Dream Spores - 16. Sergeant Garnish

At first I was sitting in a car with an older man, his wife and another cook, who was probably younger than I. The man drove, his wife was in the passenger seat, behind her sat the other cook and I was sitting to his left, behind the driver. He was taking us all to work this early, early morning – it was still practically night – for a double shift. We were all going to work for twelve hours at least. The older man talked to us in the back about work, about what to expect of the day, while the other cook next to me texted his girlfriend or whomever about when he would get off from work. I caught the time as he typed it: 18:00. I asked him and he confirmed with a smirk that that was the time for his own shift to end and I nodded to him, telling him in that noncommittal, mumbled way that I was glad for him to not have to join in in the doubleshift-madness.

When we arrived it was in a nightly car park where our driverman rolled the car up extremely close to the right side of a red Smart car, until the flat hood of his almost touched the door. Only when he had managed to get to close to even fit a matchstick between the cars did he start rolling backwards again. I noticed that he was parking crosswise and didn't really understand why, but tried to reason with myself that it was probably to give us all enough room for the doors to open and get out comfortably.

At work then, in the kitchen, the older man gave me directions and an old cookbook to work with, but whatever we were doing was a bit of a blur, until I looked over to a frozen pond with an array of large bubbles on them, at least half a person tall, containing simple hovering items in a cartoonish design, like a table and other things I can't remember now, as well as a table and something else without a bubble around them, but a sort of arrow underneath them on the icefloor, pointing downwards. It was a task that needed doing, in the shape of an easy riddle. Matching things. … or something. I felt I knew almost immediately how to do it, but still needed to start thinking and get closer to figure out exactly what needed to be done. I approached the snowdrift between the pond and myself, where a few more of these large "items" were hovering to work with, and tested the ground with a foot to see whether it would support me, because I couldn't exactly see where the pond began under all this frozen white. The result this foot-test turned up did not satisfy me, so I got to my knees and leaned on the snowy area before me with my hands, patting it really hard. And sure enough, the ground wobbled. But not like a loose layer of ice on water, but rather like a very dense waterbed.

Somehow I went on the frozen pond anyway and got to work: I did whatever thing it was that I was supposed to do with those large, real-life computer game buttons, and unlocked one of the tables with some other stuff that I was supposed to use for my actual cooking job. Now, for that, it was my job to plate a bunch of amuse-bouches, snacks and appetizers for an important function where the guest were all sleek business people, and send those out. Time was short, and both the younger cook and the old man came over to help, taking my lead in how to roll the slices of various things and arrange them on the plates. What I remember most clearly are my frustration at how several slices of ham would fray and tear and look like shit when they were rolled up, as well as garnishing the dishes with herbs and seeds before sending them off. Black and yellow seeds and cress in different sizes and colours made for extraordinary gardens on top of the actual food on the little platters.

After this, I saw the younger cook outside the building in the dark (it was already evening again), getting ready to take his leave because his own shift was over. We said goodbye and I went back inside. The bulk of the work was really over now, so I wondered what we were supposed for the second shift, while I handed the old man his cookbook and other things he had given me to work with.

In the next one I was Sergeant Nicholas Angel (from the movie Hot Fuzz - who might have been a constable... but who cares), getting introduced to a group of five police officers with clowny names by their leader, who listed off a few things they were currently doing. The last thing he mentioned was an around-the-clock patrol of a certain part of a street that separated two very prestigious, modern districts of inner London. He said their names and they did sound like London city districts, or as though they could very well be, but I don't remember the words since waking up. It's possible they were just nonsense.

As he mentioned that part of the job, keeping an officer on patrol there "at all times", which apparently had successfully been preventing a large portion of the crime in that area, my view panned over the street he was speaking of, between two large, very chic modern buildings in some glassy and red design, that could either be offices or apartments. The "street" in question was really just a very sturdy, broad and long balcony along the side of one of the buildings, which was part of the house but served as a public walkway. It went around the corner of the house to a row of doors, where it narrowed to something that looked more private and had a roof to keep the rain off.

That's where I went first, the next early morning, to take the patrol and see for myself how exactly this particular corner was so integral to public safety. When I looked around and rounded the corner to that row of doors, I noticed a stack of something wrapped in blue plastic trash sacks sitting to the side in front of one door. The lower half was wrapped in one, and the top half wrapped in the other. Since there was a single newspaper lying on top of that, I figured those were all newspapers, fresh for the day, wrapped in that sturdy plastic to keep them dry in case it rained.

I approached the stack to look at the single newspaper, and when I picked it up, I noticed that it was dry and the plastic around the other was covered in waterdrops. I immediately scented a crime. There was nothing to prompt that thought, really, other than maybe wishful thinking to have something clever to point to while solving a riddle: The dry newspaper on a stack of wet ones. I called my colleagues out and started being awfully clever while at the back of my head really knowing I was bullshitting everyone and should probably stop before I wasted my own time with this.