“Seven, how could you have allowed such a thing to happen?” Cyprus exclaimed, though “exclaimed” isn’t quite the word. Seven felt her disapproval, or rather, her sorrow. But before he could respond, he watched as her image appeared simultaneously to Will and Lydia, who seemed to be in the distance below him. Lydia looked incredulous and angry. Will looked defiant and scared to death. Seven watched as Cyprus formed a gentle summertime hill beneath them. Then she talked to them quietly, before returning to Seven.

“What happened?” Seven asked impatiently. “What did I do wrong, and how much will Lydia and Will remember? Was Will on drugs or something?” He was still shaken himself, and he noticed that Cyprus wasn’t consoling him. Instead she said, “Look for yourself.” And she and Seven stood invisibly in Will’s “bedroom.”

Will lived in a loosely knit commune; that is, young people constantly came and went. Will’s cot, with his name painted on it, sat behind a huge rubber plant, and beside this sat the two orange crates that Will used as a desk. The plant and crates marked this corner of the large room as Will’s property, and above the bed a poster of Buddha stared blissfully over Will’s pillow. Will considered himself quite lucky since his corner possessed a window, half of which he’d covered with a map of the world.

Now he lay curled up at the head of the cot, wondering if he felt strong enough to make it to the communal sink to wash his face, or even further to the refrigerator where his food—oranges—was stacked on the third shelf. There were ten other cots scattered around the room, each one marked in one way or another as private property, but for now, Will was alone.

He’d just awakened from a terrible nightmare, or so he thought, except for the ending where he was sunbathing on a hill; and he supposed that one or a combination of the drugs he’d been taking had caused the particularly frightening sense of insanity he dimly remembered. But now everything looked normal, which meant shitty and dismal, he thought. Reaching under his mattress, he felt around until his trembling fingers found his potpourri of pills, his cache, that he kept hidden there. Without even looking to see what particular pills he’d grabbed, he popped two.

Oversoul Seven said to Cyprus, “He does it all the time.”

Will’s eyelids fluttered. He began muttering. Cyprus sighed. “What you experienced earlier was a nightmare, all right, composed of Will and Lydia’s worst fears about god and the universe. And you should have monitored it for them, not fallen into it yourself.”

Will’s mutterings grew louder. At the same time, he began to rouse in his dream body. “You stay with him now,” Cyprus said. “I’ll want to have a good talk with you later.”