed to catch frequent passenger Doreen before 
she mentioned, as she most assuredly never failed to, the occasion she and 
her family stopped at a particular inn along the way; Jay dreamt he was at 
a record store where he heard the newest record from the Smashing Pumpkins, 
and desperately tried to memorize the melody so that he could cash in on it 
after he got up; and Rob dreamt he was stuck with working on a holiday and 
to get revenge on his boss invented a computer virus that delivered a fatal 
electric shock to office people all over the world whenever they pressed the 
“~/`” key, or some such nonsense.