As I rode, I slept. As I slept, I dreampt. And if I dreampt, that means that I am. A little bit of loneliness, a little bit of disregard. The background music from the back of the bus-shaped vehicle began drifting into my subconscious, which was now coming off in waves emanating from a vibrating locus somewhere immediately adjacent to my position. I was stupefied. That didn't mean I was stupid though, I still knew how to tell stamps from one year apart from ones that had a different year, and promotional ones with funky designs on them. Though what I really wished I knew was about teeth, because I wanted to be a dentist, not a stamp collector. Wait a minute… since when had I thought that? As far as I could remember, I had always dreamed of becoming a dentist, but was dejectedly resigned to being a stamp collector? I… hadn't wanted to change that. I felt like another pair of eyes were scanning my memories. When had that part of me changed? What had caused that part of me to change? WHAT MADE ME NOT WANT TO BE A STAMP COLLECTOR ANYMORE? I wheeled under the weight of the world of my knowledge and wobbled to and fro. Randy's crêmê-de-la-crêmê-slathered voice resounded throughout my brain. "Aren't you forgetting something, Mr. Pony?" the crêmê-de-la-crêmê sloshed incrêdibly violently when he pronounced the 'r' sounds in 'aren't' and 'forgetting'. With how ridiculous and metaphorical this gag is getting, I wonder if it is still enter taining, or if it's gotten annoying. But anyways. Was I forgetting something? Well, I was forgetting something. It's just that that something that I was forgetting was whether or not I was forgetting something." That was incredibly hard to translate out of my native language, Czech, because for some reason we were now moving at 4 cuils. I buckled down my spectacles and got ready to go.
All of a sudden, Owen's disembodied head appeared in front of me. "Pretending to have amnesia, huh? You're such a simp, Jor-bah." his grin was dripping with menace, causing me to take a step backwards and make a noise that sounded like a combination between Hank Hill and Kermit the Frog. Besides my pavlovian terror, something registered in my reptilian brain – this disconnect that I was feeling about not wanting to be a stamp collector anymore was the same as the disconnect Owen was feeling when he said he was sure I was pretending to have amnesia. I knew for sure that I had never pretended to have amnesia, but now everyone was telling me I was. I had also been fine with being a stamp collector, but now suddenly I wasn't? What kind of nonsense was that? I felt like the two trains of thought were about to collide, generating the transcontinental railroad needed to funnel the information all out to all the atoms of my galaxy brain's neural network. I gasped and took a deep breath. I was hovering in a lavender cylinder five hundred feet above the floor of a well lit cave. The cylinder flickered like film as bison nibbled on the grass above the ground where my cylinder was hanging from. I assessed my situation, putting my hand over my nose and mouth thoughtfully. If I were Tinkerbell, this is exactly how they'd trap me, I thought, thinking to myself. I had to think really hard if I wanted to think my way out of this situation. Something was missing somewhere, somehow. I had to dig deeper. I got on my hands and knees to dig, but the walls of the purple cylinder repelled me like Violet's force field. Frustrated by my attempts, I decided to curl up into a ball and pretend that I was a bean. Specifically, a Gonzales bean. I could feel my beaniness intensifying as my body became more and more bean-like. I felt like I might grow a beanstalk any second. All of a sudden, the beanstalk popped out of my body. It grew, and grew, and grew some more, until it was able to pass through the crystalline walls, and with enough humming and meditating, grow a new bean of its own. Now, I had a way to escape from my crystalline prison – but at what cost? I could transfer the life energy of my current Jordan body to the bean, in hopes that it would hatch into an identical Jordan, but the current me would cease to exist. I opened my eyes for a quick second. I was already surrounded by a beany veil and bathing in a beany fluid. In short, I had become a bean. I closed my eyes in acceptance, feeling a bit like shep. If something as lowly as the bean I had devolved into could power the existence of a new, better Jordan, then it was well worth the sacrifice. I began shaving my legs. Hands and legs curled up like a fetus, I felt my consciousness sliding away from my current form and down the rich nutrients of the beanstalk. Though I was 'naught' but energy, as Julia would say, I could still catch a 3D glimpse of what was happening around me. The beany casing that had housed my former form began browning and shriveling up as all the life force was sucked from it. Eventually, all of the nutrients from my old body and the entire beanstalk had been sucked dry by the swollen bean now dangling from the frail, brittle dead beanstalk, waiting for some, any kind of outside influence to send that bean plummeting 500 feet downward to its demise.
