Charlie was taking a math test, which was strange for two reasons. First, because it was summer, and second, because he hadn’t studied.

  The classroom had no walls, just endless rows of desks stretching toward a horizon that kept moving. His pencil was a banana, and every time he tried to write an answer, it just smeared purple across the page.

  The questions didn't make sense either. Question one: If a train leaves Boston traveling west at 60 miles per hour, how long until it reaches the moon? Question two: Calculate the area of a circle with no radius. Show your work. Question three: If you have no parents, but one grandparent, how lonely are you?

  Charlie stared at the test. The banana had grown arms and was trying to pry itself loose from his grip.

  "This isn't going well," he said to no one as he pushed his free hand into his brown hair.

  "What did you get for number two?" someone whispered.

  Charlie looked to his left. A girl sat at the desk next to him. She was about his age, maybe a little older, wearing a school uniform that didn't match the school. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was leaning toward him conspicuously, eyes on his paper.

  "I don't know," Charlie whispered back. "I don't think it has an answer."

  "Everything has an answer. You just have to show your work." She leaned closer. "Come on. Just let me see."

  "I haven't written anything."

  "Then write something. I need to copy it."

  Charlie looked at his paper. Purple smears and nothing else. "I don't think that's going to help you."

  "Mr. Brunswick." The teacher's voice cut through the room like a knife. Charlie looked up. A bright yellow octopus stood at the front of the classroom. Her arms shifted uncontrollably, and in each one she held either a ruler or an eraser. Charlie was afraid of all eight.

  "Is there a problem?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Then why is Miss..." The teacher squinted at the girl next to Charlie. Her expression flickered. Confusion, then suspicion. "I don't have you on my roster."

  The girl sighed, and suddenly she wasn't a girl anymore. She was a woman in a pressed shirt and sensible shoes, looking profoundly tired.

  A whisper brushed the side of Charlie's head. Not a voice exactly. More like a thought that wasn't his.

  I need to get eggs in the morning. Lacy has that bake-off for ballet.

  Charlie flinched. "What was that?"

  "Fine. I was over this anyway."

  She had inched so close trying to cheat that Charlie couldn’t even react when she grabbed his wrist and slapped something onto it. Cold metal, a clasp clicking shut.

  "Hey…" Charlie started and turned his wrist over. It didn’t hurt, but it was a surprise. The device resembled a watch that ticked against his pulse. Silver band, simple face, no numbers. There were no hands Charlie could see, but he could feel the gears moving inside.

  The woman stood up from the too-small desk. The classroom was already changing around them. Desks folding in on themselves. The horizon creeping closer. The octopus was clapping the erasers and rulers on every surface she could in anger.

  "What did you do?" Charlie asked.

  "I gave you a watch."

  "Why can't I take it off?" He was pulling at the clasp. It wouldn't budge.

  "Because you'd just lose it, and I'm not chasing you for another week." She looked around at the collapsing classroom with the expression of someone assessing a leaky faucet. Annoyed but not surprised. "We have maybe three minutes before this whole thing falls apart. Questions can wait until we're somewhere more stable."

  "I have questions now. Starting with who are you?"

  "Agent Merlose. SCA. And you're Charlie Brunswick, the kid who's been making me the laughing stock of Terminal Hypnos for the past week." She grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the desk. "Walk and talk. Emphasis on the walk."

  The floor was thinning beneath them. Charlie could see something underneath. Not ground. An inky darkness that seemed to move.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Away from here. Toward there." She pointed at a door that had appeared in the distance, standing alone with no walls around it. "That's our exit."

  "Exit to where?"

  "Somewhere your subconscious isn't actively trying to digest us." She was walking fast, pulling him along. "Your dreams are unstable. Happens when someone more real shows up and the subconscious doesn't know what to do with it."

  "Someone more real?"

  "Me, the watch, this conversation. Keep up." A desk collapsed to their left, folding into nothing. "You're used to being alone in here. Your brain doesn't like visitors."

  Charlie's head was spinning. Not from the walking. From something else. A feeling like pressure building behind his eyes.

