SF Dream #2457

I'm at a pool party with various friends and family. We're playing some sort of game. It's a board game -- but a huge, floppy board like an interactive membrane that accepts vocal and gestural commands. (It resembles a weird, organic descendent of the strategy and tactics games my cousin played in the 80s.) The board flops in and out of the pool and the terrace around it. Various groups of people are doing various things to it. Somewhere out there, there's another team and we're playing against them.

I have a big, huge complicated area. I stare at it in horror. Then it occurs to me. Cut the problem in half. I draw a line with my finger. The problem has automatically been simplified by 50%.

I'm pleased with my self. I get up to inform my friends of my cleverness.

There, standing at the edge of the pool, is the Grim Reaper holding a scythe. A cartoony Grim Reaper, vaguely Terry Gilliamish, but not cutesy. Big mother. About 7 feet tall. I see glimpses of decay and deterioration beneath his dark hood -- a line of smiling, rotting teeth. He isn't trying to take me away, yet. He just wants to hang out at the pool party. I don't try to throw him out. Cartoony or not, when the Grim Reaper appears at your pool party, you give him his proper respect.