Decisions and revisions which a minute shall reverse.

  The cracked road ched beh the tires and dry oaks bursting out of the storm drain flew past the windows. Something in the clouds and the sunlight and the motion of it all whispered to him, like he had dreamed this moment and it had ended in an explosion. He was going sixty when it came out from behind the trees.

  The mall. It rotated as the road curved ached it dance. He remembered going to it as a kid, a smear of shopping trips and Christmas décor, scrapped from the years and pressed together behind his eyes. Where the memories ended, something else moved. A memory without definite qualities, a fotteion, ref in his mind. He was sure of the mall in a way that he hadn't been sure of anything since waking up, and it made him feel alive. It kept spinning as he came around it, and he wondered if it was going to drop out of the world and leave a gaping tear iy.

  Without thinking, he turned in at the first entrand it came towards him like a faded beige horizon. He passed over the storm drain creek and turned onto the road that circled the mall. Faded bck lines of the words Jny floated ghostlike over the empty lot and vanished.

  He watched the mall dail it rotated pletely and he found himself back where he started. The memories, if that’s what they were, never came to him. It never gave up its secrets, never fell through the earth or told him why he loved it. It just spun at the ter of a ing pavement sea, hinting at something he couldn’t even approach. He circled it again without revetion and parked under a leaning light post.

  “Fuck.” He leaned bad stretched his legs above the pedals. After staring at the torn sagging fabric over his head for a while, he came to the realization that he was having a mental breakdown.

  “It's gotta be stress. This job is killing me,” he said it to the visor. His voice fttened oeriiving the statement a e to reality that helped him believe it. He sighed and his stomach growled so deep it shook his chest.

  “All right. I’m losing it. I o eat. Then check myself iested, put on medicatio on disability…”

  He went halfway around the mall without looking at it until he got to the strip of retail space with the cafe stu the middle and pulled into a spht up front.

  Inside, he poihe hostess to a table he window and ordered a coffee over densed milk and a breakfast Bánh mì. As he waited in the m silehe mall stared at him across the shimmering lot.

  He tried to ig. Staring at the gss topped faux wood table, his mind ged itself on the passing seds and spat up fears of unemployment aal health evaluations. The st shreds of dreams slipped away, beaten back by the rushing current of waking thoughts. A sharp bite of longing, cold cws in his chest, struck him as the dreams dissolved, and in a reflex learned from a lifetime of grasping at fantasies for fort, he ed his mind around them. For an instant, they darkened as dreams, and lit up as memories.

  The mall caught his eye again. Some cloud shadow fshing over it. A breeze through the oaks. He suddenly felt that he had dropped into the same strange pne of existe occupied and they were vibrating together.

  The waitress set his pte down with all the ies and he nodded without hearing anything she said. When she had gone, he stared out at the clouds and thought of dreamcrafts and impossible towers, of sapphire eyes and whiskey drinking dreamguides, of Hardworlders and a war of light and demons.

  “I don’t give a fuck if it's not real. They lock me up for the rest of my life on a Thorazine drip if I believe in it for just one sed.”

  The food was incredible. He focused on every fvor aion, and iween bites, while drinking deep gulps of the alkali ice water, he searched outside and traced every surfaow lit up with m sun, trying to find the gaps in all of it, looking for pieces of that otherworld peeking through. Instead, he found nothing but unyieldiy.

  “All right then. I'm crazy.”

  The restaurant's ph and Gradie remembered the card from the dream. His phone said eight fifty-seven. He opened up the dial pad and tried to remember the number.

  It came to him instantly. It was so clear he was sure he had seen it somewhere beore and it had slipped into the dream from memory. Weren't numbers impossible to read in a dream? He thought about the card, held in the gentle light of a thoughtcrafted hotel room, and remembered the numbers shifting.

  Despite this, the number was nht in front of him, typed onto the s, and he was sure, somehow, that it was right.

  It was eight fifty-nine.

  He put his thumb over the dial button, and stopped.

  “If I call this, a some random business, I’ll lose it. If I don’t call, I still believe, just for a while.”

  He looked back at the phone. Nine o clobsp;He hit dial.

  The line rang like funeral bells and the sileween was the stillness of death. A few more seds, and his life would be over. He felt the dreams fall away into dull dead memory as the ringing in his ear blended with the realness of everything else.

  The line clicked and he gagged on his breath.

  “Hello?”

  It was Michael. But maybe it wasn’t. It sounded like the man in his dream, but it robably just—

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Gradie.” He choked on the word.

  “Why are you calling this number, Gradie?”

  He almost threw the phone across the restaurant, but tightened his grip and took a breath.

  “Because you told me to.”

  “Oh yeah? What else did I tell you?” The voice was mog, but familiar. The dead dreams fred up like coals in wind.

  Do something drastic…

  “You told me to do something drastic.”

  “Oh, wow. Sounds serious. And have you done something drastic?”

  “I called in.”

  There ause oher end, and Gradie felt the breath fall out of his chest.

  “Oh, ok. Well, enjoy your day off. Careful with those strong coffees.”

  The line clicked off.

  Hardworlders don't call in, and we don't call the cops. ime, something drastiext Episode: Funeral