American Indians decided it was time to go on a quest. They wanted to see if the old world really was up to the task creating all those diseases which ravaged their tribes centuries ago. They were in luck because Asia was at its closest approach to the American Northwest in millennia. The coast of China was a mere thirty feet from the coast of Washington state and the ocean was only shin-deep at its worst.

Halfway across the water they received a message from the Republic's military warning them that they should not spend any length of time in China otherwise they'd be classed as enemies of the state and denied re-entrance to their homeland. China was really filthy, red walls were smeared black with sooty handprints and scrapes from cars and bicycles. The sky was a perpetual gray making sunlight feel more like fluorescent lighting rather than good wholesome sunshine. My travelling companions judged the filth as a sign of incompetency and deemed the old world as being incapable of sustaining bugs like smallpox.

We hustled our way through China heading southwards into Myanmar. We thought it was funny that the Republic had no issues with entering Myanmar which is currently undergoing an internal crisis. The borders were quite porous but I don't know if we would be able to leave the country. Soon I was separated from my fellow travellers and wandered the streets. Blocky, impersonal and windowless concrete bunkers lined the streets giving the impression of a Stalinist state. Soon I stumbled into a residential neighborhood. What marked this as a neighborhood was the bright purple and blue paint on the bunkers. Now and again I'd hear a few kids in alleways and pass an old woman coming home with a sack full of food.

There were prepubescent prostitutes standing outside most of the buildings most of their faces already hardened with the thousand mile stare from supporting their thankless families. A few older women acted as their pimps. I ignored them and walked into a random home. Sitting in the back of the bunker behind tattered silk scarves and worn beads was an albino Caucasian woman. Despite her condition I could tell that she was quite old and surprisingly with child. We spoke at length and learned of her horror. She was on vacation when a charming Burmese man wooed her then drugged her with Scopolamine to be his slave.

Her only job was to sexually submit to him and bear his children. Any daughters would be pressed into service out on the streets to the highest bidder. All sons were butchered and their meat was sold at the local marketplace. Her eyes were dead and sunken as if she had used up all her tears decades ago when she still had the shadow of free will. I inched away from her in horror.

There wasn't an exit. The door I used was no longer in the building. No windows or any hint of escape was obvious to me. I stalked through the hallways stepping over children and mutts in the hopes of finding some escape. I could imagine that I was in a square, concrete doughnut and got to know each booth and bedspace intimately in my searchings. Exhausted and broken I sat against the wall and looked up. A small metal hatch that was about two feet by six inches and I could hear people on the other side. Either people were on the roof or it simply led to another floor. I caused a ruckus which caught the attention of the folks on the other side and I could feel the sultry air pouring down over me and the stink of southeast Asian street food vendors with their fried durian and boiled lizards stuffed with chile peppers.

Had I been thinner there was no chance in hell that I'd be able to achieve freedom. I lifted up a loli to see if she'd be able to scramble to the other side only getting a cut forehead for her endeavor. Suddenly a Caucasian male face peeked down into my prison. He had short hair and was wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses and I think I could make out he was wearing a USAF flight jumpsuit. He offered me three wishes as if he had a pocketful of them and there weren't any buyers. Despite my waking life reservations regarding wishes and the Rod Serling interpretation of how wishes are interpreted by their genie I accepted them and wished to be able to squeeze through like Eugene Victor Tooms.

Yeah, you know him. X-Files. The guy who awoke every thirty years to eat five human livers and could squeeze through impossibles spaces to kill his victims. Protip: That episode was thirteen years ago!

Once I was outside I couldn't find my benefactor nor could I call upon the remaining two wishes. Freedom made me grateful enough so I clambered back down to the street and put as much distance as possible between myself and this sad place. Miles away there was an old cinema from better times now abandoned and boarded up. A guy was sitting in his 1977 Thunderbird with the engine running smoking a cigarette. He was wearing a gas station attendant's outfit but I couldn't make out the embroidered name. I knew that I had to make contact with him in order to get back home. Suddenly a dirty white van screamed around the corner and gunfire echoed through the concrete canyon. Gasman stomped out his cigarette and hollered for me to get into the car. As I was climbing through the passenger window three bullets hit me. One burrowed up through my thigh and jammed into my hip, another hit the top of my ass and glanced off the bone while another missed my balls by an inch. Blood was pouring down my legs and pooling in my shoes as the realization that I had been shot and would never be the same danwed in my head. Gasman was cranking the starter and pumping the pedal to no avail.

That's when I woke up at 5:38 a.m.. Spot wanted to jump onto the ledge to peer out the window when her leap knocked over a bunch of books on my head. I lay in the dark with my eyes closed waiting for the inevitable alarm. All the while Elton John's Daniel was playing over and over in my head.