"What's that supposed to mean?"

She crossed her own arms. "I dream every night," she said. "Know what I dream about?"

"Look," he said, "this is going in kind of an uncomfortable direction. I'm not sure it's appropri-"

"Monsters."

He shut his mouth and stared at her.

Something sparked in her eyes. Her shoulders lifted. "And you do, too, don't you?"

He didn't say anything. He looked at the young woman and tried not to think of the image he'd seen out of the corner of his eye. The corpse in the wheelchair.

"There's thousands of them, right? Dead people walking around. They're kind of slow and clumsy, but there's just so many of them."

He set his hands on the table, then crossed them again. He studied her face. "How are you doing this? Is this some kind of magic trick?"

She shook her head. "What else do you remember?"

George thought about his dreams. "There's a wall," he said. "A big wall keeping them out. And a gate."

Madelyn nodded.

"And a robot," he said. "A battlesuit. But that's just dream stuff."

"No it isn't."

"It is. I saw it on a commercial for the Army this morning. It's some military project. The future of combat or something."

She smirked. "So you're telling me the battlesuit has to be part of your dream because it's real?"

"I'm saying I probably just saw pictures of it online. Maybe it was on the news while I was doing something else and it didn't register. And then, you know, the subconscious grabs it and puts it in a dream."

Madelyn reached down and tore a piece off the burger patty with her fingers. She popped it in her mouth. Her teeth were perfect. She swallowed. "The dream about monsters," she said.

"Yeah."

"That you have every night."

"I don't have it every night."

"Okay," she said. "When was the last time you didn't have it?"

George tried to remember his last good night of sleep. "I'm not sure," he admitted, "but I know I haven't always had it."

She tore another piece off the burger. "You haven't."

He drummed his fingers on the table. "So what makes you so sure your dreams are going to come true?"

"Already came true," she corrected him. "It's all real."

"But what makes you say that?"

"Because it is," said Madelyn.

"That's not really an answer."

She sighed and scrunched up her mouth. "Okay," she said, "do you have a television?"

He nodded. He figured he could humor her for a few more minutes.

"Prove it."

"What?"

"Prove you have a television. Right now."

He smiled. "I don't carry around photos of my TV."

"But you're sure you have one?"

"Yeah."

"You know it's in your apartment right now?"

"Unless someone broke in and stole it, yeah."

She smiled. "That's how I know your dreams are real."

George chuckled. "Okay, then," he said, "if this was true-"

"It is true."

"If this was true, why doesn't anyone else know about it?"

She poked at her tray. She'd eaten both burger patties and nothing else. All the meat was gone. "I used to have memory problems," she said.

The warning flares went off in George's brain again, but were swamped by a wave of pity. "Mental problems?"

"Memory problems," she repeated. "I had trouble forming long-term memories. Whenever I fell asleep I'd forget most of the previous day."

"And that doesn't happen anymore?"

She shook her head. "Not since I started having the dreams. I think ..." She paused for a moment. "I think I forgot that I was supposed to forget everything. Whatever happened, I fell asleep and forgot that it happened, so it didn't affect me as much as all of you. So I'm here but I still remember there. Something like that."

He drummed his fingers on the table.

"Come on," she said, "this has to make sense on some level."

He glanced at the clock. He had just over two minutes before he'd have to call in to Jarvis. "Look," he said, "I don't mean to sound rude, but ... well, what are you getting at?"

Her face dropped a little. "You still don't get it?"

He shook his head. "It's a fun story. A neat coincidence, I guess, that we're having similar dreams, but it's just a story. This is the real world, like it or not."

"George," she said, "this isn't the real world. That's my point."

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then he chuckled. "Okay," he said, "I was wrong. You came up with something less believable than the whole dating-a-supermodel thing."

Madelyn shook her head. "Something happened. I'm not sure what. And everything changed. We all changed. You. Me. Barry." She tapped the magazine. "Her. All of us."

"Who's Barry?"

