SPOILER ALERT: Starts Funny-ish; Then Goes Bummer

Actually, things could be far worse.

What I thought was going to be a mildly alarming health issue turned out to not be so bad.

With the help of an awesome person,  I've managed to score a new source for drugs.  This previous sentence, in my twenties, would have been far more sinister; in my fifties, the drugs in question are for high blood pressure and cholesterol control.  (I was on a regimen of four meds in Japan.  It turns out that only the BP and cholesterol meds are prescription here.  The stroke-prevention medication is a baby aspirin, and the pills to deal with stomach complications from the other three is just Pepcid AC.)

I have a car and a job, although there are caveats to both.  The car is a rental and the job is driving for-hire.  I have to work six days a week or so and drive in Seattle during rush hour traffic, which is less than optimal and quite stressful, and if I don't work, I don't get paid.  There's no boss, but neither are there any benefits.

I have a home, albeit another temporary one.  This should see me into spring of next year, though.  I've got a room in a friend's house, and there's space for all my stuff, and there's a bed.  It's warm and dry and the WiFi is good and the neighborhood is quiet and there's a nice park nearby for running, and my favorite pub is a few blocks away.

So things don't suck, as such.

I still have some issues, however.  The job hunting process is long and daunting, and fraught with blatant ageism, a market that isn't great for generalists, and the not-uncommon outright scam attempt.

I'm disappointed, and disillusioned, and beginning to feel like there are things that are permanently off the table for me.  A decent job with good pay and benefits, for one.  I'm not feeling the love for actual experienced and educated managers and consultants.  This is largely due to the massive HR apparatus that surrounds so many companies these days, much in the same way that Eptatretus stoutii, the Pacific hagfish, covers itself in a protective layer of mucus to protect itself from predators.  These useless slimebags manage to keep just about everything from gaining access, and whether or not I'm still talking about the sea creature or the corporate gatekeepers I will leave as an exercise to the reader.   Suffice it to say that I've had one count 'em one proper interview since I returned to the US at the beginning of August.  Hagfish, by the way, are ultimately farmed and skinned and made into a sort of leather.  A word to the wise for the HR professional.

I can't see home ownership happening for me, either.  My finances are shredded, of course, and that's of my own doing.  But holy smokes, the median home price in King County is $632,000.  I don't think I've made that much money in my entire life, and I've been working full-time since I was sixteen years old.  That's not happening.  Hell, I'm having a hard time finding an apartment that I can afford.

No work stability and no financial stability doesn't exactly fire up the ladies, either.  It's not as though I was ever a raging success with women to start with.  I mean, I've had girlfriends, but God only knows how that happened, because I sure don't.

Put all this together and let's do a quick calculation of my overall worth to myself and society as a whole.  Whoops, you have to send out to CERN to get numbers that small.

I feel completely useless and without value.  I'm not accomplishing anything.  There is no stability in my life.  If I died, some people might be temporarily upset, but I sure can't see anyone giving a damn.  (OBLIGATORY ASIDE: No, I'm not suicidal.)

I'm not really sure how to end this.  Frankly, I should have stopped after the hagfish bit, which was at least sort of funny.

I just want to be worth something.

The Anxiety Blanket

I’ve mentioned here before that I suffer from anxiety, in varying degrees, pretty much all the time.

There’s a specific reason for this, and even a specific person who is responsible for me being this way.  (I should take a moment at this juncture to point out that I don’t really care if you agree with me or not, by the way.)  There’s no real reason to confront said person, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is I’m well into middle age and should really be thinking about beginning to take at least some nominal responsibility for my own life.

Here are a few things about anxiety, about constant worry, that I’ve noticed in me personally.

To start with, anxiety, expecting the worst, doesn’t actually help you prepare for the worst.  This might seem counterintuitive; if I expect the worst, one presumes, then I can be prepared for it. 

There are three problems with this theory.  The first is that you can’t possibly be prepared for every bad thing that might happen.  There’s always that unexpected train crash or tax assessment or random imbecile elected to high office that catches you unawares.  The end result is that you plan poorly for some potential bad things, instead of planning properly for the realistically most likely event.  

