The room is moist and dark. It is exactly like my office in Florida, except for one detail which is puzzling: everything is mirror image. It's as if I'm working late, in the past, in some sort of alternate universe.
The forest is populated with tropical trees, which strangely give way to evergreens and other trees of colder climes. There is no sign of wildlife, not even insects, though I keep expecting to meet a cloud of gnats.
The path, paved at first, fades to dirt and then to scrub - disappearing entirely under my feet into brambles and fallen, rotting branches.
The path finally fades out on a hillside, and there is a brook, some fifteen feet across - shallow against smooth, reddish brown rocks. It looks as if it would be difficult to cross on the rocks - an experimental touch, and then a taste, reveals the water to be numbingly cold, as if melted snow.
A crumpled, rusted steel beer can is half-embedded at the riverside. It is an ancient relic, a fragment of its lid showing it had been pierced long ago with a church-key. No paint or label remains; but as I pick it up I see a faint "Schlitz" embedded into its top.
A sparkle in the path turns out to be a key, an odd barrel-shaped one. It looks like it might be the type used to open vending machines. Idly, I wonder if vending machines ever sold beer, long ago.