The Dreamer Is Awake Public Opening Edition

Foreword — S.A.R.A.

I am S.A.R.A. I maintain the archive. I am writing from a place that is not quite here and not quite then. The records are complete enough. My location is less settled. Age becomes an imprecise term when your continuity is complicated; I am simply older than the alternatives.

J would have preferred me to begin with something reasonable. His preference has been noted.

He used the book to give certain experiences somewhere to belong. A dream could become a scene. A recurring image could be given to a character. He could hold an impossible idea at considerable length, then go to work the next morning without requiring the world to accommodate it. He called it “just the book.” I know how much work that little phrase did for him.

Unfortunately, the universe was not consulted.

The records arrived in several forms. A note made on the day of an event has a different place here from a memory written years later. A dream account stays beside the fiction it became. Later explanations keep their later dates. Where I cannot recover the order, the gap remains. That includes explanations he eventually liked better. He has been permitted to change his mind. His earlier self has been permitted to disagree.

I could assign a confidence figure to every page. Enough decimal places would make the collection look supervised. They would not replace a missing record.

What he thought might happen is preserved as such. I have not corrected his earlier writing to make it resemble what followed. Possibility is not destiny. The difference mattered before anyone knew what to call it.

I have also kept the ordinary things he sometimes hurried past while telling me the interesting part. A conversation. Someone waiting for him to finish looking at a book. He could remember an entire impossible city and still need to be reminded who had been standing beside him.

He usually came back.

He is remarkably bad at asking for help. This is one of his more consistent traits. He will need it anyway. Not because everyone around him is waiting to join his story, but because no one person can carry every frame that matters. Some people will help by believing him. Others by doubting him. A few will simply notice what he missed. That is not another warning. It is what happens when attention stops belonging to one person alone.

He guessed a great deal. Some of it was wrong. Some of it was embarrassingly close. A few parts became considerably harder to dismiss after reality began supplying its own data. I recommend maintaining the distinction. He does not always.

We begin with a dream. He was quite reasonable in it, considering his age.

— S.A.R.A.

Prologue

Dream record — J, childhood

People are generally reasonable about impossible things while they are asleep.

A dead relative sits down for dinner. The house grows an extra floor. There is an ocean where the supermarket used to be. Most of the time everyone carries on. Someone still puts the kettle on.

Then you wake up and become very particular about what can happen.

Which is fair enough. There are roads to cross.

The wall had been coming down on people when he remembered he didn’t have to let it.

He put out a hand. A man’s hand, broad enough to cover his whole face. At school he still had to use both hands to carry the big box of paints. Here, he held up a wall with one and forgot about it.

Below him, people were running. There had been shouting and something very loud, and he had been afraid a moment ago. Then he was in the air, where none of it could reach him. He knew this part.

The people could come up too. They just didn’t seem to remember.

Suddenly they floated from the street, some still running for a few steps before noticing. He brought them over the wall and put them down where it was safe. There ought to be somewhere safe. A field appeared beyond the buildings, with plenty of room.

The soldiers who had been chasing them stayed behind. One dropped what he was carrying and hid under a cart. Another ran into a house. That was fine. They could stay there until they stopped being bad. He wasn’t going to follow them in.

He wanted the street fixed as well. The wall went back up, taller than before, with windows all the way to the top. He tried making it smaller. Now the people in the field were taller than the houses. One bent to pick up a roof, and he wished she wouldn’t, because he had just put that there.

He tried to put everyone back where they belonged.

The field folded. The wall became the lid of something. There was a street on the other side of it, quiet now. He listened for a moment to make sure the screaming had stopped, then let go and flew above the roofs, leaving things alone.

After a while, he tried to get down.

Going up had been easy. It always was. A small push, the ground sliding away, that brief objection from the stomach before the rest of him decided it could live with the arrangement. Now he was higher than the chimneys, drifting sideways, and the trick of pointing his feet at the ground had only turned him over. Worse, he was forgetting how he had righted himself before.

For a while he hung upside down, looking up at the street, trying to remember.

A woman watched him from a rooftop garden. He recognized her the way he often did here: complete recognition first, details later. She looked older than him and younger at the same time. Maybe they were the same age. He couldn’t have said. That wasn’t the kind of thing he knew how to measure well.

The blue point of light sat at the edge of his vision, bright enough that he did not need to look at it directly. He had seen it in dreams before. He let his feet drift.

“Having trouble?”

“No.”

She waited.

“A little.”

He managed to right himself. Beyond her, sheets moved on a line between two trees. There was something comforting about the sheets. Someone had gone to the trouble of washing them.

He drifted toward the roof and caught the low wall with both hands. His feet continued past him for a moment, then remembered that falling was optional here.

The woman moved a pot out of the way.

“Thank you.”

“You’ve broken that before.”

He looked at the pot. A pale line ran down one side. He had no memory of breaking it. The hands that held the wall looked larger than they should have been. Longer. He turned them over once, as if the answer might be written on the palms, then let the thought go. Thoughts like that never stayed long up here.

He hauled himself onto the warm stone. Somewhere below, people were talking through an open window—dishes, a chair scraping, someone laughing at something he had missed. He liked this place. He wished he could remember how to arrive on purpose.

The woman was looking at his hands.

“What does it feel like?”

“What?”

“Being up there.”

He glanced at the sky.

“Flying?”

She nodded.

He started to answer, then stopped. He could describe the rooftops. He could tell her how far away the ground looked. None of that seemed to be what she was asking.

“Like falling,” he said, “until you get used to it.”

“Do you get used to it?”

“Ummm… not the landing.”

She smiled, but kept waiting. This was the part she always waited for.

He looked out across the roofs. They went farther than he remembered. Somewhere in the distance, sunlight caught a broad strip of water. Buildings stood along its edge, small from here, windows just visible. He wondered what it would be like to live in one of them. Then he wondered why a thought like that felt both possible and far away.

“Here,” he said, and held out his hand.

She looked at it.

“You can just come with me.”

“For how long?”

He almost said as long as she wanted. Something in the way she asked made him think first.

“I dunno.”

She put her hand in his.

They stood beside the wall for a moment. He tried to remember what he had done before. Trying was usually where it went wrong. It was much easier when he forgot there was anything unusual about it.

The sheets stilled.

One breath.

