'Travelling Without Moving'

It appeared that I was on my way to somewhere - this was the realisation that hit me as I was seated at a mamak stall located across the road from the KTM station in Taiping, it was bustling with the usual night-crowd: students, teachers, pensioners, family and couples who would have their supper in the comfort of low lights and a plastic furnished environment - that or it was a place which held an uncanny resemblance to the haunt of my schooling days; whatever it was, I wasn't too sure. I had with me, my trusty backpack and an extra pair of black pants. I was drenched from head to toe, though I could not remember getting caught in the rain. Also, I was with a good buddy from high school. We had not met in years.

I did not go to the washroom nor leave my seat at the table but I had somehow managed to change into my fresh pair of pants through the sheer act of willing it - though I could not feel the difference, the idea of change itself mattered to me. I had left my wallet in the other pair, as it was thoroughly wet. I wasn't talking, or maybe I was. We were seated there for a while till my friend suggested that we continued on with our journey. I had a slight feeling that it was to ease the boredom, as this friend of mine was one of those..

So we walked away from the place towards a small block, supposedly with the town's power generators (which I thought were robots in construction when I was younger). Then, I recalled that I had not paid the bill - if we did order anything at all. Instead of coming to the generators, we came to a monorail station - and faintly, I knew that it was not a familiar place, nor was it an unfamiliar one - it was an amalgamation of both - Dreamland. We decided to catch a train, but with no destination in mind.

I searched my pockets for change as I approached the ticket booth and only then did I realise that I had left my wallet (they were in my pants) at the food stall. I ran back hurriedly to the place, in hope that it would still be there, untouched - not taken. It took me just minutes, but when I reached the place, all the shops were closed and it was extremely dark. As I looked for the table where we sat - for my belongings, an Indian woman gestured to me through a door which stood ajar: from inside the shop which operated the establishment.

"Are you looking for this?", she said, as she held my wallet.

"Yea, I am. I left it here."

"I know. It was you.", she handed my wallet back to me. I opened it to check if everything was still intact.

"There's two gold coins there.", pointed out my friend. It was only recently that our country withdrew the use of these denomination of coins - and currently, they have no value.

As I took both the coins out from my wallet, they became something else: two twisted silver ones - bent exactly in the middle.

"Look. I can't use these. I would have a problem slotting these into the ticketing machine. They're bent.", I said to the woman as I held the items to her attention. "Please, take them back."

"I know that they have no use. And no one wants them. That was why I gave them away. To you."

I asked her again. "Please, just take them back. I have no use for them."

She took them and clenched them in her palm, looking sympathetically at me.

I can't recall if I thanked her or said anything else after that. I left with my friend, for the station again. And then there was nothing.

( _")