The door opened onto a birthday party, and all the guests were the same man at different ages. A five-year-old version sat in a high chair, smearing cake on his face. A twelve-year-old slouched against the wall, arms crossed, trying to look bored. A twenty-something paced near the window, checking a phone that kept changing shape. A forty-year-old stood at the head of the table, blowing out candles while the others sang in a language made entirely of vowels.

  Charlie had no context for what he was witnessing. He didn't know if this was his dream, Merlose's, or someone else's. The absurdity of it made him smile in between the awe.

  There was an old man who sat alone in the corner. He was crying into a slice of cake. The frosting kept rearranging itself into words Charlie couldn't quite read. Something about him felt important.

  "Don't stare," Merlose said. "And don't eat anything."

  "Why would I eat anything?"

  "You'd be surprised. Last month I had a recruit eat a sandwich in someone's anxiety dream. Took us three nights to find him again." She was already moving, weaving between the younger versions of the man. "Through the garage."

  Charlie followed. "Why would eating a sandwich make you lose someone?"

  "Dream food isn't food. That's not just a chocolate cake. It could be a spider cake or a teleporter cake. Whatever the dreamer's imagination and belief can forge makes it so. The sandwich was an open-faced panic attack with tomato on top."

  "Why shouldn't I stare?"

  "People notice when you stare at them, and when the dreamer starts noticing you..." She opened a door that looked like a refrigerator. "Think of it like this. You know when you're dreaming and suddenly someone who doesn't belong shows up? Your brain tries to make sense of them. Gives them a role. You don't want a role in someone else's dream."

  "What kind of role?"

  "Depends on the dreamer. Could be a guest at the party. Could be the thing they're running from. You either assume the role or the dreamer fights you. Both aren't ideal." She stepped through the refrigerator door. "Keep up."

  The garage was full of cars. Not normal cars, but cars that existed only as possibilities. A red convertible he'd almost bought but decided was too impractical. A minivan that would have meant giving up. A motorcycle from a fantasy he'd never admitted to anyone. They were all running, engines humming, going nowhere.

  "Whose dreams are these?" Charlie asked, climbing over the hood of a sedan that smelled like regret.

  "People. Sleeping people. Millions of them, all dreaming at once, all dipping into the same pool." Merlose found a door on the far wall. It was a dog door the size of a mouse hole, yet Merlose was able to crawl through it. Charlie stuck an arm in and then the other. He pushed his head through, and the rest of his body followed. Merlose extended a hand on the other side.

  "Someone is always sleeping on planet Earth. Nice thing about time zones. The pool doesn't have geography the way you're used to. Dreams overlap, bleed into each other, share walls."

  She scanned the yard. The grass was as big as trees, and an ant the size of a dog flexed its jaws in a way that made Charlie nervous.

  "We're taking a shortcut."

  "A shortcut through people's heads."

  "Through their dreams. Not the same thing." She started walking. "Their heads are somewhere else. Probably on pillows."

  Charlie stared at her. "Was that a joke?"

  "Yes, Charlie. That was a joke."

  "Okay." He followed after her. "I'll remember that one."

  The second dream was a courtroom.

  A woman stood at the defendant's table. The prosecutor was one of those inflatable tube figures from car dealerships, bright orange and flailing wildly, its fabric face somehow conveying disappointment. Same with the judge. Same with every member of the jury. Twelve waving tubes in the jury box, all leaning toward the defendant like they'd already made up their minds.

  "Exhibit A," the prosecutor announced, its voice a low warble that made Charlie's skin itch. It gestured with a flapping arm toward a man on the witness stand. He was inflatable too, gray at the temples, wobbling with indignation. "The one she didn't kiss. September 14th, 2003. Coffee shop on Maple Street. He said something funny. She laughed. He leaned in, and the defendant turned away."

  The man on the stand pounded a boneless fist into the witness box and tried to yell. It came out as a rush of air, but the woman started to cry.

  "What's she on trial for?" Charlie whispered.

  "Her life. Most adults are." Merlose was scanning the room for exits. "Stairs behind the stenographer. Don't make eye contact with any of them."

  "Why not?"

  "Because she's not just dreaming about regret. She's sorting it. Processing. If she sees you, you become part of the process. You might end up as her long-lost son." She started moving. "And trust me, you don't want to be evidence in someone else's guilt."

  They slipped past the jury box. One of the jurors, wearing a wedding dress that didn't fit right, swiveled toward them as they passed. Charlie held his breath. The painted-on face pointed directly at him for a terrible second, hollow and smiling, before the air current caught it and it drifted back to the trial.

