“I just want to let you know, I am ready to go the distance. To do whatever it takes. To go above and beyond. To do anything. Nothing is out of scope. Everything is on the table. Whatever it is, I am eager and ready to go. Just point me towards the task and watch me perform it with alacrity. No one has ever been more up for the job”

“Sir, this is the post office. All you need to do is sign this form and then you are all set”

“I’ll do it!”

“…that’s the spirit”

She woke up. For once, she had managed a nice nine hours, a solid unequivocal sleep. Instinctively, she reached for her phone, unmuted it, and noticed the second unusual thing of that day. She had missed calls. A lot of them. All of them from miscellaneous relatives whom she probably, but not necessarily, might recognize if she walked past them on the streets

It must be important

Overcoming the general weirdness of the situation, she quickly determined the nature of the problem. She hadn’t paid for the Netflix account this month, which apparently caused such a tangle of consequences that it literally involved everyone, directly or indirectly. Clearly, dear auntie did not honor her promise of not telling anyone the password

She was lost

She could tell, since the words used to describe the buildings she walked past had shifted from “derelict apartment complexes” to “ostentatious lawn ornaments” and “spacious garages with room for mid-life experimentation”. Not her usual haunts. Adding to the overall lostness was the fact that the exact route that brought her there had somehow faded from memory. One moment she was walking along, and the next – wham, suddenly all these too big and too quiet houses

The houses were not completely quiet, though. As she walked past, garage lamps turned themselves on, charting her trajectory through this unknown neighborhood. While she did not know the way home, she did know where she’d been. As she kept walking, she pondered that this was not an altogether unfamiliar situation