My colleagues and I were trying to stop a dangerous, shape shifting, genius hacker who was being a terrorist. One of the guys on our team had files and files of code printed out that was like kernels of grain. He grabbed a handful and seeded the internet with it, in order to lure the hacker out into the internet somewhere we could find him.
I spent a lot of time crouching in corners with a handgun aimed head-high at closed doors in case the guy came out of them, but that would only wound him. He could only be killed when he was shifted out if human form. Finally, we had tracked him out to a wood, and we were hiding in a waist-deep stream, beneath a gracefully arched bridge. The water was crystal clear, and the surface was freckled and dimpled with yellow petals from the flowering trees above.
Suddenly, he was on the bank above us, in the form of a huge tiger. As he lunged down into the water, my partner turned into a tiger, too, and they fought as I scrambled out of the water and out of the way. My colleague held the bad guy under until he was drowned.
That job over, we went to work security at a sort of junior Olympic basketball tournament. It was being held on the seaside in a partially submerged and buried building complex that looked like the inside of a huge submarine. I crawled all over and through the upper bleachers to make sure everything was safe, then went to stay the night at my grandmother's house, which was tucked into a garden on the facility grounds.
I couldn't get to bed for a while, though, because people kept getting lost in the garden trying to find their own lodgings, and I had to keep them out of my grandmother's place. Then my mom came and told me my boss had called and asked me to patrol the beach at first light.
The next morning I walked down to the shore and began walking, past the facility, up a sandy rise. I could see, about another mile off, the bridge where the highway lifted up from the mainland to go out to one of the large barrier islands. Closer to me, just ahead, the beach broke up into dozens of sandy islets.
The islets were thick with otters and nesting gulls. Nearby, on the shore, I could see a largish wild cat. It was something called a sand lion, shaped and colored like a puma, but only about the size of a coyote. They were mostly shy, but could also be friendly and playful, and were definitely not dangerous. It had seen me, and was loping up a sandy ridge to see what I was, but when I looked past it, into the dunes below, an enormous golden head lifted up in a cleft between dunes. It was a lion, a real lion, not a sand lion, but gigantic. It was a lioness the size of an elephant, at least, staring up at me with eyes like molten gold.
I froze. The lioness stood to watch me, the sand lion was still headed my way. I hadn't been issued any weapons for this assignment, so I was completely unarmed. I began to back slowly away, stumbling a little in the sand. When I was out of sight down the other side of the slope, I turned and slogged faster through the sand, trying not to look back too much, or break into a run.
I did make it back to the arena, and scrambled through a heavy side door that I shut and locked behind me. I turned to go report to my boss about the huge lioness, and found I was in a deserted hall with no obvious way out. The walls were pale tiles that looked sickly in the greenish light. They had depth marking on them, like this had been a stories-deep diving pool.
That gave me an idea, so I looked and found a rusty ladder up to a terrace. I climbed up that, and could hear the sounds of basketball and crowds from the other arenas, and I realized the whole thing was a renovated set of these deep diving pools. I climbed in and out of courts looking for my boss. I finally just reported to a colleague and left.
I met up with some friends for pho, but after everyone else had ordered theirs, when I began to place my order, the waitress told me they were now out of pho. So I decided I wasn't hungry, and I left. Some other friends pulled up in a school bus, and said they were going to my high school, so did I want to make a visit. I said sure, so an odd mix of my New Orleans game night and my college band friends headed to my small town high school.
A lot of the buildings had been replaced, but the band hall was the same. I went in to visit my high school ban director, then met up with my sister, who explained that what looked like apartments where the tennis courts use to be were dorms for student athletes, and that high school basketball especially was getting to be a big thing. We had turned in the bus, and now we were headed home, and all had to squeeze in a huge old Crown Victoria. We got on the road, and then I woke up.
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