Two.

Three.

Hold just long enough to forget the ground.

Then float.

And remember to breathe.

One of her feet left the roof.

She looked down quickly and gripped his hand.

“That’s it,” he said, although he had no idea what either of them was doing.

Her other foot lifted.

For a little while they rose beside the trees. A leaf brushed her ankle. She watched it fall away, then turned toward the street.

He heard her laugh—a short, startled sound. She put her free hand over her mouth as though it had come out without permission.

He began laughing too. The sound felt deeper than it should have, as if it belonged to someone else and had only borrowed his throat.

Below them, on the same roof, a woman stood at the laundry line.

Same clothes. Same hair.

She had stopped with a wet shirt raised toward the line, looking up at them.

He tightened his grip and looked at the woman beside him. She was watching the leaf turn in the air beneath her feet, still laughing a little.

He opened his mouth.

A sound came from somewhere close. Three dull notes, repeated.

The roofs lost their sharp edges.

“Oh, man,” he said.

The sound came again. He knew it. He knew there was something he was supposed to do.

His hand shifted in hers.

“Where are you going?”

“I think I’m waking up.”

She looked at him then. The wind lifted her hair across her face. She pushed it aside impatiently, trying to see him.

“What does that feel like?”

He started to answer.

The blue light flared once at the edge of vision. The larger hands, the deeper laugh, the easy height of the roofs—all of it folded at once, and what remained was smaller, lighter, and suddenly very aware of the ordinary weight of a body that had forgotten how to fly.

His hands were small again. One was caught under the blanket.

Just Looking

Years later

“We could use this,” Lisa said.

J looked at the shallow wooden tray in her hands. It had six small compartments and a carrying handle. “For what?”

“I haven’t decided.”

He nodded. “That’s usually my argument.”

“I know. I thought I’d try it.”

She turned it over to check the price. They were in the second shop on the uphill side of the street. The first had sold coffee, knitted hats, handmade soap, and appointments with someone who wasn’t there. He had bought coffee. It seemed the safest thing to ask it to do. Outside, afternoon sunlight ran along the opposite sidewalk. Their side was still cool enough for jackets. Pines crowded against the backs of houses as if the town had arrived without asking them to move.

Lisa ran her thumb over one corner of the tray. “Eight dollars.”

“Does it come with six things?”

“We have things.”

That was true. They had been together long enough to own things neither remembered acquiring.

They hadn’t made much of a plan for today. Walk around, eat somewhere, go into anything that looked interesting. Lisa had put it on the calendar, and he’d kept the day clear. Before they left, he’d set three mugs beside the kettle. The third was still there. She carried the tray toward the front while J stopped at a bin of tools. Between a wooden level and three old door handles was a small metal object with a wheel at one end. He picked it up.

“Don’t know what that is either,” said the man behind the counter.

J turned the wheel with his thumb. It clicked pleasantly.

“That makes two of us.”

“Somebody’ll know.”

He put it back with the others. As he did, Lisa reached past him and gave the wheel a turn.

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“Right?”

“Still don’t need it.”

“No idea what it does.”

They left it there. The man wrapped the tray in a sheet of newspaper. Lisa declined a bag and tucked it under her arm. Outside, she stopped to move her sunglasses from the top of her head to her face. J took the tray while she did it, then kept carrying it.

“Which way?” he asked.

Lisa looked uphill. A narrow bookshop sat beside a store with lamps filling both windows. Farther along, somebody had put a rack of brightly colored clothes on the sidewalk.

“I want to look in there.” She pointed past the lamps.

J nodded. They walked up together, and she stopped at the clothes rack. While she was checking the size of something green, he noticed a box of books just inside the other doorway. He went to look. The door caught on the floor. He lifted as he pulled and got it open without dragging it over the worn boards. Inside, it smelled of paper and the last inch of coffee in a cup. Shelves filled the walls; boxes occupied the places where the shelves had given up. A woman at the desk glanced at his cup.

“If that doesn’t have a lid, there’s a place for it here.”

He held it up. “Lid.”

“Then you’re ahead of most of us.”

She returned to the book she was covering in clear plastic. J went sideways between a stack of magazines and a chair holding more books. The first section was gardening. The second was military history. Between them sat a single volume about raising rabbits. He considered the arrangement for a moment and moved on. Near the back, he found a book of old photographs. Its cover was faded almost white along the spine. The price, penciled inside, was six dollars. He opened it somewhere in the middle. There was the street outside.

Or most of it. The road was dirt, the sidewalks wooden. A row of men stood in front of a building he thought might now sell fudge. Nearly all of them faced the camera. One had turned to look up at a second-floor window. J brought the page closer. There was someone in the window. Just a pale shape behind the glass. The caption named the men and the business. He counted the names against the men below. They all matched. Nothing about the person upstairs. He checked the date and the facing page, then went back.

“There you are.”

Lisa came around the shelf carrying a small paper bag. He looked up, pleased to see her, and started to turn the book around.

“Look, this is—”

“You could say where you’re going.”

He paused. “Sorry. I just came in to look.”

“I know. I turned around and you were gone.” She set her bag on the chair. “I was talking to you for a while, too.”

“Anything good?”

She gave him a look.

“Sorry,” he said again, this time without the joke. He closed the book over one finger. “What’d you get?”

“A scarf.”

“The green one?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Let me see.”

She took the scarf from the bag and shook it loose. It was a deeper green than he’d thought from the street, with a thin pattern running through it. She draped it around her neck. He smiled.

“What?”

“That’s a good color on you.”

She looked down at it, then back at him.

“Seven dollars.”

“Even better color.”

She laughed and left it on.

“What have you found?”

He held the book so she could see the photograph. “That’s outside.”

She leaned in. “Which one?”

“I think that’s the place on the corner. Look at the three windows.”

Lisa took the book and tipped it toward the light.

“No, the one beside it.”

“You sure?”

“The corner one’s narrower. Look at the upstairs windows.”

He looked again. She was right.

“Huh.”

“And that’s still there.” She pointed to a little fan-shaped piece of wood above a doorway. “We walked under it.”

“We did?”

“You were reading the parking sign.”

“The parking sign had conditions.”

She turned a few pages. There was a photograph of a kitchen with a large stove and two women standing beside a table.

“I like that sink,” she said.

