A DMT Trip
A DMT Trip
It was a quiet day in the coffee shop. Just as well. Dora wasn't feeling entirely herself.
Dora knew coffee. No one could make a better cappuccino or latte than Dora. The secret, for what little good it did anyone else, was in the sound. The perfect pitch that told her when to stop pouring coffee, or that the milk had reached exactly the right level of frothiness.
But today her ears were playing her false. The last cappuccino had been all froth, over-compensating for the previous one that had been a terrible flop. She felt like she was coming down with the flu.
To top it all off, she tripped over a cable. Cutlery went flying, hitting the ground in a shower of
multitonal pings around her as she also fell...
...and kept falling.
Something twisted, she wasn't sure if it was something inside her, or the universe at large. Then finally she landed.
"Oh! Hey, you can't just push in like that!" said a voice.
Feeling rather shaken, Dora looked up slowly. Something vaguely like a large blue sausage was glaring at her.
"I'm sorry. What... er, where am I?" Glancing around, she appeared to be on a crowded travelator, surrounded by a lot of nothing.
"You're in the line, and you just pushed in! What's your priority?" The sausage demanded.
"Um... one?" she tried hopefully, struggling to her feet.
"Ha. Get to the end of the line."
"Er..." She looked back, at a seemingly endless parade of odd... people. "Where is it?"
"Where is what?"
"The end of the line."
The blue sausage looked at her like she was an idiot. "At the end."
"Yes, well," it was hard to tell without reference points, but the travelator seemed to be moving at a good speed, and was quite crowded. "how do I get there?"
"Change at the next router. Here it comes, you ready?"
"No!"
None the less, the sausage shoved her off. A moment of panic was quickly over as she hit the floor.
"I'm going to have a lot of bruises to explain." she told no one in particular.
"Destination?" A shiny silver robot stood beside her with a clipboard.
"I want to go home." Even to her own ears that sounded pitiful.
"127.0.0.1" the robot announced, ticking the clipboard with a flourish.
A chute opened beneath her, and then she was sliding through the dark, emerging in a crowded concourse. The crowd were every bit as surreal as the blue sausage.
It was all too much. "Help!" she shouted.
"Help is on the way!" a green duck told her happily, without pausing.
"I want to go home!"
"This is home." another robot had appeared.
"Not for me."
"Ah, you should have been more specific then. Do you have a fully qualified domain name?"
"I... no."
"Lost Packet!" it shouted, waving a flag. "Identification please."
Dora went to take her wallet from a pocket, but was startled by a loud siren going off.
"Virus! Virus!" The robot screamed in panic as a cage fell over her.
"I am not a virus!" she protested, grabbing the bars of the cage.
"You're a Trojan." The robot asserted.
"I am not. I'm English."
More robots arrived and carried her off to a brick lined cell.
"I'm not a virus! I just want to go back to work!" Dora cried.
"Bounce. Identification please." said a pleasant, disembodied voice. It sounded almost reasonable.
"I am Dora Smith. I'm supposed to be at work. Twenty, Farfield street."
"I'm sorry, that is not a valid address."
Dora paused to think for a moment. "Telco1."
"Rerouting to telco1."
Then Dora was flying. And screaming.
At least she landed on something soft.
"Bounce!" screamed a small purple mushroom, pulling a lever. She was flung up again.
"Help!" she gasped as she landed.
"Bounce!" responded an identical purple mushroom, and away she flew again.
The next surface was polished steel, she wasn't at all sure how she avoided breaking her legs.
"This is a secure server. Please have your passport or identification ready for inspection."
Dora pulled out her wallet before anyone could panic, and presented her drivers license.
"This certification authority is not recognised. Access denied."
"What? That's the DVLA stamp right there! How can you not recognise the DVLA?"
"Next please."
A queue seemed to have formed behind her. Dora shuffled aside, embarrassed, but also angry. She stalked down the line, trying to work out what to do next.
She shouldn't stare, but she couldn't seem to help it. There in the queue was an oversized, anthropomorphic phallus.
"What are you?"
"25% discount on Viagra!" it replied.
"Ah." she regarded in through narrowed eyes. "Say, do you have identification?"
"Yes!" It waved a certificate at her with pudgy hands.
With only a moment of hesitation, she grabbed the paper and kicked the phallus out of the queue.
"I hate spam." she muttered to the shocked blue sausage as she stepped into line.
"I would just like to apologise for any offence I may have caused earlier..." stammered the sausage nervously.
"Forget it. Please."
She waved the certificate at the inspector.
"You are from KittyKat Express Services?" It asked.
"Um, yes?"
"Hmmm." It looked down at her over half-moon spectacles. "Takes all types. Go on."
Dora walked through into something like a small shopping market. She approached a booth containing a tree.
"Excuse me, I need to find the destination address for twenty, Farfield street."
"I'm sorry, you are not authorised to access that information."
"But I need it!"
"You are not..." the tree was interrupted by an explosion of falling masonry as a hole appeared in the wall behind its booth.
"Security breach!" It cried, running as fast as its roots would take it away from ground zero. "Security breach!"
Dora approached the hole, and found a caterpillar helping itself to documents on the far side.
"Excuse me, can you find the destination address for twenty, Farfield street?"
"Easy." It reached into the hole, seized a sheet of paper and brought it within reach
"Thankyou." Dora grabbed it and ran back to the booths, ducking past the arriving robots.
"I need to go here." She presented the paper to a green mushroom.
"Routing... Have a nice trip."
A trolley scooped her up and hurtled away through corridors, eventually dumping her on a travelator not unlike the one she had started on. Mere moments later she was thrown unceremoniously off the end of the line.
Her head hurt, so did her knees. She heard herself groan.
"Dora, are you okay?" her boss was at her side, trying to help her up while calculating compensation liability.
"No, I tripped." she gingerly poked at the side of her head, but it just seemed to be bruised. "Please do something about that damned network cable."
Word Count: 1138
Muse for Today: drjon