It all started with a long-distance phone call. The person on the other end was clearly speaking a language that I didn't understand (German?) but somehow I did understand.
I woke up later in the office (really a room next to a high school gymnasium, linoleum floors and all) where a software engineer was describing his problem to me. He spoke Swedish (I learned later) and I responded in English and yet we both were able to discuss the problem of modifying his system of text-delimited fields to accomodate graphical input.
I strolled through the gym after our meeting, then outside where children were swimming in a community pool.
Knowing I needed to return to the airport, but not which way to proceed, I wandered down a street on the sidewalk and decided to phone my contact in the US, Fard Muhammad. I asked him to look up directions to the airport, complaining that it was beginning to get dark. He said he'd call me right back as I opened an extremely narrow door set into a wall. It turned out that I couldn't fit through the door wearing my backpack and since I was on the phone, I decided to go around it. It also turns out that it wasn't beginning to get dark at all, just a quickly moving black bank of clouds passing by.
I had to find a bathroom and doffed my backpack, setting it down on the sidewalk outside a women's lavatory. As I entered the men's room my phone rang. I flipped it open. Instead of hearing Fard's voice, I saw about twenty pictures of slot machines that he had taken on a recent trip to Las Vegas.
I cursed him as I snapped the phone shut, used the urinal and washed my hands. My backpack was still sitting on the sidewalk when I returned for it.
Next door to the bathrooms was an arcade; of course I had to check it out. They had a strange Dance Dance Revolution clone (I couldn't make out the title on the marquee) and I could hear the familiar sounds of Defender echoing from a far corner.
Just then I realized I could search my Recently Dialed list for American Airlines and book a flight home and get a taxi to the airport.
It was 11PM
