Having moved into a new house with a roommate, a house that vaguely resembles the Dunham’s home, but finished, I am searching for a place to set up an office for myself. The squarish spaces of the rooms do not match my furniture terribly well, so the going is tough.

My roommate informs me of something happening outside that he feels requires my attention. When I leave the house, our farmland yard is covered in tiny blue spheres. In the wind, I hear something say, “If the balls are moved, it will wake the spinet.” Then, through unclear necessity, my roommate moves one of the things. Dumb ass.

Immediately, as though the spheres were a blanket over a nest, a swarm of winged insects burst from beneath them and somehow captured us. We are enslaved by the bugs, who possess a sort of telepathy.

When I awake, I am in a space-age elevator where several different-colored caterpillars spell strange letters on the floor. When we do not respond, we hear in our brains, “We are to assist you. Please take care with your feet.”

My roommate, still a dick, makes a motion to stomp on them, and they scurry into the cracks of the elevator which abruptly stops. He must hear something in his brain that makes him leave, then the elevator resumes, taking me to a different floor. The navy blue caterpillar returns, introduces himself in my mind as Adrian, then takes me to a room much like a classroom.

A projector plays what seems a child’s video game, with frequent Hardee’s commercial breaks. As I am subjected to tests, a woman in the room informs me that we are now slaves. We will be given everything we could ever want and live in blissful paradise, but will occasionally be called upon to massage the carapaces of the cow-sized insects who are the ruling class of sorts.

The other choice of course is death. I choose the former, but am met with baleful looks from my fellow inmates.

Before I encounter the massage, I wake up, but the question remains in my head: Would I suffer occasional mind-bending horror to live in paradise?