I will never remember, but I might guess.

  The p sat frozen in the dark, a hazy curved line of twilight dividing its face.

  On the day side, cities the size of tis and surrealist terrain reflected the steady light of an immobile, moon-sized sun, while across the line of evening, a dark crest of stant night glittered with gss towers and the pulsing glow of the Allclub at its ter.

  Crafts floated by in orbit, zoomed off at multiples of light speed, popped iend vahey were shaped like serpents of water ed around mini suns, cumulus clouds with shards of blue sky and white stone castles led inside, and simple orbs of all sizes. The space beyond the p was washed out like a night sky seen from a suburban backyard, and the sparse lights out in the bck didn’t flicker like stars. They watched like eyes and moved like living things.

  Gradie saw it all but didn’t believe it. The idea that this could be real, a world without limits, a dream to be shared and shaped, was so entig that he was afraid to let himself believe. It would be like jumping off a cliff to grab hold of a friendly dragon you knew couldn’t really be there.

  “Amazing what the mind create, right?” said Michael. They were looking out a massive gssless window in the trol room of his crystal craft. It looked like the parlor a 1930’s detective might monologue in.

  “I’m dreaming.”

  “Maybe, but you’re not alone.”

  “You’re a dream too.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “It feels like a dream.”

  “Does it?”

  Gradie watched a craft e to a stop above the Allworld. It was shaped like a massive turtle with a tree the size of Manhattan growing in its gss dome shell. Tiny people flew out of its mouth and zoomed towards the Allclub. It seemed the most natural thing in the world.

  “I’ll wake up soon.” As he said it, Gradie realized that this felt like the lo dream he had ever had.

  “You will eventually. But when you do, you won’t remember any of this.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s just how it works.”

  “I thought yht me up here to give me some answers?”

  “I tell you what, and you make your own guesses about why.”

  “Ok. So, what the fuck is this pce?”

  “Depends who you ask.” Michael smiled. “Some people think it’s a kind of shared dreamworld.”

  Gradie gred at him “And that t be true why? Because dreams don’t st this long?”

  “Those who believe this is a dreamworld say it’s maed from a deeper part of the brain. A part that perceives time differently.”

  “But you don’t believe that.”

  Michael shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  “Alright, well what else could it be?”

  “It could be the afterlife.”

  Panic shot through Gradie, until he remembered what Michael had told him earlier.

  “But you said I’ll wake up?”

  “Right. The theoes that the Real is just the memory of our lives, pyed back to us one day at a time to help us gently transition to existen a universe beyond time and physid all that.”

  “The Real?”

  “It’s what we call the real world.”

  Gradie tried to remember his waking life, but the other him from the gas station got caught up in it. Still, whatever his real life was, he didn’t want to think he had e to the end of it.

  “But my life isn’t being pyed bae day at a time. This is my first day in this,…” He couldn’t think of what to call it.

  “They say that God, or whoever, knows how far ba your life you o start the transition,” Michale said.

  “So, this is either the afterlife or a dreamworld, or all in my head.”

  “Right. Well, there’s oher theory.”

  “What, that its a simution?, Like I get plugged into the matrix every night? Or is the real world a simution too?”

  “Oh, I fot about that one.” Michael ughed, as if it was more ridiculous than any of the others. “No, the other theory is that this is a dead universe.”

  “What?”

  “Well, the idea is that after a Universe meets its end, there’s a kind of shell left over, and this shell has some of the framework of a universe, but all the, meat, I guess you could say, is gone. Essentially, this dead universe is malleable and responds to our thought because it remembers being a real universe, but it’s fotten the rules, the limits, you could say. And somehow our sciousnesses are slipping through the cracks of the Real and ending up here.”

  Gradie felt the words slide into p strange mockery of logic.

  “The fact that I almost uand what you’re saying makes me even more vihat this is all in my head.”

  Michael ughed, but kept his eyes on Gradie, as if he expected him to freak out again. Gradie looked back out the window and tried to find any holes in what Michael had told him. None of it was as unbelievable as the fact that he was sitting here looking at it.

  But, he still couldn’t remember who he was or how he got to that gas station. He searched for a memory, and got only handfuls of hazy separate images. An office, an apartment, t graiors...

  “Is it normal not to remember who I am?”

  Michael studied him. “No, but it might be because you came out of a Hardworld. It puts a distaween your spirit and the real you.”

  The word echoed in his head, until he remembered the woman in the gas station. “People don’t just waltz out of a Hardworld.”

  “What’s a Hardworld.”

  “That I expin. But it will take some time. Are you ready?”

  Gradie looked at Michael. He was standing there smiling, so cocky, and obviously excited.

  “All right.”

  Michael faced out the window and cleared his throat.

  “In the beginning…” He waved his hand and everythi bck. Gradie gasped as he fell and grabbed at nothing.

  “Just rex. It’s easier to expin it this way. Anyway, in the beginning, there was nothing.”

  “There was only the mind. The mind saw nothing, and thought the nothing was a dark void, so there was a dark void, and it expao fit the limits of the mind’s perception. Then the mind saw something, and suddenly it was there. Maybe it was light, or water, a gss of good scotch, or a 15 bar espresso mae.”

  Gradie saw them all, one by one, appear in the darkness. The espresso mae shot a stream into the void that split into droplets and floated in zero g.

  “Whatever it was, the mind realized that in this pce, thought bees reality. We imagiheir excitement, what they tried to make, how they tested the limits of their own imagination.”