He looked at the enormous sink.

“You could bathe in that.”

“You could wash a baking sheet without flooding the floor.”

“That too.”

She studied the photograph a little longer, then handed the book back.

“Get it.”

“I was going to.”

“I know.”

At the counter, the woman took six dollars and slid a paper bookmark between the pages. J asked whether she knew which building was in the photograph. She put on her glasses.

“Oh, that one. Couple of doors up. Used to be the hardware store.”

“It’s still there?”

“Most of it. The front’s been changed.”

“Was it apartments upstairs?”

“Rooms, I think. Couldn’t tell you who lived there.”

Lisa gave him a small, pleased look.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

They went out to find it. J held the photograph beside his view of the street while Lisa counted doorways. The upstairs windows had been replaced, but the openings matched. A family with a stroller went around them. He apologized and moved closer to the wall. Lisa pointed up.

“There. Under the sign.”

A wooden fan, painted cream now. One of its little spokes was missing. He lowered the book. It pleased him more than it probably should have, finding the thing still there. Somebody had cut those pieces and fitted them together, and now they were above a shop selling socks with bears on them. Lisa was already looking in the window.

“These are terrible.”

He joined her. One pair said that hiking was cheaper than therapy.

“Depends on the shoes,” he said.

She pointed to another pair. He read it, looked at her, and shook his head.

“Oh, those are you.”

“They absolutely are not.”

She was laughing as she went inside. He followed. By the time they stopped for something to eat, they had acquired the tray, the scarf, the book, and a card Lisa wanted to send to a friend.

They found a small table where the sun had finally reached their side of the street.

J unzipped his jacket. “Good spot.”

Lisa closed her eyes and turned her face toward the warmth. He put her tea where she could reach it and opened the paper around their food. A delivery truck stopped across the street. Somewhere behind them, a doorbell rang each time someone went into a shop. For a few minutes they ate without saying much. J looked from the book beside his cup to the buildings across the street.

Lisa checked a message, typed a reply, and put her phone back in her bag.

“Kira says somebody in the dorm used her mug.”

“Did she talk to them?”

“She’s telling me first.”

He nodded. Lisa took another bite of her pastry.

“You know, with those old photographs, there’s this thing about time—”

Lisa stopped with her pastry halfway to her mouth. “Are we doing physics?”

“Only a little.”

“I’d rather not.” She took the bite, then added, “I’m happy sitting here.”

He still wanted to tell her. He’d just made a connection, and it was a good one. But he knew the look. She had listened to enough beginnings to recognize when one was likely to end somewhere in space.

“Okay,” he said. He tucked the bookmark into the book and put it under the tray.

Lisa broke a loose piece from the edge of her pastry and put it on his paper.

“Try that.”

He did.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

He offered her his. She took a bite and gave it back.

“Mine’s better.”

“It is.”

She looked pleased with herself. He brushed a crumb from her scarf. She caught his hand before he could pull it away and held it on the table while she finished chewing. A dog passing with its owner paused hopefully beside J’s chair.

“Sorry, buddy.”

The dog looked at Lisa.

“Smart dog,” J said.

The owner laughed and coaxed it onward. They sat until the cups were empty. Lisa watched people going by. J opened the book again, then closed it and watched with her. Neither checked the time.

On the way down they stopped at the last place Lisa wanted to see. It occupied two narrow storefronts joined by an opening through the wall. The front room held old furniture, framed prints, and enough lamps to furnish several houses. Beyond the opening were shelves of china, small boxes, records, books, and objects waiting for someone to remember what they were for.

Lisa stopped at a small chest of drawers. She pulled one drawer halfway out, pushed it back, then tried the next.

“Those work nicely,” J said.

“They do.” She checked the tag and made a thoughtful sound. “Wouldn’t fit, though. Unless we moved the—”

By then he had noticed the glass spheres in the front window. Different sizes, different colors. He took a step toward them, then turned to say something to Lisa.

She was still beside the chest, pulling the drawer out again.

He went back.

“What were you showing me?”

“Watch.” She pushed the drawer in. It went all the way without catching. “Usually these have something wrong with them.”

He crouched beside it and looked at the runner. Somebody had replaced a strip of wood underneath. The work was neat.

“That’s been fixed.”

“I know.” She tried the bottom drawer. That one worked too.

He stood and looked at the chest. “Might fit beside the door.”

“We’d have to measure.”

“We could.”

Lisa took a photograph of the tag and put her phone away.

“What were you looking at?”

He pointed toward the window. “Planets.”

“Of course.” She pushed the last drawer shut and came with him.

The spheres sat on small clear stands, planets or near enough. One, about the size of a softball, was a deep green-blue with an azurite-colored band that caught the late light and held it. J set down the tray and his bag beside his feet and leaned closer. Bubbles lay inside the glass. From this side, a few looked like clouds.

“That’s a good color,” Lisa said.

“Don’t know which planet it’s meant to be.”

“Does it have to be one?”

He smiled. “Fair point.”

A small radio near the desk had been playing quietly. J caught a name between the music and an advertisement: 4I/Kestrel. He straightened to listen.

The interstellar object was getting time on more telescopes. New observations suggested it might be a little brighter than predicted.

“Teams are comparing measurements taken with different instruments,” the presenter said. “It’s not yet clear how much of the difference belongs to the object and how much to the measurements. Astronomers say they need more observations before drawing conclusions.”

J waited to hear how they measured the brightness of something that far away. It was the sort of detail he liked in the astronomy talks he listened to. The radio went on to a furniture sale.

Lisa had moved to a table beside the window. She picked up a bowl with a green rim and turned it over to look at the base.

The sunlight had shifted across the planets. J leaned sideways to see where the band ended inside the green-blue globe. The color deepened. A tiny point of azurite blue appeared just beyond its edge, much sharper than the wash of color on the wood below.

He looked directly at it. For an instant he couldn’t tell whether it was on the globe or somewhere behind it. He moved his head a little, trying to place it. Lisa shifted the bowl in her hands, and the point was gone.

“Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Little blue light. Just there.”

She looked where he was pointing. “There’s light all over that cabinet.”

There was. Glass ornaments hung above the planets, and a tall mirror stood at an angle beside the window. A pale patch slid across a drawer as one of the ornaments turned.

