So here you are. Smack dab in the front of a Room at The Red Rainbow. You’re just standing there, silently, and you aren’t sure what everything is. You do know what marjiuana looks like though, and you see some of it over there on a tray by the lamp.

You inspect the tray to find that yes, indeed your suspicions were correct, it is marjiuana. It would further seem that there are gummi edibles, edible chocolates, and some sort of glowing pink liquid that smells fruity and synthetic… There’s also a warm hand towel, and a VIP benefits booklet, and some lavender, and what would appear to be 100 tabs of LSD with tiny red rainbows printed on them. You aren’t sure if any of this is for you. You pick up the VIP Benefits Booklet, and the first thing you see is this:

This is what the booklet says regarding Tim’s Tours:

“Cancel all your plans, call in sick to work, and sit down in the world's most comfortable barcalounger, cuz you're not going anywhere. These babies have cupholders, they've got massage settings, and they lean aaaaaaalll the way back. There's only one thing you have to ask yourself. Why walk around the building when you can fly?   

(INCLUDES COMPLIMENTARY MANI-PEDI'S FOR FIRST TIMERS)

Tour Schedule

MON-FRI: 

Like most people, Tim likes to sleep in. So tours don't start 'til around 10:30am. Early birds can definitely request a special morning worm, but don't be surprised if he's groggy and short tempered throughout. 

THE WEEKEND

As soon as the clock strikes five on Friday, Tim switches the settings to party mode. Instead of just taking you around the building, he'll lead you on a psychedelic soiree starting with a swan dive off the top of the tower. 

TOUR OPTIONS:

STANDARD —Free for Guests
The Red Rainbow Building
The Solar System
Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies

EXTRA — 10 DOGE
Anywhere you’d like to go. Literally.

Some examples might include:
Inner Earth
Individual Planets (in depth)
Moon (in depth)
Country of your Choice
City of your Choice
National Parks (Worldwide)
Major Forests/Deserts
Ocean of your Choice
Fictional Worlds (if Tim is in a good mood)

WHERE TO MEET?

Go to the nearest beach and find a pier. Walk towards the end of it and hang a sharp downward turn right after you get there.

WELL…

You think a tour sounds kind of interesting, but not exactly what you feel like doing right now. You just got here… you’ve never been here before… and you’d rather see the place the old fashioned way. You find yourself turning to a page in the booklet titled: During Your Stay

This is what’s on the page:

Restaurants & recreation

Obviously there are a wide variety of restaurants and activities for you to choose from here. But, restaurants are out of the question because you ate not long ago and you’re not that hungry. You’re also not sure if you’re in the mood for a whole ‘activity’ yet, so… You decide that the coffee shop, GreenSleeves is the place for you. It’s pretty neutral it seems like out of all of em. And you’re fairly certain they can’t just sell marjiuana beverages. They must have regular coffee too… So you’ll just head over there, see what’s happening, and yeah…

First you need to figure out where the food court is. The Booklet says, Behind the Lobby. You feel a little confused by that. Not that confused. You just bees bein confused enough. You make for the elevator.

You go in and press the button for The Lobby. The door closes and this music starts playing:

Suddenly it feels like you’re going up, which makes no sense to you. Every fiber of your being thought that the Lobby was on the ground floor. You’re still pretty sure that it is, and you almost refuse to believe otherwise. Just then, while you’re contemplating this, you realize that you’re starting to feel lighter. Physically lighter, like you don’t weigh as much, and you’re hair is floating a little bit… and you’re having a hard time keeping your feet on the ground… and you start to think that maybe none of this is real… Maybe it’s a dream… There’s no such thing as anti-gravity… And yet… nevertheless…

The doors open and you’re in The Lobby. You look up and see that the First Floor is in fact above the Lobby. You were right after all, the Elevator was being weird. You decide to not be so freakin lazy and just take the stairs next time.

You see The Stache across the way, and to the right you see a bar overlooking a side entrance to the theatre. You don’t see any other way to go. To get, “Behind the Lobby,” as the Booklet said. You stand awkwardly in the middle of the room for a second. You turn to the guy reading the newspaper and ask, “How do I get to GreenSleeves?”

He looks at you like and says nothing.

You ask him a second time, but all he does is make a confused face, as if he himself were asking a question. The other man sitting at the bar, the one in the yellow suit, turns to you, and removes his hat and says,

“Forgive norman. He’s always… in character. As who? Who knows. But that’s beside the point. You were looking for GreenSleeves, correct? It’s that way…”

The man points back towards the Elevator, and past it. You’re embarrassed that you didn’t think of this. Heck, you didn’t even think to look that way when you walked in. You just say “Tanks” and walk away.

