It was night-time, and I was in Portland for a job interview at a campus-like facility with a tree-lined parking lot. There was at least one exotic car, an orange thing with a huge rear and a wheel-less front end that rested on the concrete base of a lamp post. The body had a small dent or two, suggesting that it was in use everyday. I felt even the least interested auto enthusiast should recognize the model, and thought that as the owner of something not too different, I might fit in well here. After all, the first part hadn’t gone too badly. Two others, a man and sharp-dressed young woman, were also candidates, but I had stood out by challenging one of the two interviewer’s insistence we abide by a quirk of his that we sit in a certain formation. As I walked to another building for a second phase, I thought I might have taken it further and very cleverly argued that the whole ruse was to show that bias or prejudice was anathema to the hiring process. [I had jerk-stored earlier this evening while running.]
It wasn’t a job; it was law school, a whole classroom full of new admissions. Somehow the payoff made repeating the program worth it. But there was something strange about this place, and a short film seemed to reveal it when at the end a PA derided evolution by mocking an exam with a beep for an answer. The two main characters, representing myself and my comically-inclined slower-witted fellow candidate from before who now was a chimp, kissed each other with relief as they decided to leave. Afterward, I still wasn’t sure they were serious, but remained seated as a guest speaker, another professional woman, began a demonstration of dramatic closing argument. Each point made by the instructors was marked by a distinctive sound effect, and when they asked us to identify it, one person suggested it was a sample from a 60’s song called “Falling”, while my companion joked it sounded more like “Catherine” by the Cure. I chuckled, as if to know it, then made him confess that he was a plant, and none of this was real. He didn’t deny it. A story began about women who were “de-feeted”, actually removed of their feat, and some nurses arrived singing while giving me a checkup with arms that were stumps. They were obvious fakes, as I could tell from the feel of their actual limbs under their bosoms, but I had had quite enough. I wondered if this were all a big performance, and were they gonna kill me?