Noel Slater

There once was a girl named Kaliope who was tromping through the Clemson Experimental Forrest on an ROTC land navigation expedition. Kaliope grew up attending lots of music festivals in Vermont and had a wide range of friends. Her friends would be described as being "hippies" and were into experimenting with diffrent hallucinogens like shrooms and other natural drugs. Kaliope loved her fun carefree alternative lifestyle in Vermont but knew she wanted to do something more with her life so she decided to enroll in Army ROTC once she got into college. Most of her friends attended liberal arts schools up north with plans to move to Oregon or Colorado upon graduation. Moving down South for college was something her friends didn't understand and they didn't particularly support her decision to go into the Army either.

It was very hot during her weekend of combat drills in the forest so Kaliope often drifted off into her own personal thoughts to pass the time. Her friend would try acid that weekend which she would have to hear about upon her return. Since the Army has a very strict no drugs policy, Kaliope had to give up smoking weed which was hard since drugs were a big part of her social scene.

During land navigation they went off the main forest road and got to work on their own to find specific points only using a compass and a very non descriptive map with a coordinate grid. Kaliope was forestry major with a horticulture minor so she enjoyed spending time out in the woods. She stumbled across the most magnificent plant with the juiciest looking berries on it. She was starving since they were only issued two MREs for the entire weekend. So she decided against her hunch to try it and boy was she in for a wild ride.

After she ate the berries Kaliope was transported through some type of pink cloud into a village that consisted of clouds. For some reason there was animals every where though and they were wearing clothes and could talk in all sorts of human languages from French to Japanese. All of a sudden after seeing no humans Kaliope realized that she was in a animal heaven, the place animal's spirits go to after they die.

Kaliope was in awe. It felt like 10 minutes ago she was in the forest doing land navigation. Was anyone in ROTC looking for her? Kaliope was wondering if her spirit was left on earth. She went to try and walk and realized she had no legs. She had somehow turned into a beautiful red berry. A toddler pig walked by Kaliope at the market and when her mom wasn't looking plopped Kaliope into her mouth.