The second is that your imagination is, objectively, shite at this.  Seriously, it’s awful.  Imagination is great for some stuff.  I used to write comic books for a living and it worked reasonably well for that.  It also does the trick when I ponder scenarios involving me, Lupita N’yongo, and a four-day weekend at Kalaloch.  It’s even good for making dinner plans.  But your imagination is terrible at thinking up realistic concepts.  There you are, working on some strategies for investment that involve market disruptions, and you brain starts off well enough considering actual economic factors such as natural disasters, trade disputes, and new inventions, but then it runs away and hides in a corner and starts shouting, “But what if they invent WARP drive?  What THEN?  What if it turns out that the kaiju from 'Pacific Rim' are REAL?  Huh?”  Next thing you know, you’re on the phone to your broker at 3 AM, demanding to diversify your portfolio into giant robot manufacturers and Pym Tech.

The third problem with it is that you don’t know the future and it’s actually horribly egocentric to think you do.  To think that we know the future implies that we have control over the outside world, which we really don’t, at least, not at that scale.  My hand to God, I spent the vast majority of the 1990s believing that my personal will was a major factor in keeping the planes I flew in aloft.  I had to concentrate at all times on keeping the plane together and airborne, because otherwise that 737 was gonna go into Plummet Mode and that would be it.

Now, if this sounds stupid to you, there’s a perfectly valid reason for that: it was really really stupid.  (I also believed that the plane stayed up as long as I wasn’t looking out the window.)  These are the stupid lies and coping mechanisms that people with anxiety develop, just so that they can move through the world.  This is what we have to go through just so we can go outside, or talk to another human, or deal with the Wendy’s drive-thru, or any of the hundreds of daily activities that non-anxiety people just sort of… do.

Not only this, but, and stay with me here, you kind of do create your own reality.  Now, I don’t mean that you actually give yourself cancer or cause your company to fail.  But you do move towards the things that confirm your fears.  You will drink more and engage in bad behaviors that wreck your health.  You will  become less productive at work.  You will  get sick and miss a lot of work and ultimately get laid off.  We seek out, consciously or not, the things that confirm our biases.  You can’t alter the state of the universe.  You just can’t.  But you can move towards the things that make you say, “Ah HA!  See?  I TOLD you I would get sick!”  Of course you got sick, dingus.  You smoke three packs a day and drink three pints of lager a night while parked on a barstool, because that’s where your anxiety led you.

"Who is to blame for all this?” I loudly scream at the universe, God, Facebook, Twitter, and random people on the 39 bus.  

Well, the truth is, it doesn’t matter.  Like I said up at the beginning of this, this isn’t tort law.  Knowing which parties are at fault doesn’t do a damn bit of good.  They left you out in the middle of the desert, metaphorically speaking, and raging against the sun isn’t going to keep you alive.  In fact, quite the obvious.  

So here’s what I’m going to do.

First, I’m going to forgive.  Ha ha ha, no, I’m just kidding.  I’m still righteously angry about the dreadful unfairness of this, and I have every right to be.  I’m 54 years old and lack a fairly basic set of coping skills.  I’m also not going to forget.  This is the first thing everyone tells people with anxiety: “Forgive and forget,” they say.  “Only when you let go of your anger can you Jedi nonsense blah blah hippie shit flowers blah blather,” and obviously I’ve tuned out.  

Forgive and forget doesn’t work, and here’s why: it’s bloody hard to do.  I’ve been pissed off for absolute decades, and I’ve known why and at whom for a considerable bit of time as well.  We get so wrapped up in Forgive-and-Forget being Step One of Becoming a Glorious Person that, when we can’t do it, we get discouraged and give up.  F-and-F should really be way later in the process.  Like, Step Forty-one.  Or not at all.  No, I’m going to ignore F-and-F and jump straight to Step Only.

Step Only: Pursue Joy.

And this time, I’m not kidding.  Years of anxiety have left me nearly completely anhedonic.  I experience pleasure, but it’s like I’m seeing through a blanket.  I “enjoy” spending time with friends; I “like” eating wonderful food; I am “happy” when playing guitar.  These things, and many others, generate a pleasant feeling, but it’s muted. This damn Anxiety Blanket covers me all the time, always getting in the way and covering me like a shroud.  Not only that, but, to extend the blanket metaphor, it alters the way in which people see and experience me.

