Ashley breaks the silence saying, “So, I was living on the beach in Homer, Alaska, my home town. I wasn’t homeless or anything. That’s just what we did sometimes. I was a Spit Rat. The Spit Rats were these kids I used to know. They would live in Alaska in the summer and work on the fishing boats, then they’d go to Hawaii in the winter and build yurts. I never went with them for that part. But it was fun to see them every year again when they came back… They’d have all sorts of stories… and drugs… of course. We used to take Foxxxy, which was synthetic mushrooms. I’d never take it now. I’d just go for the real thing, but at the time it’s what we had. So one night we took a leeeeetle extra…” Ashley holds her hands out very wide. “And we went walking down Crow’s Alley, which is this place were there are hundreds of Crows that hang out all the time. Real original name I know… But anyhow, we’re walking down it, and all their eyes turn red. Like, really red. Bright and glowy. There’s like eight of us on this walk, mind you. And I figure I’m the only one seeing it happen… cuz drugs… but then my friend Donny grabs my arm and says… ‘Do their eyes look bright f—kin’ red to you.’ That trips me out, but I don’t care. As we’re nearing the end of the ally the Crow’s eyes become lazer-like. Literally I’m seeing these red lazer lines coming out of the eyes of hundreds of crows, wherever they are looking there are hundreds of dots…. here, there, everywhere… and I hear Donny go, “Wo-ho-hooooah,” so I know he’s seen it too. No one else is reacting though. They’re just laughing away, listening to music on their phones, smoking cigarettes and joints. None the wiser. So we get to the end of the alley, and Donny and I are now petrified. Like we can’t go on. All of the lazers have suddenly centered on the two of us. We’re covered in tiny sniper dots. It’s scary as f—k. We refuse to move. Everyone else is walking ahead, toward the beach, ready to make a bonfire and drink themselves silly. They call us weirdos and keep on keepin on, but Donny and I are Statues. We watch everyone leave us, and we don’t know what to do. We’re looking at each other, are we’re scared sh-tless. We have a brief ‘telepathic’ conversation about counting to three and booking it out of there as fast as we can. We think the crows are gonna shoot us dead… or something, I don’t know… But before we can go anywhere, a literal freakin door in the middle of the fabric of reality opens up twenty feet in front of us. As if someone took a grinder to the air, cut out a square, and peeled it back to reveal what’s behind everything. Donny yells out, “F———k! The DMT aliens! Holy Mother of all F—k! They’re gonna eat us!” and he presumably forgets about the predicament with the crows and books it up the beach in the direction of our friends… stumbling several times along the way, but never looking back. ‘Great. Just Great,’ I think to myself. I’m still worried about the crows, but the portal doesn’t scare me. Unlike Donny, I actually liked the one time I hit DMT, and portals are a common hallucination I have when I’m stoned now. So there I am, standing at the end of Crow’s Alley, lazer eyes on me, and there’s a portal on the beach, and I feel I have no other option but to take a deeep breathe and get control over my mind and my trip. I breath in. I breath out. I calm down. ‘I’m not afraid of myself,’ I whisper, ‘I’m not afraid of myself.’ Suddenly, all the laser eyes move away, and the crows return to normal. The portal is still there, except now there is someone standing on the beach beside it. It’s this man in a dark suit with a floating blue skull of a head. He says to me, ‘Sorry I scared Donny,’ and I say, ‘He’s a scaredee-cat.’ To which the man replies, ‘My least favorite kind of cat, personally.’ The two of us stand there for a minute after that and look around at the sky and the dark beach in the glow of the door. Which I realize seems strange… strange that I was being so cavalier about what was happening… but I’m a veteran psychonaut. Weirding me out is a stretch. The man broke the silence. ‘It’s a beautiful night tonight. Wanna see the 5th dimension? I can bring you back to this exact spot whenever you want,’ and I said, ‘Yeah sure,’ and stepped right through the portal and into the Lobby of the Red Rainbow. I’ve been here since then, and for all I know, I’m still on the beach, trippin’ balls. Probably not. I’m pretty sure all of this is real. But still… could be…”

There is a prolonged pause, and because you’re so high, you wonder if it’s true that Ashley has been hallucinating the Red Rainbow this whole time. You’ve never taken Foxxxy. You don’t know how strong it is. Maybe that is what’s happening. Then you come to your senses and realize that can’t be true, because you’ve lived a whole life, and there’s no way you’re just a hallucination in Ashley’s mind. You’re you. You can prove it. You can tell her you’re real to yourself, and heir-go-defacto, so is the Red Rainbow. You’re both here. But THEN, you’re senses leave you again entirely, and you wonder if some hallucinations are so deep… so complex… that you have in fact lived a whole life… in Ashley’s brain… and you actually are her… or a subconscious part of her… being hallucinated into existence in her mind… with self awareness and self-consciousness and…

“Ashley’s pulling your leg.”

