[john70t]

I'm climbing a tall set of curved stone stairs someplace exotic. There is a small monkey with me who keeps slipping on the wet moss. I pick him up and carry, explaining that I can climb them easily because stairs are made for human limbs and not animals.

The curve gets tighter and tighter up into a pointed spiral in the sky. I have to squeeze through a horizontally narrow space carrying a massive rut sack but do it easily, which should be physically impossible. At the top it is cold wet and breezy. The tower is next to a huge waterfall. There is a jump to a distant narrow mossy ledge. I'm thinking what the men who built this tower were capable of. Day after day of hauling precise stones and the tower having lasted so long. And I only climbed it once. I make the jump with ease but keep going and don't stop to help the others in my group. There is an old white-haired lady looking sad behind me. Nobody else helps or even notices her despite the crowd on the land side. I'm sure there is a system for it. There has to be.

I put on my wet suit and grab the boogie board. There are two shallow pools of saftey before the waterfall drop into frothy misty outer space. I surf over the waterfall down down down and it turns into an ice slide about halfway through past the rocks at the bottom. That was easy. A crowd of reporters cheers and flashing light bulbs greet me at the bottom.

Then the cute girlfriend of a once close childhood friend splashes into the water behind me. I wait to get out because I want to ask her where he is. She doesn't know and doesn't seem to care. I figure all the reporters will tell him I was there. I leave to go get lunch at the cafe but she desperately wants to tag along. Whatever. We will probably find the friend there. The cafe is warm but she gradually becomes very attentive and clingy and is starting to piss me off. Is she hitting on me?

Another childhood friend by the same name, once fat and dopey but now thin and professional with glasses, bursts in and announces my friend died an hour ago. "Didn't you hear?"