I look at Arthur sleeping. His fingers move slightly. He touches someone in his dream, perhaps. I am reminded of Eddie the yellow cat. When he sleeps, his paws sometimes move, faintly, as if he is running. His toes flare and his claws come out. He dreams. He chases other subspecies creatures in his dreams to grab them and kill them and eat them. Perhaps the place where dreams come from is impervious to my power to bring forgetfulness. Perhaps they have all dreamed of me, all these visitors from Earth. Who is to say? Perhaps they chase me and grab me and kill me in their dreams.
I am growing quite hysterical, am I not? But, of course, I am very tired. Very tired. And this planet spins on, pulling the end of its millennium toward it. Only a few hours away, and I have no plan for what I must do. I think to wake Arthur now and return him to his sleeping place. I see myself doing this very thing, though I am aware that I have not moved at all from my chair. This is merely my intention for the next few minutes playing itself out in my mind. But no. I am actually doing this thing. Surely I am. I rise and touch Arthur on the arm and he snaps awake and looks up at me.
“It is time,” I say.
“Have you come to take me home?” Arthur asks.
“Only to the place on my ship where you sleep,” I say.
He reaches up and grasps my arm. “Am I in heaven?”
“You are not dead.”
“Aren’t you the Lord?”
“Am I?”
“Yes. You’ve come to take me.”
“How do you know?” I say.
“We have been waiting for you. Forever.”
“Please,” I say. “Come now. Sleep.”
And Arthur falls from the chair to his knees and bends low before me. “Lord,” he says. “I will rest in you.”
“Only your voice will. I am sorry. I wish it were more.”
And now the door to the interview room opens with a great whoosh of air and with a flood of light from the corridor and I turn and there are silhouettes there, one and then another and they are sliding into the room, another silhouette enters and another, and they are simply dark, sharply outlined shapes, and there are more coming in and they gather around me now and the lights catch them, there are so many of these creatures that all the lights of the room flare up at once and it is very bright, and they are the rest of my twelve, my Viola and my Lucky and my Mary and my Hank and my Trey and my Hudson and my Claudia and my Digger and my Misty and my Jared and now my Citrus, who breaks through all of them and she has wiped the blackness from her mouth and her lips are pale, the color of my wife Edna Bradshaw’s thighs, and the black spikes of Citrus’s hair have dissolved into long silken curls of russet which fall about her shoulders and the metal piercings are gone from her face and all of these voices cry out, “Lord, Lord what will you have us do?”
And I cry, “I am.”
And I wait. And I look at these twelve faces hovering before me and I feel these twelve minds waiting for more. And I think, Surely that is what this world needs to understand. It is the fundamental truth I have to speak. From that truth all things will follow for each of them. But they wait, they do not respond, the faces hover blankly.
Then Hudson says, “You am what?”
And they all say, “You am what?”
And I say, “I am that I am.”
And Hudson says, “What the fuck does that mean?”
And they all say, “What the fuck does that mean?”
And I try to shape some further revelation. I am thinking to say, I am a spaceman. I am a sharer of your voices. I am one who yearns and grieves with you.
But before I can speak, Citrus says, “He am God!”
“God!” they all cry and their faces fall, clustering together now low to the floor at the edge of the light, and from them, Citrus’s voice rises.
She says, “He has spoken the words of God to Moses at Horeb. He is God!”
“I am not!” I say, though my voice sounds faint to me.
“Do not forsake us!” Citrus cries.
And they all cry, “Do not forsake us!”
And I say, “Go to sleep.”
And Claudia says, “Sleep! He wants us to die!”
Claudia’s voice is full of fear and I am afraid she will draw her pistol again. I cry out loud and sharp, “Sleep! Merely sleep!”
And Arthur’s voice rises now, “He says there’s nothing after death!”
And Hudson cries. “Merely sleep! We’re in deep!”
A great wave of moans sweeps across all of them.
Citrus’s face rises from the gathering near the floor. Her eyes are full of tears. “Are those the words you haven’t been saying to me?”
“No.” I cannot make my voice rise above a whisper.
The tears are rushing down Citrus’s face now and down the faces of the others, too, for they are all weeping copiously, and Citrus says, “Why are you forsaking us?”
“I do not wish to forsake you,” I say, and I lift my hands, I will try to touch them, I will place the beating of my heart inside each of them. But as soon as my hands appear, they all recoil.
Hank the bus driver’s voice lifts sharply, “That’s how he makes us sleep!”
And others cry, “The hands!”
And Citrus emerges into the light, her whole body, clothed in the whiteness of a nuclear fireball, and she lifts her hands even as mine still rise from the momentum of my impulse to help these yearning souls and in each of her hands is a glint of light in each of her hands is a long tapering shape in each of her hands is a metal spike and I wish to cry out but there is nothing to say and Citrus’s hands rear back and her face is twisted in pain and I see the flash of spikes as they rush at my hands, spikes Sharp Enough to Cut Tin Cans Sharp Enough for All Your Kitchen Needs, and I cannot hide my hands, I cannot move my hands at all, and my palms suddenly burn as if the very atoms that make them up are flying apart and I am about to flare into nothingness.
And I leap up. I am aflame and I am stiff but I am standing alone in my interview room. I spin to face the door and it is in darkness, closed tight. I am alone.
No. Not alone. I sense another, and I turn, slowly, and look.
It is Arthur. He sleeps, still, in his chair.
I look again toward the door and then into the places where the others had been. There is no one. They have vanished.
Or they were never there.
And suddenly I realize that I have dreamed.
My species does not dream. I have only music inside me when I sleep. It is mere sleep. But now I have dreamed. I have died my daily death and instead of darkness and an ineffable movement of tone, I have voices and faces and the anguish of others, and my own anguish as well, a terrible burning. I look at my hands. They are unharmed. But that merely preserves them for further harm when next I fall asleep. I have died my daily death and descended into the hell of dreams.