I had a dream that I had access to a teleporter. Me and Sigh were trying it out. I was going to teleport him to Philadelphia, but I accidentally teleported him to alternate-dimension Philadelphia. I found this out because he figured out how to send an email to me.

He said he wanted some cupcakes, so I tried to teleport some cupcakes to him. The teleporter’s computer never registered that they had gotten there, so I was like “Computer. Where are the cupcakes?” and the computer responded “munch munch munch What pubpapes?” and I was like “The cupcakes I just teleported through,” and it was like “chomp chomp I pannod logade dem munch munch”

Hmmmmmm….

Well, I was feeling bad for stranding Sigh in an alternate dimension with no cupcakes, so I decided to teleport there and see if I could help. Surely, with my knowledge of computers and teleporters, I could get us back.

I teleported to alternate-dimension Philadelphia.

Y’know what’s interesting about alternate-dimension Philadelphia? Many things are exactly the same, except that the people look like giant, humanoid ants! Except for the black people. Curiously, the black people look like ordinary, human black people.

So I found Sigh, and I searched around, but couldn’t figure out how to teleport us back. In the course of talking to people about it, though, I discovered that in this dimension, there are no video stores! Only movie theaters. I suggested that they open a video store.

Soon, a new trend appeared in alternate-dimension Philadelphia. They were opening video stores. But they were opening them inside of existing movie theaters. And I don’t just mean in the same building. They would take out some of the seats, put up five-foot high walls, and put a video store right there in the theater. And it gets weirder. People rented the videos and watched them right there.

I was starting to get a little exasperated about this. “You guys just don’t get the point,” I wanted to say. But then I noticed that some cool things were happening here. They put in cool, comfy couches in the video stores. Beanbags, even. On the five-foot high walls, fliers started to go up, about concerts and other community events. Some video stores had old Ataris in them, and people would hang out and play the games and sit around and talk and eat and drink. A lot of the time, they weren’t even renting or watching videos. Groups that frequented certain video stores started to do things together. They’d organize some sort of volunteer drive or group outing.

People started talking that these things were a lot like youth groups, except that adults, as well as youths, were members. Also, there wasn’t the religious theme. These were just groups.

It’s like I’ve always said: When we have the Neutral Zone (teen center in Ann Arbor) for adults, and when it’s well attended, then the revolution will be over and we will have won.

Good work, alternate-dimension Philadelphia.