While driving his beat up old Honda Del Sol back toward the city, a cheap looking white sign with black lettering caught Taro's eyes. The sign said, "Thrift Store". Taro's eyes were tuned to recognizing those signs since that's where he bought most of his clothes lately. He turned off the road and parked in the dilapidated white building's parking lot.

After stepping through the door, Taro walked past the clothing racks - he didn't have enough money for that right now - back to the nick-nack section. "Aha. There they are." He had the choice of three VCRs, each costing 300 Yen. Plus another 100 for an old universal remote.

"Naah." He put the remote down. He really liked watching Ryoko manage the VCR controls manually. Taro put the VCR, an old Sony model, under his arm and walked to the register. He was just about to step up to the counter when he came to a dead stop.

"What in the world am I doing?" No, pretty girls didn't just hop out of TV sets. As real as it seemed, last night didn't really happen. It couldn't have. Taro was imagining things. And it wouldn't have been the first time. Of course the one other time involved some stupid experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. It'll make you more creative, his friend had told him. Steve Jobs did this. Taro hadn't touched that stuff for years and vowed never to do it again.

Sure, he could have put the chair away himself... and cleaned up the pizza box… and found the wool blanket and covered himself with it… after putting the red tape on the cushion next to him. This was all possible.

The red tape. He opened his jacket and looked down. It was still there. Ryoko was still there. Or was she? Well it was only going to cost him 300 Yen to find out. He stepped up to the counter and set the VCR down in front of the old lady manning the cash register.

The lady raised her eyebrows. "We don't sell too many of these anymore. You know, I can remember when I paid over 40,000 Yen for my first one." Taro nodded, smiled, and handed over the money. "Do you need cables?" the lady asked.

Taro thought about her question. "Yes. I guess I do."

The lady reached under the counter and set some cables on top of his purchase. "It's on the house. Have a nice day!"

Taro stuffed the cables into his pocket and nodded with a grateful smile. "Arigato!"

Traffic was light when Taro's Del Sol entered the city limits. He took a deep breath. Sometimes, he remembered reading somewhere, the drugs don't leave your system. And they can recombine in the brain years later. That must have been what happened.

After navigating through some city traffic, Taro pulled into the parking lot of an old warehouse in the city's garment district. Though the building was quite run down - graffiti covered its walls and few of its windows were still intact - it was the place that he called home.

Taro parked his car near a loading dock and scaled the concrete steps. After stepping through the heavy fire door he hopped into a nearby freight elevator and pressed the button for the top floor. He hugged his new VCR tightly on the way up.

Contrasted with the outside of the building, the top floor of the warehouse was surprisingly neat and clean. As well it should be. Taro had spent countless days, even weeks, cleaning, sweeping, scrubbing, puttying and painting. He was grateful to have this space and he wasn't going let anybody think he didn't appreciate what he had been given.

Since the space was quite large, Taro only used up a corner of it to live in. This corner, bounded by a concrete pillar, contained a lumpy bed, a large couch, and an old wooden kitchen table with chairs that served as his work desk. On the desk sat a five-year-old Apple MacBook Pro, a machine that had been the hottest laptop around when Taro first got it. Opposite the couch, between a scratched up refrigerator and a poorly stocked food cabinet, stood Taro's pride and joy - a 60 inch LCD television set. It had been a high school graduation present from his parents.

At the far end of the building, catty-corner to his living room, Taro had set up his studio. At the moment it consisted of two empty easels and a podium. On the podium stood a slab of marble with only the top corner chipped off of it. A large folding table pushed up against the wall was the home to his tools, brushes, paints and other necessary supplies. A well worn and colorful smock hung on a plastic hook glued onto a nearby concrete pillar.

After walking into his space, Taro looked at the smock for several minutes. But he still didn't feel like he was ready to wear it. Instead Taro marched over to the kitchen table and set his new VCR on it. Then he took off his jacket and hung it over one of the chairs. He heard the plastic tape box bounce up against the back of the chair as he did this. Taro lifted the red box out of its snug home and set it down on the VCR.

Taro's laptop seemed to be calling out to him. There was something he wanted look up. But the red tape caught his eye. The MacBook could wait. Taro had an appointment with an hallucination.

The cables the kind old lady had provided worked perfectly. Taro was amazed that a TV set as modern as his 60 inch LCD still had connections that worked with this ancient device. When he plugged the VCR in, it powered right up. Taro stared hypnotically at the flashing "12:00" for several seconds.

Then he picked up the plastic tape box and opened it up. The red videotape was still in there. He checked the spindles. Someone had rewound it to the beginning. Taro turned on his television and set the source to "AV". Instead of seeing the static he was accustomed to, he saw a blue screen. He patted his VCR as if it were a well-behaved pet. Some of the better units sensed when there wasn't a signal and put out a nice blue screen up instead of noisy static.

"Here goes nothing!" Taro pushed the red tape into the machine and pressed PLAY.