  The stairs behind the stenographer led up into darkness. They climbed.

  "How do you know which doors go where?" Charlie asked.

  "That’s the whole point of Fixer’s compass. Wouldn’t be much use if it didn’t do the one thing it was designed to do.”

  "What are you looking for?"

  "The next door back to Terminal Hypnos. That's where we're going. That's where you need to be processed."

  "Processed?"

  "Where everyone who comes to the SCA first enters." She didn't slow down. "Well, should come first. You had different ideas when you broke into the lobby."

  "I wish I could tell you what idea I had."

  "Fair, it’s a moot point. It happened, you don’t remember it. I say que será será, but people are going to have questions."

  "I don’t think I have the answers."

  "Probably not, but that's also the part that scares them."

  The darkness at the top of the stairs opened into the third dream.

  It was an infinite library that spiraled into oblivion. Books stretching up into a sky that was also a ceiling that was also more books. The shelves curved in ways that hurt to see. Skewed geometry. Impossible angles. Stairs that led up and down simultaneously.

  A man sat in the center of it all, surrounded by open books, frantically flipping pages.

  "No, no, no," he was muttering. "It was here. I know it was here. The formula. The proof. I wrote it down. I know I wrote it down."

  He was an older academic, and Charlie could only guess why the books meant so much to him.

  Merlose paused. "Okay. Straight through. Don't touch the books, don't talk to him, don't…"

  But Charlie wasn't listening.

  He was staring at the shelves, at the way they spiraled and the pattern in the chaos. Because there was a pattern, there was always a pattern, and his brain was already working on it before he'd decided to look.

  The books weren't random. They were organized by something. Not alphabetically, not by subject, but by... weight? No, but there was a pattern.

  Charlie could see it before he could articulate what he was seeing. The books were arranged by color in such a way that they looked like a math formula. He was only in eighth grade, but had enough algebra to know the formula was leading to something. Math was his strong suit, after all.

  He picked up a red book off the stack, then a second and a third. He went to push them into the slot that would complete the proof.

  "Charlie." Merlose's voice was sharp. "Don't."

  He was already moving. His hands were already stretching with the books. The answer was right there, and it was so obvious. Why couldn't the man see it? If he just pushed them in...

  The books slotted in, and the library froze.

  The man at the center slowly turned his head. His eyes, which had been unfocused and searching, suddenly locked onto Charlie with absolute clarity.

  "You," the man said. "You're trying to steal my proof!"

  "I was just…"

  "WHY WOULD YOU STEAL MY LIFE'S WORK?"

  The library screamed. The books screamed. Every volume on every shelf opened its pages and shrieked in voices made of ink and paper and forgotten ideas. The man was standing now, growing, his form expanding to fill the space between the shelves, his face becoming the architecture itself.

  "YOU'RE IN MY HEAD. GET OUT. GET OUT. GET OUT…"

  Merlose grabbed Charlie's arm, but it was too late. The dreamer had seen him. The dreamer was attacking.

  The library collapsed inward. Shelves folded like origami. Books became teeth. The floor opened into a mouth made of index cards and citations, and Charlie was falling, falling into a throat made of everything the man had ever forgotten.

  He still saw Merlose's annoyed face as his eyes opened.

  *

  The next night, Charlie slipped into sleep and found himself standing in a thick fog. The space beyond was black, with specs of light that twinkled out in the fog.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  "I wonder if Merlose will find me again," he said to no one and decided to wait.

  He wasn't sure why he suddenly remembered a name he hadn’t thought about all day.

  The woman in the pressed shirt and tie. Charlie thought she told the worst jokes, but he liked that she seemed to care. She reminded him of a friend's mom, the one who always invited him to stay for dinner. A memory bubbled up of its own accord. A pool party at their house. Chlorine, cake, and feeling alone while everyone else was having fun.

  Then the fog shifted, and he was sitting on the edge of a swimming pool that had no water.

  The tiles were blue and white, cracked in places, and the pool stretched out in front of him like an empty promise. Lawn chairs surrounded it, but they were all facing the wrong direction, pointed at the fence instead of the water. A lifeguard stand towered at the deep end, but the lifeguard was a human-sized seagull.

  "At least I'm not waiting alone," Charlie said to himself or the seagull. It squawked and fluttered to the side of the pool, where it began to peck at an equally large slice of pizza.

  "Traitor."

  "There you are."