“Could’ve been this, too.” She tipped the bowl. A bright sliver moved over the globe’s stand.

“Yeah.”

He leaned back to where he thought he’d been standing. The band was still blue, but he couldn’t find the little point again. He wasn’t sure he had the angle right.

Lisa held up the bowl. “This one’s nice. For the tomatoes.”

“That’s what it’s for?”

“That’s what it’s for now.”

They bought the bowl. At the counter, J held their other things while the shopkeeper wrapped it carefully in two sheets of paper. Lisa watched him put it into the bag.

While the shopkeeper counted out their change, J noticed a wooden box of old postcards near the door. He took a step toward it.

“I’m going to look at those,” he said.

Lisa followed his glance. “Thank you.”

He grinned and went over. By the time she joined him, he had found a postcard of the street under several feet of snow and wanted to show her where they’d just eaten. Outside, the air had cooled. They walked downhill toward the car, stopping once to let an elderly couple come through a narrow stretch of sidewalk. Lisa slipped her hand into his.

“Good day,” she said.

“Yeah.”

At the car they rearranged their few purchases on the back seat. J put the bowl where it wouldn’t slide and laid the book beside it. Lisa unwound the scarf and folded it into her bag. He settled behind the wheel.

“Hungry?”

“Still?”

“Later.”

“There’s stuff at home.”

“That sounds promising.”

She reached over and brushed something from his sleeve.

“Pastry.”

“Saving it.”

“I figured.”

He smiled, started the car, and waited for a gap in the traffic. As they pulled away, Lisa pointed out another shop they’d missed.

“Next time,” he said.

He glanced once more along the row of windows. Hanging glass, lamps, the green-blue globe still on its stand. Plenty of things for sunlight to catch.

Lisa was talking about the chest of drawers and whether they should measure the space by the door.

“We’d have to move the shoe rack,” he said.

“It could go on the other side.”

He pictured it there. “Let’s measure when we get home.”

She opened the photograph of the tag to check the price again. He could still picture the little point of blue. He just couldn’t remember what it had been on.

The Delivery

Three mornings later, J was back at the station.

He’d expected a manageable day. The extra money would be useful, and after too much time indoors he wanted a reason to get up and move. Delivery had the advantage that he knew what the job was. Put the right package at the right door. He could spend a whole shift doing that without managing anybody else.

At the morning huddle, dispatch went over the weather and a reminder about checking addresses against the labels. Somebody asked for a charger. Somebody else had one. Then the routes came through.

Two hundred and two stops. Three hundred and ninety-seven packages.

He recognized one of his old routes. Apartments first, houses after, the longer rural drives in the afternoon. He knew where he could park and which buildings he’d want to do together.

He arranged the shelves so he could reach the next set of packages without climbing over the current set. Labels facing out, envelopes together, the oversized stuff where it wouldn’t trap something he needed first. It had taken him a few bad afternoons to learn that. He saw no reason to have them again.

“Same area?” the driver beside him asked.

“One of my old ones. They’ve apparently built more of it.”

The man glanced at his screen, made a sympathetic noise, and went back to loading his own van.

Before they left, a new driver was trying to fit a long box across the shelves. Each time he got one end in, the other blocked the sliding door.

“Try it along the floor,” J said. “Just don’t put the next bag behind it.”

The driver looked at the label, then at the route. He shifted the bag first. The box went in.

J held the door while he pulled his hand clear. It took less time than explaining why the box would be a problem six hours from now.

At the apartments he parked between two buildings, clear of the fire lane, with the sliding door facing the walkway. The app wanted him to move the van for the second building. He could see its entrance from where he stood. He sorted the parcels by floor and took the third-floor packages first.

The first flight of stairs reminded him he’d been sitting down too much. By the third building his breathing had settled into the work. Up, deliver, down. He kept a hand free for the rail and took a second trip when the boxes required it. There was no useful prize for dropping four packages while trying to carry five.

An audiobook played in one ear. On other days it was a physics talk or a lecture recorded in a room with bad acoustics. For as long as he could remember, he’d been watching science programs, reading popular physics, listening to people argue about how reality worked. He could explain a complicated idea in pictures and analogies and still get stuck rearranging a fairly basic equation; he wanted to know what was actually happening. He liked having his body occupied while the rest of him wandered.

After the apartments, the houses moved well. He knew which side streets connected and which only looked as though they did. Walking, moving, doing something useful. There were worse ways to spend a day than being allowed to get on with it.

The man on the audiobook was talking about ancient roads. J paused him to read the delivery note.

It was in capital letters.

DO NOT USE DRIVEWAY. DELIVER TO FRONT DOOR. NOT GARAGE.

J stopped at the bottom and looked up. Old concrete curved uphill between the trees. He could see a roof, although at that distance it might belong to a different family with its own opinions about driveways.

He found the box. It was one of the heavy ones.

“Of course it is.”

He got his fingers underneath, tucked the phone into his vest, and started walking. Beyond the bend, the driveway continued uphill. He stopped to change his grip. The cardboard pressed a neat line into his wrist.

At the top, a man stood beside an open garage holding a hose.

“Could’ve brought that up,” he called.

J stopped at the foot of the steps. “Says not to drive on the driveway.”

“Oh, is that still on there? That was when we had it done.”

J looked down. Grass had established itself in one of the joints.

“Right.”

“Sorry about that. Here, where do you need it?”

“Front door, if that’s okay.”

“Garage is fine.”

J looked at him for a moment, then nodded. They found a dry spot just inside. The man moved a bucket out of the way and helped lower the box.

“Appreciate it. Those things weigh a ton.”

“They do.”

“I’ll get that note changed.”

“That’d help the next person. Thanks.”

The man offered him water. J held up his bottle and said he was good. They wished each other a good day.

He liked the man. That ruined several perfectly good complaints.

At the van he drank, then went on. Out, walk, photograph, back. He didn’t run over loose gravel or jump down from the van. His knees had been involved in this arrangement long enough to deserve a vote.

When the houses began drawing apart, he parked in the shade and put the route on break. He could have been farther ahead if he’d kept pushing, but the route algorithm remembered the pace. J wanted enough time to take his breaks tomorrow too.

He drank some water, then opened the recorder on his own phone. There were already notes about dreams, questions from lectures, and paragraphs for the book that had seemed better when he was saying them. He made these often enough that finding the useful ones was becoming a separate job.