  "Five nights," Merlose muttered, more to herself than to him. "Five nights of chasing you through oceans and trees and trains and mushroom villages. I made you dinner two nights ago. Did you know that? Set a whole table. You ran anyway."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Of course you don't. That's the whole problem." But there was something in her voice now. Not quite a smile, but close. "You're fast, I'll give you that. Slippery and fast."

  "Why were you chasing me?"

  "Because you broke into my office, and my boss wants to know how."

  "I didn't break into anything."

  "You did. You just don't remember." She stopped and pulled soemthing off her belt. She aimed it at the wall, and a door appeared. It was twenty feet away now, but the floor between them and it was mostly gone. Just a few islands of linoleum floating over darkness. "I'm going to need you to jump."

  "Jump?"

  "It's not far. Three feet, maybe four." She was already moving, leaping from one island to the next with the ease of someone who had done this before. "Don't think about the void. It gets hungry when you think about it."

  Charlie looked down. The void looked back.

  He jumped.

  His foot caught the edge of the next island, and for a terrible second he thought he was going to fall. Then Merlose's hand closed around his wrist and pulled him forward.

  "Don't think about it," she said again.

  "You keep saying that, but it’s not working like you think it is."

  "Because you keep thinking about it." She pulled him toward the next island. "Two more. Focus on the door."

  They jumped again, and again. The door was close now, close enough that Charlie could see it was just a plain wooden door with a brass handle, standing in the middle of nothing.

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  "Please tell me that goes somewhere," Charlie said.

  "It goes to the next dream over." Merlose reached the last island and turned to help him across. "That's what the compass is for."

  "What compass?"

  She held up her other hand. In it was a small device that looked almost like a compass, except the face didn't have directions. Just a single word that kept changing. Right now it said READY.

  "The Fixer made it," Merlose said. "She makes all our equipment. Very talented, very dramatic. Everything has an inscription." She turned the watch on Charlie's wrist over. On the back, tiny letters were engraved: FOR THOSE THAT WANDER, MAY THEY NEVER BE LOST.

  "That's…"

  "Tolkien. Bastardized Tolkien, technically. 'Not all who wander are lost.' The Fixer's a literary nut. Puts high fantasy nonsense into everything she makes." Merlose shrugged. "We let her have her hobbies."

  “Why’s that?”

  “Coma.”

  Charlie stared at her. "She's in a coma?"

  "Long story. Door first." Merlose turned the handle. Light spilled through, warm and golden. "This is going to feel strange. Don't fight it."

  "Don't fight what?"

  She pushed him through.

  Charlie stumbled into a field of wheat that stretched to the horizon in every direction.

  The sky was the soft purple of early evening, and the wheat swayed in a breeze he couldn't feel. Somewhere far away, a farmhouse sat with its windows glowing yellow. A woman was hanging laundry on a line, her movements slow and peaceful.

  Merlose stepped through behind him. The door vanished.

  "Good," she said, checking the compass. "Quiet one. We can rest here for a minute."

  "Rest?"

  "The compass needs to recalibrate after moving into a new dream. Your collapsing classroom made our retreat a little forced." She sat down in the wheat, cross-legged, like this was the most normal thing in the world. "Five minutes. Maybe ten."

  Charlie stood there, unsure what to do.

  "Sit," Merlose said. "You look like you're about to fall over."

  He sat. The wheat was soft beneath him, and the air smelled like summer and something baking. The woman at the farmhouse was listening to a song that sounded French. It was playing through a comedically oversized gramophone.

  "Whose dream is this?" Charlie asked.

  "Hers, probably." Merlose nodded toward the farmhouse. "Somewhere in the world, a woman is sleeping and dreaming about a quiet evening at home. We're just passing through."

  "Does she know we're here?"

  "Not unless we do something stupid." Merlose gave him a pointed look. "Which, based on recent experience, is not outside the realm of possibility."

  "I don't even know what I did."

