I'm getting some mandatory paperwork done, in a confusing bureaucracy that speaks a mix of Cantonese & Mexican Spanish; but the written language seems to be syllabic, looking vaguely Chinese but not. Not Japanese or Korean either, I know those. Looks more like... Ethiopian!

I'm sent with my forms to the woman who issues you government shoes. She speaks only Cantonese, though her paperwork's in Amharic syllabics, only after a while I start to think it looks more rounded, more like Cherokee.

She mimes that I have to give a urine sample, peeing into a clump of tissue paper right in her booth. Reluctantly I do it. Otherwise I'll be stuck with only these heavy steel-toed shoes for the next year; I need lighter footwear. I can't just wear go barefoot or wear sandals; you MUST wear government-issued shoes.

One deskworker, a strange little guy, asks "Can I sniff your lunch? I can deduce your whole history!"

I drawl "You can tryyyy." I mean, seriously... Lunchomancy?

He breathes its scent in one long moment, then reels off a long list of events in my life!

And, impossibly, half are true.

Trouble is, half aren't.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Shoes get issued: your sole(s)/soul(s) assigned to you? Or are "shoes" a pun on "issues"?
• Unfamiliar syllabary or alphabet: huh?
• Strange little guy sniffs my lunch: not a Private Eye, a Private Nose!
• Half right, half wrong: reminds me of when I try ESP tests--guess above chance, but below what a clear sense would get. Frustrating, but consistent. That's why I'm convinced it's a real sense, just... even weaker than smell, and humans are pathetic scenthounds. And yet... consistently above random, too.

My sister Althea wants lunch. We go to B-Star (Burmese, on Clement Street)... and there, fetching our tea-leaf salad, is... the lunch-sniffer. Unmistakably him.

Now I wonder about the weird writing in the dream. As the splendid psychic I am, I guessed every alphabet BUT Burmese...

Half right, half wrong. The Private Nose was me.

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