“Ah! I almost forgot,” he said, gulped down the rest of his beer, and started rummaging through his bag. “I got what you wanted.”

I shot up. “The dream project?”

“Yes.”

“You smuggled documents out of the research department? I can’t believe it,” I mumbled.

“You didn’t hire me back then for no reason,” he said, and then yelled excitedly, “Here, found it!”

He pulled out of his bag a large, rolled-up blueprint—above and beyond what I had expected him to produce. He leaned toward me and, checking that no one was listening, whispered, “What I’m going to show you is top secret. They just finish working on it last week. You have to swear you won’t tell anyone.”

I swore.

Nicolai slipped off the rubber band and carefully unfurled the blueprint onto the table. A slogan in silver print appeared at the top of the page: “Yesterday’s Memories Are Tomorrow’s Dreams.”

“It’s the wrong side,” I said and nearly snatched the paper out of Nicolai’s hand, eager to see the blueprint on the other side of the page. But there was nothing there.

The page was empty, completely blank. Nothing but that stupid ad slogan. I studied the piece of paper for a few more minutes before looking up at Nicolai, who was staring at me with a big smile on his face.

“What’s this?” I asked, baffled.

“You be happy to hear that after thorough investigation, this is all I came up with. This poster, printed a year ago. There is no project.”

“How could that be?”

“There’s not single project involving dreams. I thought there was, but turns out research ruled it out. They said dreams and memories are completely different areas, like oil and milk,” Nicolai said. “I admit I was having a little fun with you with the slogan. Bet your heart missed a beat there.”

I tried to explain that he must have misunderstood. There had to be some kind of mistake. There was no way I’d gotten this close just to find out there was nothing.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“You said I’d be happy to hear what you found.”

“Right, I found out there is no project. That’s what you wanted to hear, no?” Nicolai said, at this point as confused as I was.

“Why would I be happy about that?” I asked and downed the glass of water in one big gulp.

“Because you want to build a start-up for dream sharing or something like that. That’s why you wanted me to do corporate espionage,” he said. “This is excellent news for you! Now you can build a competing start-up and make millions. My only advice is you take one of those neuroscientists or something because this isn’t one of those piece-of-cake apps you build at home.”