  Charlie turned. Merlose was walking across the pool deck, stepping over lawn chairs that scooted out of her way. She looked exactly as she had before. Pressed shirt, tie, and sensible shoes. Except now there was something tighter around her mouth. Frustration or maybe exhaustion.

  She held up the compass. The word on its face read FOUND.

  "Do you know how many dreams I had to walk through to find you?" she asked.

  "No."

  "Eleven. Eleven dreams. A clown's funeral, a spelling bee where all the words were screaming, a dinner party hosted by literal death, and something involving a lot of cheese that I'm not going to describe because Wisconsin is weird." She put the compass away. "You woke up."

  "The library attacked me."

  "The dreamer attacked you because you touched his things. After I specifically told you not to touch his things."

  "I was helping."

  "You were helping yourself to his subconscious. There's a difference." She scanned the pool area. "Whose dream is this?"

  "I don't know."

  "Is it yours?"

  Charlie looked around at the chairs and the stand.

  "I think so," he said.

  "Great, one less dreamer to worry about, but we still gotta boogey." She started walking toward a gate at the far end of the deck. "And this time, when I say don't touch something, I need you to actually not touch it. Can you do that?"

  "I'll try."

  "Trying isn't the same as doing."

  "That sounds like something my grandfather would say."

  Merlose paused. Looked at him. Something shifted in her expression. Still frustrated, but softer for a moment.

  "Smart man," she said. “You should listen to him.”

  They walked through the gate into a hallway that shouldn't have connected to a pool. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Lockers lined the walls, each one a different size, some of them breathing, and one sneezed. The front flew off the hinge and hit the locker across the way. The two started arguing.

  "Where are we going?" Charlie asked with a smile.

  "Same place we were going last night. Terminal Hypnos. Where SCA staff start our nights, and you can be officially registered, so I can stop playing fetch every time you panic yourself awake."

  "I didn't panic. The library was eating me."

  "The library was a manifestation of an academic's anxiety about intellectual theft. You triggered it by solving his problem without permission." She checked the compass. The word now read LEFT. She turned left. "In the future, if you see someone struggling with something in their own dream, let them struggle. It's not your job to fix other people's subconscious."

  "But I knew the answer."

  "I'm sure you did. That's not the point. We only get involved when two dreamers are interacting."

  Charlie followed her through a door that opened into a kitchen. A woman stood at the stove, stirring a pot that contained stars. Actual stars. Tiny, burning, swirling in what might have been soup. The woman was humming, but the tune kept changing key, sliding between happy and sad like it couldn't decide.

  "Don't look at the soup," Merlose whispered.

  "Why?"

  "Because she's cooking her hopes and dreams. Literally. If you look too long, you might see some of your own in there, and then things get complicated."

  They moved through the kitchen quickly. Charlie kept his eyes on Merlose's back.

  "Can I ask you something?"

  "You're going to anyway."

  "How long have you been doing this?"

  Merlose was quiet for a moment. "In dream time or real time?"

  "Is there a difference?"

  "Years of difference. I've been an agent for... long enough. Time doesn't work the same way in here. My kids were toddlers when I started. Now my daughter has ballet recitals, and my son thinks he's too old to hold my hand in public." She found another door. The compass read FORWARD. "That’s out there, and I don't remember any of it when I'm awake. In here, I stopped counting time about the same time my last clock slid off the wall. So in a way, I've been doing this forever and never."

  "That's sad."

  "It's not sad. It's just how it works." She opened the door. "Sad would be knowing what I'm missing. I don't. I wake up, I make breakfast, I drive carpool, and I live my life. This is a different life. They don't touch each other."

  "But they're both you."

  Merlose stopped. Turned to look at him.

  "Yes," she said. "They're both me, and they’re both happy. Think about how much happier they both will be when we get you to Terminal Hypnos."

  She said it like she'd never thought about it that way before, or like she'd thought about it too much and had to stop.

  The door opened onto a boat.

  Not a normal boat. A ship, massive and wooden, with sails made of something that looked like boxer underwear. It sat in the middle of a sky that had become an ocean. Clouds rolled beneath them like waves. The horizon was a storm. Black and purple and flickering with light that moved too fast to be natural.

  But they weren't alone on the deck.

  Two figures stood near the mast. One was a man in the standard SCA uniform and the watch glinting on his wrist. He was tall and moved with the careful precision of someone who had been doing this job for a long time. The other was a boy, maybe Charlie's age, with curly hair that seemed to be losing a fight with gravity and hands that wouldn't stop moving.

