Beatles Waterfall & Virtual Menagerie

  • With Allen and other friends, I enter a strange building at night in an industrial urban area. The interior is one cavernous room, with a high platform in the back facing a huge tv screen on the front wall. (The layout now vaguely reminds me of the last level of Doom 2.) We climb to the top of the platform and meddle with some controls. A waterfall begins to pour from the back wall off the platform, down to the floor and right through the big screen. The Beatles appear on the screen, surrounded by water. Then they appear standing next to us on the platform. Ringo Starr shows us how it's done by jumping into the rushing water and riding it all the way to the end. When he hits the front wall he is instantly teleported back to the rear wall right next to us. Everyone joins in with the ride. I hang around talking with John Lennon but only try the perpetual motion ride a few times.

  • A scene that is narrated by an aristocratic voice with a British accent, while I am the acting character. It's night and I'm walking in a dark, silent house towards a particular room. The narrator describes the three objects contained therein: a television set, a video game machine, and a "menagerie". I approach this last one, a glass-sided box ten feet long and wide, it's roof just brushing the room's ceiling. On the sides are what look like video game controllers. I can make out what looks like a miniature street corner winter scene in the dark interior. As I pick up a controller and fiddle with the buttons and joystick, the narrator recalls a personal memory of his, the one on which this menagerie is based. As I watch, the inside of the box becomes the whole dream--I and the house are no longer--as the memory is relived on a snowy street corner. Like in a cartoon, all the people walking around are actually personified animals. The narrator, now walking down the sidewalk, is a large yellow bird. The memory being relived is the day the bird took a walk and, wherever he went, he would get astonished looks from tigers. I watch this happen a few times as, for example, a tiger spots the bird from across the street and is taken aback, with a hand over his mouth, looking quite frightened. Neither the bird nor I ever figure out what the problem was. Eventually I am back in the room in front of the menagerie. Through the sliding glass door I can make out a small cement patio and the lawn just beyond it. Up in a starless sky, the moon is shining.