I swear this heat is trying to kill me.

It felt like my innards were melting.

Every so often it seemed that someone had somehow dropped a rock inside of one of my intestines.

I had a large soda at McDonald's, then refilled the cup twice with ice water and drank it all.  It could never hope to replace what I was losing.

When the class was scheduled to start I was not there.  The heat was oppressive such that you had to push through it, and it slowed me down a lot.

I was in the park.

My bearings were off, the bridge was thirty to forty degrees to the left of where I expected.  Crows and seagulls battled for audio dominance, squirrels and ducks scavanged on the ground.

So much alge it looked like you could walk on it.  Verdant.  But also sickly.  Comicbook nuclear green, perhaps?

An area that hadn't been mowed.  Regrowth project?  A sign.  Words too small to read.

They say if you cut down a forest it takes some 500 years for the ecosystem to recover.

Girls or women, too far to tell, in atheletic clothing.  A team of some kind?  No gear.

Soccer?

Boys playing football, well, practicing, the football lines intersect the baseball diamond.

I step out from under the canopy and the sunlight hits me with enough force to make me go, "Oof."

The ramp has no railings.  When did they take those away.  They better not take the ramp.

It was bad enough when they fenced off under the bridge because heaven forfend someone might sleep there.

Over the bridge.  Still alive I think.  School's been in sight for a while.  Now there isn't an interstate in the way.

A class comes outside.  Any chance it might be mine?  I hope not.  I hope for air conditioning.

Don't see the one indicator I have.  Go in, check computer.  Sunlight makes it too annoying; even free from the heat the sun hates me.

Move.  Check elsewhere.  It's only one floor up.  I've climbed to the top floor, the fifth floor, every class for a semester.  Of course I take the elevator.

Sign says intended for people with disabilities, no one pays attention to the sign.  We know to make room for people who need it rather than want it without a fucking sign.  The sign is there to shame us for not getting the exercise of the stairs.

Fuck you sign.

It's a miracle that I'm not dead of heatstroke already, you don't get to tell me I should be using the stairs.

Second floor, make it to the class.  We're talking deep questions, what is science, how has reputation been harmed, Plato's thoughts on art, how the mind body split has informed our entire culture, so forth.  I'm not in the class yet, I haven't done the reading.  I can go on for ages about this stuff.

Class goes well but good god was it hot.

To quote my Greek pagan friend in the class, "I'm in Maine, I shouldn't have to deal with this."

Amen.  Fuck off gods of warmth.  It's not that I want to freeze, but heat like this makes me feel like I'm sleep deprived, malnourished, dehydrated, and unmedicated while none of the above are actually true.  It's like it can suck away all of the upkeep that I have to put into my body.

Heat like this can go fuck itself.  Unless it enjoys that.  If it enjoys that then no self fucking until it first gets the hell away from my god damn region.  We didn't sign up for this.

We accept the possibility of freezing to death in winter as part of a bargain, and that bargain says that heat like this never lasts more than a day or two.  It's been a month.  Or more.  Probably more.  Possibly much more.  I couldn't tell you.  My memory melted along with various other parts of my brain.

-

Video game thoughts:
1 A game where you have two separate worlds with different dynamics.  One is a world of shadows, it exists in two dimensions and follows rules that make sense for shadows.  The other is our world.

This game may already exist, I recently got Contrast to find out but have not had time to check it out.

2 A game operating on the same principle, but instead of 2-d world of shadows, a 3-d world that is our world and a 4-d world that it is a shadow of.  The problem of how to best represent 4-d is always a question.  The possible fun you could have once your character is freed from the shadow world and gets to interact with the "real" 4-d objects is almost, but not quite, unimaginable.

Yes, the Allegory of the Cave came up in class.