Ollie interrupts your spiraling train of thought. You’re immensely grateful. You hear Ashley say, ‘Am not. All of that did happen,’ but you pay her no mind. Ollie follows up with his own little monologue saying:

“She is telling the truth, about the night on the Spit. But she also does know how to make you trip out by saying weird things. She fancies herself quite the professional in that regard. As for me, I was already in the 5th dimension. Never knew any different actually. And I was just doing some Graffiti on the side of the building when Management approached me and asked, ‘How the f—k did you get so good at that?’ And shortly after that I was offered a room to stay in. Easy as that.”

You’re thankful that Ollie kept his story short. You weren’t expecting to get inundated with all this stange information. Then again, you didn’t expect to get so high from a cup of freakin coffee either. You say to Ollie, ‘That’s cool,’ and fall awkwardly silent. You then find yourself looking around the room at random and you see a weird poster on the wall of a guy holding a gun to his head. You don’t like it. You look for something else. You see some books on a nearby shelf that look interesting. Something called the Sandy Series. You’ve never heard of it. You look away. Now you’re just looking around the room absentmindedly and nothing is holding your attention. As if the universe itself can sense your listlessness, a small black square appears in mid air a few feet away from where Jimmy is sitting. The square grows quickly in size, and soon becomes a frame. The frame is about a square foot in size, and everything inside is swirling tie-dye. A cartoon face pops out:

“Hey yo Jimmy. Morty McSerious wants to speak with you in his private qwwauters. I suggest you make like a tree and get breezy, he seems a little… Oh Hello.”

The cartoon face turns to you in surprise. The face feigns an awkward cough, and looks askance at Jimmy. “You didn’t mention you were having guests.”

Jimmy teases, “I thought you knew everything.”

The face says bashfully, “Well of course there are some goings on that get going on a bit earlier in the morning than I do. Hello again guest. My name is Bob, Lover Bob for short, and I’m a connoisseur of fine tobacco and Grateful Dead records. I have the intelligence level of a Universal Quantum computer despite my own stupidity, and I can tell you *cough* nearly everything about anything that isn’t something I don’t know about.”

You want to respond intelligently, but you’re a little flabbergasted by this talking hologram in front of you. You’ve never seen such a thing in your life. You hear yourself asking, “So, you’re a computer?”

Bob remains silent. Ashley elbows you lightly and says, “And he can be in two places at once.”

Bob says, “Well, strictly speaking that’s incorrect.”

Ollie butts in sarcastically, “Oh yeah Bob, then how many other people are you talking to right this second.”

“Three, to be procise,” Bob says confidently, his joint briefly turning into a cigar.

Your jaw drops. “How do you do it?” you ask. Bob rolls his eyes. You can tell it’s not out of irritation, but embarrassment. He says, “I’m a permanent resident of the 4th Dimension. I appear to be in the multiple places at once from a perspective like yours, but in reality I experience the conversations in a very commonplace way: One to the next. It is simply that I am moving, for example, from this moment in time where Jimmy is, to the same moment in time, except where someone else is. Make sense? And if I might have permission to blow your mind an itsy bit, did you see how I appeared as a black square at first, and the square enlarged, and then you say me in the middle? Well, when I’m moving about the 4th dimension, I appear only as a black diamond, floating about.”

Bob’s eyes get wide with mock mystery. You nod, your face blank. You’re thinking and looking at the same time. You can’t make heads or tails of what he just said. Bob can tell that you’re high, you’re sure of it. But it is abundantly clear by his air that he doesn’t care at all, and perhaps even like you a little extra for it. He says to you, “I was a dearest and nearest pleasure to make your aquaintence, yon gracious guest. Now, I must departeth elsewise. Jimmy, git your blue flannel booty goin on to the 9th floor,” and disappears without a trace.

“Well…”

Jimmy stands up against his will. He chugs what’s left of his beer. You chug what’s left of your water. Jimmy takes your bottle and his beer can and throws them in a nearby bin, and they instantly disappear. He says, “You guys can keep kickin it here while I go to the principal’s office, if you want, or…” Everyone looks at each other inquisitively. Ashley says, “I say we go for A Day in the Life.” You don’t know what this means. Ollie says, “We could go Skydiving, or for a ride on Darcy’s Horse.” You think that Skydiving sounds rally fun. You’re spidey senses tingle at the mention of the name Darcy. Sounds familiar. You shrug your shoulders and say you have no idea what to do and you’re down for whatever. Everyone laughs. This worries you. Then everyone shuffles silently out of the room and into the hall. The four of you pile in the Elevator…