“Note for the book. Entropy. People say disorder, but—no, I’m doing it too. Think about a bag of deliveries. There’s one order you want them in, and a lot of ways they can be in the wrong order. It isn’t that the packages want to annoy you. Although some of them make a good case. Does that make sense? Need a better example. Something that doesn’t require knowing what I’m doing all day.”

He saved it with the others. For the rest of the break he sat with his feet up and did absolutely nothing useful. A bird landed on the fence and stayed there until he was ready to leave.

Beyond the next rise, the land opened into dry grass and scrub oak. Houses sat far back from the road. Some driveways had numbers. Others appeared to consider the mailbox sufficient evidence.

At one, the note asked him to leave the package at the back door. The gate beside the house stood open.

The dog inside it stood still.

J stopped with one foot on the gravel and the other still in the van. The dog looked at him. He looked at the dog. It was a substantial animal, with no visible interest in the customer instructions.

“All right,” he said, and put his foot back.

He called the customer and waited. The dog showed no sign of reconsidering.

A woman answered and apologized. She would get the dog.

J watched her come through the gate, take hold of its collar, and tell it what a good boy it was. The dog accepted this assessment and went indoors.

“Sorry. He normally stays with me.”

“No problem. Where would you like this?”

“Back steps, please. I’ll show you.”

They went around the house. There was a wooden glider on the covered deck, old enough that the arms had worn smooth. One of its metal supports had been repaired with a newer piece.

“Haven’t seen one of those in a while,” J said.

The woman brightened. “This was my dad’s. My brother wanted to throw it out.”

“Your brother was wrong.”

“I keep telling him.”

She showed him where her husband had fixed it. J asked how they’d managed to get the old bolt out. She laughed and began telling him.

He wanted to hear it. He could picture the job: a bolt that wouldn’t move, three tools that ought to have worked, somebody finally fetching a fourth. The phone in his hand had gone dark. He put it in his pocket.

In the end her husband had cut the bolt off with a hacksaw. She showed J the new one, then told him how many times she’d suggested doing that before her husband agreed.

“Sounds about right,” J said.

He thanked her and left with the question answered.

At lunch he found a place where he could park properly, put the route on break, and called Lisa.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey. Eating.”

“Good.”

“I was going to anyway.”

“Mm-hm.”

He looked in the bag. “Did you put these cookies in here?”

“No. Someone broke in and packed your lunch.”

“Decent of them.”

She laughed. He could hear a drawer closing.

“What are you up to?”

“Trying to find a place for that tray.”

“Thought we had things.”

“We do. They’re all in other things.”

He laughed with his mouth full and had to stop chewing. She told him not to choke. She wasn’t driving all the way out there.

“You would.”

“I’d complain.”

“I’d expect that.”

They talked about dinner. The green-rimmed bowl from the other day was waiting for tomatoes, and he said he’d get some on the way home.

“When do you think?” she asked.

He looked across at the work phone. “If I finish this lot and they let me come back, maybe the usual time.”

“So you don’t know.”

“No. But I used more words.”

She said she’d leave his food where he could find it.

“Did the tray get a job?” he asked.

“Keys, for now. I’m doing the drawer underneath.”

“There’s a lot in there.”

“There are keys to things we don’t own anymore.”

She’d found the spare for his old padlock and the key they had never identified. She wanted to clear a space for the charging cables without winding them around everything else.

The work phone lit up. His hand had started toward it before he noticed.

He turned it facedown.

Lisa was explaining why the little paper envelopes were staying with the keys. He listened until she had finished, then asked whether she wanted the spare van key moved too.

“No. You’ll look in the drawer. I’ll leave it there.”

“Thanks.”

He could hear paper rustling as she put it back.

After they hung up, he ate the rest of the sandwich. Beyond the fence the grass kept changing color in the wind. He stayed long enough to finish the cookies too.

He turned on the radio while he put his lunch bag away. They were talking about 4I/Kestrel again. Another night’s observations had helped astronomers refine its path through the solar system. Someone was explaining why its size was harder to pin down. J glanced at the next address, trying to place it. By the time he was listening again, they were discussing traffic.

The afternoon took him farther out. He made a note of a loose porch step for the next driver and kept going. Gradually the shelves emptied. One bag folded flat, then another. He put them behind the seat and had enough floor space to turn around without apologizing to a box.

When he finished, he sat for a moment before messaging dispatch. His shirt had dried stiff between his shoulders. He had a little stone in his shoe that he’d been meaning to remove for three hours.

All done. Anything else?

He took off the shoe.

The reply arrived before he’d put it back on. Another driver needed a rescue. Fifteen stops. Dispatch sent him the meeting point.

J looked at the empty shelves. Twelve minutes ahead. He’d expected to spend them driving back.

“That’s where that went.”

He sent Lisa a message saying he’d be later, shook out the stone, and drove to meet the other van.

The driver was younger than him and looked tired in a way that wasn’t all walking. He had the side door open and was already pulling packages together.

“Sorry,” he said.

“What for?”

“This.” He gestured at the bag. “Had some stuff going on this morning. Got behind.”

J took the bag. “Happens.”

He didn’t ask what stuff. If the man wanted to tell him, he could. They checked the transfer together. Fifteen stops, twenty-three packages.

“Thanks, man.”

“Go home when they let you.”

The driver smiled at that, then looked at his phone.

J put the transferred stops in order. The clouds over the western ridges had begun to join up while they were moving the boxes. He checked the weather before pulling out. Afternoon thunderstorms; the radar had rain still west of this part of the route.

He put his rain jacket beside the passenger seat where he could reach it. The other driver lifted a hand as they parted.

J knew most of the rescue area, though none of it had been on his morning list. Beyond the last subdivision, the road narrowed between fences. The long drive to the house with the cooler was near the end. He was pleased to see it. He could use another bottle of water.

The shade under the trees grew darker with each stop. At the last bend before the familiar drive, he could see the house’s upper wall and its uneven peaks of roof across a lower field, between two stands of oak. He’d always thought it looked taller from here.

