[+] - - - - - Imagine 1 - May 6, 2020

6:00 am. My alarm clock chirps the playful sounds of an outdoors ping-pong park in Beijing. As the laughter and pock pock pock crescendos, I open my eyes with a smile.
I've been using this track, circa November 2008, for ten years. The best part
is my wife sleeps right through it.

I don't drink coffee. I don't check email. Instead I eat a banana, a couple mouthfuls of salted seaweed and an egg. Then I head outside for forty minutes of Tai Chi.

7:00 am. Breakfast includes rice porridge, a salted duck egg and fish, usually tuna. I hear my two children start playing upstairs. I go upstairs and great them with the freshest of morning smiles. We laugh. We
come to breakfast together. In twenty minutes they're done and off to their
laptops.

8:00 am. My wife wakes and starts showering. I check my pocket. A slip of paper reminds me that today I need to, 1. Call Chen Liuyan, an online talk show megacelebrity in China,
about sponsoring a new university in Gansu,
2. Read the comments from the beta-testers of Quest, a new Massive Multiplayer
Alternate Reality Role Playing Game (MMARRPG) aimed at integrating personal goals,
gaming and normal life, 3. Pack for four months in Shanghai.

8:30 am. Ms. Chen is pleasantly surprised to receive a videocall from a fan in America. She seems concerned about how I found her personal screenname and I assure her
that I will inform her secretary about the details of my methodology. Most
importantly, she seems excited about the idea of playing a pivotal role in
private education reform in China.
We schedule to meet on Tuesday in Shanghai.

9:00 am. I chat with my wife while she eats breakfast. We talk about plans to visit our families while we're in China. I remind our children to start packing. My daughter packs diligently every time, but my
son enjoys playing in the piles of clothes.

9:30 am. I check on our vegetable garden. I just turned the soil and planted the seeds two weeks ago. I added fertilizer. A good friend from the community gardening club will be watering and harvesting my crops for
the community.

10:00 am. I pick my laptop up out of my desk drawer. Keeping it stored away with my pens and notebooks reminds me that the computer is just a tool like any other in my house; I avoid enshrining a calculator.

Work email first. 742 new messages. My assistants in Shanghai have already sifted through the other thousands of emails and marked the several hundred with insightful critiques and suggestions for me to read. The speed reading
course I took after graduating from undergrad was one of my best investments in
the last ten years.

The buzz about Quest is full of excitement. I smile as I'm infected by all the players' exciting ideas. I star the ideas that I think should be implemented immediately.

12:00 pm. I quickly cook noodles for the family. We eat out on the balcony.

1:00 pm. Nap for 20 minutes.

1:30 pm. Packing. The family is relocating to Shanghai for four months. My parents and their siblings are all living in Shanghai for the year as a part of a prolonged family gathering. All my work is online and relocating only means a
12-hour time shift. Since I'll be 12 hours early, not 12 hours late, none of my
friends at Quest minds the difference. Plus, all my assistants are Shanghai anyways.

I love the excitement of traveling. I know how to pack everything I need for an indefinite vacation in under 40 minutes. I also never bring more than 30 pounds of luggage.

2:30 pm. Personal email. I check work email once a week, but personal email every other day. I love to keep in touch with my friends and family. My parents sent me some details about where we'll meet in Shanghai. My best friends
send me a link to the live video feed of the volleyball tournament they'll be
playing in tomorrow. I promise to watch it on the flight.

3:00 pm. Help my children pack. In many ways, they're even more excited than me when it comes to traveling.

4:00 pm. I love to cook: it sets the pace for a comfortable meal. Just breathing the scent of warming oil calms my spirit. I wash the vegetables and cut the meats. I heat the oil and add slices of garlic and
ginger, then – down goes the pork slices – stir – stir – stir – spoonful of
salt – swig of soy sauce – stir – stir – in goes the Chinese celery – stir –
stir – stir – stove off – swing the wok over the plate. Ah. Smile.

5:30 pm. Dinner. The plates carry traditional Chinese and Korean dishes. The only oddity that anybody would notice is that everybody refers to the dishes in English.

7:00 pm. It's Shower Time for the children. My wife and I finish the last of the packing, check the passports, the tickets, the wallets and purses, the keys, the toothbrushes, the computer pads, the
projectors, the notebooks, the books, the phones, the windows, the timed
lights, the security, the empty refrigerator, the children playing in the
bathtub.

9:00 pm. The kids are sound asleep. I put away their nightly story books. My wife and I joke with each other while we brush up and prepare for bed.

10:00 pm. I climb in bed. My wife prefers to read before bed and is on a sofa across from the bed.

An early flight tomorrow. 8:20 am out of the gate means a 4:00 am for the parents. Although, nowadays, everybody flies straight to Shanghai, I
booked a layover in Narita just for kicks because I used to always transfer
there when I was little. I fall asleep smiling into my pillow.

11:37. My phone goes off. I attach the voice dampener so I don't wake my wife.

"Hello?"

"This is Alchemy. EVOKE needs all its agents again."

"Wow! Excellent. I'll check my email in the morning. Alchemy, thank you."

"Thank you." Click.

I lie awake thinking: the world will shift again. I silently reach for my LED pen and notepad to draw up a plan. My family will go ahead to Shanghai.
I'll reschedule a one week layover in Tokyo,
where many EVOKE members will gather. As I click off my pen, I grin, and then
fall back asleep.