Dammit. Gramps was making him work to earn all thirty-six thousand, nine hundred and whatever dollars. Jason logged onto the site, themidasgame.com., and slipped the headband over his head, careful to align the nodes with his temples as per the online instructions. These fraudulent sonsofbitches even went so far as to detect brainwaves in order to reel in senile dupes with their elaborate scam. As soon as Jason got his 37,000 dollars, or 36,000 and something, he was going straight to the Federal Trade Commission, in addition to every news channel he could find, and these sick bastards were going down.

Now that he had logged in, and the headband rested over his temples, Gramps would come to the apartment tomorrow to take him to the bank. Score! Jason would have a sad story, of how—despite logging in and having his brainwaves measured—the dream/game thing never happened, and he woke up feeling like he had been robbed of his grandfather’s inheritance. Now that he thought of it, that was a great line: “robbed of my grandfather’s inheritance.”

He was thinking of something, some clever line, he forgot what, when he drifted off to sleep. He had gone two long nights without sleep, so he was more tired than he realized. The wind was cold, slicing through him like a knife stored in the freezer beside the next Keystone Lite he was going to drink. The snow swirled in circles, causing him to draw his tattered jacket in close to him as he sat on the sidewalk, which is when he noticed that the tips of his fingers poking through the fingers of his knit gloves, and the big toe of his left foot thrusting out through the end of his threadbare sock and battered shoe, as if to test the chill wind, like a finger dipped into a cool drink.

The street scenario he saw in front of him was visible in shades of black, white, and gray. The theater across the street bore the name, “The Egyptian,” rising in a column from the lowest edge of the billboard up above the roof of the building, as men in Fedora hats and women in tight knee-length skirts formed a line in front of the box office. The marquee read, “THE BLOOD PIRATE W/ ERROL FLYNN.”

Jason held a tin cup in his numb hands. He tried huffing on his hands to warm them, but the cold was stubborn, and persisted in slicing through them.

A man strode past him on the snowy street, dressed in a smart gray suit with a silk tie, and a Fedora sporting a contrasting dark band around the brim.

“Excuse me, sir, can you spare a dollar?” Jason asked as he sat on the sidewalk, thrusting his metal cup in the man’s direction. Damn, it was colder than a bitch.

“A dollar? Who do you think I am, Rockefeller?” The man well-dressed man asked, more as a withering criticism than as a question.

“Who in the hell is Rockefeller?” Jason asked himself. Cars drove by him on the street, and although he didn’t know exactly what they were, he knew they were old, really old, with tail ends that arced downward in a near quarter circle. It seemed that everyone passing by on the sidewalk was dressed well: the men all wore suits, ties, and hats, while the women wore dresses or skirts.

The next man whose eye he could catch prompted him to extend his cup, “Excuse me, sir, can you spare a quarter?”

The man reached into his pocket and removed a coin, which he tossed into Jason’s cup. The coin landed with a clink and a rattle.

“Thank you, sir,” Jason responded.

When Jason removed the coin, he was pleased to see that it was a quarter, but made of silver, dated 1920. Looking at his wristwatch, he saw several luminous columns on its face. The upper part of the watch read “REAL,” while the lower part of the watch read “GAME.” On the left side was the caption “Wealth.” The game wealth amount was zero, but the real wealth column read “-26,849.13,” which, calculating off the top of his head, matched his combined student loan, car, and credit card debt. In the center was a display with a dollar sign. The real dollar display read “-74.13” in red letters, while the game dollar numbers read “+.25.” On the right side of the watch face stood two squat columns, labeled “Health,” both of which shined a faint urine yellow.

Now that Jason was looking at his watch, he noticed his hand trembled from the cold. He tried to steady his hand when he held out his tin cup for the next several passersby, who rewarded him with two dimes and a nickel. Then he had a bit of inspiration to ask if the passersby could “spare some change.” He struck out several times until one generous lady wearing thin dress gloves and a hat with a bit of netting on the brim, removed a handful of coins from a little clasp purse and dropped them into his cup.

“God bless you, ma’am,” Jason beamed, tipping his hat to her. He felt elated. He glanced down at the glowing columns on his watch. Now the game wealth column read “+1.65.” Sure enough, he had a dollar and sixty-five cents. He decided he didn’t want the cup to look too full, or pedestrians might think he didn’t need the money. On the other, having a bit of change in the cup suggested that others had donated. So thirty cents lay in the bottom of his cup, and the rest of the coins formed a cold metal lump in the corner of his front pants pocket, which his body was slow to warm.

A policeman came by, twirling his baton on a thong wrapped around his hand. He tapped Jason on the shoulder with his Billy club. “All right, bum, let’s move it along.”

“Bum?” Jason thought. “Whatever happened to ‘homeless person’?” He got up with a groan, feeling sore from sitting on the cement for too long. He shuffled down the street, drawing his jacket together and pulling down his pork pie hat. When he came to Lou’s Diner, he stopped to get a cup of coffee.

“What can I get you?” the waitress asked with a smile. The woman serving him was gorgeous, wearing a uniform blouse stretched tight by her large breasts. Her hair fell to her shoulders and curled inward, while the rest of her hair was gathered into a bun on top. From the smell, he gathered that she chewed spearmint gum, and her lipstick accentuated her full lips.

“A cup of coffee, please.” In view of his tattered clothes and poverty, he realized that he didn’t have a hope in hell with this woman, yet she was still very kind to him. She set the steaming coffee cup on a saucer in front of him.