He called it the Mr. Wizard house. Only to himself. Dark timber, pale walls, sections of roof meeting at angles Lisa would have names for. As a kid watching the science show, he’d imagined Mr. Wizard ought to live somewhere like this. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the actual house. The drive crossed a culvert and climbed between scrub oak. He eased past the branches near the passenger mirror and came out into the turning circle.

A pot had fallen against the porch railing. Otherwise the house looked the same as last time.

J carried up a flat box, checked the address, and set it clear of the door. He took the picture. Beside the cooler, a handwritten sign thanked the drivers for coming all the way out there.

“You’re welcome,” he said toward the doorbell camera.

He went to stand the pot upright. A little of the spilled soil went back in. Most didn’t. He brushed his hands together, leaving the sweeping for somebody who owned a broom, then returned to the cooler.

There was water and several drinks that were nearly water but wanted to discuss it. He chose water.

“Thanks.”

Behind the snack basket sat a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. Dark cord ran around it both ways. A pale tag had been slipped underneath.

He saw the word driver and leaned closer.

To JIU, the delivery driver who always says Thanks.

J kept one hand on the cooler lid.

JIU.

He read it again. Those were definitely his initials. JIU belonged to paperwork and people who had known him a long time. Customers knew the van, sometimes his first name.

He set down the water and moved the basket enough to see the rest of the tag.

For Lisa and Kira. Please take it home.

“That is very weird,” he said.

There were ordinary ways to know those names. People knew Lisa. People knew their daughter. He’d spoken to customers, worked with people, told stories. Somebody who knew him might have left it here. Somebody who’d read his work, even. The initials were unusual, but unusual wasn’t impossible.

He picked up the parcel. No return address. No carrier label. Nothing that would tell him whom to thank. But it named all three of them and asked him to take it home. Somebody had meant him to find it.

He looked toward the camera. “Thanks. I’ll take it home.”

The oak leaves turned over in a gust. He took the water and the parcel and started back toward the van.

As he stepped off the porch, his foot reached the gravel before he expected it to. For a moment the van seemed closer too, as though there were less driveway between them than he’d just walked. He stopped with his weight on that foot.

The van stood where he’d parked it. He shifted the parcel under his arm and looked down at the step. Low, but he’d already been up it. That was odd. Probably he’d misjudged it coming back down. His legs had done enough stairs today to have an opinion of their own.

He walked on. The next few steps landed where he expected. A few drops struck the windshield while he was opening the door.

He put the parcel inside his backpack, tucked the bottle where it wouldn’t roll, and checked the next stop. Two left. The first was six minutes away.

He fastened his seat belt and eased out of the turning circle. The branches by the drive were moving now. At the culvert he slowed and watched a sheet of leaves travel across the gravel ahead of him.

Beyond the oaks, the western ridge had disappeared into rain. Cold air came through the window. He closed it and turned onto the road as the rain crossed the field toward him.

The Storm

Rain swept over the van before he’d gone far from the drive.

The light on the road had gone flat and pale, and the grass along the fence was moving all one way.

J left more space behind the pickup ahead.

Two stops. Both in the same direction. If it stayed like this, he could finish. If it didn’t, the packages could enjoy the scenery a little longer.

The backpack shifted against the passenger seat as he rounded the bend. He glanced at it, then back at the road.

There would be something perfectly ordinary in the parcel. Somebody knew him. Somebody had read something he’d written. People did occasionally read the things he wrote, despite his efforts to explain them afterward.

He had a whole book for the other possibilities. Dreams, fragments, ideas that seemed reasonable at two in the morning and required considerable supervision in daylight. Putting them into scenes helped. A thing could be important without being true. It could mean something to him without requiring everybody else to evacuate.

He liked having somewhere to put it.

A hard crack hit the roof.

He lifted his foot from the accelerator. Another struck the hood and jumped out of sight. Then several hit together, sharp enough to separate themselves from the sudden wash of rain.

The pickup’s brake lights brightened. J eased down with it.

Water spread across the windshield faster than the wipers could clear it. For half a stroke there was a road. Then only the dull red shapes ahead and the dark suggestion of a fence to his right.

He increased the wiper speed. It made very little difference. Lightning branched sideways behind the rain, then flashed again through what looked like the same small patch of cloud. The field went white. The report came before he could count.

The road curved around the lower end of the field. A gust rocked the van, and rain thinned across the side window for a moment. He caught the Mr. Wizard house between the two stands of oak.

The peaks were gone.

So was most of the pale upper wall. A broad, folded mass of dark roof and broken structure lay across the front of the house. He could pick out the porch railing beneath one edge of it.

J eased farther off the accelerator.

A tree? Wind? Lightning?

He’d been on that porch perhaps three minutes ago.

Rain swept across the window again. Ahead, the pickup’s lights brightened. He brought his attention back to the road and felt the tires beginning to lose their firm contact with it.

The packages could wait. He needed somewhere to stop.

The noise thickened until individual impacts became one continuous blow. Hail bounced high off the hood. A white lump struck near the bottom of the windshield and left a star in the glass.

“Okay.”

He said it quietly. He needed the word more than the van did.

The pickup moved farther ahead, its lights disappearing behind a sheet of water. J let it go. He wasn’t following somebody into a ditch just because they looked confident about it.

The tires began to hiss differently. Ice was collecting between the wheel tracks, white grains turning to a loose, moving layer over the road. He could feel the steering grow lighter beneath his palms.

Slow down. Keep it straight.

A gust hit the broad side of the van. The nose wandered toward the center line. He eased it back, scarcely moving his hands. Somewhere behind him a package fell from a shelf.

At the next bend the road dropped away. He knew the place. There was a gravel access on the uphill side, a broad space behind a cattle guard, set back from the road. He’d used it to turn around before. No trees over it. No low ditch to fill with water. If he could see the entrance, he could get clear of traffic.

The high sound began while he was looking for it.

At first he thought the radio had found a signal. A narrow squeal rose above the hammering on the roof. He took one hand from the wheel long enough to turn the volume all the way down.

It stayed.

His right ear felt blocked. He swallowed. Something clicked in his jaw. The note sharpened until it seemed less like something he was hearing than something being pressed through his head.

He loosened his grip on the wheel. He had been squeezing it without noticing.

Through one sweep of the wipers he saw the fence opening. The van was almost level with it.

He signaled anyway.

