- The Driven Machine -

Host 
  To      : Sarah Beth Richards
  Subject : class


  Hi Sarah!  It's me, Alex, from calc class.  I just thought i'd write
to say
  To say what?
to say hello again :)
  Brilliance. I'd never top that. Unless, of course, I actually came up with something that sounded remotely interesting! Why did I do this? I mean, it wasn't as though I thought she'd actually give me her address when I asked for it. But she did, and here I am now, stuck with writing an e-mail to someone I hardly know. I'm bad at writing e-mails, and I'm even worse at sending them to people whose names I barely know.
  Okay, so her name's Sarah. I just had to look up at the address. It doesn't count. At any rate, it's not as though I don't want to write her, it's just that I know I'll botch the job, and she'll never speak to me again. Quite simple, really. But I guess I've got to write something, so here goes. 
It's nice to meet someone in calculus that can help me out - I just hope I don't
end up bothering you for help too much!
  Great, now she's going to think I'm a moron who can't understand calculus. That's not going to work. Of course, there's the fact that I am a moron who can't understand calculus, but that's beside the point. I'm really beginning to re-think my decision to become a math major. Everything in high school seemed so easy! This new stuff isn't quite so. 
Anyway, I guess I'll end up seeing you on Wednesday, unless you'd like to meet
to study for the quiz before then
  Please want to meet to study for the quiz.
See you then!

  Always,

    -Alex
  I'm going to send this off before I can think about how horrible it sounds. That way I won't try to make it better, which can only make a letter even worse. Having accomplished the one important thing I had to accomplish today, I'm free to put off the other things (homework) until later tonight. I think I'll spend some time reflecting upon my letter.
  Oh man, she's never going to speak to me again. She'll take one look at it and say "Wow, this man couldn't e-mail his way out of a paper sack." Or something. I'm not very good at english either, okay?
  There go my hopes of passing this class, I guess. Maybe she'll still tutor me, if I'm lucky. She knows the material, that's for sure. She doesn't even have to listen to the lectures - she just shows up, draws in her tablet during class, and somehow manages to get perfect scores on every quiz and exam handed out to us.
  Those drawings - now that's what got my attention. She's a Mechanical Engineering major, she told me today. She likes to design things in her spare time. I told you she was smart. Some of those things she was drawing though, they were downright strange. And the spookiest thing about them was that they were familiar to me. I knew I'd seen them somewhere before.
  My dreams, I think. For about a week now, they'd been getting a little strange. Not major things, just little dreams that I couldn't remember when I woke up. Then just yesterday I had this one where I was in some operating room, and there was this bizzare creature there with me. The creature took me out and showed me around - they lived in some kind of dome with this tall metal tower in the middle. It looked like it was a giant engine to a car or something - all gears and oil and exhaust. I think the guy was trying to tell me something, but I woke up before I could figure it out.
  I told my roomate about the dream; he suggested that I'd been kidnapped by aliens. He then made some comments that I choose not to reproduce here. I didn't find them as funny as he apparently did.
  So when I think about it, I think some of the things that Sarah was drawing were things I saw in my dream. One of the bridges, for example. I was a little creeped out at first - I mean, this would mean we were having the same dream, right? Well, not really. She had probably started drawing them a while back, and I had managed to integrate it into my dreams. Makes sense. Still, just a little bit creepy.
  Oh no.
  That was entirely too fast for her to have read my e-mail, and then written back. I'm going to get all nervous again - how could she have replied to my letter so quickly? How long have I been sitting here thinking, anyway? Oh. So maybe it wasn't such a fast reply after all. I must have dozed off. Well, time to find out exactly how bad a letter writer I am. Here goes.
From   : Sarah Beth Richards
Subject: A quiz?!

  Hello Alex!  It's good to hear from you - to tell you the truth, I wasn't sure
that I was going to get a letter.  I'm glad I did :)
  Don't worry about asking me for help.  I've got this all memorized.  I know it
like the back of my hand.  Hey, when did I get this mole?  Okay, bad example.
  And thank you very much for reminding me about the quiz!  I was all ready to
sit back and have a nice, quiet Monday evening, and plan for a second nice,
quiet Tuesday evening, when you had to remind me about a quiz.  Now you will
pay!
  I'm kidding.  Sure, I'd love to study for the quiz with you.  Union food court
sound good?  Write me back, I'm going to be trying to hammer this computer into
submission for another few hours in order to get it to accept my project for
another class, so I'm not going anywhere for a while.

*bangs on her monitor* Work!  I command you!

 :) Sarah.
  I must have spent about ten minutes just staring blankly at the screen. I mean - she wrote me back! She's speaking to me! Not only that, but she didn't even seem to notice my rather -- lacking is too kind a term, I'll just use 'akward' -- writing style. All right!
  I feel sorely tempted to do a victory dance. But my roomate already thinks I'm crazy enough - what with the aliens and all.
  Okay, I've got to compose this in my mind. I have to write something coherent, I -- --
  "Man, what the hell is wrong with you?"
  It's my roomate, Dan. He asks a good, valid question. I just don't know the answer any more than he does. I must have fallen asleep at my keyboard, because now I'm on the floor and some bizzare dream is running through my head. I get up, though slowly, because I feel a bit dizzy. That wasn't like falling asleep - that was like passing out for no reason at all. And I don't like that one bit.
  "I think it's about time you went to a doctor. I mean, first you were talking gibberish in your sleep last night, now you scream and fall out of your chair for no reason - what's going on?"
  Talking gibberish in my sleep? That's new, he hadn't mentioned that one before. I ask him what happened again, and he tells me the same thing. Apparently, I was just sitting at my computer, reading the e-mail from Sarah, when I slumped over. According to Dan, I looked up at the monitor and screamed, and then fell down on the floor. The whole time, I was just talking nonsense.
  I don't like it. At all. I mean, from what Dan says, it sounds like I was having a stroke. Of course, Dan could just be making it up. I could just have fallen asleep and he's decided to get on my case about it.
  I feel fine now. I'm going to reply to Sarah's letter. But just to be on the safe side, when I talk to her tomorrow, I'm going to ask about those drawings.
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