It isn’t until ten seconds later that you realize you said “Tanks,” like an idiot. You wonder if the guy at the bar thinks you’re a moron. Well, more on that later, as we like to say. You follow his advice and head past the elevator, taking a sharp left turn down a marble corridor. At the end of the corridor there are two lion statues.

You note them, but aren’t genuinely interested or impressed. Between the statues is a door. The door opens to a courtyard, curved and bright. There are palm trees everywhere, and the ceiling above looks exactly like the sky. Suspiciously so. If you didn’t know any better you’d think you were outdoors.

Then you see it. You see a small sign toward the back that says: GreenSleeves. Next thing you know, you’re in line.

If you’re being honest with yourself, you think this place looks exactly like every other coffee shop that you’e ever seen. In fact, now that you think about it, you can’t come up with one definitive difference between any of the coffee shops you’ve ever seen. You glance at the menu…

Okay, so, your fears have been realized. You don’t think this place sells regular coffee at all. It’s all marjiuana. Maybe you could go for a ‘Go On Vacation…’ Or something. Something mellow… You really don’t know what to do, and it’s almost your turn in line. While you’re thinking about what you’re going to order, you overhear a conversation happening at a nearby table.

“Darcy, are you listening? I left him in there for like, 300 years. (whispers) Three hundred fucking years.”

“There’s no way you could’ve known that.”

“Well… That’s not true at all, I knew the RTR was 1:1000, and it was a non-linear Anterior at that. I knew that something was wrong…”

“Not until after the fact.”

“Can you not keep trying to relieve me of my guilt please? If I wanna feel guilty just let me feel f—kin guilty for two seconds.”

“Whatever helps.”

“Well not that.”

Umm…

You decide to order the ‘Go On Vacation’ drink after all. The barista asks what size you’d like. You say, “small.” The barista points to a sticker on the counter that says, ‘ROACH, PINNER, BOMBER.’ You still say small. The barista, who you now realize is a robot, says to you, “that is not an applicable size.” You roll your eyes. Not wanting to get something “ROACH” sized, or have anything to do with anything called a ‘PINNER’, you say, “Bomber.” The Barista, who’s name tag says reads: Eddie Van Baked, points a finger at you approvingly. This worries you.

You find yourself standing to the side, waiting awkwardly—again—and the same two girls you heard talking before are still talking, and you don’t want to drop any eaves, but at the same time they’re at the table closest to where the drinks get put out… and its pretty quiet in there so sound really amplifies… and you wish there was at least some music… You’d think there’d be some kind of music in here… It’s a stoner coffee shop for Pete’s sake! But instead there you are. While you’re standing there all you can hear is…

“Let’s be honest he probably enjoyed it. He knew where he was, and it’s not like there was a full memory wipe…”

“Wouldn’t that make it worse? I mean, there he was, stuck in the 73rd century, knowing he couldn’t get…”

“I don’t think that made it worse at all. He had nothing to do except live in a village where no one talks and everything operates like a well oiled mailbox. You know that. You research these things all the f—kin time. He knew that even if he died there he’d just wake up here. And only a few minutes would’ve passed. He explored the land to no end I’m f—kin sure. In all likelihood it was extremely relaxing. Like living in Lord of the Rings without any of Sauron’s stupid fartin around about rings and world domination. Besides, he’s been researching the place through other people’s dreams for the last… devil knows how long. I’ll bet if he was only in there for the allotted time he would’ve been disappointed.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. Have you not talked to him at all?”

“I’ve been avoiding him ever since.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel guilty.”

“Except you have no reason to feel guilty.”

“Now we’re just talking in circles.”

“Fine, then tell him you feel guilty.”

“And then what?”

“He’ll say, ‘Okay,’ and that’ll be the end of it.”

“One Vacation Bomber, iced!”

You take your first sip of the coffee… and it is deeeeeelicious. Absolutely glorious. you’ve never tasted such good coffee in your life. You can’t even notice the taste of the reefer. You smile, and get comfortable on the bench. You watch the people in the courtyard go about their meanderings. What are they all doing here, you wonder. You see them walking out of the gift shop with bags of stuff, or out of an arcade looking like they haven’t seen sunlight in a week… or heading into what looks like a VR Cafe called A Day In the Life…

Your mind goes back to the conversation the two girls were having in GreenSleeves. Was there some kind of glitch in a program? They must’ve been talking about VR right? And someone got stuck in one? You imagine for a moment what it would be like to be stuck in a virtual reality for 300 years. While you’re doing that some guy comes up, sits down, and immediately starts talking to you.