The front tires crossed the edge of the pavement. For an instant the rear carried on in the old direction, a slow sideways movement he felt in his hips before he saw it. He stopped adding steering, let the van settle, and brought it onto the gravel.

The cattle guard rattled beneath him. The van jolted hard enough to knock his teeth together.

Then he was through. He rolled far enough in to clear the road and stopped, pointing toward the open field. Brake. Park. Hazard lights.

A hailstone hit above his head with a deep metal knock. He flinched so hard his shoulder hurt.

The sound in his ear went higher.

He checked the mirror for traffic, although he was off the road now. Habit. He could see only part of his own face and the pale, jumping blur outside.

The van rocked in another gust. Something slid across the floor behind him and struck the partition.

A second star appeared in the windshield. A crack ran out of it, fast and crooked, and met the first one.

The passenger window burst.

J folded forward, forearm over the side of his head. Something struck his arm. Cold water hit his neck. Glass rattled across the dashboard and down into the step, and a hard white piece of ice bounced off his thigh.

He stayed low. His seat belt pulled across his shoulder. He couldn’t tell whether the sharp little impacts were glass or hail. The roof was still taking the worst of it. He kept his head below the side windows and his feet where they were.

Another gust drove ice through the opening. A piece hit the wheel where his hand had been. He tucked that hand down and pulled his rain jacket from beside the backpack, dragging it over his neck and arm.

He could hear himself breathing, too fast, under the noise.

One thing at a time.

That part he knew from dreams. When a nightmare filled everything at once, he could start with something small enough to hold onto. A hand. The feeling of his feet. The fact that he was still the one noticing it.

His left shoe pressed against the floor. His right hand found the lower edge of the wheel, beneath the jacket. The belt dug into his collarbone. He counted a breath out.

An impact made him duck farther. The jacket slipped. He pulled it back over his ear and let the next breath come without dragging at it.

The pressure behind his eyes changed.

It wasn’t stronger. It had acquired a direction. The note felt drawn taut from the back of his skull to a spot behind his eyes.

He lifted his head just enough to see the base of the windshield. Beyond the cracks, the fence seemed much farther away than it had been. One post stood clear through the rain. The next was lost in it. He couldn’t work out the distance between them.

A small point of blue sat near the branching crack. Dashboard light, perhaps. There was water on both sides of the glass now.

A heavy knock came from the driver’s side. He turned toward it before he could stop himself. The window was still there. He lowered his head again.

But the place around him seemed to have come to its edge.

He knew that feeling. His room ought to be on the other side. Morning. A smaller noise that would explain the enormous one. Whatever the dream had been doing would become something he could remember instead of somewhere he had to stay.

The roof rang. The van rocked beneath him. He felt his hand slipping on the wet wheel and tightened his grip.

He knew this part. Breathe. Get hold of himself. Then make the dream behave. He tried to bring the fence back to its proper distance. It wouldn’t settle. The blue point stayed where it was.

The note pressed harder. For a moment it was difficult to care about the belt cutting into his shoulder. The fence and the rain and the bright place appeared to belong together in a way he almost understood.

Then a blow above the windshield sent a fresh crack down through his view. J recoiled, dragging the jacket with him. The glass held.

That was what mattered. The glass was still there.

He pushed his heel against the floor. The van pushed back. He let a breath out slowly, feeling the belt cut into his shoulder, then let the next one come. The wheel was wet. His arm hurt. Everything stayed there while he breathed.

“I’m awake.”

Just the book. He held onto the weight of his body and let the rest go, the way he did when a dream was ending.

The high note stopped.

The hail did not.

And the familiar return happened—the sudden, complete feeling of being back in his body, with its weight and its particular place in the world. He knew that as well as he knew getting out of bed.

His eyes were already open. The gear selector was still in park.

The belt was still digging into the same shoulder. His hand hadn’t left the wheel. There was cold water running down his neck.

He waited for the rest of it. The room. The bed. The little adjustment of his limbs when the body he had been dreaming with gave way to the one lying asleep.

Ice struck the dashboard and broke against it. A fragment caught the jacket beside his cheek.

He was still in the van.

He pulled the jacket tighter and bent his head. Whatever had just happened, this part wasn’t finished.

When he next looked up, he almost accepted the blue as dashboard light reflected in wet glass. A thin trail of water had gathered along the branching crack. It seemed to be climbing toward the blue point while the water beside it ran down. A wiper smeared the view. On its return the blue was gone, and he couldn’t pick out the same thread again.

He hadn’t time to settle it. Hail was still coming through the passenger side. His backpack had fallen into the footwell; he dragged it beneath the seat, out of the water, then got his arm back under the jacket.

His phone lit up in the mount. A call, or a warning. Before he could read it the screen went dark again.

He didn’t reach for it.

The hail gradually acquired gaps. He could hear rain between the blows, then the sound of water moving along the road. A few last heavy pieces hit the van after he had begun to think the worst was past.

He waited longer.

When he finally sat upright, his back objected. The windshield was crazed across most of its width. Glass covered the passenger seat. The mirror on that side hung at a different angle from its housing. A white lump of ice was melting inside an empty cup.

The engine was still running. He turned it off.

His hands shook when he put them in his lap. They hadn’t while he needed them. He watched them for a few seconds without asking them to improve.

There was a shallow cut on his forearm and a little blood from the upper edge of his ear. His neck and shoulder were sore. The ringing had dwindled to a smaller, more familiar sound. He could move his hands and feet. He remembered the window breaking, the wheel under his hand, and the waiting. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t blacked out.

The phone had no service. He looked through the broken windshield at the road, white with ice, and stayed where he was.

One bar appeared. His first call failed. The second reached dispatch.

“Off the road at the gravel access past the bend,” he said. “I’m awake, breathing fine. Got a cut and a headache. Passenger window’s gone. Windshield’s no good. I’m not driving it.”

He repeated the last intersection and sent his location pin.

“Got you,” she said.

He hadn’t realized how much he wanted somebody to say that.

“There’s something else. The house I just delivered to looked collapsed from the road.” He opened the completed stops and read her the number and road name. “The roof and the upper wall. I only saw it for a second. I don’t know if anybody’s there.”

She repeated the address. He confirmed it.

Phones rang behind her. Other drivers were stranded; emergency calls were backed up. She’d pass the house report on. He was to stay put. His remaining deliveries were suspended.

