Thanks to the cliff-hanging driving in Indiana Jones 4 (which, alas, like the rest of the movie, was spectacularly tepid—they managed to follow the formula well enough, suspension-of-belief escapes, swarming insects, bad guys vaporizing at the end, but maybe all that proved is that formula just doesn’t work anymore) I dreamed of getting onto an on-ramp high above the water, then, as so often happens, the perspective changed to outside the car, like in a videogame whose critics complain about stiff camera angles, and I lost control and ran off a portion without guard railing. I watched from my overhead perch and saw it dive into the ocean, then flew to another side of the bridge where a school of dolphins had gathered. Swooping down to join them, I found myself in an underwater station that teleports its passengers to Alpha Centauri. A bright light shimmered around me, and I soon stepped out onto the deck of a vessel near the alien city. The plain but densely-packed buildings didn’t particularly impress as other-worldly, so I looked up to the night sky for passing star-liners.
After landing I was ushered into a crowded theater lobby, accompanied by many visitors from Earth. My old buddy Reynold was there, asking someone about an engineering problem he was having with a surging circuit, but the response was a snicker, because, as everyone apparently knew, you shouldn’t expect any benefits from advanced civilizations. Another rule in effect was that everything of value had none and vice versa, so when I went to a nearby shop to have rips and creases in a poster I was carrying repaired (which was possible with their technology, by first marking the damaged areas with stitching), and the one I thought was from the Shining turned out to be a B-movie called “Shining Monsters” instead, I offered it to the proprietor for another I’d rather have. Might as well barter my credit away, since there’s no use in keeping currency.
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