Oversoul Seven looked around cautiously. He’d been secretly quite pleased with the environment he’d chosen and created. The classroom was authentic twentieth-century, like the one Lydia knew as a child. There were rows of desks, blackboards, windows, everything right down to stacks of paper—all individual new sheets—and an automatic pencil sharpener.

Then he blushed, all over his nice new cheeks and right up to the roots of the thick brown hair that sprang up from his forehead.

“Nice effect,” Cyprus said, watching. “I meant to congratulate you on your form, very good fourteen-year-old male type, Caucasian, I believe. But for the other—”

“I found it, the error! There!” The wastepaper basket had been in the corner, complete with girth and thickness, exactly two feet high and as many around, but he’d forgotten to materialize it visually. Now he made it red, and with a flourish added scallops around the upper edge.

“But there’s still another error,” Cyprus said, looking nowhere in particular. Just at that moment a young man wearing a toga appeared. He looked around with a rather wild air, then shouted out at Seven: “Ah, there you are! I knew I’d find you again. Just the same, all this has to stop.” He looked half mad, and yelled in tones of deepest outrage.

Cyprus raised her eyebrows at Oversoul Seven, who coughed several times and tried to look the other way.

“Well?” shouted the young man.

“How did you get here?” Seven asked. Then he whispered urgently to Cyprus. “That’s Josef. He must be in a dreaming state, and sleeping on Earth.”

“How did I get here? You tell me,” Josef cried angrily. “Next time I’m going to memorize the route. I see you in my dreams too often for comfort. Dreams aren’t supposed to work that way.” He broke off, frowning: “I am dreaming, aren’t I? I must be. What a crazy place. What on Earth is that?” He was staring at the automatic pencil sharpener.

“Don’t touch it! It’s not on Earth. That’s the point,” Seven cried. But Josef was fascinated.

“It’s authentic twentieth-century,” Seven said, giving in. “Works by electricity.”

Cyprus moaned. “I believe that Josef is your seventeenth-century personality,” she said. “Electricity isn’t utilized there.”

Oversoul Seven blushed and dematerialized the pencil sharpener. “Just forget you saw it. Forget the whole thing,” he said to Josef.

“Where did it go?” Josef stood staring.

“Listen, you aren’t supposed to be here. Not here, of all places. I get demerits for this,” Oversoul Seven said. “Go home. Go back to your body where you belong.”

“What do you mean, go back to my body?” Josef demanded. He rose to his full stature and adjusted his toga with a dramatic gesture. “This is my dream, and nobody is going to put me out of it.”

“Why are you wearing a toga?” Cyprus asked gently.