Fin takes four or five rapid breaths to prepare himself, then he commits his IFC to enter the Ragtime Dreamstate. He is hesitant because he knows this will give him a headache for days, maybe weeks afterwards, but there’s nothing to be gained by waiting. Only death awaits outside, and most likely the answers he needs are in here, in the datasets of Yan Maxwell and thirty-odd others who are dead, their IFC contents passing to the investigative realm by virtue of their murder.

The Ragtime’s communal dream, called Dreamstate or Longsleep Dreamstate by Earthfolk, starts with a desert. Noon. Red sand. Tough, scraggly shrubs and a wind that threatens to blow Fin’s avatar away. He turns around and, half a mile away, there’s a structure, flat, bleached, shimmering in heat eddies, and maybe a mirage. Fin walks in that direction. He’s never seen a desert, although he’s told there are five on Bloodroot, documented by the surveyors in the early days but not inhabited by humans. Every so often the scientists would go, collect some samples, fiddle with instruments and come back excited. New organism found! They’d name it after their ex-spouse and move on.

He’s tempted to run, but he doesn’t know the rules. This is coded as a desert for a reason, and all his instincts say to conserve energy and “water”, whatever that stands for in this place. Around him there are hardy green plants covered with spikes, but he doesn’t stop to find out what would happen if he got punctured by one.

Fin gets closer to the structure and it’s a bar, with an imaginative sign reading “DRINKS” hanging off two chains on a post. The sign swings in the wind, forlorn. A peeling, yellowed poster on a boarded-up window advertises a musical: CARMILLA – One Night Only! There are no vehicles or roads, and he wonders how patrons are meant to arrive and depart. Helicopter? He sighs. This is how to find a murderer.

Horses tied close to a water trough nicker and snort when he arrives. He doesn’t know horses, so he doesn’t know how to take it. Time is not as meaningful, as if it collapses in specific parts of the Dreamstate and dilates in others. He’s at the bar, which for real has saloon doors from Earth’s Old West. Inside, it’s dim, with no electric lights and limited sunlight through windows. This is wrong. Not enough light makes it through the windows. It should be brighter. People drinking at tables, none of whom look up when Fin comes in. No breeze or dust comes through the doors. Big guy at the bar, wiping the surface down. He stops, looks at a clock on the wall to his left, then keeps cleaning.

“Don’t tell me,” says Fin. “You’ve been expecting me and I’m late.”