All Good Things...

Dan's eyes flickered open. He was covered in a cold sweat.
It was dark out and he glanced over at the alarm clock. 3:33am. His throat was dry and parched; he got up out of his bed and into the small bedroom/sitting room. The tent was hot like a furnace; his body produced a huge amount of heat and the closed flaps made it unbearable. Dan slept in a tent in the bachelor apartment, since a man shouldn't eat, sit, and sleep in the same room. And walls or barriers were needed for defining and keeping the mind focused and sharp, due to the changing environments.

Damn. It was a dream.

In the kitchen he poured water from a pitcher in the fridge. He stopped and took a couple of deep breaths to calm his nerves down a little. He was still going over the things in his minds. His skin had the feeling of a billion pins stabbing into them, like the dead weight of sleep... or were they pencils reanimating him back to this version?

No. No it wasn't - I transcended.

Was it a dream? He wasn't quite sure what the hell had happened, but it was an experience. He scrambled over to where he kept his journal and with pencil in hand began to furiously scribble down notes. He didn't bother on sharpening the pencil when it got dull, he reached over and grabbed a pen and continued to write down every little thing that his dream world had unveiled to him. It was a visionary quest, similar in nature to what the natives of North America have experienced in their sweat lodges. Whatever had happened he wanted to make a record of it before the tendrils of sleep reached out and comforted him again.

He put the pen down at 6:06am and looked over his transcript. 44 pages all jotted down like a madman's scribble. Satisfied, he decided to crawl back into bed and get at least another hour of sleep before heading over to the restaurant for coffee. Just before his head hit the pillow a cellphone rang. And Dan's eyes widened upon the realization that he hadn't bought one.

The Homecoming

Memories and realities seemed to merge for Dan. He sat down on a bench, he could hear, feel the sudden rush of wind as a subway was approaching.

"Dan," Suki said. "You might want to brace yourself."

Dan looked up as the subway pulled in. He could see Max in one car and Simon in another car. A cluster of other figures. They were all caught in some frozen 2-dimensional fight.