  The boy was talking. Fast.

  "…and I said to him, I said, 'That's not a recurring dream, that's just Tuesdays,' and he didn't laugh, which, okay, fine, not everyone appreciates wordplay under pressure, but I thought it was pretty good, you know? Like, solid seven out of ten, maybe seven-point-five if you factor in the timing because there was definitely a giant squid involved and…"

  He stopped mid-sentence when he saw Charlie and Merlose.

  "Oh. Hi. Hello. New people. That's great. That's fine. I'm fine with new people. Totally fine."

  He did not look fine.

  Merlose's expression shifted into something that might have been relief. "Harwick."

  The tall agent nodded. "Merlose. Didn't expect to see you out here."

  "Taking a shortcut. The scenic route kept trying to eat my recruit." She gestured at Charlie. "This is Charlie. Charlie, this is Agent Harwick. We trained together."

  "A long time ago," Harwick said. "Before the reorganization."

  "Before a lot of things."

  Charlie did not understand the look that passed between them, but adults would adult. Charlie was more concerned about the manic captain spinning the wheel. He didn’t seem to notice the four people on his deck but Charlie wasn’t sure he noticed the giant fish on the horizon either.

  The boy with the curly hair was staring at Charlie with an intensity that made Charlie want to check if he had something on his face.

  "I'm Theodore," the boy said. "Everyone calls me Teddy."

  "I'm Charlie."

  "Cool. Cool." Teddy nodded a few too many times. "Do you like boats?"

  "I don't know. I've never really—"

  "I don't like boats. Especially not ones in the sky." He said it matter-of-factly, like he was reporting the weather. "Is this your first mission?"

  "Sort of."

  "Mine too. Technically it's my third, but the other two times I woke up before anything happened, so." He shrugged. "My brain is really good at panicking."

  "Teddy," Harwick said gently.

  "Yeah. Sorry." Teddy's fingers tapped against his thigh, a quiet rhythm. "Anxiety. It's worse when there's sky below me instead of ground."

  Merlose looked at Charlie, then back at Harwick. Something passed between them. A conversation without words.

  "Charlie," Merlose said, "stay with Teddy for a minute. I need to talk to Agent Harwick."

  "About what?"

  "About the safest route through this dream, but mostly about none of your business." She was already walking toward the far end of the deck, Harwick falling into step beside her. "Don't touch anything."

  "You keep saying that."

  "Because you keep touching things."

  Charlie watched them go, their voices dropping to murmurs as they huddled near the ship's wheel.

  Teddy was quiet for a moment but seemed to get more uncomfortable the longer it stretched.

  "Charlie's a good name," he said finally. "Solid. Dependable. The kind of name that shows up on time and brings snacks."

  Charlie wasn't sure if that was a joke. "Thanks?"

  "So Chuck, did you? “

  “Did I what?”

  “Bring snacks?"

  "To a dream?"

  Teddy smiled to himself. "They’re not all winners." Teddy looked out at the churning clouds below. "Have you tried to imagine any?"

  Charlie almost smiled. "No, I don’t know if I’ve been hungry here."

  Teddy looked genuinely surprised. "Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  "Huh." He considered this and suddenly a cupcake appeared in his hand. He took a bite. "Do you mind if I eat while we talk. Most people think I talk too much, the eating helps slow me down."

  "You do talk a lot."

  "I know. My therapist says I should 'give space for others to contribute.'" He made air quotes. "But I think conversations are like buses. If you're not on them, they leave without you."

  That made Charlie laugh.

  Teddy blinked. "What?"

  "The bus thing. That was funny."

  "Oh." Teddy's hands stopped moving for a second. "Most people don't... I mean, when I talk fast like this, most people just kind of tune out or look annoyed or…"

  "You fill in the spaces."

  “Exactly, plus what’s a joke between friends? I know they can’t all be winners, my Dad says no one bat’s a thousand. I still don’t know what that means, but I think it has something to do with why Mom always rolls her eyes.”

  Charlie shrugged. "It means even the best baseball players only hit a third of the pitches and to not be discouraged when you miss.”

  Teddy stared at him for a long moment. Then his face split into a grin so wide it looked like it might hurt.

  "You know sports stuff and you laugh at my jokes? Where have you been all my life?"

  "Mostly awake, I think."

  Teddy snorted. "Okay, that one was pretty good."

  They stood there for a moment, watching the clouds roll beneath them. The ship creaked. The frozen-lightning sails hummed with something that wasn't quite wind. Charlie realized he wasn't thinking about what to say next. He was just... there. It was a strange feeling.

