Today, I worked at the office. After a morning spent in never-ending meetings, lunchtime came rightly as a savior. But there was some place I wanted to visit before eating lunch, so I left the office building. The distance to my destination was a 15-minute-long walk under the rain to the warping gate, followed by 10 seconds of warping time. My office was located at the capital of the United States of Europe, Bruxelles since President Christian Zhu unified disaggregated countries into one single superpower. After I arrived in front of the nearest warping gate, I told the machine my destination and it proceeded to check my identity by sending a query to the chip inside my head: “Take me to Mountainside Lake.” I paid 15 crypto-euros and then walked into the gate from which a neon-blue fluid emanated.

Some mornings, I wake up standing there, always in the same place deep in this luminescent forest. This has been happening every now and then ever since the end of summer, or rather the beginning of fall. The memories of the dreams I make before waking up in the middle of iridescent trees fade away as soon as I open my eyes. As I try to hold onto the evanescent memories of what felt like regretful dreams, all that remains is but a sense of profound loss.

Nothing has ever interested in any way. It’s true that I’ve never tried anything outside of my comfort zone (at least that’s what I deduced from reading memes on internet forums). All the activities that I do nowadays are basically activities that I’ve been doing back when I was a teenager. Nothing ever really changes, now that I am 20 years old, I still spend most of my free time watching series. Most people of my age do as well, but I feel like I am lacking in something compared to normal people because this is all I have in life. It’s time to wake up.