“It’s a 5,000 year­old love note, sweet and unreadable,” the gray suit explains. You had admired her necklace, an amber pendant containing a miniature scroll, while waiting in line at the car rental office. Suddenly clean, cold keys to a red Toyota Camry are in your hands. “Toyota Is Recalling More Than 800,000 Cars Because of Spiders” you recall from the news, in which spiders’ webs in the air conditioning tubes sometimes cause the airbags to spontaneously inflate. You pull out of the parking lot and signal right into an old sunset.

Dig a hole in the ground. It may be square, round, oblong, or otherwise, so as long as the substrate is something you can confidently call “dirt.”

Toss your dry ingredients: Any exoskeleton, ground gabardine, sprouted silk.
Combine with the molten steel of a ceremonial dagger used to split a vanilla bean.*
Strike while the batter is BPA­free, and make sure to scrape down the sides. While the
ingredients metamorphose, wrap the depleted bean in gauze and administer CPR.
Let it rest until the cicadas return, or when the ground temperature reaches 64°F.
Upon their calamitous arrival, pour into a personalized mug, bow down, and serve.

*You may substitute a switchblade ferried across a swamp between imperfect teeth.

An edible ink. Various thermochromic various vessels can be impregnated with this banana­like odor on demand. If in an urn, add oatmeal and freeze­dried clock gears for a satisfying snack that changes from magenta to deep purple, as glaciers melt in the North, and islands emerge in the space between sludge and prism.

A golden apple reflects a bonfire used to cook a baby pig and the night sky that ordained it. A palomino stallion, whose rider is caked in mud and drying nearby, bats away a mosquito carrying both their blood. As a party trick, a prize­winning chef fires her butane torch in the air and caramelizes the mosquito. The topping lands on her plate, like dust from the starry night sky.

Your perfect, everlasting energy has lead you here. A tropical fruit wreath is placed over your shoulders. Your sweat is sweet: people line up to taste the byproduct of a champion. A soft apricot finds your mouth, floating at eye level. Flashbacks to this moment already sparkle in your future memory. A modern bubble issues from your nose and ascends into the warm air.

The red plastic hand­shaped chair faithfully recreates human phalanges. The only aberration is a deep indentation on the thumbnail to place a drink. To be a faithful humanist, after all, one must be liberal with depiction of the figure to accommodate a sitter’s spill­proof gesticulation, punctuated by sips.

In colder months, the hand­shaped chair is wrapped in plastic to protect it from glitter that flakes off three Christmas decorations hung above. The ornaments are in the shape of saxophones: Alto, tenor, baritone. The reeds are replaced with sticks of cinnamon gum. Assuming you have proper embouchure, assume the position, and: Inhale sweetness. Exhale a big red orb.