But (he said, riding this metaphor all the way into the ground like the guy surfing into the planet’s atmosphere at the end of Dark Star), it is possible to poke a hole in that blanket.  I can stick a finger in that blanket and wiggle it around.  With enough poking and worrying, I can make the hole bigger.  Maybe I can stick a hand through it, or see a little better.  Maybe I can eventually poke my whole head through.  Maybe I can, someday, tear that stupid blanket apart.  (Apologies to my friends and relatives in the fabric-arts community, for whom blankets are handmade and precious.  Trust me, this is a bad blanket.  If blankets were people, this blanket would be a really bad person.)

Here’s the challenge.  Right now: no holes in that blanket.  It’s pretty solid.  Well-made, this blankie, and it’s been in the family for a long time.

So what I have to do is look for a thin spot in the blanket.  I can’t even see through it, but I can tell that there’s a little more light over here than other places.  Right now, the thin spot is running.  Running triggers some feelings in me that I can’t really express, because I don’t have the vocabulary for it oh wait no I do, it’s called “happiness.”  Spending time with friends seems to make me somehow less sad.  Staring at some bamboo moving in the wind.  Eating something tasty.  There’s this goofball iPhone game I like.  Watching old episodes of British panel shows.     

Eventually, I might be able to turn that thin spot into a hole, and tear that sucker apart.

“But John,” my anxiety whines, “what if you never escape this blanket?  You might get old and die without being successful.”  Which is a very Anxiety thing to say.  It also says, “What if you do escape this blanket?  It keeps you safe and protects you."

I don’t care.  I’ve lived most of my life under this blanket, and I really think I’d like to try the option of living without it.  

I’ve seen people live their whole lives in artificially-created fear, being afraid of things that either never came to pass or that they were powerless to stop.

I’m not going to do that.

Bye, blanket. 

Cookie Policy

A brief timeline of recent events:

August 2016: Graduated from university, the culmination of several years of intense and prolonged hard work towards a goal.  I feel proud, but also at loose ends.  What to do now?

September 2016: Boss offers me a nice apartment, only a five-minute walk from the office instead of a forty-five minute bike ride.  This is great, or would be, except that I still think that it's okay to eat two cheeseburgers, a big bag of Calbee chips, two tallboys of Yebisu, and an ice cream for dinner, despite no longer burning off 1600 calories a day in exercise.  Weight begins to creep up.

October 2016: My father dies after a four-year-long battle with cancer.  I can't be there.  I decide that a good response to this is to cut out the cheeseburgers and ice cream from my regular meals and replace them with another couple of tinnies at night.  Every night.

November 2016: The worst president in the history of the United States of America cheats his way into the office.  I add pizza to my evening meals.

December 2016: Christmas in Japan, a nation that traditionally treats Christmas as a sort of dating holiday.  So if you're depressive, single, and without any family or friends around, well, at least you can eat.

January 2017: Towards the end of the month, I wake up one morning, drink a venti black coffee at Starbucks, and a blood vessel near the base of my skull goes, and I quote, "pop."  I spend a week at home in bed, unable to get up or even sit up properly, before the boss comes and orders me to the hospital.  I grudgingly go to the ER, insisting that it's only a sinus infection, before a CAT scan reveals the truth.

February 2017: I spend a large portion of this month in the hospital learning how to walk again.  To this day, I still occasionally have the slightest bit of trouble walking up and down stairs.

March 2017: I am cold all the time.  I go to the gym every single night and eat very little.  I walk with a cane for a little while, and then throw it out.

April 2017: I turn 53.  I've managed to lose some weight and I'm looking better.  As long as I stick to this strict diet, everything will be okay.  No drinking, no chips, very little carbs, lots and lots of exercise.  I don't lose the weight very quickly, but it's coming off.

May 2017: Struggling with my weight, struggling with depression, struggling with loneliness.  Still on the strict diet, plus I wake up every morning at 6 AM and ride my bike for an hour.  Hit the gym at night.  I hate the way I look, but I'm seeing progress.

June 2017: I maybe look... okay.  I go to commencement and walk for my diploma, even though I graduated the previous year.  I wish Dad could have seen this.

July 2017: An old friend from high school and my 20s and 30s just completely loses his shit, seemingly overnight, and ends up killing himself.  Shit.  He had a good job and had just paid off his house and had loads of friends.  What if that happens to me?

August 2017:  Mom is in a home and has been there since before Dad died.  She has been losing her memory for some time now.  She's lived a lot of her life in fear, and now she's lost and even more afraid.  I won't even be able to retire.