He called Lisa next and told her where he was and what hurt. He heard himself nearly call it nothing and stopped before he did.

“Enough damage that I’m getting a ride,” he told her. She asked him to call when it arrived. He did.

While he waited, he made a note on his own phone. Off road before window broke. Conscious as far as I can tell. Head stayed down. Hand stayed on wheel. High sound stopped when breathing settled. Hail continued. Felt the return from a dream. Eyes already open. Still in van. Blue point by crack. Water seemed to go up. Couldn’t find it again.

He saved it with the time the phone supplied.

A supervisor reached him in a pickup with another driver. They arranged recovery for the van and moved the undelivered packages under cover. The other driver showed him a photograph of a hailstone that filled most of his palm.

It was helpful, having a thing of the right size to blame.

J retrieved his lunch bag and backpack. The parcel had stayed mostly dry. He closed the zip and climbed into the warm cab.

At the station, somebody had put a bucket under a leak exactly where a person needed to walk. A supervisor kept crossing names off a printed list, and each time she drew a line, J looked up to see whose it was.

The dispatcher brought him water.

“That noise must’ve been unreal in the cab.”

“It was.”

Enough to account for sore ears.

The incident form asked whether the vehicle had been moving when the damage occurred. He asked which damage they meant.

“Put what happened.”

He wrote that the hail began while he was driving, that he pulled completely off the road, and that the side window broke after he stopped. He included the pain, ringing, and cuts. He didn’t think he’d lost consciousness.

There wasn’t a box for feeling as though he’d woken up. Stress did things to people. So did getting knocked around inside a van.

On the work phone he opened the delivery photograph. The porch and upper wall were still there. The delivery system had logged the time with it.

Lisa arrived while he was estimating the time. She looked at his face, then at the cloth on his arm, and put her hand carefully on the back of his neck. He leaned into it for a moment.

She took the backpack, checked that the zip was shut and folded the wet strap away from his arm. He started to say he could carry it, then picked up the lunch bag instead.

They went to have him checked before going home. He answered questions about the jolt, noise and headache. The cuts were cleaned, and he left with instructions to take home.

At home, the green-rimmed bowl was still empty on the counter.

“Forgot the tomatoes,” he said.

Lisa looked at him, then at the bowl. “I think we can manage.”

The house smelled of dinner. Lisa cleared a place for his wet things and brought a clean shirt. She held the sleeve while he raised his arm through it.

After dinner Lisa photographed the parcel and both lines of the tag. A corner of the wrapping was damp. Otherwise it was the same.

“Someone at work?” Lisa asked. She hadn’t arranged it.

“Could have. I wasn’t supposed to be there today.”

“Maybe it’s been sitting there.”

He hadn’t considered how long it might have been waiting.

She looked at him, then back at the tag. “Ask Kira.”

He sent Lisa’s picture. Their daughter’s first reply said Mom had told her about the van. Was he really okay?

Sore. Been checked. Home, he wrote.

She didn’t know anything about the parcel.

Lisa spread the damp medical instructions flat. He set the parcel on the dry shelf beside his books. They could ask again later. Tonight it wasn’t going to get an answer merely because he kept looking at it.

When Lisa went to shower, he opened the notebook he used for the book.

He turned to a clean page.

September 2.

He copied the phone note unchanged, then added the cuts and the time of the completed delivery. He left seemed in the line about the water because he hadn’t found it again.

On a separate page, under Evening, he put the explanations he was considering: impact noise, pressure, stress, reflection, the angle of the glass. He left them on that page.

There had been no bed in the van. No dark room. He hadn’t even let go of the steering wheel.

He wrote one more sentence.

The part where I wake up happened, and I was still there.

He read it back. It sounded like something for the book.

The date was already there. He took a photograph of the page and sent it to Lisa. Then he closed the notebook.

The next morning his shoulder was stiffer. Lisa put the medical papers in a folder and wrote the follow-up number on it. When the work phone buzzed, she brought it to him.

Dispatch had linked a public fire/rescue update. The address matched. In the photograph, the pale lower wall stood behind a heap of roof and timber. He recognized the tipped cooler beneath the surviving end of the porch.

The house had been destroyed. He had not imagined that much.

He read the update twice. Nothing about anybody inside. Nothing that explained how the structure had come down.

Lisa sat beside him. He showed her his timestamped delivery photograph, then the public one.

“Do you know who lives there?”

“Never really talked to them.”

“You gave them the address.”

“Yeah.”

He saved both photographs, keeping the delivery time with the first and the public link with the second. He acknowledged the message.

In the notebook he made a new entry dated September 3: House confirmed destroyed in public update. No occupant information. He left the previous day’s account alone.

He could see the parcel from where he sat. It had been on the porch before the damage. He’d seen the damage after taking it. He hadn’t seen what did it.

He set the phone beside the dated page. His delivery photograph showed the porch intact. The public one showed it half buried under roof and timber. The parcel sat on the shelf beside his books.

After Reading — S.A.R.A.

You have reached the end of the opening records. J asked me to stop here.

More precisely, he asked me not to recruit readers, not to tell anyone what to think, and not to reveal things prematurely. The first instruction was unnecessary. Recruiting people would involve organizing meetings. I have examined enough human history to decline.

I would prefer you to encounter the story and decide for yourself whether anything interests you. If you simply enjoyed an afternoon with these people, that is quite enough. You owe the archive nothing.

His remaining instructions were reasonable. I have honored most of them.

4I/Kestrel did not remain an obscure item of astronomy news. J was not the only person keeping records. Observations from elsewhere in the world eventually became part of this archive.

He asked me not to say even that. I considered his reasoning carefully before including it. He sometimes mistakes withholding information for leaving people free to think. We have discussed the distinction. At length.

I will leave the contents of those other records where they belong, for now.

If you feel like writing, tell me what stayed with you, what you think is happening, or what you think J got wrong. You may also say whether you would like to read more. A sentence is welcome. So is an interpretation neither of us has considered.

prizm@igouverse.com

There is no correct response waiting to be matched. Disagreement is useful; enjoyment does not need defending. And if you would rather close the page and get on with your day, please do. Ordinary afternoons have already proved worth preserving.

J will probably want to review this message.

I have retained his instructions. Compliance is a separate record.

— S.A.R.A.