You turn to him mid sip. You don’t love that he just started talking to you out of nowhere, but he seems nice enough so…

You say, “What? Oh right. Yeah, I mean it’s decent coffee. Can’t say I know what to expect as far as the… um…” You stop mid sentence.

“Oh it’ll be fantastic… I assure you. I have em all the time. In fact…”

The guy gets up and rushes off toward GreenSleeves. You try to tell him to wait, and come back, but he’s gone. That’s when you first start to notice a weird wave. It’s like… A wave of cool stretching lightness going through you and around you. You don’t feel it in your mind at all though. You feel clear as a whistle and sharp as a tac. If anything you feel smarter, more acute… You giggle at the thought of the word ‘acute.’ It’s so tiny. You also look up at the leaves of the Palm trees against the drifting sky projection above and suddenly feel safe, and so far out. As if you are a celebrity going unnoticed on a street in Spain, but it’s Spain on another planet, and you just finished an alien movie so your flush with cash and the air is the perfect temperature and the whistling of the birds is music to your ears and time is but a figment of your imagination’s wildest dreams and…

You realize that what you just thought… “Time is but a figment of your imaginations wildest dreams,” wasn’t a thought of your own, but in fact something you heard someone say two seconds ago. It was this guy:

He’s standing there by a fountain in the middle of the courtyard talking to a gentleman who looks much older than him and is smoking a cigar.

You’re starting to feel pretty high, and it looks to you as though the fountain they are standing by is emitting a radiant mist of red-green light that wraps around them in a bubble of timeless sound and energy, vivifying their every word into a totem upon which the fabric of the very universe hangs…

You get the chills, and snap out of it a little bit. You hear a few more things they’re saying, but it’s a little harder to keep track now that you’re so stoned the marble tiles on the floor look like the Milky Way galaxy shifting like molasses:

“Or should it be something about fractalization…? Maybe time is a corridor with many doors… No that’s stupid.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Let’s go back to the beginning, ‘In a world so mysterious…”

“That part’s fine. So is the part about time. What you need is something to bring back the Levity. Remember… Humor is your Primary. And it’s at it’s best when it comes directly after something profound. The solidity of the one is solved by the fluidity of the other.”

“Sometimes you’re emphasis on mechanics urkes my nerkle… you know.”

“Well heck you asked for my help.”

“And I thank you dearly indeed old buddy. But I think that sometimes you just need to butt out.”

You consider for a moment getting up and uncharacteristically going over to the two and attempting to intrusively butt in to their private conversation. You’re stopped, however, but the return of the guy you met five minutes ago…

He’s holding a half full cup of coffee that looks just like yours. You stare at him for slightly too long. You heard what he said, but it’s like you already don’t remember it. He asks you another question:

“Do the tiles on the floor look like the Milky Way galaxy shifting like molasses?”

You’re shocked.

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“Oh…” he leans back on the bench confidently, “I designed that part myself. We figured out a way to get pretty freakin specific with these strains.”

All you can muster is, “That so?”

“Oh yeah. Have you ever heard of Terrence McKenna? Well, he’s dead now but at one point he talked about how beneficial it could be if we could somehow translate what we see and feel when we’re high onto a screen, or some other display, and show people. That way we could study it, or compare and contrast, see what’s really going on… or at least communicate it to one another. Seeing as it’s so difficult to communicate some of these things, especially when you can’t totally accurately put them into words. Anyway, we have technology that does that here, and one of the things we did with it was to make highly specific strains that do exactly the same thing every time, no matter who takes them.”

You nod in a futile attempt to imply you were tracking with all of that. You feel impressed that this person can be so lucid, considering.

“What’s your name?” you ask him.

“I’m Oliver,” he says.

“Do you work here or something?”

“I wouldn’t call it working… but yes. I do. What about you, you have a room?”

“So far.”

“What floor?”

“The First.”

“That’s a good one. Great place to start.”

You can feel the conversation coming to a grinding halt, but you’re too stoned to think of any clever topics. Or really any topics for that matter. Luckily, Oliver breaks the ice like it’s water.

“I was on my way to hang out with McGillicuddy, wanna go?”

Without asking who McGillicuddy is, or really even thinking at all, you simply find yourself saying, “Indeed.”

To be continued…