Howling winds spin furiously through the great rotunda … you struggle to gain your footing. Your eyes, glazed and swollen stare from the hollow of your head. You labor to even remember what this place is and just how you came to be in this morass of nature’s fury …
As you fight to just maintain consciousness and cannot even take a step against the debris whistling about your head, it is difficult to manage anything resembling deep thought. But now you recall a glimmer of the night before … that fantastic palatial expanse you knew as the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco’s most endearing and iconic structure of a Century earlier!
You had driven south down Highway 101 over The Golden Gate Bridge and partaken of the evening’s special event that celebrated the Centennial of that Last Great World’s Fair, but something is vastly different … something is very wrong with that splendid scene. Harry Houdini had made a sojourn those many decades ago to perform at the Exposition and last night, an unknown entity had promoted a repeat of Houdini’s Séance in the one magnificent structure remaining from that Great Fair … the Palace.
And now as a semblance of sanity and vision returns to your mind and you finally are managing a bit of mobility, you gaze about the landscape searching for anything familiar besides the Palace Rotunda. Where is the Highway and for that matter why do you spy only a battered Ferry where only last night stood the Golden Gate Bridge … where is your vehicle … or any vehicle save a few old Model T Fords strewn about? And why do you not recognize any of the lavish old buildings … and fountains and fantastic statuary that now form such an awesome perspective in every direction?
Out of the tumult eerie figures emerge, appearing as dazed as you … but a welcome sight for seared eyes! But why are they dressed like those at the Dickens Fair you recently attended and why, straining to gain sight of the Marina, are there nothing but weathered tall-masted wooden ships tossed about what looks to be an old seaport … what is this place … when is this place?