In the Pool

Friday, January 07, 2056, 6pm

What did I do? I screamed. I yelled. I yelled, “Help me!”

And to my great pleasure something happened. Not as dramatic as I might have hoped for, but well enough. Very slowly, I began to be able to make out to large orange rings in front me about a meter above the surface of the pool. When I say very slowly I mean like the sunrise in the morning. I next was able to make out a small waterfall coming out of each ring. Behind me I could next see a larger half ring acting as a gateway for water leaving the pool. As time passed, I could see a large red and blue wall enclosing most of the pool except for space near the larger ring.

I swam over to the larger ring to see what else there was to see. I think the proper name for the ring is torus, which, if it means shaped liked a doughnut, would be about right. I could see now that a long orange wall had enclosed a space in the shape of an ellipse with the pool at one end. The ellipse was about two football fields long and one football field in the middle; or about 200 meters by 100 meters.

Down the middle of the ellipse ran a stream running from the base of the waterfall issuing from the pool to the opposite end of the ellipse where it seemed to meet the orange wall. The slow moving stream was about two meters wide and was lit somehow from below like the pool. On either side of the stream there were stone paths, each about a meter wide, which ran the length of the stream. Seeing how regular everything was laid out made the last features seem a little out of place. The last feature was three smaller streams that issued from the main stream, extended a short ways, and then seemed to end in orange doughnuts the size of the two above the pool.

As time passed, two profound changes took place. First, the orange walls and rings all came alive with orange fire. Second, all of the space above and below the elliptical firewall was filled with stars. Stars brighter than you might see in the desert. Stars brighter than you might even see in space. This brightness was all the stranger given that the orange light from the fire should have obscured their light the way that light from a city obscures the stars at night. My words cannot portray how awesome this sight was. It was so beautiful. I think I just stared at it all for a couple hours without thinking anything other than how beautiful it all was. This seemed like a good point to call it a day. Given the ease with which I have been able to come to the Other Place lately, I had no doubt that I would have no trouble returning. So I willed my self to wake up.

Upon waking up in my Normal Place, I decided that I would like to make a representation of what I had seen. I am no artist and I have no such background. So I spent the afternoon playing with a basic drawing program. The results are fantastic, but I hope they are good enough to capture the essence of what I have seen.