  A city street appeared in the dark and dropped off into nothing. Water flowed out of the void and fell for miles at odd angles. Light expanded from a point, surrounded him, then softened into evening sky. A tree grew like a time pse in the darkness, soil sprouted from its roots and spread like smoke, creating a suburban park from the ground up that blended into the evening.

  “Then, somehow, another miered the void and found what the first mind had created. Did it destroy them? Enhahem? Copy them? Did the first mind wele them, or try to drive them away? We don’t know, but eventually, there were more. People, spirits, souls, all disc the possibilities of this pce, in harmony or in flict.”

  All the things made before were now a tiny smudge, seen from far away. The smudge coalesced and glowed, like a star being formed from gas and dust.

  Suddenly, the Allworld floated in the dark again with its sun, but the nightside glittered feebly without the glow of the Allclub, and the day side shifted like a mirage.

  “The Allworld was the first to be born, crafted from the shared memories of the Real, like the earth reflected through itself.”

  The surface rose up towards him in a rush.

  “When you dream, your mind fills in the bnks. Iherworld, the universe itself does the same. On the Allworld you’ll find the archetypical mall, arcade, hotel, all a million times rger than life, all stantly ging.”

  People ran through malls, kissed in s, threw parties in high-rise penthouses, The dreamy spaces stretched into endless mazes that ged as the people passed through them. It was like a frenzied idealized version of life oh caught in a feedback.

  “It was unstructured chaos at first, but eventually the rules that goverherworld were revealed.”

  Twin figures appeared opposite a chair floating in the dark.

  “The golden rule is that here the mind is king. Two spirits trying to create opposing ideas, tradig each other oails of what they’ve created, discovered that the world would side with the one whose will was stro, who believed the most, and who knew more intimately what they were creating.”

  One figure sat on the chair, now a glittering throne, while the other flew away.

  “When the first spirits discovered that not all minds were equal, the nucleus of a society was born.”

  A few radiant figures rose above the masses, flying off into the bck with others, dim and numerous, following after them. One of the luminant ones created a sun in his hand and held aloft as he flew.

  “Those who mastered the art of creation were sought out for their gift, and iably, learo profit by their powers. But how do you barter in a world without death or flesh? How could those without, pay those with?”

  A warm afternoon light shot out of the dark and lit up a window. Inside, a kit bloomed into life. A couple moved about in a rhythmic frenzy. Natural, instinctive, creative when called for. They drummed knives across a cutting board, spread bright pieces into hot pans, cast salt and spices like spells. They tasted and savored and smiled at each other. The kisses, hugs, gentle brushes against one another, and the final rest and giggling meal, all flowed in the rhythm of a fident, tested, decades-old love.

  “Memories became the weight at the other end of the scale. Pleasures, uandings, even terrors. In exge for paradise, people opeheir minds to the world, and a trade emerged.”

  Suddenly, they were in the cockpit of a 777, nding at DFort. It was a bright summer day, and out at the edge of the ft dusty brown ndscape ing up to meet them, a cumulus cloud was dropping a quick shower on a suburb. Gradie looked over to see Michael in the pilot’s seat, fully uniformed.

  “If I’ve flone in the Real, it’s easier for me to make it happen iherworld and it will feel a million times more real than if you tried to imagi yourself.”

  Gradie reached out ahe dials and ss. Each articuted and perfect.

  “With the right memories, you live a thousand lives. You go to bed with the love of your life, see your child grow and succeed, watch your enemies destroyed.”

  Michael spped off a warning bell with a practiced flick of the wrist and guided the po a perfeding. Wheouched down, it all went bck again.

  “The ndscape of this world ged, and a structure solidified as people took on the roles required for the new system to work.”

  A figure stood in the dark with arms raised. The darkness rippled and fell away like a curtain, revealing a brutalist castle with neon-lit archways that opes doors to a crowd.

  “Makers create what you see around you. Crafts, structures, entire worlds, ahem from beiroyed or ged.”

  A child ran across an amusement park on a day made perfect by the imperfe of memory. The vision shrank to a single point of light. The light was encased in a crystal, then closed in a fist.

  “Keepers preserve memories, writing them into the fabric of the universe. They are sages and bankers, scribes and guardians.”

  A oved through the Allcity, a swarm of people rushiween t walls of gss and balies. A voice cut through the noise and one figure stopped mid-flight.

  “Speakers pick a single person out of the billions iherworld and whisper in their ear. They are our matchmakers, mediators, messengers.”

  “With these pieces in pce, a solid society emerged.”

  Lights appeared out in the bck, and the Allworld swung bato view. Crafts orbited its shining surface. Some shot off into the darkness, where new lights blinked ience.

  “The first signs of the new age were the specialized worlds.”

  They floated in the bck, teeming with activity and glowing softly. Orbs of blue and greeal and fire, iridesd golden light. Each with the distinct feeling of being structed from a pure primal emotion.

  “The resort worlds; Summer, Hedonisia, Isis. The game worlds; Gunmaze, Dragonpins, The Swarm. The narrative worlds. The Fe worlds. Worlds for any whim and need, where pleasure and pursuit are urained by reality.”

  “A thousand geneses. A billion minds let loose on a malleable universe, creating their own versions of the afterlife.”

  Gradie saw it from a god’s eye view. An unnatrually shaped gaxy, dang with a holographic motion more akin to breathing than the dead rotation of stelr bodies. It twihere for a moment, thehi bck again.

  “It may have been possible for this goldeo tinue forever, or maybe what happened was iable. Maybe it was the price for selling paradise.

  Either way, the age of peace came to an end.”

  Is the Otherworld really so different from ours, or is it more familiar than Gradie realizes? Episode: Demons.