Cruising, Career Advice & War

1. We were on a cruise somewhere in the Pac NW. At some point the ship backs up a river that turns out to be a very tiny fjord. We park there. The water is milky with silt. Inside the boat we wander around. Some people are watching a movie on a big TV in a lounge. It's a black & white scene of a pale woman on dark rocks at the seashore. She's sitting hugging her knees. Now she has a fish tail, all wrapped in white fabric and sort of cross-gartered. Soon she dives into the water and swims away. Cut to an animated scene, in color: a big fat viking in a longship fooling with the sail. Is the mermaid going to catch up with him. I go to another room and Gordon is watching the same movie. "It's Asterix & Obelisk" he says. The animation is very fine and detailed.

2. Now I'm in the same area, but talking to Adam Baldwin about movie making. He asks me about what kind of work I've done, and I pretty much tell him my life story. He asks if I like making movies, I answer that I LOVE making movies. "Well," he says "then that's what you should be doing! You're a clock and you need to keep ticking." He's gearing up to leave the ship on some kind of shoreside "mission". I see him to the gangway, and just before he ducks out he turns back and admonishes me to "keep ticking!" or some such. OK!

3. Now we're cruising in the Med somewhere. There is trouble and we end up marooned on a little island somewhere. Cheryl is with us. There is a fort of some kind up on a bluff. Maybe if we can get up there somebody can help us. It's bleak and brown and rocky. The grass is dry and sparse and there are scrubby trees in groves here and there. We climb up into the hills and happen on a palatial house. I go inside and find a woman in her kitchen. I explain that we've been shipwrecked and ask if we might stay the night and where we might go for more help. Cheryl keeps telling me we're on "Yalta" but I point to a map and say "Malta" would be more likely, since Yalta is not an island in the Mediterranean.

The woman becomes agitated. There is some kind of war going on. We hear gunfire, and I look out the window and up the hill to see soldiers weaving down through the trees. The woman is out the door and slithering down the hill in a flash, and we're right behind her! We look for cover, but everywhere I turn the foliage is too thin for concealment. Soon we're split up and soldiers are all around us: it's like dogs busting up a group of rabbits. Suddenly Cheryl comes crashing out of a copse of trees riding bareback on a big red horse: good for her! Gordon and I press on in to a small village and try to blend in or find some place to hide. If we could only get our hands on some weapons...