  "I know. That's why we're going to talk." She set the compass down in front of her. The word on its face said WAIT. "Ask your questions. I'll answer what I can."

  Charlie had so many questions they were tripping over each other trying to get out first. He picked one at random.

  "What's the SCA?"

  "Subconscious Control Agency. We police the dreamscape." Merlose pulled a piece of wheat from the ground and twirled it between her fingers. "When people sleep, their minds dip into the same pool. Billions of dreamers, all sharing the same water. Without us, some boundaries dissolve. People would bleed into each other until nobody remembered who they were."

  "What’s bleed?"

  "It's what happens when minds get too close without protection." She looked at him. "You felt it in the classroom. That thought about Lacy's bake-off. That was mine. It leaked into you because we were close and you didn't have the watch on yet."

  Charlie remembered. The whisper that wasn't his. I need to get eggs in the morning. Lacy has that bake-off for ballet.

  "Lacy," Charlie said. "She's your daughter?"

  "My dancer. My son plays soccer. Neither is going pro, but everyone needs a hobby. Mine is saving the dream scape while I sleep.”

  "Was that a joke?”

  “Yes, Charlie.”

  “Uh-huh… So bleed, does that happen all the time?"

  "To unprotected dreamers? Yes. Most people don't notice because it's small. You wake up with a song stuck in your head that you've never heard. You remember a face you've never seen. You feel sad for no reason. Mandela effect shenanigans." Merlose shrugged. "Minor bleed. Harmless, mostly."

  "What about major bleed?"

  "You lose pieces of yourself. Things like memories and personality. The things that make you you." Her voice was flat. "It’s hard to keep track of the outside world in here, but we’re told that people with severe bleed wake up out there with cognitive issues. Forgetting simple things, unattributed anger, and even things like chemical dependency, where there was none before. Some people just... stop. Like someone turned off a light inside them."

  The wheat swayed. The music from the farmhouse continued to play on, oblivious.

  "That's what almost happened to me," Charlie said. "In the lobby."

  "Yes." Merlose met his eyes. "You broke into Terminal Hypnos completely unprotected. Hundreds of agents, all with decades of memories, all bleeding into a fourteen-year-old kid who had no idea what was happening. The watch protects the wearer, not the other way around." She paused. "I threw you out a window because the fall wakes you up. It was the fastest way to get you out before you drowned."

  "You keep saying I broke in. How? I don't even know what Terminal Hypnos is."

  "Neither do most people. That's the point." Merlose set down the piece of wheat. "Terminal Hypnos is protected by encryption. The most sophisticated lock in the dreamscape. It's designed to be unsolvable. When someone tries to crack it, they experience their worst nightmare. Most people encounter it by accident, but they still wake up screaming and never try again."

  "What does it look like?"

  "Different for everyone. The encryption reads your subconscious and shows you something you can't handle. For most people, it's a monster. A void. Something primal that breaks them before they get close."

  "What did it look like for me?"

  Merlose was quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure, that’s between you and whatever deity you’re currently worshiping.”

  "But whatever it was, I was able to figure it out," he said.

  "Seems that way, kiddo." Merlose's expression was unreadable. "You solved our most secure encryption wearing rocket pajamas, and then crashed into a lobby full of Sleeper Agents. Impossible doesn’t even begin to describe it?"

  "That sounds kind of cool."

  Merlose laughed. "It does, doesn’t it? In a punk rock way. Anyway, that's why you're my assignment."

  Charlie looked at the watch. He could feel it tick on his wrist, but the hands weren’t there.

  "What good is a watch that doesn’t tell time?"

  "What good is a watch that does? Just reminds you when you’re late for things.”

  She threw the wheat into the field.

  “Was that a joke?”

  She chuckled to herself. “It does things. First, it protects you from bleed. Filters out the noise so you don't pick up every stray thought from every dreamer you pass." Merlose held up her own wrist. Her watch was older, more worn, but the same basic design. "Second, it gives you continuity. Without a watch, you forget everything when you wake up. With one, you remember. Night after night, building a life in here."

