We were writing employee evaluation forms, which eventually took the form of nickels and dimes. We each carried around twenty cents with us as we headed toward the human resources castle. That's right, it was a literal castle that we had to enter through a drawbridge across a moat. As we headed toward the side entrance, we passed a huge mountain of trash stacked against the side wall. We recognized a lot of the stuff from our labs, and we shook our heads in shame at how poorly things were being run. We were surprised to see whole mouse cages in the mix, and joked that at least there weren't any mice in them. A janitor toiled at the base of the pile, though as we started up the stairs, we saw another man crouched in the corner. He was wearing an immaculate suit and tie and was calmly taking cages from the bottom of three huge stacks of them, one at a time. We recognized him as a mouse tech (not in real life), and to our horror we realized there actually were mice in each cage! Turns out, this is the backlog of mice to be sacrificed, and he was only now taking care of it. He asked us, in a very measured tone, to please not tell our boss Ron about this.

We came out a top exit of the castle, each of us on wheels of some sort, to ride down the slope below. I came out first in a wheelchair and did fancy spins, but slowly, since I knew the guardrail was flimsy. As I came to a gradual stop, I saw Brian Cox (the actor, who's 66!) come flying down on roller blades, very low to the ground in almost in a limbo pose. Very impressive, though it was difficult to tell if he was doing it on purpose or not. Stacey from grad school came out next on her bike, wearing her usual helmet and very slowly making her way down with a big smile. Finally came Clint Eastwood (I think) on another bike, and he skidded close to the guardrail but managed to stop short of it. An anonymous guy came screaming after him on a skateboard. He tried to do a fancy grab of the edge of the cliff which stuck out, but he missed and went flying out in a big arch. He screamed "oh no!" while he very slowly went through the parabola. He hit the ground face-down with a big thud and started rolling down the mountainside, clearly dead. Clint, who now looked much younger, jumped down onto a light stream and rode his way down, parallel to the guy. We traveled with him as we watched people jump out of the way of the body. They were in graves, so they were either archeologists or grave robbers. We remarked as we traveled down the slope that it was a shame there were so many artifacts lying around untended. Clint turned into a young, long-haired Australian ranger-type, who grabbed a large wooden case with artifacts in it. He took off running and barked for us all to grab one as well, then made fun of us Americans for being too weak to carry them. Who knows where we we running off to.

posted by Larry at 9:21 AM