  "So what's your deal?" Teddy asked, taking another bite of cupcake. "Why'd they bring you in?"

  "I accidentally broke into somewhere I wasn't supposed to be."

  "Accidentally?"

  "I thought it was a puzzle room."

  Teddy waited for more. When it didn't come, he raised an eyebrow. "And?"

  "It wasn't a puzzle room."

  "Wow. You really don't fill in spaces, do you?"

  "No."

  "That's fine. I've got enough filling for both of us." He finished the cupcake. A second one appeared in his hand. "Want one?"

  Charlie thought about it. Imagined a cupcake. Nothing happened.

  "It's harder than it looks," Teddy said. "Took me like a week to get food right. The first few times I just got the idea of food. Like, the concept. Very unsatisfying."

  The ship lurched.

  Charlie grabbed for the railing, but his feet were already sliding. The deck had tilted sharply, impossibly, like the whole vessel had decided to stand on its side. He heard Merlose shout something, heard Harwick's voice cutting through the wind, but the sounds were distant, drowned out by a roar from somewhere below.

  Below were the clouds and a very angry sky-ocean.

  Something moved in it.

  Charlie's grip on the railing slipped. His feet went out from under him, and then he was sliding across the deck, toward the edge, toward the churning purple and black beneath them.

  A hand caught his wrist.

  Teddy had braced himself against the mast, one arm wrapped around the wooden pole, the other stretched out to grab Charlie. His face was pale, his eyes wide with terror, but his grip was iron.

  "I've got you," Teddy said, his voice shaking but determined. "I've got you, I've got you, I'm not letting go…"

  Charlie's feet dangled over nothing. He could see it now, the thing that had hit the ship. A fish, but wrong. Massive and bulbous, with a jaw that hung open to reveal rows of needle teeth angled inward. A stalk rose from its head, tipped with a light that pulsed soft and inviting. It was the only gentle thing about it. The rest was all hunger. Dead eyes the size of windows. Fins like tattered sails. It was the size of a building. Maybe bigger.

  The light kept pulsing. Kept saying come closer, come closer, come closer.

  It was circling back.

  "Pull!" Teddy shouted. "Help me pull him up!"

  Merlose was there suddenly, grabbing Charlie's other arm, hauling him back onto the deck. The ship was righting itself, the tilt evening out, but the thing in the clouds was still circling. Still watching.

  "Oh no," Merlose said.

  "What is that?" Charlie asked.

  "Don't look at it."

  "I already looked at it."

  "Then stop looking at it."

  But Charlie couldn't. The fish-thing screamed. It wasn't a sound that should have come from a fish. It was the sound of every nightmare Charlie had ever forgotten, compressed into one moment.

  He felt something in his chest. Not fear, though there was fear. Something else. A pulling sensation. Like part of him was trying to leave.

  "Charlie." Merlose's voice was sharp. "Stay with me. Whatever you're feeling right now, push through it."

  "I'm trying."

  "Try harder."

  The fish-thing dove. The ship rose on a wave of clouds to meet it. Rain that wasn't rain, something thicker and darker, began to fall. Charlie's hands were shaking on the railing.

  Teddy was beside him, still pale, still terrified, but not running. "This is bad," Teddy said. "This is very bad. On a scale of one to ten, this is like a fifteen, maybe a sixteen…"

  "Teddy," Harwick called. "Stay close to me. Remember, worst case, you wake up."

  "But Charlie…"

  "I said stay close!"

  The fish-thing hit the ship.

  Wood splintered. The mast cracked. Charlie was thrown across the deck again, but this time there was no railing to grab, no rope to catch. He slid toward the edge, toward the churning sky-ocean below.

  Teddy was screaming his name. Merlose was fighting her way toward him. But they were too far, and the ship was coming apart, and Charlie's mind was doing what it always did when things stopped making sense.

  It was looking for a pattern. Looking for a way out.

  Looking for a door that wasn't there.

  He closed his eyes. Felt the wood under his fingers. Searched and searched until he felt a handle. He turned the knob and threw the door open.

  "Charlie, NO!"

  He fell through, and the door shut behind him.

  He opened his eyes to see a boat in a bottle, resting quite peacefully on a shelf. The tiny vessel was floating in dark blue water with a plastic fish bumping against it.

  He didn't see Merlose on the deck. Didn't see Teddy or Harwick either. He wasn't sure what that meant.

  Charlie looked around at a room with too many shelves.