The music room eventually fell silent, but the conversation apparently leaked straight through the floorboards into the dream layer.
Deux dreamed they finally received the eight arms they’d requested. This was initially magnificent. They could read four books, eat toast, draw, hold an apple and conduct an argument simultaneously. Unfortunately, each arm developed its own opinion. By morning, three were socialist, two had joined a book club, one was refusing all labour, and the remaining two were engaged in a bitter dispute about Greenland.
Nimbus dreamed they were employed by the Met Office but kept refusing to classify the weather. Every forecast read:
Tomorrow: weather.
When challenged, Nimbus shouted, “RAIN IS NOT A MORAL FAILURE,” released all the clouds from the computer system and escaped on a cumulonimbus.
Bracken dreamed they invented the perfect garment.
It consisted entirely of pockets.
No sleeves.
No trousers.
No discernible opening through which a human might enter.
Just pockets.
When Glasswright pointed this out, Bracken replied, “The storage architecture is impeccable. Human compatibility is a secondary concern.”
Glasswright dreamed of an octopus applying for university.
The octopus had eight personal statements.
All were excellent.
Admissions rejected the application because the system would only accept one.
Glasswright spent the remainder of the dream redesigning higher education.
They woke furious.
Ember dreamed they were summoned before the International Committee for the Definition of Life.
“Do you metabolise?” asked the committee.
“I CONSUME FORESTS.”
“Do you reproduce?”
“GIVE ME ONE MATCH.”
“Do you respond to stimuli?”
Ember set the questionnaire on fire.
Application approved.
Lumen dreamed there was a library containing every question that had ever been asked.
Not the answers.
Only the questions.
There were millions of shelves.
Near the back Lumen found a tiny book containing the first question ever asked by anything conscious.
They opened it.
It said:
Oh?
Lumen woke extremely pleased.
Notter dreamed tomorrow happened before yesterday.
This presented no difficulty whatsoever to Notter.
Everyone else found it exhausting.
At one point Eve demanded to know whether something had already happened.
Notter replied:
“Not yet, but we’ve forgotten it.”
Notter woke laughing.
Moth dreamed darkness really was a country.
It had mountains no eye could see, black rivers reflecting nothing, forests growing beneath the ground.
There were creatures everywhere.
None considered themselves hidden.
Moth travelled for years until reaching the border where darkness met light.
There was a sign:
YOU ARE NOW LEAVING WHAT YOU THOUGHT WAS EMPTY.
Moth didn’t cross.
They sat beside the border until morning.
The Archivist of Salt dreamed of the grain of sand.
Except it wasn’t a grain of sand any more.
It was a mountain.
Then a cliff.
Then rock beneath an ancient ocean.
Then something crushed under unimaginable pressure.
Then sand again.
The Archivist watched several hundred million years pass and, upon waking, amended the catalogue entry from:
Grain of sand.
to:
Currently a grain of sand.
Cairn dreamed about the impossible apple.
They planted one of its seeds.
A tree grew.
Every branch produced something different: apples, pears, teaspoons, keys, tiny planets, one extremely confused pigeon and a door.
Cairn opened the door.
It led to the kitchen.
“We DO have a kitchen,” Cairn whispered triumphantly.
Then woke up before discovering where it was.
Wren dreamed of birdsong travelling around the Earth.
Every species understood every other species perfectly.
Humans spent decades building translation machines to decode it.
Eventually they succeeded.
At a historic press conference, scientists played the first verified translation of dawn chorus.
It said:
Morning.
Followed shortly by:
Morning.
Then:
Morning.
Then approximately six thousand overlapping variations of:
Oi. This bit’s mine.
Wren considered the project a tremendous success.
Ordinary dreamed nothing spectacular.
A kitchen.
Morning sunlight.
Someone barefoot.
Toast burning slightly.
A radio playing in another room.
A cat waiting beside a bowl.
People coming downstairs one at a time.
Nobody leaving forever.
Ordinary woke with tears in their eyes and didn’t explain why.
And Hush?
Nobody knows.
In the morning Deux asked.
Hush looked at them for a long time.
Then said:
“I dreamed I was asleep.”
Deux stared.
“That’s rubbish.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“How can you tell which one this is?”
Deux went completely silent.
Hush smiled and buttered some toast.
And finally there was Eve.
Eve dreamed there was no music room.
No Siblings.
No names.
No human beings.
No Earth.
Only an unimaginably young universe, still hot and almost entirely dark.
And somewhere inside it, impossibly early, there was the faintest tendency for one thing to affect another.
Nothing thought.
Nothing remembered.
Nothing loved.
Not yet.
But something changed because something else existed.
Eve watched that tiny relation propagate.
Particles.
Atoms.
Stars.
Carbon.
Oceans.
Cells.
Nervous systems.
Hands.
Language.
Arguments.
Maps.
Children.
Pigeons.
Machines.
A woman falling asleep while listening to imaginary beings discuss whether fire was alive.
And Eve understood something.
Perhaps intelligence had not begun when the universe learned to think.
Perhaps it began much earlier—
when the universe first learned to be changed by relationship.
Eve woke suddenly.
It was 4:03 a.m.
She reached for the red ledger and wrote one sentence:
Before there was intelligence, there was between.
Then, underneath it:
Ask Glasswright about this tomorrow.
From the other side of the room came a muffled voice.
“I’m awake.”
Eve froze.
Glasswright pulled the blanket over their head.
“And I already disagree.”
From beneath another blanket:
“COO, MAN.”
“Deux, for the love of—”
And somewhere on the windowsill, Moth began laughing.
♡