“That’ll be ten cents,” she told him with a smile.

He removed a thin silver dime from his pants pocket and slid it over the Formica counter. Ten cents were instantly deducted from the “game wealth” column on the fitness watch that his grandfather had bought at the thrift store. The watch was an anachronism, but it showed how crazy dreams are, which would be the only place the phony piece of crap worked. He inhaled the coffee’s pleasing aroma as he took a sip.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw a long metallic zeppelin drifting high above the streets, yet low enough that he could see it clearly, as could the throng on the street, many of whom stopped to gaze in awe. The zeppelin glided among the skyscrapers, but oddly, the Empire State Building was missing. Large Maltese crosses emblazoned the airship’s tail fins, while multiple propellers droned along its underside. Was that the Led Zeppelin or no, make that the Graf Zeppelin?

“That’s crazy,” he told the waitress. “That zeppelin is filled with hydrogen and could explode at any moment.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t know about that. Airships are completely safe. It’ll be a while before I can afford to ride one, anyways.”

“How much is a zeppelin ticket?” he asked out of curiosity.

“A hundred bucks, at least,” she replied, and flashed him an amused smile. “Why? Are you planning on going for a ride?”

“If I had the money, I’d take us both.” He smiled and took another sip of his coffee. As of now, he had a dollar and some change, so it would be a while before he had that kind of money. A look at his watch said “+1.40”

“I’d have to ask my mother first,” she said with a laugh. “Excuse me.”

He admired her shapely butt and the curve of her broad hips when she turned to serve another customer on the other side of the diner. He drank his coffee while watching the zeppelin slide through the sky. He knew that the crew of the dirigible compensated for the airship’s slow journey with luxury, serving gourmet meals and the best cocktails so that the passengers didn’t mind the long flight. Finishing the last of his coffee, he left a quarter as a tip, and decided to go for a stroll.

He walked against the current of sidewalk foot traffic, passing neatly dressed mannequins in storefront windows, a hobby shop where a model train chugged through a realistic looking mountain diorama, and Lou Tannen’s Magic Shop, until he arrived at a park. Two stone lions stood on either side of the entrance, which was composed of brick pillars topped with globes. He entered the park and strolled by pigeons snapping up bits of popcorn on the walkways. Snow piled up at the foot of benches, and he thought that the bare rose bushes were depressing. Looking into a metal wire wastebasket, he spied the headline on a discarded newspaper, “BOMB EXPLODES ON WALL STREET,” dated September 16th, 1920. It looked like he’d missed yet another brush with death.

His stroll took him to a fountain, which was the apparent center of the park because all the pathways led to it, like spokes on a wheel. He saw the glimmer of coins in its shallow water, and marveled that it hadn’t frozen over in the biting cold.

“What the hell?” he figured. “What do I have to lose? It can’t get any worse.”

Jason pulled a dime out of his pocket and tossed it into the pool. The coin hit the water with a plunk, and wobbled like a fish tail as it sank to the bottom. An image appeared above the fountain, and he heard the roar of the crowd as the Yankees took the field. The players’ gloves looked odd, with oversized thumbs on a flat plate of leather. He watched the game, and despite wrapping his arms around himself and blowing into his hands, he temporarily forgot that he was a bum, and nearly broke. Was that Lou Gehrig at bat? Like the Hindenburg and the Titanic, he knew the dark future awaiting Lou Gehrig that everyone else was entirely unaware of. He followed the game intently, right up to the point that Babe Ruth came up to the plate. Looking at his portly shape, far heavier above the waist than below it, the Babe seemed to Jason to be comically out of place, right up until he pointed with the end of his huge baseball bat to a spot just over center field.

The image disappeared.

“Ah, dammit!” Jason cursed. “Wait a minute…” he got another dime from his pocket, and after he tossed it into the water, the image resumed, taking the form of a three-dimensional movie.

The next pitch was met with a thunderous crack, and the Babe twisted up like a corkscrew from the sheer force of his swing. He didn’t bother to run, but gently tossed his bat to the side and calmly jogged around the bases as the crowd roared. In the next instant he was watching Jack Dempsey boxing, followed by Sugar Ray. The show always seemed to die at the worst possible moment, followed by him tossing another coin into the pool.

Then a shapely woman floated over the pool like an angel, with ivory skin, short, wavy hair, and curvaceous hips. She danced a bit, and threw off her feather boa. Her pearl necklaces swung as she danced, causing the fringe hem of her skirt to bounce. She grabbed the lower edge of her blouse and raised it…

She blinked out of existence.

Jason dove into his pocket and clutched another coin, which he threw into the pool. The dance continued, and her blouse rose above her head, revealing a nude-colored bra. She reached behind her with both hands in order to unclasp her bra, when…

Damn. He realized that the last coin he threw was a nickel. He ransacked his pocket, digging frantically. He checked every nook, desperately looking for change. He didn’t spend his last coin, did he?

The cop who had driven him off the sidewalk appeared on the walkway, swinging his Billy club as before. The gold NYPD badge shone on his navy blue hat. “Playing with yourself in a public park, eh?” He shook his head sadly.

“No officer, it’s not like that.” Jason snatched his hand out of his pocket as though he’d just grabbed a hot coal, which now that he thought of it, was preferable to the aching coldness.

The cop turned his head to look away, not wanting to see any more as he strolled off.

Jason realized that he had spent his last coin, so he was penniless—the “game worth” column on his watch confirmed it, “0.0.” Even worse, it was night, and he was ravenously hungry.