September 2017: The boss, who has been watching over me like a second father for several years, dies suddenly in an accident at the beach, along with his nephew, another one of the company directors.  The company is not thrown into chaos, but none of us really have a chance to deal with it, as we have to keep our customers happy while reorganizing the operation and making sure everything stays together.

October 2017: I don't remember anything here except just being sad all the time.

November 2017:  Ditto:

December 2017: I manage to make it through Christmas somehow.  I'm not going to the gym any more, but I've discovered running.  Running is great.  It just shuts off all the other parts of my brain, all the worrying parts, all the thinking parts, all the parts that just run wild and imagine horrible scenarios that never come to pass.  All I can think of while I'm running are simple things like, "Lady, please get out of the way," and "I wonder what a ruptured aorta feels like?"

January 2018: My best friend Mike comes to visit for the New Year's holiday.  This is wonderful.  We go places and have fun and eat food and drink and watch RiffTrax and play Xbox and all sorts of other stuff.  The downside is that I start having panic attacks pretty much the minute I pick him up at the airport, thinking, "Oh, he'll be leaving in 14 days."  I start talking to him and realize that I haven't been able to properly talk to anyone, at all, about any of this.  The words come out and don't stop.  Mike is really good at listening.  He eventually returns to Seattle and I go back to work, trying to complete a big project.  We get it completed, but I'm only barely holding it together.

February 2018: Things get, words fail me, bad.  I gained a bunch of weight over the holidays and I can't burn it off, even when running every single night.  I can't make it through the day without crying.

March 2018: I look back on the previous month with fond nostalgia for a time when I wasn't experiencing suicidal ideation on a daily basis.  Running more.

April 2018: I turn 54.  I'm single, broke with horrible student loan debt.  My job has been reorganized out of existence and into something I don't care for.  I look back on my life and realize that pretty much everything I've ever set out to do has been half-assed or a complete failure.  People tell me, "You're too hard on yourself," which a) reminds me terribly of my father, and b) is patently untrue, because otherwise I would be achieving my goals, wouldn't I? 

May 2018: Mike suggests that perhaps I could get a bit more support and some better options if I moved back to Seattle, and I agree almost instantly, desperate for any sort of lifeline that I can grab.
Towards the end of the month, I injure my leg while running, in a scary way that means maybe I can't run for several weeks.  (I still haven't started up again.)  I put in my notice and start applying for jobs in Seattle, a daunting process.  I've never really had to apply for work; it's always just sort of found me.  Now I have to deal with HR people and constant rejection, which is just like dating.  Yay.

June 2018: I still can't run.  I'm trying to keep some sort of exercise going so I don't balloon up like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day float.  I'm trying to arrange to ship my stuff back to the US, but I don't really have any place to live or a job, so I'm just shipping stuff to a friend's house in West Seattle.  If I eat four ounces of food, I gain three pounds.  I'm rapidly running out of money and I don't know how long I'll be able to survive in Seattle.  I stress-ate a huge bag of 7-Eleven cookies the other night and gained two pounds the next day.  I don't know what sort of job I want or what sort of job I'm qualified for.  I'm aging, alone, unattractive, and have not so much a safety net as a safety Dixie cup half-full of water.  I'm scared of losing my mind, scared of losing what little health I have left, and scared of spending the rest of my life being scared and alone and missing out on some really great stuff as a result. I'm scared that I won't be able to run any more and scared that I won't be able to ship my guitars back to the US safely.  I broke my TV by accident last night and I was going to sell it for a little money.  I'm scared of dying and I'm scared of being alive and I'm terrified that I'm too damaged to be a decent partner to someone, even if, mirabile dictu, I was able to find someone.  Everything is completely and utterly fucked, and I have two ways out, and neither of them is very appealing.

That bag of cookies is not the problem, is my point.

Gotta Run

On the way home for lunch, I ever-so-gently jogged, lightly, for about fifteen steps. Then I went back to walking.

Let me explain why this is important. I was never a runner. I played sports, but usually stuff that didn't require extended periods of running. A big part of this was because I was fat and was very embarrassed. Later, I started smoking, which gave me an excuse (albeit a stupid one) not to run.

Then last year I had a stroke. I know I keep going on about this, but I spent three weeks in the hospital progressing from being able to sit up in bed to being able to stagger down the hall to the restroom to being able to make my way down some stairs with the aid of a cane.

