It was quiet on the Adriatic. The moon, in its last quarter, rose over a calm sea. In the small merchant ship, nothing could be heard but snoring, an occasional creak of wood, and the scurrying of busy rodents. Demetrius was oblivious to this, because his subconscious was busy elsewhere.

Where he was, the sun beat down remorselessly from a blue sky. The occasional cloud made surreal images against the azure backdrop, as if Rene Magritte had just passed by. Not that the clouds were needed: the scene was weird enough.

Here we go again, thought Demetrius.

As far as the dreaming eye could see, sand stretched to every horizon, mostly level. The relentless and steady wind had blown the sand into ridged lines like waves, or a ploughed field. The mental eye was drawn ineluctably to a sandy rise, upon which stood a statue.

The statue depicted an Asian ruler of some magnificence. It was odd, that statue: at first the dreamer thought if might be some Frank Baum-influenced reflection on bimetallism and national currencies. Too many metals, though: while the head was gold, the rest of the body presented a strange progression of metals. The chest and arms were silver, the belly and thighs of bronze, the legs of iron, and the feet. . . ah, well, the feet and toes were made partly of iron and partly of baked clay. Demetrius swore he could see cuneiform on those toes.

What fresh madness is this?

Still, the statue looked out majestically, if somewhat comically, across the desert landscape. Monarch of all he surveys, thought Demetrius, though before his sleeping brain could come up with any Shelley lines, the sun was partially obscured when a large rock (meteor?) came hurtling down.

The rock hit the feet of the statue, its most vulnerable part. The statue fell prone upon the sands. Demetrius had a moment, during which he thought of a few more Shelley lines. But the rock wasn't finished.

It did a little jig, did that rock. A dance of triumph, if you will. And then it twirled, and sank into the earth, rather smugly, in Demetrius's opinion. The scene in front of him blinked, the way an FM television transmission might when the signal was briefly interrupted.

The scene changed.

The same plain, now without the statue. In its stead, a tower arose, seeming to be building itself. Floor by floor, layer by layer, a giant ziggurat of a building, full of extravagant figures, splendid in profile. When the tower was complete, the figures began to move.

That's some CGI, thought Demetrius, possibly frivolously. One of the figures turned and stuck out its tongue at him.

The Tower spun faster and faster. It reached critical mass – and collapsed into itself. What emerged was a hypercube. It hurt to look at it, this spinning cube against the blue sky. It turned and turned, unnatural, and yet the most natural thing in the universe: a new thing, yet rejoicing in its own inevitability.

From somewhere, Demetrius heard music. Not the music of the spheres. Not the Song of Seikilos. Something new, something that said: this shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Demetrius sighed in his sleep, and awoke.

From somewhere – he knew he was awake, though – he heard words in the part of his mind that heard words when no one was speaking.

'The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.'

Demetrius looked out on the wine-dark sea, and smiled.

A dolphin came swimming alongside the ship.

'Come on in!' it chirped. 'The water's fine!' He jumped in.

DG

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