I was in a foul mood. Fouler than foul. The void of disbelief and doom clouding my mind darkened my emotions and my entire worldview. Worldview… that's not really the right word in this situation. It's awkward, it's wrong, it doesn't mean anything. The usual definition just doesn't apply here. How can you view the world if you're not even sure what you're seeing is real?

And I couldn't just brush it off as insanity—madness doesn't look like this. Hallucinations aren't this realistic, especially mass hallucinations. Anyway, they made it clear enough that what I was seeing wasn't a product of my imagination. Hah! Going insane would have been better than being stuck here. Around me, others wandered aimlessly around the well-tended park, and I could tell they were thinking almost the exact same thoughts as I was.

But what if... What if I just accept it all? What if I just stop trying to understand, forget how absurd it is? Just accept what's happening, without trying to figure out how, or why, or what I did to deserve this. Would anything even change if I got different answers to my questions? What if I just... went with the flow, like that hippie guy lying on the grass over there?

The guy in question was lounging under the shade of a bush off to the side of the sandy road, using his rolled-up shirt as a pillow. He lazily chewed on a blade of grass, seemingly immune to the chaos and dark mood afflicting everyone else. I couldn't help myself—I walked over to him.

"You comfortable?" I asked, looking down at his shock of unkempt dreadlocks. "The flies aren't bothering you?"

"Nah, it's all good! No flies, man!" he stretched out like a sleepy cat, spitting out the blade of grass. "No mosquitoes, either!" Before I could make another sarcastic remark, he added, "I drove 'em all away."

"What an honor to be in the presence of such a hero!" I flopped down cross-legged next to him, realizing just how tired my legs were.

"If you were as high as me, you'd think you were Hercules himself," he winked, closing his eyes dreamily. "You wouldn't believe the stuff that grows here! If I could name this place, I would call it Paradise Island."

"Like what?" Not that I wanted the full drug tour—I was just curious. The trees on the island looked like the trees I was used to, but the bushes, grasses, and flowers were mostly foreign to me. "I haven't seen any plants I recognize."

"I just… experimented. Tasted whatever I could find." His eyes shut again in a haze of memory. "Curiosity never killed anyone."

"So you just went around putting mysterious plants in your mouth?" It wasn't something I could ever see myself doing. "What, can't go a few days without your stash?"

"Nah man, it's all in the name of cur-i-os-i-ty!" He replied, enunciating each syllable like he was explaining it to a child. "Everyone always said I was too curious for my own good."

"I had you pegged as just another junkie," I never liked being around addicts, and my own curiosity was already satisfied. His carefree attitude was probably drug-induced.

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"Come on, man!" He looked peeved. "I'm a Rastafarian!"

"A real one!?" That's something you don't see every day! "Like, a back-to-Africa Rastafarian?"

"Just a regular one," he grinned a white-toothed grin, breaking off another stem. "None of that religious stuff, which you probably could have guessed, since I’m here, too."

"Hm…" He had a point—a real, religious Rastafarian would have been out of place here. "But you said you were high."

"High as a kite! It's like I'm in a 3D movie, but I can still think straight." He offered me the stem, which almost looked like a dandelion. "If you lick the sap from the stem, stuff gets weird… unreal, like there's too much color. Like a cartoon."

"A cartoon?" The sense that I was in a virtual world got stronger. I found an identical dandelion growing within arm's reach and picked it. "Okay, so what do I do? Just squeeze out the sap?"

"You got it. Squeeze it into your hand and lick it up." He frowned and took my stem. "But this isn't the same plant. Look, mine's different," he said, holding up both for me. "See? They're different!"

"You sure about that?" I couldn't tell them apart. They were definitely the same type of dandelion.

"One hundred percent. Look. Mine has kind of a yellow glow, and yours is red around the edges." A look of realization spread over his face as he realized what he had said. "Jah! Didn't think I was that out of it…" He pulled up two blades of grass, brought them up to his eyes, and peered at them intently. "Jah! This one's definitely glowing." He poked me with one of the plants. "It's light blue. And this one," he prompted, as though it should have been obvious to me, "is purple."

"I really can't tell them apart," I said, deciding not to encourage him.

"But there is a difference." His gaze was suddenly too intense for me. "I can guarantee the sap from your dandelion would have no effect. No visuals, no altered state of mind." That was a half-baked explanation if I'd ever heard one, although this hippy did kind of remind me of those shamans who pumped themselves full of substances. And they did manage to heal people sometimes, or so they say.

Even though the conversation bordered on the absurd, the Rastafarian's carefree indifference snapped me out of my funk. It wasn't as though my life was over. I had just moved on to some kind of next step. Maybe it was an insignificant step, but a step nonetheless. I stood up abruptly, leaving my companion to examine his mysterious flower auras by himself. I probably should have thanked him, on second thought, but why bother? He wouldn't understand what for, and I didn't feel like explaining myself.

So what was going on? Sure, I didn't know where I was—I mean, I had no idea how to even find my home planet from here, like the hundreds of others I'd seen so far. Sure, I'd been uprooted from my familiar surroundings. And sure, the life I was used to had been taken from me. Literally everything had been taken from me, other than my body. No, no, thoughts like that were nothing but a one-way ticket to depression. I had to force myself to change my perspective. Turning back to look at the Rastafarian, I felt a pang of envy, wishing I had his attitude. His blissful nonchalance...

But no, I couldn't turn to drugs the way he could. I had to find my own path, my own positivity. So what did I actually lose? Anything important? My boring job… did I really need it? The friends I never had? The apartment I hadn't left in years? My family? I'm just alone as I ever was. Looking at it that way, it didn't seem like that bad of a situation.

And what had I gained? Wasn't this the kind of world I had dreamed of living in? Hadn't I spent so much time immersed in video games, only leaving that world to work, sleep, and fuel my body? Yes, it was, and yes, I had. So why was I upset? Probably something to do with the fact that no one ever asked me if I was okay with the fate assigned to me by the gods. Or whatever powers were pretending to be "gods" here...