At first, the doctors weren't sure how much walking I would be doing in future. I went on a strict diet and started hitting the gym, building upper-body and core strength. I used the stationary bikes at the gym for cardio. After a few months, I was able to ride my bike outside again, as I got my balance back.

But I couldn't run, for some reason. There was some sort of signal disconnect between my brain and my right hip; whenever I started to try and break into a trot, the lag time was just enough that my right leg wouldn't get the news in time and I would stumble.

Finally, last summer, I decided I'd had enough. I had managed to overcome all the other stuff going on, and now I was going to run. I bought the C25K app and just started doing what it said. I would walk when it said walk, and run when it said run.

I got to the point where I was running a solid thirty kilometers a week, and I really enjoyed it. What's more, I'm pretty sure that running saved my life last winter, when I was going through one of the most profound depressive episodes of my entire life.

When I'm running, I don't have to think about anything else. (I'm not one of these guys who can listen to music or a podcast while I run; I need to be aware of my surroundings.) I can burn off whatever craziness and anxiety has built up in my system, and burn off a bunch of calories as well.

I can't run this week, because my leg is injured and it needs a little more time to heal. It's coming along nicely, though. But I needed to know that I'm going to still be able to do this, and move forward.

A dozen or so steps seems like an okay start, I guess.

Darn Good Question

So, for those of you just tuning in, I had kind of a rough time over the holidays. 

The short version of the story, which is really all I have the energy left to tell at this point, is that I had never properly dealt with the emotional fallout from Dad's death, my stroke, Gordon's suicide, and then Mr Ali and Zamith's deaths. 

Part of the reason I had never properly dealt with this was that I had no one to talk to about any of it.  I came to realize, right around the time the holiday season started, that I was basically alone here.  All of my friends that I would ordinarily discuss this stuff with were gone.

So when I finally got holiday time off from work, I had the time to finally deal with things, and then Kent Kangley arrived, and I had someone to talk to about them.

And I came unglued.  Everything I'd been putting off dealing with for the past two years came out.  I was worried that once I started crying I wouldn't stop, and I sort of couldn't; it went on for days, and didn't get any better when Kent went back to Seattle.

Today I was walking from my place to Higashi-Kanagawa and back, a mere ten kilometers or so, and the solitude got to me again, so I texted Linda.  She was very comforting and helpful, and I only had to stop a couple of times to pull myself together.

She did ask a couple of interesting questions, though.  The first one was, "What gets you out of bed in the morning?" (short answer: fear.  That's a subject for another entry.)

The second question was, "What keeps you alive?  What makes you come alive?" 

I legitimately don't have an answer for that right now.  I don't feel alive at the moment.

But it sure makes me think. 

Anxiety

So, here's what was going through my head today, as I walked through Oguchi on a Sunday afternoon.
I am starting to have some real trouble dealing with Christmas decorations and music around here.  Any sighting of a wreath or a tree, or hearing Christmas music playing in a shop, can send me into a despair.  I get really sad and lonely, and very depressed.
Lately I'm just feeling like I will never have real intimacy in my life ever again.  Getting a girlfriend would be tricky enough back in the US; getting one here, with the language and cultural differences, not to mention my own numerous and complex personal issues, is basically a non-starter.
So I just walk around by myself, with no one to talk to or share anything with.  This sucks most of the time, but extra sucks at Christmas.
I'm continuing to gain weight, not at a rapid rate, and I'm still in very good shape, but seeing that number go up still gives me anxiety.  I don't want to go back to where I was.  I mean, I'm running 30 kilometers or more a week, so I doubt I will, but it's still scary.
All of this is ganging up on me and giving me anxiety.  I hate it.

Saturday Writing Prompt: Ransom Note

Ransom Note

“So read it again, please,” said Caroline.

Elena shook the flimsy piece of paper.  “That’s it.  There’s nothing more to read.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Elena handed the note across the plain wooden table.

Caroline took it and examined it.  The paper seemed old, and thin, and a bit fragile, but nothing too extraordinary; the sort one might find in a child’s notebook.

Caroline and Elena had woken up, or regained consciousness, or simply begun to exist, in this room at about the same time, forty minutes ago.  Neither one had any memory of a life before, or of each other, or of themselves.

Caroline was shaping up to be the more inquisitive of the two.  She looked at the note.  Printed in the center of the page, in block capital letters, were the words:

WE HAVE YOUR REALITY.  IF YOU WISH TO SEE IT AGAIN, FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.  THIS IS NOT A JOKE.  WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE CONVENIENCE.

