The Glitch in Sleep (23 page)

The specific places that person visited in the dream varied on a Case by Case basis, but Becker wanted to give Jennifer “the deluxe.” First, he took her to Time Square—the quaint town center in the Department of Time, complete with Second Hand Stores, Daylight Savings (FDIC), and Magic Hour—arguably the best coffee shop in the Seems. Then they stopped at the Sound Studio (where they design everything we hear) and the Olfactory (and all the things we smell) and they even dropped by the Weather Station, where Becker could show off a bit, because he knew the guys up there from a previous Mission.

“Briefer Drane,” exclaimed Weatherman #3, upon seeing Becker with his wide-eyed companion.

“That’s Fixer to you, Freddy!”

“Hey, congrats. How ’bout Yesterday? Was that a perfect day or what?”

“Keep up the good work.”

Jennifer was impressed that Becker knew the people responsible for Weather, and she wasn’t afraid to throw in a request of her own.

“Um, do you think you guys could do me a small favor?”

“For a friend of Fixer Drane . . . anything!”

“Well, I was just wondering if you could, like, bring down another ice age or something on this little town called Caledon.”

“Caledon? Ontario, Canada? Sector 104?” The Weatherman quickly flipped through his log of local forecasts. “No Ice Age scheduled there for another thirty-two thousand years. How ’bout a Cold Spell? I could do that without having to get approval.”

Jennifer laughed. “As long as I get a couple snow days out of it.”

Becker knew where this was coming from. “Don’t let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.”

“Yeah. Sure. Right. I’m sure there’s a lot of cool people I just haven’t met yet.” On the way out the door, though, she looked back and flashed Freddy the signal to hit ’em with everything they got, and the Weatherman gave her a thumbs-up.

But it was at the Big Building itself where Jennifer was really blown away.

Though it’s strictly against the Rules to meet your Case Worker in person (even in a Dream), Becker made arrangements to stop by when the entire staff was out to lunch. While they rode the elevator up to the 423rd floor, Becker filled her in.

“. . . and so each Case Worker has about twenty-five individual Clients that they manage, and their job is basically to help you in any way they can. Like sending you Happy Thoughts or nudging you down the right path, or in your Case, ordering up this Dream.”

“And they let you design it?”

“The Pleasant Dreamers helped me out.”

“That’s a pretty cool job.”

“Totally.”

The elevator dinged and they wandered down the seemingly endless hallway to office #423006. A knock on the door confirmed that no one was there.

“C’mon . . .”

Inside the office was a messy desk with a nameplate: “Clara Manning, Senior Case Worker,” and posted all over the walls were pictures of her Clients. You really have to love your people in this job, and it was clear that even though the two had never met, Clara felt that way about Jennifer.

One section of the wall was entirely devoted to her and there were Moments up there that Jennifer herself had nearly forgotten—like the time she had won a bronze medal at the Pacific Dolphin swim meet, and the time she hiked to the top of Hominy Hill and caught this amazing view of the valley and the church steeple and wished more than anything that someone could be there to share it with her. There was even a yellow Post-it note slapped on the corner of the laptop computer that read:

Note to self: Remember to send J. K .
hint that necklace she lost =
under bed in floorboard crack.

“This is wild . . . ,” said Jennifer, staring at her life up on the wall.

“Yeah, Case Worker is a great job, but they have a lot of restrictions. They can’t mess with your life or invade your privacy, but if you let them they can really help you out.”

“Cool.”

Clara had a cheap clock from Seems Club on her wall, and Becker noticed that another thing he’d preprogrammed into the Dream was about to unfold. He slid the window open and invited Jennifer to come to the edge.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s a Dream—I figured we would fly to the next spot.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Trust me.” He reached out for her hand. “This is gonna be sweet.”

She thought it over for a second, but everything else had gone pretty good so far, and someone told her once that when you fall in a Dream, you wake up before you hit the ground.

“Carpe diem,” she said, and together they climbed out on the sandstone ledge. The wind was whipping back and forth, and far below they could barely make out the monorail, which looked like a toy train.

“What are we waiting for?” asked Jennifer, now fully on board.

“Hold on a sec.” Becker had a giddy smile on his face. “I planned something special for 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .”

Out of nowhere a song kicked in, as if playing on invisible speakers. Becker had debated between “I’m with You” and “Flight of the Bumblebee” when sifting through the music section of the Spice Rack, but had chosen “Sugar Mountain,” because he expected a smooth and mellow flight.

“You like this song?”

“Totally.”

“But isn’t the guy who sings it, like, four hundred years old?”

Becker was bummed, because he’d thought it was a pretty good call.

“I could probably change it if you want?”

“No, I’m just teasing you.” She smiled and punched him on the shoulder. “I love Neil Young.”

They took one last look over the side before Jennifer leaped into the air.

“See you at the bottom!”

When they finally landed, they pretty much spent the rest of the day chilling out on the Field of Play and enjoying a first-class picnic. Twinkies were served with knife and fork, Soft Drinks™ provided as beverage, and outside of an Ultimate Frisbee game between the two sides of the Coin, they pretty much had the run of the place. Jennifer told Becker all about her gram and how cool she was and that even though it sucked that she had died, Jennifer always felt like she carried her around with her wherever she went. The whole time, Becker couldn’t help thinking about how much she reminded him of Amy Lannin, which made him kind of sad but also made him kind of happy too.

