Gorilla? I don’t even know her.

“OMG, you would not believe this dream I had last night.”

 Steve reached across the table for the creamer, letting out a deep sigh, shaking his head. “It was fucking bananas…” His face stays the same, as the room around him changes. No longer a diner, but a dark alley. THE Dark Alley, the stereotypical one we’ve all seen a million times on TV.

“So I’m in this alley behind…” he looks around “um, like…I don’t know. Maybe behind the Lincoln Tap Room or something.” He shrugs and continues. “And it doesn’t feel exactly right, so I’m already on guard. Then, I hear this low growl. And I look down towards the street, but instead of like, empty boxes and stuff by the dumpsters, there are a bunch notebooks. All stacked up.”

“Like Macbooks?” a disembodied voice says.

Steve looks annoyed. The alley is gone, we’re back in the diner. He looks across at Pedro, the question still sitting on his face. “No, man, like NOTEBOOK notebooks. Like the kind you write shit down in when you know…like old school shit. Paper.” Pedro nods, and we get a half-hearted “oh, crazy” from the third person at the table, Melanie, while she scans the menu.

Steve pours the creamer into his coffee. With a mumbled “anyway…” we’re back in the alley. Steve looks up, and around and then squints at something in the distance. “and then I see this….something…something big…coming down the alley, moving towards me. It’s not moving fast, exactly. More kind of deliberate and steady.” He’s still looking calm, but he starts backing away slowly.

“Then all of the sudden it’s RIGHT UP IN MY FACE.”

BOOM up pops a big dark mass right next to him. The shape moves from blurry to sharp focus. Steve stand there, narrating. “It’s a giant fucking gorilla man, just right there in front of me. We’re like nose to nose at this point and I’m scared, but I’m like…also a bit curious. Like what the fuck is actually happening with this gorilla all up in my business?”

The Gorilla lets out a breath through its nose and without breaking eye contact, pushes something towards Steve. Steve unconsciously grabs this blurry shape, without realizing its weight as The Gorilla lets go. He bends slightly, looking down.

“And then he hands me this…like typewriter, man.”

“A what now?” and we’re back in the diner.

Steve stops, sighs, and takes a sip of coffee. “A typewriter. It’s like the shit you used to do computer stuff before there were computers. It’s like…for secretaries and stuff? My grandma still has one in her house and…I actually think this was that one, this was exactly my grandma’s typewriter!” Melanie doesn’t look up from her phone while she monotones “woah, insane.”

“Anyway” woosh, we’re back in the alley.

Steve is holding the typewriter which has now changed into a sharper image of a perfect, lovely old typewriter in a sky blue colour. He looks down at it, then back to the Gorilla. And he says, “what am I supposed to do with this?” The Gorilla looks at him, its expression growing slightly more threatening as he raises his arm. Steve winces a bit, not backing away, not exactly. As the Gorilla raises its arm, and simply points.

He follows with his eyes and sees a doorway open up in the back of the building. “There 1 million percent was not a doorway there a second ago. And not only there, it’s like..GLOWING. I mean, whatever is in there is glowing. So now I’m curious, right? So I go”

Passing The Gorilla, Steve keeps eye contact just until he’s a few steps away and then the turns to face the door he’s walking towards “and as I get closer, I realise that it’s kind of a big room, and there are a bunch of people in there, all sitting at desks and all of them have typewriters.” Steve walks into the room. There have got to be almost a hundred people in there, all clacking away at different versions of typewriters. Some are smiling and typing quickly, confidently, the look of someone who has something to say and can’t wait to get it out. Others are pecking at keys, unsure how to actually use this machine, or maybe just unsure of their own story.

“And then I see that there is one desk free. And it’s…” he pauses, looking around the room. “I just UNDERSTAND that I need to go there. That it’s MY desk.” And I’m like… ok, I guess this is my life now.” Steve moves to the desk, puts his typewriter down and takes a seat. “So I sit down, and the thing is all set up in front of me, paper is in it, light is on, which… I mean, I guess that means it’s working and stuff. But like… what am I supposed to DO, man?

So I look up, and The Gorilla is standing right in front of my desk now, and it looks like, kind of happier? Like not angry for sure. So I just decide that I guess I should ask it. So I say ‘um. Ok, what am I supposed to do now?”

The Gorilla’s face moves closer and pretty soon it’s all Steve can see. The face of The Gorilla. No longer threatening, in fact, it looks like it’s on the verge of laughter.

“And then this motherfucker says “Human type story. Type until masterpiece”

The voice changes to a woman’s voice, struggling to contain laughter “Human make Gorilla Shakespeare!”

With those words, the room melts away, The Gorilla changes shape, and a woman who’s probably in her late 20s, long messy box dyed red hair, wearing a pair of turquoise blue coveralls takes its place, and she’s expectantly looking around, eyes wet with tears. There is no more Steve, no more Gorilla, just this woman, Bea, sitting around a table in what looks like a break room, a story. And they are, thankfully, for the most part, laughing.

“You did not” says one of them, shaking his head with a smile “what were you expecting?”

“I absolutely did” Bea holds up the fuzzy mass in her hand, which, now that we’re really looking at it, focusing on it… we realize it’s a gorilla mask, and a really bad one. Its fur is matted, eye holes too big, and you can tell how it smells just by looking at it. “and I don’t know, I guess I was just thinking ‘why do we have to do all the work, like let them come up with a storyline or two since we’re there, right?”