“I don’t understand,” murmured Caroline. 

The only furniture in the room was the table and two chairs.  There was a door, about which nothing much could be said, and that was it.  Indirect light filled the room, from no ascertainable source.

Actually, there was one thing you could say about the door: there was nothing on the other side of it.  Absolutely and literally nothing.  Caroline had opened the door to exit, and there was nothing there.

“Nothing,” she muttered.

Elena paced nervously.  “I’m confused,” she said.  “What’s the deal with this note?  Why are we here?  The only thing I remember about myself is my name.  And who apologizes for the convenience?”

“The person who wrote this note, apparently,” answered Caroline.  “You don’t remember anything before you woke up?”

“Not a thing.  My name might not even be Elena.  That’s just what popped into my head when you asked me.”

“Same here.”  Caroline glared at the door.  “What do you know about us?”

“I just told you.  Nothing.”

“Yeah, but think.  We’re talking, right?  We have a language; we’re using it to communicate.”

Elena considered this.  “So we have a common vocabulary.  This means that our thought processes have some similarities.”

“Right.”  Caroline looked down at her body, dressed in the same simple white singlet and loose trousers that Elena wore.  “I also know that I’m a female, and that you are, too.”

“Which implies the presence somewhere of males.  Which further posits that we are not alone.”

“Or not meant to be.  Correct.”

“The note is written in our common language, which indicates that we have a society.”

“One based on rational thought.  At least based on our conversation.”

Elena smiled.  “You never know.  We might be the only two smart ones.”

Caroline grinned in return.  “So, we’re on the right track.  Whatever that means.”

“It’s a shared idiom.  I understood the intent, although not the literal meaning.”

“That would mean-“

“-That we had an existence prior to this, yes.  I suspect our memories have been blanked out by whatever entity brought us here.”

“Hmm.”  Caroline’s brow furrowed.  “Have we been ‘brought’ here?”

“Good point,” Elena conceded.  “Everything else might have been taken away.”

“Ooof,” Caroline said.  “I do remember one thing.  I’m hungry.”

Elena rubbed her stomach.  “I think I am, too.  I wonder what we eat?”

Both of them thought about this in silence for a moment, right up until a plate with some cubes in various colors and textures appeared on the table.

Elena picked up a red cube, about an inch across, and sniffed it, then nibbled a corner experimentally.  “I think we eat this,” she said.

Caroline broke a piece off of a larger cube and took a bite.  “I suppose we do.”

The two ate for a moment in thoughtful silence.

“So,” said Elena.

“So,” said Caroline.

“We thought about food, and some showed up.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“What if we thought about something else?”

“Like what?”

“Like something to drink,” said Caroline.

They stared at the table.

A decanter of fluid appeared, with two glasses.

Caroline considered this for a moment.  “So someone has taken away our reality,” she said finally.

Elena picked up the idea quickly.  Caroline was starting to really like her.

“But they didn’t take away the source of the reality, just the design,” she said.  “Like taking away the clothes, but leaving the fabric.”

“Which is why we can think up this food and drink,” Caroline agreed.  A slow grin spread across her face.

A knock on the door startled both of them.  A piece of paper slid under the door.

Elena collected it.

“What does it say?” Caroline asked.

“It says, ‘WE STILL HAVE YOUR REALITY,’” she said.  “’FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS IF YOU WISH TO SEE IT AGAIN.’”

Caroline and Elena looked evenly at each other.

Caroline turned and looked at the opposite wall of the room.  A moment’s concentration, and-

“Ooh, that is nice,” offered Elena.  “You’ve doubled the size of the room. It looks much more comfortable, too.  Let me try something.”  She waved a hand.

“Very pretty,” said Caroline, as another wall became covered in lush, green plants.  “I think we can expand the house further, don’t you?”

“I don’t see why not,” agreed Elena, as the plants flowered and began to bear fruit.

“I seem to remember something called a sea,” said Caroline.

They were well into creating their third continent and had deduced the existence of cheese and quantum foam before another note was slipped under the door, which, despite all other expansion, was still there.  This time it was Caroline who picked it up.

“Well?” questioned Elena. “What are their instructions?”

Caroline rolled the note up into a ball and tossed it over her shoulder.

“Who cares?” she said.