"Barry Burke. He's your best friend. He's ..." She closed her eyes and wrinkled her brow, the look of every student trying to remember something. "He's in a wheelchair, too, and he's ... he's bright."

"Smart?"

"I think so. He told me he used to work out at a lab in New Mexico." She snapped her fingers. "Sandia Labs. The people with the Z Machine."

"The what?"

"It's a big machine in New Mexico. It has something to do with physics. They make particles there."

"That's not really helpful."

She waved her arm around her. "Give me a break. I'm just a soph.o.m.ore."

"I thought you knew all this," he said. He tried to give her a good-natured smile. "You said you remembered everything."

"I remember most of it," she said. "I remember enough to know we're not supposed to be here."

One minute left on the clock. Somewhere in the dining hall a knife was tapping on a gla.s.s. He wasn't sure if it was to get attention or be annoying. Or both.

George thought for a minute about how to word what was in his head. "Okay, let's say you're right," he said. Her smile lifted and he held up his hand. "Just hypothetically. Let's say there was some kind of epidemic and half the world died and turned into monsters. And you and I know each other there and we're leaders or heroes or something."

She nodded.

"So why would we want to go back to that? Why would anyone want to 'fix' things so billions of people are dead? What would it accomplish?"

"Because the people there are depending on us," she said. "They're depending on you."

George leaned back in his chair and tried to ignore the shadows her words had cast. He tried to think of something gentler to follow up with when his Nextel chirped. "George," called Jarvis's voice, "you there?"

Habit made him unholster the phone. "Yeah, I'm here."

"You done with lunch?"

He looked at Madelyn and mouthed a quick apology. "Yeah, I think I'm all done here."

Her face fell.

"Can you head over to Ackerman? Bathroom's flooding on the second floor."

He looked out the window toward the student union building. "Seriously? Don't you have plumbers over there right now? Real ones?"

"Sorry, buddy. I'd give it to Mark, but ... well, trust me. You got the better job."

"Great. I'll be there in ten."

"You the man, George."

He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. Madelyn said nothing. "Sorry," he said. "I've got to go." He piled his napkins and gla.s.ses on the tray.

She slid the magazine across the table to him. "Keep it," she said. "Maybe she'll help you remember."

He shook his head but she pushed it at him. He sighed, folded the magazine, and shoved it in his back pocket. He could toss it once he was outside. "It was ... fun," he said. "You should write all this stuff down. I'm sure someone in Hollywood would buy it."

She sighed. "One last question."

"If you're quick."

"Are you strong in your dreams? Really, really strong?"

He thought of the impossible physics when he fought the monsters. How their bones crumbled beneath his fists. How he'd yanked the demon into the air. "Yeah," he said. "How'd you know?"

"Because that's who you are."

EIGHT.

THE TRASH BARREL had two plastic wheels on the bottom. Over the years one of the wheels had been worn away by too many trips down the stairwell and over curbs. It was closer to an oval now. Almost a rectangle.

George dragged the trash barrel across the parking lot and some more of the oval wheel crumbled away. The plumbers had dumped all the old tiles and soggy plaster in the trash room rather than carrying the material down to the dumpster like they were supposed to. If he had to guess, the barrel weighed over three hundred pounds. Maybe over four.

He paused to let a group of students go past. They were chattering away and barely acknowledged him as they rushed between cla.s.ses. He started to pull again and one last kid walked by, cracking his gum.

George heaved. The trash barrel sc.r.a.ped across the pavement. By the time he got it to the dumpster he was pretty sure he'd worn the other wheel flat, too. He tossed both lids open and stopped for a breather while he figured out what to do next.

He knew he should just call Jarvis and tell him to send Mark over for an a.s.sist. He should've called ten minutes ago, but the thought of listening to Mark ramble on about the life he was supposed to have seemed especially grating at the moment.

If he could get the barrel off the ground, even just a little, George was pretty sure he could work the top of it up onto the edge of the dumpster. Then he could just push it forward and tilt it until the whole thing tipped. It was the same move he'd used with the couch last week.