Bharat, still shaking his head a bit, clapped her on the back. “ok, that’s fair. Did you see any of what The Dreamer was writing?”

Nash looked up from what she was tinkering with in her lap. She’d been sort of half paying attention, but now, she was focused. Coming up with the storyline was the part she hated the most. Props was where she shined.

“No, I mean, kind of, it looked mostly like some sort of typical unconscious wish-fulfillment sort of deal, like “once upon a time there was a guy and all his friends thought he was the best”. Nothing usable.” She looked over at Nash. “but, I’m still pretty good at coming up with bullshit, so we can brainstorm some stuff for your next show. When is it?”

Nash looked at the old digital clock on the wall. It was right under a faded printout with If you have time to lean, you have time to dream along with some obvious clip art of a duck and some sparkles on it. “In about 10 minutes, and I’m a little stuck. Here’s the briefing.” She hands Bea a printout on green and white striped paper:

BRIEF #7882-Δ

“Omg, Nash, you’ve got this” Bea said, handing the briefing back. “So you’re in the grocery store, right, obviously because” she waves her hands around. “And so you just have the flamingo come up and go “excuse me, did you see there’s a sale on hummus? But you know in like a super sexy way so that The Dreamer is all like… oh, really? For meeeee?” She holds her hands over her chest, bowing her head looking a little fake embarrassed. “then from there, easy peasy. The math teacher is doing an interpretive dance that The Dreamer understands as ‘Your new love interest is super into you because even though you sucked at math, you got that A’ and then he dances away, The Dreamer is all ‘oh yeah I did’ and then the flamingo comes back and is like ‘excuse me, did you check your mail? You can’t leave unless you got that coupon’ and The Dreamer is going to be like…’ok do I really need that hummus that badly?’ and then The Flamingo drops it: ‘Your new love interest really wants that hummus.’ Annnd…dream!” Bea extends her arms in a “taaaadaaaa” flourish.

Nash sits there thinking, looking down at what she’s been tinkering with. It’s a few pink pipe cleaners and some pink feathers that looks way more like a flamingo than it has any business looking like. She really is good at props. She picks up the brief, looks at it again. “ok, but what about the ending? It seems like everything is kind of tidy here, no loose ends.”

Bea leans over the table, grinning. “No, that’s the best part, because The Dreamer is going to be like ‘but why hummus?’ because they really don’t want to open their mail, and let’s be real, like 90 percent of time real world tech doesn’t work over here anyway, so they’ll be all “oh no, I guess I could try, but WHY THE HUMMUS”.

Nash started to slowly smile and nod. “yeah, Bea, that’s good. I like that.” She took out a pen and wrote “hummus coupon” on a post-it note, and stuck it on the Flamingo. She picked up a Darth Vader action figure with a post-it saying “your math teacher” on it, and headed towards the door. “Thank you! I’m going to grab the grocery store backdrop and head to the stage. See you later!”

Bea flipped her a little jaunty salute, then looked over at Bahrat, Josie and Ted, the remainder of her shift-mates. “Ok then, I guess, back to work” she said slapping her hands on her knees and getting up from the table. Ted looked at her, mildly annoyed “yay, work, work is fun, it’s so so great” he said, also getting up, as the printer starts buzzing. Bea didn’t even look back at him as she walked over to the printer, ripped off the briefing, glanced at it with a smile and then headed out to the prop room. “best job in the world” she said happily as the door closed behind her.

“Honestly” Ted said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like we’re making art here. It’s not like we’re in Lucid or Prophetic or even fucking fate-adjacent. The BDD is lame, and I do not get her “go get ‘em tiger!” attitude.

“My guy” Josie said, pointing a perfectly manicured nail at him “first off, Lucid is a total shit show. The Dreamers are like, fighthing you half the time, and sometimes they REALLY see you and they fuck with your work and even completely take over sometimes. Like, you think our dreamers are bad? There is no sayin no to a dreamer who goes fully lucid. They take over, your vision is out the window, boom, done gone. No thank you.” She took off a couple of beautiful bangles from her perfectly-tanned-but-not-too-tanned wrist as she continued “and honestly, being an oracle must be pretty creepy. I mean, who wants to know half of that stuff, and then your Dreamer is probably just screaming the whole time anyway.” She wrinkled up her nose, pushing a lock of pure black hair out of her face. “no. No thank you very much. Basic Dream Division really is pretty close to perfect, it’s like all the nocturnal narrative, half the drama.” The printer started buzzing again, and she walked over to it, tore off a brief, gave it a glance and breezed out the door, tucking her bangles into her overalls.

Bahrat looked over at Ted “She’s right, I worked in Lucid ops for like a minute. It was awful. I think the only way you can really do that is if you just don’t really care about what goes through.”

“I mean, I get that. Maybe Lucid was a bad example, but like I mean even the ADT has to be more interesting than this.” Ted said, pointedly looking over at the printer that had printed out another briefing. Pointedly not picking it up. “Who really cares about these run-of-the-mill basics. Like, we’re not changing lives, we’re not making an actual difference. It’s just…” He sighed, got up and walked over to the printer. Tore off the assignment and looked at it. Sighed. “it’s just noise” he said dejectedly as he walked out the door.