My first memory is of a man with his gun pointed at me. "Get out," he says. He is alone with me, and we are indoors. He opens the door to the outdoors, revealing a 1,000-ft metal staircase stretching all the way down to the desert sand, and multiple planes and personnel on the ground.
As he starts to descend the tower, I am faced with a decision: Cooperate, or attempt to escape. I observe that he has foolishly walked ahead of me with his back turned towards me, so I choose to escape. I turn around as fast as I can and begin running back up the stairs. Unfortunately, he notices, turns around, and shoots me down with his pistol. I die.
Fortunately I have time travel, similar to the time travel in "Prince of Persia, Sands of Time." I rewind time for 5 seconds. We are once again descending the stairs, and he is in front of me. This time, I push him down the stairs, as hard as I can. As he falls backwards, he fires a couple of shots at me, but none find their target. He crashes down 20 feet of stairs onto a junction point in the stairs (the square platform at which the stairs pivot and to the left and continue downwards). He is gravely injured, but is already attempting to get back up. I hurriedly run back up the stairs, hoping he is too weak to follow me.
I weave through a maze of narrow corridors and rooms, slightly reminiscent of the interior of a cruise ship. During this time I experience dream-running (the sensation of slowed running due to reduced gravity), because I am constantly fearful that the man with the gun is right behind me. I follow the "Exit" signs for a couple minutes and finally find myself outdoors again, but much closer to the ground than before.
A priest and another man appear near the exit I had just come from. I hide myself behind a pillar lest the priest be the gunman in disguise. They walk past me.
I continue walking, at last coming to a small field of grass and some buildings, similar to the area between the B and C buildings of the Amador Valley High School. A couple of family friends are standing and having good-natured conversation. My dad sees me and walks over. I whisper to him, "We have to get out of this place, now! This guy with a gun almost shot me." My mom and sister arrive.
Christine (my sister) says, "Aha, so this time you found dad first, instead of us." I am confused by this remark but give it no further thought.
As my family and I are exiting the scene and climbing some cement stairs, I notice that my dad's white lab coat is slightly torn. Suddenly, of its own volition, the tear increases its length by an inch.
"Why did the hole in Dad's lab coat suddenly get bigger?" I ask.
Christine responds, "Dad's been doing a little time traveling lately, just like the rest of us. Every time he time travels, the tear in his lab coat lengthens ever so slightly."
"So what happens when the tear reaches the bottom of the coat?"
"We don't know."
A random little 5-year-old girl starts singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," with chillingly modified lyrics. She is holding a paper star, and tearing it.
We arrive at what appears to be the second level of a shopping mall. The second level is simply a walkway along the edges of the building (think Stoneridge Mall). There is a safety railing to prevent people from falling off, but it is cheap and resembles the railings one would find at a roller coaster waiting line.
My sister is feeling jubilant, so she tightrope-walks along the safety railing. The ceiling is low enough such that her head can touch it, so she uses the friction between her head and the low ceiling to prevent falling down. Of course, my mother tells her that this is a very dangerous stunt, but she doesn't stop. Suddenly she loses footing and falls over the edge, onto the first floor.
She is shaken but alive. My mom flips out and runs down the stairs angrily, yells at Christine for not listening to her, and drags her back up to the second level. "Why didn't you stop when I told you to? Do you enjoy not listening to us? Do you enjoy ignoring our warnings and hurting yourself? Well fine! If that's what you want!" she screams. Then, out of nowhere, she throws my sister over the edge of the railing.
Christine lands on the first floor yet again, shaken but alive. Now I flip out. "WHAT THE FUCK! What the FUCK is your problem?" I yell at my mom. I march down the stairs dropping F-bombs everywhere, causing a scene. I yell something about the fact that throwing Christine over the railing is not only cruel, but also sets a bad environment for people that come to the mall. People turn their heads and call security, but I ignore them. "Calm down," one security officer says. "NO FUCK YOU TOO!" I yell at him. Then I point at every passerby looking at me and subsequently tell each of them to fuck themselves too. Finally, I arrive at my sister, who is not in the least injured, and we hug.
For some reason I decide to travel back in time again, all the way back to scene 1.
So I'm behind the guy with the gun (again), and he's walking down the stairs. As before, I push him as hard as I can. As before he falls over and hits the platform and misses his shots. But this time, when I run back into the building, I take an alternate exit route: a hatch in the floor leading to a descending ladder. This time my escape route does not take me to the aforementioned "Amador Valley field," but to some indoors area where I meet up with my sister and my mom.
"Aha, so this time, I met up with my mom and sister, before Dad," I observe (recall that in the previous "escape" scene, at the Amador Valley field, I meet up with my Dad first). Then I remember what Christine had remarked to me long ago, in the previous scene:
"Aha, so this time you found dad first, instead of us."
I now realize that in the original scene, Christine already had memories of this alternate parallel universe/timeline. That is to say, Christine in the original timeline had already experienced the very timeline that I am now experiencing.
"You've been doing a LOT of time-traveling, haven't you?" I ask.
"Maybe..." Christine says.
"Why hasn't your dress been tearing, like Dad's lab coat?"
She beams at me.
"What, you won't tell me?" I ask.
She points at her teeth, and I notice that they are just slightly crooked. The flaw is not obvious, but it is slightly noticeable.
"Time travel has a different effect on everyone," she says. "For me, every time I travel backwards in time, my teeth become slightly more crooked."
"Can't we just fix that with braces, then?" I ask.
"I don't think so."
As this alternate timeline continues, my family and I arrive at Disneyland, instead of the cheap shopping mall. And so the dream concludes as we walk down Main Street watching a Mickey Mouse parade, debating whether or not the effects of time-travel on teeth can be remedied by braces.
Lyrics to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," as sung by the freaky 5-year-old girl holding a paper star:
Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
The more you pull the more it tears
Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