Unfortunately, a Dream can only last so long, even though Time doesn’t work the same way there as it does in Reality (you can spend six hours in a Dream and it’s only two minutes of Sleep). And Becker remembered the Pleasant Dreamer’s warning, so he knew it was almost time to wrap things up.

“Wow,” said Jennifer, following the Fixer to the top of a craggy hill. “That’s pretty awesome.”

For his grand finale, Becker had chosen the Point of View, a thin jut of rock that overlooked the Stream of Consciousness. Soon, each would have to go back to their respective worlds, but neither were in any hurry to leave.

“I wish I could just stay here in this Dream forever,” Jennifer mused, hair blowing across her face from the breeze.

“You can.”

“What do you mean?”

Becker couldn’t help noticing how pretty she looked to him—even more so than when he first “met” her on the Window in the Night Watchman’s station—and it almost caused him to forget what he was trying to say.

“That’s the thing about 532. It’s supposed to make you feel better Tomorrow, not just Today.”

“But tomorrow I have to go back to school.” The harsh reality of Reality was creeping back into Jennifer’s state of mind.

“But now it could be different . . . because now you know about The Seems.”

“The Seems is just a Dream, Becker.”

“No, it’s not.”

Jennifer gave him a look, like, “Dude, please give me a break.”

“I swear!”

She could tell he wasn’t kidding, and part of her wanted it to be true. In fact, a lot of her wanted it to be true, but there was still something bothering her about the whole idea.

“You know . . . if The Seems is so great and they have a Plan and everything . . . then . . . then why is this happening?” She was referring to her situation at school, which Becker had witnessed firsthand. “I mean, you don’t know what it’s like to wake up every day and know you’re gonna have to deal with that.”

Becker nodded and gazed down at the rippling water, as a single sculler whisked gently past them on the Stream. Somehow he knew this moment was coming. It came for him when Amy died and again when Thibadeau disappeared and sometimes it still came Today, when he saw all the things that didn’t make sense in The World.

“That’s a good question. And I actually asked my teacher at the IFR the exact same thing once, when I was going through a really tough time.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said that no one, not even a Case Worker, can tell you what lies at the heart of the Plan—and beware of anyone who says that they can.” Those were his Instructor’s words verbatim, on the day when he was called off the Beaten Track to hear the tragic news about Thib. “But Fixer Blaque seemed to think it was something good.”

Now it was Jennifer’s turn to search for answers in the rippling water.

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Well, that’s the thing.” Becker shrugged his shoulders. “Tomorrow, when you wake up, pretend that maybe The World isn’t what you thought it was. That the trees and the leaves and the wind—and even you—are all part of the most magical place ever created, and something, somewhere, is making sure you’ll always be okay.”

But Becker’s new friend just rolled her eyes.

“Honest! I tried it and, yeah, it’s not always easy, but the more you do it, the more you realize it just might be real.” Becker kicked the dirt under the bench, trying to get the words out right. “Because sometimes you have to believe in something before it comes true.”

Jennifer looked over at him with a wry grin, but she could tell he really meant what he was saying.

“Do you really think that’ll work?”

“I know it will.”

“But what if it doesn’t?”

“Then I owe you another Dream.”

There was so much more he wanted to tell her—like about the Plans for the Future and the Most Amazing Thing of All— but he didn’t want to push his luck. He hoped that at least he had given her a little something that would make Tomorrow better than Today.

“Well, I’d better get going,” said Becker.

“Is this the end?”

“Almost. But you’ll remember everything that happened— or at least the important parts.”

The sun had almost set now, cutting the Islands in the Stream across in shadow. They both got up from the bench and for the first time, Becker seemed a little awkward to Jennifer— not this mighty Fixer anymore, but just a boy, about the same age as her.

“Thank you for an amazing Dream.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Will I ever see you again?”

After spending the whole day with Jennifer, he realized how prescient the Dream VP’s words were about the difficulties of adhering to the Golden Rule. But he couldn’t tell her no.

“You can Plan on it.”

She laughed and Becker slid his hands in his pockets, not sure what to do with either of them.

“Get going already!”

With a shy half-wave good-bye, the Fixer turned around and executed a perfect swan dive straight into the Stream of Consciousness. Jennifer cautiously leaned over the edge, hoping to catch a glimpse of Becker one last time . . .

But he never came up for air.

14
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A Good Night’s Sleep

The Stream of Consciousness, The Seems

Becker’s head popped out of the water, gasping for oxygen, and he was still slightly disoriented from his entrance back into The Seems. The only way out of someone else’s Dream is through the Stream of Consciousness, for it’s the one thing that connects all of us to each other.

“Over here!”

By a small red boathouse at the edge of the water, Simly and the Pleasant Dreamer who’d helped Becker reconstruct the 532 were anxiously waiting for him to swim to shore.

“That was cutting it close, sir.”

“You’re telling me.”

Becker stepped out of his wet clothes and they immediately wrapped him in a blanket, just to make sure he didn’t catch a chill.