He’d never really enjoyed flying since, because the little peaks of excitement he used to feel had flattened out and the boredom had swept over them. Just about the only thing he did enjoy was the dream. He always slept on planes, and for at least the last five years he always had the same dream, or more or less the same one.

And it was the only time he had it, never at home, never sleeping anywhere else. He’d wondered a few times if it was something particular about the cabin pressure or the engine noise, but he was none the wiser—it was just his airplane dream, and this trip was no exception.

It was one of those strange dreams in which he still felt partly conscious, aware of the seat he was sitting in, vaguely aware of the low engine whine in the background. But rather than being strapped in, he felt like he was floating in the darkness, still in the seated position, but free of the seat and the plane, adrift in the open air.

And then, all at once, he seemed to become acutely conscious of the entire world around him, of the air and the cold and the moisture, of the land below and the stars above. He was aware of countless people living and dying, and could see them all within that moment, some in daylight, some in the depths of night on the other side of the world, children playing games in a dusty street, lovers kissing in a twilight park, an old man surrounded by family as he rattled through his final breaths, images swarming around him from every part of the planet, oceans and deserts and hushed-breath forests and forlorn streetlights and empty amusement parks.

It was as if his mind had opened, fully opened, but what he really loved about these dreams was that he felt connected, to everything. He spent so much of his life feeling like he didn’t have a place in the world, and yet here he felt he completely belonged, an integral part of all those lives and non-lives, of all those places and non-places.

Finally, as it always did, the dream ebbed away from him, but one last vision crashed into his mind from the void. He was on a rough ocean at night, feeling almost a part of the waves, conscious of something seething beneath him, and then he realized it was a whale, gliding and crashing through the heavy swells, dark within darkness, a massive mournful muscular presence, and for those few moments Tom was part of that too, pulsing through the darkened ocean, a black abyss below, an endless sky above, and he felt at peace there.

He was woken by a jolt, thrusting him upward against the restraint of the seat belt. He opened his eyes, saw the strangely half-lit cabin, took a second to remember where he was and immediately understood.