Entry #37
But of course, I made it out anyways. How I was noticed by the people down there and managed to not get shot was all over the news. LAPD had promised to keep the circumstances secret so I can only rant about it here.
At that time I wished I was one of those stereotypical teenagers that slept with phones in their pocket. Well, actually, since my pajamas doesn't have a convenient hip pockets, I would have to keep my phone in my breast pockets. Having my phone ringing near my breast is probably a confused experience trying to figure out where the heck is my phone in the delirium of sleep. Not to mention I run the danger of crushing it during my sleep. That goes for phones in hip pockets.
I started to cup water in my hand and thrust my hand outward. The old guy started to yell. We were panicking, alright. Just trying to get some attention.
After two minutes of yelling/cupping water we stopped. "What time is it?" I asked the old guy. He turned to me. "Well?"
"Probably seven. See, the sun is bright, but no one is out there yet," he points to the houses below.
"Great," I replied. "Let's find a way to make attention before they come out." It was school days, after all.
"I've been yelling at the top of my lungs for a while, ma'am. I don't think they care," he commented.
"Well, make them," I said. Water isn't able to make sounds loud enough to attract attention. Yelling isn't indicative of anything wrong. Jumping...well that would just be short sighted.
We needed something heavy to call to attention, but swimming back on shore and grab something heavy, then swim back was exhausting and certainly deadly for me. Not sure about the other guy.
"Hey, could you swim back to shore and grab something heavy?" I asked.
The guy threw a deadly stare. "What?"
"Whatever there is," I said.
"There is nothing."
"Well, okay. Do you want us to die here?"
"That's fine by me. At this age where a doctor can only starve it doesn't matter."
"Alright, then. But you know what? I am not giving up yet," I dived into the water instead.
To the old guy's credit there really is nothing to move around. I shivered for a bit on the shore, partly due to the wind and partly because of desperation.
But of course, even a dumb human can think of what I did next. I am professionally diagnosed to be dumber than average dumb human. Oh well. At least I made it to college.
I ran up to the mock Bass'ken Lake and unzipped the long zipper down my pajamas while tighten the zippers around my legs and the velcro around my arm. Without hesitation I crouch down the lake. The koi, startled by the sudden movements, swam away to the far end corner. It doesn't matter. The mock lake is deluxe bathtub sized. It didn't took long to trap all the koi inside my pajamas. They struggled around in there, tickled my stomach.
If I could not carry them, why not have them swim with me?
"Hey, I got some heavy stuff," I told the old guy, who was crouching near the edge of the podium. I remained submerged in Shallow Seas.
The old guy turned to me. "Oh?"
"I am keeping them alive. Okay, can you throw?"
"Of course I can," he was still puzzled ."What did you bring?"
"Fish."
"Fish?"
"You don't see them raining around, do you?" I joked. "Listen. When someone come out--it has to be someone, not someone in a car--throw a fish toward them. Take account gravity."
"Fish?"
I climbed onto the platform. "Yes, fish. You must do this or we all starve and die." I unzipped my pajamas a little and handed the old guy a live koi. "Sorry, but it is must. It is either us to them.'
"Them?" he held the koi, confused.
"Yes, I got a few more." Four, to be exact.
The guy turned around and threw the koi.
"Where are you hitting?" I moved toward the edge. The koi made a parabolic arc and landed on soft lawn grass, just behind a kid on a tricycle. We could see it flinched a bit before dying. "Ugh. So close," I handed him another one.
This time, the koi hit the roof of a car. But the car owner did not notice.
"Third time is a charm," I grabbed another koi.
The koi slipped thru my fingers and made its way to the water.
Ah, well.
I handed the old guy the two remaining koi. "Don't kill us."
It should be made clear that I have some peculiar syndrome that makes me sleep in the middle of the day.
I dozed off, only to be awoken by the old guy in what seems to be minutes after.
"They noticed."
"Huh?" I crawled to the edge. If not for the old guy grabbing my collar and almost choking me then I would have certainly fall to my death.
Down below, a crowd had gathered, no doubt drawn by the koi.
"Help!" I yelled. The crowd shuffled. "We are trapped here!"
"Already did that. No one cared," the old guy said. "This is the same kind of people that told a murder victim to be quiet as she was being stabbed to death."
What is he now, a psychologist?
I continued to yell. "Call 911! Call someone to help! Don't stand there. The death of us will be on all of your shoulders, equally heavy!"
Later on, I learned that a kid who skipped school called the 911.
It took a few hours for the fire department to broke into the estate and reach us (again, our case was too trivial to get helicopters). The estate was booby trapped to no end for whatever reason. And confusing to them. A segment of subway? Why is it here.
The rest is history. Pictures of the old guy--or should I say, psychologist PhD that is homeless-- and I started to circulate around mass media by the evening. Pictures of the estate is selectively taken to not reveal much about the game it is emulating.
I wonder if my pictures will end up on clueless Facebook feeds as "NASA astronaut lending a helping hand to homeless". That will certainly confuse interviewers and employers.
My grandma called my aunt who called her mother-in-law who called her daughter-in-law to pick me up from LAPD, buy some sea urchins that is only available in LA Chinatown, then send me back to Berkeley.
Berkeley tightened their security up for a bit.