  "So you remember everything? Every night since you started wearing one?"

  "In here, yes. An inconsequential amount of glorious years. When I'm dreaming, I remember all of it." Something flickered across her face. "When I wake up, it's gone. I'm just a mom who's tired all the time, but that’s from my kids, not this job. Sleep here is still sleep. We just dream with purpose."

  "That's..." Charlie searched for the word.

  "It's the job." Merlose checked the compass. Still WAIT.

  "Do your kids know?"

  "I don’t even know." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Waking me has no idea what I do in here.” She shrugged. "But I remember my waking time perfectly. It’s nice, gives you perspective.”

  The wheat swayed. The woman at the farmhouse had finished hanging laundry and gone inside. The windows glowed warmer now, like something good was happening in there.

  "Why do you do it?" Charlie asked. "If the real you doesn't even remember?"

  Merlose was quiet for a long moment.

  "Who’s to say she’s the real me?" she asked finally.

  Charlie didn’t know what to say.

  "Don’t discount dreams. They might be free, but they’re powerful. And to answer your question directly, I do this because the bleed is real, and the damage is real. Most people will never know how close they came to losing themselves in their sleep. I do this because my kids are out there, dreaming, and I want someone watching the walls." She picked up the compass. The word was changing. WAIT became ALMOST. "This matters, even if I don't remember that it matters in the morning."

  Charlie thought about that. A job you couldn't take credit for. A life you couldn't keep.

  "That's kind of heroic," he said.

  "It's kind of stupid, is what it is." Merlose was smiling with tired eyes. "Don't tell anyone I said that. I have a reputation."

  “Why don’t you remember in the morning?”

  “Do you remember your dreams in the morning?”

  “Yeah, when I first wake up, then they fade.”

  “Exactly, what we do in here fades over the day.”

  “But I remember when I first wake up. Why can’t you just keep a journal?”

  She laughed, and Charlie winced. He hated it when people laughed at things he said that weren’t jokes.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. I tried that once. You should see the entries. Purple rhinosaurus. Giant scissors made of gravy. I had one entry that was just HANDS in all caps. Your brain tries to make sense of the dreams in the waking world, but you get just the fuzzy details with no context. I gave up after a week.”

  The compass flickered. ALMOST became READY.

  "Finally." Merlose stood, brushing wheat from her pants. "Time to go."

  Charlie stood too. His legs were steadier now. He felt the weight and the slow mechanical tick of the watch.

  "What happens when we get there?" he asked.

  "You meet some people. Answer some questions. They try to figure out how you did what you did." She held out her hand. "And then you decide if you want to learn how to do it on purpose."

  "And if I don't?"

  "Then you wake up.”

  “That’s it? I just wake up like this never happened?”

  “Hey, they just wanted me to bring you in. Your fate is up to the Director. They won’t kill you or mind wipe you or anything if that’s what you're afraid of. Well, the mind wipe thing is as easy as removing the watch, but you get my point.”

  That didn’t feel very reassuring. His face must have said as much.

  “C’mon, Charlie, I promise on my children’s heads you’ll be alright. I’m going to get you to Terminal Hypnos, and the Director will be lovely. I promise.” She shook her hand at him.

  Charlie looked at it, and thought about his waking life. He thought about school. The tests that didn't make sense. The questions he couldn't answer. The feeling of always being one step behind.

  He thought about the watch on his wrist. The world it had opened up. The promise of remembering.

  He thought of his grandfather. He would trust her.

  Charlie took her hand.

  Merlose pointed the compass at empty air, and a door appeared. Plain wood, brass handle, nothing special.

  "Last chance to back out," she said.

  "Really?"

  “Not really, I’m trying to make you feel better. I thought you’d say ‘I’m not backing out’ or something like that.”

  “Another joke.”

  “Always.”

  “Ok, then, something like that.”

  "Nice to know you’re in." She turned the handle. Light spilled through, brighter than the wheat field, more solid somehow. "We have a few dreams to cross, but we’ll be there in no time."

  Charlie stepped through the door a step behind her.