It started sometime after college. The lake is never there when the dream begins. I’ll be sitting in a classroom in my old high school, or at the mall, or walking down the street in the middle of town. The dream will start up and it might be a bunch of random nonsense or there might be something like a plot… or maybe it’s always random nonsense but sometimes I’m able to see a plot.

Whatever.

The point is that when my dreams start off they’re like anybody else’s, like mine used to be. But sooner or later the water starts to rise. It comes up through the ground or floor or whatever I’m standing on. The other surroundings are submerged, or carried away, or just seem to recede on their own. Ceilings disappear. Buildings open up. Eventually everything goes away and it’s just me and the lake, clear and calm as can be.

The lake is the same every time. It’s round, but not perfectly round. It’s maybe a few hundred yards across and maybe eight feet deep in the middle. The shores are dirt, not sand. Sometimes the ground is dry and cracked just a few feet away from the water. Sometimes it’s muddy and wet. Sometimes it’s powder. If I walk away from the lake in any direction I’ve picked, I can walk across unchanging ground until I wake up.

I’m never surprised by the arrival of the water, but I don’t expect it. If I’m dreaming that I’m in an auditorium and there are zombies trying to break in, I never think, “Gosh, I have to get out of here before it floods.” or “Maybe the water will take care of the zombies.” I accept the zombie scenario as real and deal with it like it’s the only reality that matters, until the water comes and carries it all away.

There’s nothing disturbing about the lake. The whole thing bothers me only in that I can’t explain it. I don’t know why it happens. I don’t know what it means. I’ve asked psychiatrists and psychologists about it. I’ve seen sleep experts. The first thing anyone wants to know is if I wet the bed. There’s always an“aha!” moment, a triumphant look on their face when they ask me that and a bit of disappointment or confusion when I tell them no. The worst of them tell me that they can’t help me as long as I insist on lying to them.

It doesn’t matter. None of them can help me anyway. The best I’ve ever gotten is advice: if it doesn’t cause you problems, don’t worry about it.

Good advice, but I never did worry, precisely. I just wanted to know if it meant something.

I don’t have any childhood traumas relating to water. We never lived by a lake. My parents took me swimming sometimes when I was a kid. Sometimes I liked it and sometimes I didn’t. Lakes never meant much to me before. They still don’t, really. I have no strong association for water in general or even my lake in particular.

It’s just, “Oh, here it is again.”

My girlfriend says I should try to find the lake in real life, but I don’t think it exists. It’s too perfect. Too regular. And there’s something unfinished about it that’s hard to put my finger on. She won’t let go of the idea that it existed somewhere and that there is some meaning, something I’m meant to go and see. She thinks there’s something important about the dream, something supernatural.

I don’t blame her. The first time it happened, I thought it was weird. The second time it was like, heh, that’s kind of funny. I thought that thinking about it had given me the same dream two nights in a row. The third time it was weird again. Then when it didn’t stop, I thought what she thinks: this is important. This means something.

After more than ten years of the same lake taking over my dreams every night, I’m not ruling out anything as far as a cause goes. It could be supernatural. It could mean something. But after ten years of the same dream and no sense of urgency and no change, I don’t think that supernatural necessarily means important.

Every night, I dream of the lake.

That’s all.

There was only such a little space between the time the sleepers fell asleep and the time they began to dream in earnest, and it was only that space that belonged to the lovers. Once the dream began, the time for their pleasure was over. It was time to go to work.

This is obvious as metaphors go, but like the best metaphors it’s true. We pretend that “metaphor” is implicitly synonymous with “imaginary” and “unreal” in the same way and for the same reasons that we pretend this is true of the words “myth” and “legend”… or for that matter, the word “imaginary”. It’s reassuring. It simplifies the world to do so.

A city is a living, breathing thing. It is contained within a skin of boundaries, and comprised of not just edifices and machines but institutions and people. It breathes in. It breathes out. If it never sleeps, it at least rests for periods and then awakens to bursts of furious activity.

