Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

"I've heard of that. More for me, then." Jerry made a noise to Yorgo, and some pills appeared from up
front.
"What are they?"
"Well," Jerry said, "one pill makes you bigger, and one pill makes you small."
I took two, and we drove around the city, and reached the conclusion that we needed to buy clothing,
but first we had to wash. We bought a squeeze bottle of dish detergent and drove to Wreck Beach, at
the base of the cliffs at UBC. Amid the overall nudity, our underwear attracted no notice. We left Les
passed out in the car.
Out in the water we used the dish soap to scrape the diesel fuel from our skin, but a group of hippie kids
saw us and began screaming at us for using squeeze bottle soap at the beach, and began pelting us with
oyster shells, so we dropped the bottle and swam down the shore. Once on land, Jerry stole two towels
from a log and we climbed back up the cliff, at which point I remember wanting some of the scotch Les
was drinking - and then my blackout. Jerry's magic pills.
* * *
The next thing I remember is being in Seattle. Judging by beard stubble it was maybe two nights later. I
was on Interstate 5 entering downtown, riding shotgun in an Audi sedan. At the wheel was a skinny
junkie-looking guy with chattering teeth. He looked at me and said, "It's okay. You've got the money
with you. The important thing to remember is not to panic."
Not to panic? Am I supposed to be not panicking about something?This wasn't a situation I wanted to
be a part of. The car pulled up to a stoplight. I got out and walked through the first door I saw, which
happened to be the west lobby entrance of a Four Seasons hotel. I caught sight of myself in a jewelry
shop's display case: I was sunburnt and wearing a designer outfit like the ones in magazine spreads that
no guy ever wears in real life. I had to shed this ridiculous outfit, but how? Where?
In the vest pocket a palm-thick wad of fifties, but no ID, which might prove to be a problem, what with
being a Canadian in the U.S. most likely on shady business. One of Jerry's pills was tucked into a deep
corner, so I wiggled it loose and popped it in my mouth. At the bar I ordered a martini and flirted with
two women who were up from the Bay Area and who worked for Oracle's PR department. I wasn't in
their league, but they were fun, and they made cracks about my jacket. In the men's room I removed it
and buried it in the hand towel basket beneath a pile of towels. And then I blacked out once again.
When I came to, I was walking past alders and birches beside a stony mountain river. The river wasn't
huge like the Fraser, and it wasn't tiny; it was a mountain river that fed into something larger. It was late
afternoon and my hands were behind my head. I could hear someone's feet on the rocks behind me. I
looked down and remembered being a kid and staring at sand in the Capilano, seeing flecks of mica and
being convinced it was gold.
The river looked cold, and was filled with rocks like the one I'd used to kill Mitchell. And the landscape
surrounding the river reminded me of the valley forest by the Klaasen family daffodil farm in Agassiz: the
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