my jovial spanish teacher gives me a disk for a spanish computer game and i take it home and slip it into the drive. a computer generated earth appears on the screen, eternally turning in computer generated space, but then something goes wrong. overlapping bubbles blip over the image, growing and filling the monitor. i am now outside, and the atmosphere of the earth has altered dramatically, becoming a thick, blue bubbling oily soup; life is now like living in a blue lava lamp.
i am attempting to monitor the atmosphere, to find out exactly what it is made of. one thing we know is that we can't breathe it, water contains more oxygen. wearing a most impractical and embarrassingly revealing blue velvetine hotpants and bikini top, with my hair up in two silly childish pigtails, i ride on a dull silver bicycle through swampy mangroves, struggling through the sluggish, blue oily air, dunking my head under water every 30 seconds to take a breath. i hear suggestions of what the air contains from every direction..."caramelised sugar"..."olive oil"...making it sound like a recipe. however humans are rapidly adjusting, and the atmosphere is settling down until it feels almost normal.
i ride into a large concrete room full of birds. a talkative eagle perches in the far corner, surveying the scene. she seems to be the undisputed leader here. some seagulls bully a defenseless pigeon and i can't let them get away with it. i wrest it from their murderous orange beaks and razor claws, but it is in pieces in my helpless hands. if only i can gather all the pieces and fit them together like a grisly jigsaw puzzle, then the bird can live. people try to distract me as i am painstakingly fitting flesh and feathers to tiny rib-cage, but i can't seem to find the head anywhere. the nasty seagulls beat their wings around my head and their gales of cackling laughter richochet off the poo-splattered walls of the chamber.
copyright 1994 lisa bode