Cities think. They can plot and plan, they can hatch new ideas and embrace new philosophies. They can become political. They can go religious.

Cities feel. They rage… oh, yes, cities can rage. They can also celebrate and fall in love.

Cities eat. They take in meat, grain, vegetables that are broken down by the tiny individual cells that serve many purposes, from carrying out nerve impulses to aiding circulation to acting as an immune system against intrusive elements. They take in chemicals, minerals, and metals, which are used to carry out even more arcane processes.

Such things are the necessary foodstuffs of cities, but like any intelligent creature, cities that can afford them enjoy an occasional indulgence, a special treat… not something that it needs but something it deeply enjoys all the same.

A moderately shiny silver bus rumbles to a stop at the depot. A young woman… blonde-ish, tall-ish, and good-looking-ish… steps off. Her name is Darla. She wants to be a model, or an actress, or maybe a singer. Everyone back home says she has the looks for it. Everyone says she has the talent. She can do anything she wants.

The city licks its lips.

Strong hands grab at her. She’s pulled out of bed, yanked kicking and fighting towards the kitchen. The massive pot is already on the stove, already hot… so hot, boiling hot. Looking away from it, she sees the face of her tormenter, so angry and wild and yet distant. This is somehow impersonal… whatever this person wants, it isn’t about her.

She screams in fear turning to agony as she’s dropped into the water, and then the lid slams down leaving her in darkness, darkness she awakes to, her powerful hind legs kicking the wall of the den, showering her mate with dirt when her nails don’t catch him instead.

“Ugh, the dream again?” he says, shaking a clump of earth off his fur. She nods, still mute with panic. “Honestly, I don’t know where you get those ideas from… we’re rabbits, not lobsters.”

After a night of fitful sleep, he set out, mounting his charger at dawn and riding down out of the hills at a good, solid clip. He reached the castle before noon. As he approached, he spotted a figure gowned in green, walking along the outer wall. Any last vestiges of a doubt he might have harbored in his heart fled when he heard the song, the beautiful clear voice wafting down from the ramparts.

He drew his horse to a halt a short distance from the base of the high wall. The singing, too, stopped.

“My lady!” he called. “Please, my lady… I beg a moment of your time!”

“Yes?” the same beautiful voice replied, a little uncertainly.

“My lady, my name is Sir Roderick of Dunhall,” the knight said. “For thrice three years, I have been haunted by a dream, a most singular dream about a most singular lady. For all that time, her face, her voice… her beauty… has danced in my sleep and afflicted my waking hours with what was at first a most pleasant distraction. As the years went on, though, I found myself increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of my dream-damsel. I sought out a soothsayer who told me that I would find her, living in a castle of white stone on the shore of a great sea. I set off at once, sharing my tale to any who would listen. I described the castle and the face of my inamorata to any who traveled far and wide, hoping that someone would know them… and at long last, after many wrong turns and false trails, I believe I have found her. If you will only show yourself to me, so that I can confirm that you are the lady of my dreams, then we can be wed this very day and I shall be the happiest man upon this earth.”

There was no reply at first. Sir Roderick held his breath. Then, he saw movement…a glimpse of golden curls as the lady peeked down at him from the high parapet. It was just a glimpse, but it left him dizzy. Her hair was the exact shade of his dream lady’s.

“My lady?” he said.

“I think you have the wrong castle,” she said.

“I am certain that I do not!” he said. “Please, lady, allow me to look on you, so that I may know that you are the one I am destined to wed.”

“I’d rather not,” she said.

“But… if you are the one who has come to me in my dreams…”

“I do not control my own dreams, Sir Roderick,” she said, “and I am certainly not responsible for any of yours.”

“My lady, I have come so far.”

“I didn’t make you do that,” the lady said.

“But I have ridden for…”

“Is your steed magic?” she asked. “Does the mere act of riding him often change people’s minds? Or shall I marry you as an act of sympathy for his saddle sores?”

“Please, if you’ll only just show me your face…”

“What will that accomplish?” she asked.