A chicken flew by. Its bird brain operating on pure animalistic curiosity about its surroundings, pecked at the swollen bean, causing it to sway back and forth. However, by this time the beanstalk holding me up was far too weak to take this kind of hinge-like punishment, so it just snapped and sent me plummeting. I felt like I was in the tower of terror. I felt like I was gonna be sick. I felt like I was gonna be sick in the tower of terror. I screamed, but at this point, I was still only nutrients inside of a swollen bean, so all I could really do was trick my consciousness into thinking I was screaming. Wait, by that same logic, didn't that also mean that I could trick my consciousness into ignoring its sense of gravity? Hah! That worked! I now tricked my consciousness into thinking I was putting my hand up to my forehead advancedly. I had no idea what to do next, so I just kept imagining that, and imagining that, and imagining that.
500 feet below the chicken, in a lush spring meadow that had been formed in the cave from the water that had fallen in through the giant hole in the top, a robin plucked at the swollen bean. It must have punctured some vital barrier because the swollen bean popped and out slid a brand new Jordan, exactly as he was before the whole ordeal.
"All's well that ends well," I said out loud for some reason, standing up and reaching into my pocket for my spectacle cleaning cloth. I had to get the bean goo off my -
I blinked in surprise. The mix of emotions I felt in the following seconds could only be described as a range from Velma from Scooby Doo to Arthur from Fairly Odd Parents. That is to say, I went from "Glasses, where are my glasses" to "I can't see without my glasses," to "Hey, wait, actually, I can see," to "I can see! I CAN FIGHT!" I pointed confidently at the robin-sized robin in front of me. It looked up at my finger quizzically before chirping and hopping away, clearly having lost interest in me now that I was no longer in bean form. Now, what did I have to do now? I remembered the map that Jacques and Graham had created during extended day. There were three different locations where the mysterious items This, That, and Which were supposedly located. This was supposedly located inside of a pyramid, That was supposedly located beneath of a basin, and Which was supposedly located in the WATCH Tower. As for What, the only clue to its location was the "Mr. Pony" written next to it. Did that mean that Mr. Pony had What? I had a feeling that was important, so I made a mental note to remember it for later on, to make sure I asked them tomorrow. For now, I had to search for the pyramid and the sink, for that was where those mysterious objects were supposedly located. I began wandering forward, every step forward making me feel like I was walking through a blizzard and a sandstorm simultaneously. It was brutal and very difficult to move forward. My tasteful black cardigan flapped behind me like an old cape or some rags. I felt like if I could struggle through this, I would become an even stronger dragon than I was right now, even though I was not a dragon, I was a boy. I soldiered on, like soldier boy, until my form was eventually lost from sight among the whirling sand and sleet.
I awoke with a start from the sound of water dropping into pool of water and echoing off the stone walls surrounding me. I set up, and noticed that I was in some sort of blue crystal palace. Everything was made of blue crystals, giving the whole place a blue hue. I looked to my left and saw that there was a small pool of evïan crystal water that was being dripped into by a crystal clear stalactite hanging tight from the ceiling. I felt like my body had grown super buff, but my head was still the comically football-shaped head it had always been. I rubbed my eyes and noticed that my glasses were still gone. I slowly stood up and walked by centaur-like body into the pool of evïan crystal water, the crystalization making up the pools naturally smooth, water pounded edges make the water reflect an almost pinkish purple color. I kept walking deeper and deeper into the pool. Although I couldn't feel myself walking downwards at all, I felt the water getting deeper and deeper until it was up to my shoulders, or as some people would say, my soldiers. Like soldier boy. The cool, refreshing water and the smooth, cool crystal felt good on my body, and lifted me into the water. I ommed and T-posed, allowing myself to obtain the starfish position so that my body could easily be carried away by the aesthetic waters. I could feel my locus moving from the precipice of my nose between my eyes to my true core, also known as my heart, my very soul. I felt like I was Sora performing a spirit link. My body rotated faster and faster in the now perfectly circular crystal pool, creating a sort of vitruvian Jordan as my limbs spread out naturally to balance the weight distribution. I ommed harder. The crystal behind me began glowing. I spun faster and faster. I ommed harder and harder. The crystal glowed so brightly that I felt like it was a blinding white. All of a sudden, this generated a mystical portal that flashed around my spinning body and teleported it out of the crystal palace. Where it went, I wasn't totally sure, but I'd probably find out in a few seconds.
My body pinwheeled through the rainy sky, limbs flailing around as if they had been stripped of their bones by a charm cast by Gliddorley Lockhart, and my extremities, also known as hands and feet, had been replaced with cinder blocks so I spun like even more of a pinwheel than ever before. I cartwheeled through the air, tearing a hole through a cloud as I plummeted downward. I mumbled something about soulja boy. All of a sudden, my eyes began glowing and my hands and feet, also known as my extremities, erupted out of the cinder blocks powerfully. I rose into the air like I was the lord of the storm, only to be faced with another floating being with glowing eyes.
"I can om harder than you," it said.
"That is wrong," I replied. "I can om harder than you."
"Let us see," beckoned the being, filing their nails with a nail file.
