Treasure hunting

 

*Beep*beep*beep*beep*

 

        The strident voice of my alarm clock rudely interrupted my dream. Sighing, I turned it off, wishing I could go back to the world I'd just been in. What had I been dreaming? Let's go back . . . .

 

        Whoah. That was a little too far back, but I guess this part is fairly important too. I'm reading my book in bed, around eleven p.m., pretty soon before I turn out my light. What book is it, you ask? It is The Count of Monte Cristo, which I am reading at last! I haven't gotten very far into it (compared to its dramatic length), but I'm lapping it up hungrily since it's been a whole twenty-four hours since I've read it. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it, but this guy is just now telling the main guy about his vast treasure, hidden on an island, and half of it is all his, or all of it if the first guy dies. I finish the chapter, turn out my light, and sink into oblivion . . .

 

        Fast-forward past the dream in which I'm acting in some Frog Prince play. I wasn't the frog or the princess, but I was sitting on some fake lily pad with my cousin Aaron, and that's all I can remember . . .

 

        We're going treasure hunting! We (I felt instinctively that this was a collective group, perhaps the Bibleschool and some of my family, although the only people I remember actually seeing are my dad, Craig, and maybe Josh briefly) are exploring a cave--a clean, spacious, sunny cave . . . the walls almost are a bluish-white. Somewhere in here, we know from being told by our friend from my book, is the treasure, hidden behind three doors. We come to an area that we almost think is water; but no, it's fine azure powder spread out over a good-sized area, and we have to be careful not to breathe it in as we walk over it. I find a tunnel, and after crawling through the narrow, though well-lit space, I discover what we've been looking for: three wooden doors in the wall. Behind one door I can hear loud knocking, on another I see red writing--does it say "I bequeath this treasure to you" ? Before we can investigate behind these doors, however, we must make sure there is no one else around. Craig goes off to search for tourists in the area.

 

        Sadly, there are tourists, and we realize that this is a public national park cave with staff attendants bobbing about here and there. Not exactly a nice private place to open up treasure. As I think about it, I realize that I found the tunnel and the special doors with very little difficulty, and if people come in here all the time, why haven't they found it? Then it dawns on me that everyone HAD found the tunnel and the "secret" doors, but everyone had just assumed that it was just a publicity stunt or featured attraction, resulting in the fact that no one had ever bothered to see what was behind the doors. Even so, we must wait for everybody to leave, so we look around.

 

        Near the tunnel, we settle down in an extremely large, cavernous room. In this room is a large crystal blue lake, and in the middle of the lake we can see a place where a huge stalagmite and a stalactite meet. The edges of this sunny lake are very shallow and very cold. Little boats take tourists out to the center of the lake where there is a deeper, swimming-pool-sized area where there are hot springs and it's delightful to swim. We watch people splash about and come up to rest on the edges where it's shallower, but since it's so cold they soon dive back in.

 

        In the meantime, we don't want the cave staff to know that we're here, so I dart about and spy on them. A bunch of them are talking together--no, they're conversing in song, just like in a musical! (No, they did not sing "Can I Have Napkin Please")

 

        Eventually, the tourists leave and the cave staff are closing up, but we have to be extra sneaky so they don't see us and kick us out.

 

        Finally, everyone is gone. Now it is just Daddy, Craig, and yours truly. We enter the tunnel. We are equipped with various gifts from our friend so that we can open each of the doors: one door requires a door handle in our possession, another a key, and the third a piece of paper or map that is supposed to help us open it. We go to the door that we were instructed to open first; it's the preliminary door, so to speak. It swings open . . . . what could the treasure be? As I wonder, breathless, my eyes light on the biggest Nikon digital SLR camera I've ever seen. I'm serious! This thing was like the granddaddy of digital cameras; it was about a foot wide and the lens was about two feet long! (you can tell that I've been thinking about SLR cameras way too much lately) As soon as we take this sight in, it starts to roll away on a conveyor belt. At first I wonder if it is a signal that we should follow it, but the hole it's going toward is too small, and somehow I'm not too worried that we're going to lose it. It's being conducted to a safe place for us.

 

        Next thing we know, we see this machine (behind the same door) that starts to spit out a multicolored assortment of socks and underwear! As the stuff cranks out, we're supposed to grab what we want before the machine sucks it back into itself. The funny thing is that as this happened, we didn't seen anything odd about this "solemn" occurrence. It wasn't as if it was the real treasure, but the machine was equipping us with a good supply of things that we might need as we stayed for a long time to investigate the rest of the treasure.

 

        I marveled, wondering what would come next. What could be behind the other two doors? We knew this was just the preliminary door and that the other doors would probably have the real treasure. What could it be?

 

*Beep*beep*beep*beep*

 

I guess we'll never find out.