“It will prove that what I am saying is true,” he said.

“That you’ve been dreaming of me? I believe you,” she said.

“Then… will you accept my love?”

“Don’t be ridiculous… I do not know you, nor do I long to.”

“But I have dreamed of you… this is my destiny.”

“But what?” she asked. “Am I not allowed any say in this? Do your dreams and your destiny mean that I am not allowed to have my own dreams, my own destiny? If I did appear to you in your dreams, did you ever ask me what I felt? Or why I was there? Did you ask the soothsayer if I had my own beloved, or how I would feel about being asked to marry a man I’ve never met?”

“Do you have a beloved?” Sir Roderick asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I am not interested in you.”

“My lady, if you mean to test my devotion, know that I am prepared… though I have been sorely tested already.”

“Silly knight, your devotion doesn’t interest me,” she said. “How can I make that any plainer?”

“I’m ready to fight for your honor. I will duel any man, slay any dragon, bring you any tribute… only tell me what you wish for, and I shall make it so.”

“I wish to be left alone,” the lady said. “I wish to be free of men who regard me as a trophy to be won, who think that I should be overjoyed to be a mere figurant in their dreams. I wish to have my own wishes respected, when I make them clear and particularly when they touch most strongly on myself and my own disposition.”

“I see,” Sir Roderick said. “And, so… if I were respect your wishes for now, do you think that in time you may grow to return my love?”

“In what respect will you respect me, if you only do so in exchange for what you want?”

“My lady, I do not like to mention this because I do not like to brag, but I am the heir to the throne of High Dunhall,” Sir Roderick said. “I will one day be its king, and if you marry me, you will be my queen. Does that not make a difference to you?”

“Does anything I say make a difference to you?”

“My lady, I think that perhaps you are not thinking things through.”

“I am going to count to five and then I am going to call for archers,” the lady said. “One…”

“Indeed, my lady, that’s quite enough!” Sir Roderick said, wheeling his horse around. “You’ve made yourself clear! I shall away with me, and bother you no more. There is no need to lower yourself to such base threats.”

“Apparently there was,” she called. “You would not shift yourself for any words I could conjure alone.”

“Have you nothing else to say, knowing that I have dreamt of you every night for nigh unto a decade, knowing how far I have come and knowing that I am heir to a great kingdom?”

“Yes,” she said. “Two…”

“I’m going, I’m going!”

“Well… I’ve got this new thing,” the pusher said. “Don’t know if it would be in your line, though. It’s a little different.”

“What, is that supposed to make me want it more?”

“No,” the pusher said. “It’s honestly just not to everyone’s taste. If I recommended it to everybody, I’d have a lot of unhappy customers.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called ’sleep’,” the pusher said. “Synthetic neurochemicals that activate some kind of vestigial brain function that no one’s used in a couple hundred years.”

“‘Sleep’? Like a computer?”

“Yeah, basically,” the pusher said. “It puts you into power saving mode and runs a screen saver inside your brain… sort of like hallucinations, sort of like memories. It’s hard to describe. But not everybody has them all of the time.”

“What happens if you don’t?” the kid asked. “You just… sort of stand there until you come down?”

“No, you wanna make sure you’re sitting down or preferably reclining somewhere before you take it,” the pusher said. “Because your whole body goes kind of limp, you see. You’ll end up on the floor if you try to take it standing up.”

“So this stuff makes you lie down on the floor, unable to do anything? And sometimes gives you some kind of visions? Doesn’t it get really boring if you don’t have them?”

“Not really,” the pusher said. “Your consciousness is sort of… shut off. You’re not aware of anything that happens outside your head or the passage of time, at all, when you ’sleep’.”

“That’s some lame trip,” the kid said. “Why would anybody want that?”

“To get out of their lives for a while maybe? I don’t know,” the pusher said. “Some people who take it regularly say they feel more relaxed, sharper during the rest of the day, but I don’t know that you’d that notice that after one trip.”

“How long does it last?”

“About eight hours, give or take,” the pusher said.

