Lincoln, Nebraska. I had moved onto the campus not long ago, or had I? Yes, I had. But I didn't really live there. Or did I? I think I had a roommate.

In a video arcade, it was just before closing time. There was a teenage kid sitting at one of the games. He was getting a higher score than anybody had ever done before. One of his friends stood next to it, watching him play. The rest of the place was empty and dark save the glow of all the phosphorescent screens.

I walked up to another of the games, and started watching the demo, uncertain as to whether I wanted to play. Out of nowhere, a salesman appeared. He pulled out something that looked like a modified Gameboy Advance, and excitedly started trying to show it to me. Very pushy, he put it right in front of my face, covering the screen of the game demo. Had I actually been playing, I would have been pissed, because it would have ruined my game, but since I hadn't started yet, I tolerated it for the moment.

The video game whiz kid had finished his game. He and his friend walked over and took an interest in the salesman's Gameboy. He started showing it off.

I decided I wanted to play, and inserted a quarter into the machine. I got underway with my game while the salesman stood next to me extolling his wonderfully superior Gameboy to the two kids. What made it so special? The filter over he had placed over the screen, which he claimed made it much easier to see.

At this point, I became interested in his product, and got distracted from my game. I looked at the screen, and asked if he could take the filter off so we could campare it with the image of an unadorned Gameboy.

At this, he became defensive. "Can't you see, it's obviously better?" He refused to remove the flimsy looking glare filter, and continued to talk about how perfect it was. I wasn't impressed.

My game was over.

Back at a pseudo-residence that wasn't really where I lived, I went online and checked my email, and posted some sort of mundane content on my website.

After finishing up my online time, I decided it was time to drive back home. Late at night.

I drove toward "home", heading north on South 48th St. Everything seemed fairly normal, until a car coming the opposite direction at a high speed swirved into my lane. I veered to the right, and barely missed him. When the road widened to 4 lanes, I moved over into the right lane.

As I continued, I saw more cars, apparently coming from the same source, driving increasingly erratically. There were accidents ahead. I started seeing multi-car pileups in the middle of the road. I passed them with caution, only to find the situation become even more chaotic the farther I drove.

The cars causing all the accidents were obviously driven by students from the University of Nebraska. Frat boys. Drunk frat boys. Very drunk frat boys. It was the equivilant of the CU beer riots of a few years ago, except these people were behind the wheels of many vehicles. There were absolutely out of control.

I started seeing bodies laying in the steets. Pedestrians and others who had been injured or killed lay lifeless in the middle of the road. More wrecked vehicles lined the sides, shrapnel was scattered everywhere, fires blazed unhindered. There were police officers out trying to assess the mess, but there was far too much for them to handle, with more catastrophies beind added every second.

I imagined that this must be what it's like to live in Iraq right now. Could it be that a small piece of the country of Riverbend, Raed, and Salam Pax been magically teleported into the middle of Nebraska? No, it couldn't be. Could it? But how else could this level of destruction be explained?

Thankfully, I was almost home. Only a couple more blocks to go.

Ahead, the wreckage was so thick that there was only a small opening, which angled through the middle of the road. I turned toward it, and saw that there were two bodies in the way, blocking the only route I could take.

An official standing next to the mess was directing traffic, and motioned me forward. They couldn't move the bodies yet, because they needed to examine the evidence, but it would be ok for me to drive through as long as the car didn't touch them.

I drove forward slowly, the wheels of my car straddling the corpses. I was in the clear. The dead bodies remained untouched. I could see the headlights in my rearview mirror as more cars followed behind me in the same manner.

I arrived home, releived to have made it unharmed, but still in near disbelief at what I had witnessed on the way.

I entered the house. It's layout was identical to the Louisville Compound. It was the Louisville Compound.

My brother and mom were upstairs in his room talking quietly. The roommate, who occupied the guestroom / office, was asleep, but his door was open.

When they saw that I had entered, mom and brother exclaimed and started laughing loudly. I asked them if they were worried about waking up the roommate, but they said not to worry about it. He was sound asleep in the room off the hall, even though the door was open.

I walked into bouncing's room, and said I needed to tell them about what I had seen on the way home. Before I could begin, one of them said, "Did you hear the news about Madonna? She lost her case in court today."

Neither of them really cared about it, but they thought I would. Normally that would be true, but not right now.

I said, "That's nice, but listen! There's some really seriously crazy stuff happening out there, and it's very close to home. I just saw it!"

They started laughing some more, and tried to tease me on the subject of the Madonna case.

"Please, you guys! This is about life and death. You've got to listen for just a minute."

At my adamance, they started to become upset, and mom started to lecture me on how I needed to let other people speak too. My brother was annoyed too.

As it started to become a shouting match, I gave up. The only time I had ever perceived a situation with family being this bad was back in '96, when I had been diagnosed as bipolar. Of course, I knew now that back then, it had really been my own mind distorting my perceptions, but what was this? I wasn't mentally ill now. Not anymore. They just didn't want to hear anything from me.

Knowing this was going to get nowhere, I walked out of the room. On my way down the hall, I noticed that the sleeping roommate's door had been closed.

For a brief moment, I wondered if this was a dream. Could I be dreaming? No, I couldn't. This was too real. No dream would be as real as this. I dismissed the thought from my mind, not bothering to run any of the standard lucidity tests. What I had to do next was too urgent to waste time on that.

Downstairs in my room, I needed to write about what I had seen, but I couldn't go online. The only place where I had access to an Internet connection was at the other residence. I found some paper to write on instead. I could transcribe it later.

I thought of a title, and started to compose sentences. No, on second thought, I needed a better title, because this was huge. The title should be all caps. I scratched out the title I had, and wrote another underneath it. No, that wasn't right either!

I needed to get the time right to. I looked at the clock, and scribbled down a number. Dammit, why couldn't I get the title right? The words were in my mind, but they weren't appearing the way I wanted on the page. I tried to write them again, and saw that my hand had produced the same thing as before. Focus.

I knew I needed sleep, but I had to get this down first. The entire first paragraph, which was far bigger than I remembered from a moment ago, was wrong and needed to be rewritten. I drew a big X through it.

Beneath my writing, I saw faded words. A watermark, printed in light grey. "WATERMARK. NO COPYING ON LINUX."

I had heard about digital watermarking schemes in printed magazine pages which would be recognized by Photoshop, which would refuse to read or save scanned images of pages bearing the invisible signature. But what was this?

Did the paper on which my own writings were scribbled bear some strange copy protection all its own?

This wasn't a blank sheet of paper at all. This was a faded newspaper. A copy of the school newspaper from a few weeks ago, too old and faded to read.

I needed to write what I had seen! I resumed my attempt to write atop the faded newspaper text, watermarks and all, about the mayhem I had witnessed, but my consciousness was lapsing. It was all falling apart.