Ninko

First, I remember laying on the beautiful green grass in a park somewhere, with a woman I quite like. We’re very close, facing each other while our limbs entwine, and kissing. It’s a pleasant day, and it’s also very, very quiet.

I suddenly have to leave for work. I’ve been called in to help with the security at some strange, semi-deserted location - a split second later I’m there and the idyllic setting is gone. The landscape here is almost completely flat, it’s dull and grey, and the place is a bit windy. Some shacks and wooden cabins in varying sizes are scattered about randomly. My job is as vague as it is simple: just keep a look out for… something.

I start walking along a road that leads away from what could be called the central part of the place. After a while the road comes to a dead end, and there’s a building here that looks just like my old school. It’s a sad and abandoned building, even though I can tell there’s a bit of activity inside. I walk up some stairs that appear on the side of the building, and enter.

Inside I’m met by a busy woman who tells me to meet someone in a room. She’s wearing a headset and a mic, and she’s carrying a file folder. She tries to explain to me where the room is located, but I cannot understand a word she’s saying, so I just wave her off and tell her I’ll find it myself. I walk along a corridor and enter a room at the end.

Inside there are two guys who are both immensely fat. They’ve both got stupid grins, they sweat a lot, and they start by telling me they’re brothers. One has red hair, and the other black. They hand me a walkie-talkie and tell me I’m supposed to supervise some activity in the factory. They’re going to monitor the whole thing from this office. I feel a strange mixture of hate and amusement as they speak to me, but I also feel relieved that I’m not going to spend much time in the same room as them.

I walk out of the room and find myself overlooking some sort of paint-blending facility. I’m standing on a ledge, a staircase leading from it down to floor level. Below me the floor is divided into long, rectangular, colored segments, where at the end of each segment, toward an assembly line, the main color blending machines sit. The strangest thing is this: There are people working down there, with what I don’t know, but I can’t actually see them, or at least not all the time - they sort of blend in with the colors on the floor, and with the machinery, and the air around them. They are not invisible, they just appear and disappear. It’s fascinating.

I walk down the stairs to have a look at the paint being mixed. The machines shake and vibrate heavily, and they’re quite noisy. The colors they’re mixing are yellow, red, green, blue-green, blue, brown and purple. Each color’s got it’s own machine, and each machine has it’s own colored area on the floor.

Now I get a phone call from a friend of mine, who’s working as a soundman at the national radio station. He tells me I’ve been chosen to appear as a stand-in for a weekly quiz show. Instantly, I walk out of the building and start heading in a totally random direction, thinking that chance will bring me to the right place - which is weird, considering the fact that I’m in telephonic contact with my friend all the time, only never asking him for directions.

I walk for a bit then climb a sanddune. I’m overlooking a rocky, grey desert. In the distance I spot a small vehicle approaching, making it’s way in my direction rather fast. There are two girls on the vehicle, which is sort of a buggy, or a trike. The vehicle stops by the foot of my small dune, and the girls, both occupying the driver’s seat, giggle and flirt with me. They behave a bit like teenagers. They tell me to hop on in. I obey, and we’re on our way. I’m being handed a headset with a mic and told to put it on. Through the speakers I hear some background muzak from the quiz show. A voice tells me I have to be ready right after the break. The contestant is an asian girl, the voice says. Her name is Ninko, a name I find nice but a bit unusual. During the break she’s supposed to come up with the right answer to some question or other - I think to myself how odd I haven’t been told neither the question nor the right answer.

We make it to the outside of the studio, and though I’ve got out of the vehicle, I still move with the same speed, even through walls. The song ends, and I’m handed a piece of paper, some kind of manuscript I guess. I have no time to look through it. I hear myself say: “Hello there, Ninko! How are you? Have you got an answer for me?”

Then I wake up.