“Shit, I can’t do that,” the kid said. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

“Like I said, it’s not for everyone.”

We know He rested.

But did He sleep?

The original sleep of the righteous, we might say… and if He slept, did He, perchance, dream? With the act of creation still fresh in His mind, of what might He have dreamt, we wonder? Perhaps the same things that any of us, created in His image, might have dreamt: His work, naturally, and His children… His hopes and dreams for them.

He would have hoped for them to be fruitful. He might have hoped for them to be civilized. Perhaps he hoped that they would take the materials He had surrounded them with and create marvels of their own.

Maybe in His dream, he brought forth a new land from the ocean. An island, perhaps, teeming with people who exemplified the best of His hopes. We might imagine that they built graceful cities of impressive spires, that they studied the natural world and learned of its mechanics, that they constructed great ships and traveled across the face of the globe.

And perhaps His dream would be more substantial than yours or mine. Perhaps it would be more real.

Such an island, if it existed, would have been the envy and inspiration of ancient civilizations the world over… but being a dream, it would of have no hope of lasting. God might have slumbered, but He did not sleep forever. What was created on the seventh day could have been snuffed out just as quickly, the great island sinking beneath the waves in a single day and night of misfortune… if it had ever been there to begin with, of course.

Being a dream… even a dream of the divine… one suspects the record would be hazy.

“You mean the one about how he invented peanut butter?” she replied.

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” she asked.

“I asked if you know the story of Zhuangzi and the butterfly,” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “And I asked if you mean the one about how he invented peanut butter. It’s a simple enough question.”

“I’m talking about the story where the man has a dream where he’s a butterfly, and then when he wakes up he doesn’t know if he’s a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that he’s a man,” I said.

“That’s stupid,” she said.

“Okay, maybe it seems a little simplistic, but it’s got a sound point at its core,” I said. “If you can’t always tell that you’re dreaming when you are… and conversely, if it’s possible to mistakenly think you might be dreaming when you’re awake… then how can we ever know for certain that we’ve awakened to true reality? Is there any level of being ’sure’ at which our confidence is justified? Really, at its core, it’s just taking the Socratic maxim that the only true knowledge is knowing one knows nothing to its logical endpoint, that we cannot be sure of any reality that depends on our flawed senses and fallible reasoning to detect.”

“Well, sure,” she said. “But it’s still stupid.”

“How?” I asked.

“The story acts like those are the only two possibilities,” she said. “For instance, he could be a gorilla who dreamed he was a butterfly who dreamed he was a man. Or he could have been a man who misremembers a dream about being a fish.”

“You’re kind of just proving the point of the story,” I said.

“The point that I’m awesome and Zhuangzi can suck it?” she asked.

“Just for the sake of my own personal reference… did you think peanut butter was invented by an ancient Taoist thinker, or by a butterfly?” I asked her.

“If he can’t tell the difference, neither can I.”

As he sleeps, the true king dreams of a world where the information that was once bound in books may be copied instantly and infinitely, where learning belongs to the many instead of the few. He dreams of a world where a great leader can address crowds of nations as easily as he once spoke before crowds of people, where conquering empires are inexorably giving way to partnerships and fellowships. He dreams of a world where man’s intellect and scientific advances has begun to beat back the dire arithmetic under which the multitudes must starve to provide for the elect.

He dreams the world the way it should be, not the way that it is… but the gap between the two has never been narrower, and when the day comes that our world is enough like the king’s dream that the spell that keeps him slumbering cannot tell the two apart, he will awaken and lead us all to Camelot.

He has been asleep for a long time and may go on sleeping longer still. There has been much progress in the world, yes, but many in the world still hunger. Many lack access to the troves of accumulated knowledge. Many lack opportunities.

And even if all of those problems are rectified, there still remains one obstacle further. The path of progress is not straight, but branching, and we have not always chosen to wander down the right path.

“Fuck Segways,” he murmurs in his sleep before rolling over.

In the king’s dream, his knights have jetpacks.