Demetrius slept.

As usual, this wasn't very restful. He had several dreams, all deeply unsatisfying. In one, he spent what seemed like a long time attempting, and failing, to find his way through an unfamiliar system of underground trains. He couldn't read the signs, which kept changing. Halfway through the dream, he realised he didn't know where it was he was trying to go. At that point, he gave up and got off at the next station, thinking, 'If you don't know where you're going, one place is as good as another.'

Now he found himself inside a massive building, taller than the failed apartment complex at Babel but with a slightly smaller footprint than the average Roman arena. In spite of what appeared to be solid glass outer walls, the interior of the building was dimly lit. Oddly, there were no shadows. From the interior, the outside world of nature appeared strangely garish.

He understood that some vague task was being carried out here which involved scribal labour of some sort. Instead of ink and papyrus, the scribes wrote on illuminated boxes using a tablet of symbol keys. It looked like fun, and he wanted to try it himself, but every desk he sat down at was quickly reclaimed by a scribe. He was told to 'report to HR' to be assigned a desk. He was still searching for this mysterious person when he woke up thirsty.

Standing by the window with his glass of water, Demetrius enjoyed the feeling of the night breeze on his bare skin and felt his head clear slightly. He contemplated the stars with envy. You twinkle above us. We do not exactly sparkle down here.

Giati? as Cleo says to the kids (and Telly) all day. Why? Why are we here? Why did IT bind us to this linear timeline in this continuum of imperfect temporospatial matrices that offer their players poorer and poorer sets of options with which to continue the game of existence? Why can't we clean up this mess? And why, oh, why, in the name of all that's sane and holy, are human beings allowed to be involved in the generation of spacetime? Excuse me, O Great Celestial Architect, but that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Even if they had a clue what they were doing, they'd still be terrible at it.

He went back to sleep.

This time, he seemed to be inhabiting the body of a woman, somewhere, somewhen a couple of thousand years from where he was sleeping. He could only see the events of the dream from her point of view. He had no access to the woman herself: her thoughts and memories were a closed book to him.

It appeared, too, that he had little or no control over what he/she was doing in this dream. At no time did he make a conscious decision to act. At no time did any of it make sense.

'Oh, this is one of those dreams, ' he muttered to himself. This was one of his least favourite kinds: frankly, he'd rather be using public transportation.

He (=the woman) entered a shabby tavern. The door was old and made of wood, with a diamond-shaped pane of glass at head height. Pushing through the doorway, he (she) came into a dimly-lit, crowded room. The people in the room were hard to see through a dense haze of bluish smoke. Oddly, there was no hearth to be seen anywhere – only tables, chairs and a double-l-shaped bar around which men sat on stools. On the wall were elaborate signs (memorials? Votive offerings?). Some of them glowed strangely in different colours. One, in red and blue, was dedicated to the god Pabst. The effect was attractive and unsettling at the same time.

The tavern patrons clutched glasses of what he assumed was something intoxicating. Either the intoxication process was unpleasant, or the drinks tasted bad, or the mental state they had arrived at offered less than enlightenment, because most of those attending appeared to be in a bad mood. There was grumbling and growling. The occasional half-hearted threat could be heard.

One bald man, sitting in a corner, kept trying to tell jokes to anyone who was listening. No one was. He (definitely he) thought that he didn't blame them. Those jokes were old in Assurbanipal's day. One involved a dog. The bald man continued talking and laughing, telling everyone how clever he was. Finally, someone bought the man a drink.

She (with him inside) sat down on a stool at a long table and regarded a man with cold neutrality. (He could feel the tension from behind her eyes.) The man was full of bluster – but it was uncertain bluster. As he barked at her, demanding to know why she'd come, belittling her purpose, it was obvious that he was worried. He seemed to hope that his friends would back him up.

His 'friends' watched, drunkenly and with apparent indifference. The man continued to bluster, she to stare coldly. From inside her head, the dreamer managed to steal a look at a mirrored surface on the wall: the woman was dark-haired, inconspicuously dressed in grey, and neither pretty nor ugly. Her expression was as blank as the feeling he got from where he was. The man saw this expression and, finally, took it in. The flow of his words dried up. For a minute, there was silence around the couple.

Suddenly, the woman's hand shot out. She grabbed the man by the wrist, holding him in a grip of iron. He looked shocked, but was unable to break away.

And then, incredibly, the woman began to sing. (From inside, he helped with the singing. It was quite melodic.) The words of the song were these:

Du kannst nicht treu sein,

Nein, nein, das kannst du nicht,

Wenn auch dein Mund mir wahre Liebe verspricht. . .

And so on. The whole thing. In German.

Demetrius woke, annoyed and confused. Why can't I ask a reasonable question and get a reasonable answer? Why does everything immediately plunge headlong into the trivial and absurd? What did I ever do to offend the powers of Reason?

That was his last coherent thought for a while, as children and cats descended on him, urging him to, 'Get up, Uncle Demetri, you've got to see what we found in the garden!'

That is, the children were urging this. The cats weren't saying anything other than, 'Meow,' because none of them was Radu. Groaning, Demetrius allowed himself to be cajoled into wakefulness.

After all, it couldn't be worse than where he'd been all night, could it?

DG

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