Electronik and Shurik's safe-haven had looked pretty rough, even in my dream. The club building looked as it as always had. I found myself walking without any real sense of direction. In my research, I'd read the camp had survived post-USSR as a regular scout camp, before biting the dust in the mid-90s. The grass was knee-high now, billowing in the wind like rotten wheat. Like a modern marvel of Soviet engineering, it yielded and creaked open. The camp's existence made me question if the personalities I'd met in Sovyonok were real as well. I'd never been out this way before, not that I could remember at least. On a whim, I searched for the camp based on some things I could remember, and it turned out to be real. The camp's existence in the real world caught me off guard. Olga Dmitrievna and Viola would be in their sixties. Would a middle-aged Slavya peak her head out from beyond the gates now? Time shift was something I never really considered with Sovyonok - the teenaged girls of the late 80s would now be middle-aged women. The two pioneer statues stood their ground, calling for the legions of invisible pioneers that had passed through the gates many years ago. The gates definitely showed their age, but it's not like the wall was crumbling down or anything. Strangely enough it wasn't as dilapidated as I was expecting. I arrived at my "destination" and got off, thanking the driver. Through the whole trip I kept anticipating something reality shift, hallucinations, engine trouble - hell, maybe the universe would just take me back to the 1980s again.
EVERLASTING SUMMER NURSE DRIVER
I doubt the driver would take the trouble to wake me up. Thankfully, I didn't fall asleep this time. After some talking though, he gave in and grumbled something about the youth as I took my seat. I had to convince the bus driver I wasn't crazy, asking to be dropped off at an abandoned stop that was technically no longer on the route. All it cost to revisit my dream was a bus ticket out of the city. It helped that the dream was something grounded in reality. I had to lightly slap myself a few times to prove I wasn't just asleep again.
![everlasting summer nurse everlasting summer nurse](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZmYxZDg0MTktYzE2Mi00MmI3LWJlYjItNWRmNTdkMDRhMzI4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjM3Nzc4MTI@._V1_UY209_CR153,0,140,209_AL_.jpg)
It was a strange sensation, acting out your own dream.