"Ommmmmmmmmm" we both began omming and did not stop no matter what. As we became more invested in our om-off, we locked eyes, sat down in mid air, crossed our legs, made the gottem fingers with both hands, closed our eyes, and began absorbing the energy in the air around us. Everything became so quiet for a second that you could hear the electrons vibrating in the air. It seemed like the entire universe was inhaling. I saw a vision. It was a giant pterodactyl.
"I am… the Pterodactyl," it said. That much was obvious. "As your superior, I have some advice to give you."
"We'll see about that," I retorted, as if I were following a script.
"You've seen the ad too?" We said simultaneously, before poofing back to reality.
The Pterodactyl's voice echoed in my mind. "I gave you one-time-use dimensional powers!"
I nodded in confirmation, my eyes still seldomly closed. Me and the other being unleashed all of the absorbed energy at once, creating two large shockwave blasts. We were falling down, falling down, falling down. However, mine was slightly larger and overpowered theirs.
"Aargh," went the being, faltering a little bit. "H-how can this be? Mental Wave!" They shot a supersonic wave from their cerebral cortex straight at me with the intention to put me to sleep and show me visions of Disturbia, however, I opened my mouth and a bolt of lightning flew forth, shattering the supersonic wave and striking the being directly in the cerebral cortex. They were engulfed in lightning for a second and went "argh," before teleporting immediately into space, where they would briefly say "well, this sucks." And with that, I was victorious. I had proven myself the harder ommer. I raised my hand and my fist high and my already relatively long eyelashes got longer and folded over my eyes elegantly to show how tired I was. However, my body decided to give out at that moment and begin falling forward like some insane combination of the statue of liberty and the colossus of rhodes. I held my hand high, unable to change the positioning of any of my body parts, as if I had become an actual statue from sheer exhaustion. I fla-whumped onto the ground in front of me, the spring green grass and wildflowers of the meadow surrounding me as the distant thunder rumbled in the distance. I felt like a rabbit. The little sleets of shale surrounding my fallen body began rising and dropping to the sound of some pounding, vibrating beat far in the distance. If I didn't know any better, I'd think I was about to be run over by a stampede of vicious, bloodthirsty wildebeests. I somehow overcame the statuification of my own body and leapt to my feet. "Ooga booga booga!" I went, thrashing about like a caveman. "Me hungry! Me want club!" Breathing through my mouth and dragging my knuckles through the dirt, I slouched off in search of a bludgeoning object. In my pea-sized brain, which was approximately the same size as Homer Simpson's, I thought some thoughts. Why was I doing this? Why was I acting like this? I was a human being, not some dumb caveman, right? Was this what it was like to pretend to have amnesia? In the middle of my sluggish slog across the grand thunder meadow, I pressed my palms to my temples and began to weep. With every tear shed, I grew more and more intelligent until I regained my normal human brain. Then I stopped crying, because Fergie says big girls don't cry. And if big girls don't cry, then big boys don't cry either. I had to use my normal, human brain to figure out what was going on here. Why was everyone telling me that I had amnesia? Everyone except William, of course. Why was I so sure that I had been fine with being a stamp collector. What had prompted these strange changes? Though I had no way of knowing for sure, I had a feeling that the answers were somehow connected. Filled with my newfound resolve to find the answers to these strange mysteries, I rose again, my confident face staring down the storm broadly. The storm began to glow green and purple with its intense, ornery, tornado like winds. I felt the damp breeze of the oncoming storm whisk through my short, curly hair, leaving droplets of precipitation on it. I briefly opened my eyes, but when I did, I knew that they were glowing with pure energy like those of an electrified Thor that was totally in his element. I came to the storm and let it absorb me, taking in all of the awe of its wind and rain, refusing to be moved, like a ceaseless flame. The storm screamed louder and louder. I defiantly held my hands out, my glassesless face being unable to see more than a few feet in front of me behind the turbulent debris, driving rain, and durbulent walruses of the storm. Still, I stood my ground, like an old oak tree that refuses to be uprooted by the hands of corporate greed. The wind, rain, and lightning intensified. I braced myself harder. If there was a category 6 of hurricanes, this would definitely be it. I would stand here and become one with this storm if my life depended on it! I held my hands out, opened my glowing eyes, and allowed the power of the storm to envelop me. The winds kicked up to category 7 and began buffeting me around like one of those blow up dancers in front of car dealerships. I could feel my ceaseless flame flickering as the wind and rain tore away at its vitality. Would my ceaseless flame… cease? Would I cease with it? By allowing this shred of doubt to enter my mind, I wavered slightly, but at this level, that is all the storm needed to continue its brutal full frontal assault on my body and spirit, battering me to the ground, extinguishing what remained of my flame, and causing me to finally succumb to my exhaustion.
