I have my laser pointer that I carry everywhere, and quite by accident I discover that by flicking it on, I can project the beam at the ground and rise up, using it to balance myself in the air. I'm in this place that looks like the big studio at art college. It has a high glass roof, high enough to practice flying under, and the people around me are all busy working. I am unobserved. So I fire myself higher and higher, up and out of an open skylight in the roof and I travel, maybe thirty, forty feet above ground, parallel with a path that leads across what looks like a park. It's a still grey day, there is not much wind, so moving through the air is very easy and pleasant. After a while it occurs to me to worry about how I get down, so I try it over a tree with wide spreading branches and roost there for a while, looking about, enjoying my birds-eye view. Nobody can see me but I can see them. In the distance is a wall, there is someone spray-painting a piece on it. I leave the tree and laser-point myself a little nearer so I can take a look. I am transfixed. The colours are the most amazing I have ever seen. They are like liquid light, they have sparkles which glow in the air as they come out of the can. The piece itself is strange geometry and floating layers of colour, at once complicated and simple, so that you can get lost in looking at it. I come down to land near the artist, and ask where he got his paint from.
He is Asian. Shaven-headed under a black beanie. Strong London accent. He says he gets the paints just up the road, he'll show me if I like, and I think why not? so we head, on foot on the ground this time, up a steep hill along which there is a scrappy kind of street market. Stalls selling light bulbs and cables, knockoff watches and radios. He walks fast, dodging under stall canopies and between piles of fruit boxes. I am rushing to keep up as he ducks into an unmarked doorway. I dive in after him, and find myself in a big empty warehouse. In the warehouse, tied to a bunch of wheeled clothes rails, are a long line of people. Their hands are bound round what looks like coat hangers and they are all hung up like a bunch of puppets. There are two large men coming towards me with rope, and the door behind me is locked shut.
The men are smiling at me. Non-threatening, as if they are really sorry to have to do this but well, it's just their job. I look around for the graffiti artist, but he has disappeared. Bastard, I think, as the men tie me up. They attach me to a rail between a tall guy in office clothes and a little old lady in a fake fur coat. I ask the people why they are all tied up here. Look! I say. These rails are flimsy, these coathangers can easily be broken, and I twist myself loose. Don't, says the old lady. You'll get us all killed. The tall guy looks at me, hopeful but unsure. I undo the knots that tie him and throw away his coat hanger, and he smiles, delighted: but suddenly there is a massive explosion and we are all blown across the room. When the dust dies down, there is the writer dude waving at me from the other side of a steep crater in the warehouse floor, which is completely filled with the amazing paint. It ripples and shifts through a thousand colours and brims up and spills out, flooding the room. At this point I remember the laser pointer and lift myself up above the flood with it so I don't get washed away. I think I woke up then, but I can still remember how the beam of light was all starred and striped with the thousand shifting colours of the glowing paint as I rose up and flew myself away.