Awareness crept under Zee's eyelids. Perhaps also it came through her nose and ears. She sighed deeply, stretched out her legs, and lay with one hand across her face, fingers spread through light brown hair.
World, world, she thought, oh, I just had a dream about you. Sleepily she opened an eye that lay under a finger and saw a hazy shape across her vision. The finger, fuzzy around the edges, slid off her face and Zee opened the other eye. Something was different about the color of her room, the shade of the ceiling, or the lighting, and Zee thought for a second that she might be sleeping at someone else's house. She propped herself up on both elbows.
Dizziness swept up through her spine and sprayed at the backs of her eyes, hit the top of her skull and rained down again, turning everything dark for a second, leaving trails of fuzz behind. Snails' trails, Zee thought absently, blinking them away. Her eyes cleared and she looked.
Strange, she thought, my first dream ever to come true.
Color had vanished; all substance and shape had vanished. This was prairie bleakness or the blankness of a portrait bakground. Zee stared out beyond where her bed ended, into grey nothingness. I have dreamed the end of existence, she thought. I have awakened and it is here.
But why shouldn't it happen? As inexplicably as the world had materialized around her when Zee had opened her eyes at birth, it now simply vanished. She started - am I dead, she thought. And she waited frozen until an answer came - If I were dead, I would hear a heartbeat. God's. Where is God? There is nobody here but me.
She slid off her bed and landed somewhere. A floor was not in attendance, except that her feet were on something. Because, she thought, you need texture, some kind of texture, and nothingness doesn't have one, that's why I can't see a floor. What is this my feet are on. There was no differentiation between floor and sky, no horizon or walls, only grey. Zee felt as if she were inside a gigantic bubble. Sea of time, Sea of Holes, which is this? This must be Nowhere, she thought. Could I be the only thing that saves this place from being a black hole? I am a positive, the negative of this negative place. Why does it accept me? I should be swept off into the blackness of space, towards something that has substance, what am I doing here?
Zee's feet moved, but she could only tell she was going forward by the fact that her bed was getting smaller when she looked behind. When finally she couldn't see it any longer, she felt lonely, and a wave of homesickness filled her for the beautiful world that had been. All the colors and shapes and smells and sounds, how could they vanish as if they had never existed? She started running frantically, calling silently without words, because she didn't know how to address all the things she wanted back.
But she soon stopped because she felt foolishly conspicuous somehow, and she was out of breath. Wiping at her tears, Zee wondered what she would eat and drink, how she would survive.
Her thoughts fell off suddenly because in the - distance? - she saw an object. Racing, she reached it, and saw it was a box. She fell to her knees and picked it up, knowing suddenly that inside of it was the world. Her fingertips tingled happily, her whole body seemed to laugh at the feel of substance. Ah, beautiful, here we are again, together, the world and me. Cheer, crowds; smile, children; gasp, dying men - back, back, back home again. Worship solidness, fingers! Sing the praise of beingness.
- Wait. Wait. Can you remember?
Remember what?
- Can you remember all the world? Do you know in detail how it looked? Do you even know the color of your mother's eyes?
Can you, you, bring it all back the way it was, re-remember the way it was so that when you open your eyes nothing will be changed?
Zee sat stunned. But that wasn't fair. The world was inside this box, and what did it matter whether she herself could remember everything exactly; that had nothing at all to do with this situation. All she had to do was crack the box open and it would all come back by itself, just the way it was.
- You don't remember?
Yes, I remember.
- How was the world?
Blue and green, with lots of flowers in the spring, and lots of trees, lots of people walking on the sidewalks, crossing streets - oh, they all had different clothing and they walked differently, and spoke differentely.
- How?
Differently, each one.
- How?
It snowed in the winter, all the little tiny pieces of white; the ponds froze hard like rock and the trees all bent down where snow had settled on their arms. The evergreens stayed green all winter but the others lost their leaves, and snow lay in thin mounds down the branches.
- What about the snow?
What about it?
- The flakes.
Ah, they were all different. Scientists, they said that each one had a different design, every single one.
- Can you remember them?
The scientists?
- The designs.
Zee turned the box over in her hands, looking for the lid or opening.
- You don't remember.
"I do remember! What does it matter?" Zee yelled aloud. Then a hand went to her mouth, not because she had made a noise but because she hadn't. She sat frozen with her hand still, not daring to try again. Against her skin she felt the press of nothingness. It seemed to be feeling her pores, looking for an opening large enough to get in. I am absorbing it, Zee thought hysterically, or it is absorbing me. I am becoming nothing, non-existent. Soon I won't have any memory at all, any me, any substance, and I wll be sucked andfolded into this grey.
Her hands locked around the box. Quickly! Bring the world back quickly, before it's too late. And when I have it back I will look carefully at everything, photograph everything with my eyes and never forget it, keep it all inside me. Zee brought the box down hard on the invisible ground and saw a split form. She hit it again, then put two thumbs to the crack, breaking it in two like a breakfast egg. The shell was thin. From the openingsomething began rushing out, running down Zee's arms. She stood up and held the box at arm's length while the world poured out, forming a pool at her feet, swirling around her ankles. What a lot to come from such a small box! It must have been compressed in there, she told herself. How wonderful! The flood had already reached her knees. She looked down and saw colors swirling below her, waiting for form. It reached her waist.
- Remember?
God, how can I remember it all?
- Think fast.
So many ways that it could be, so many variations. I can't! I can't handle it! I can't put it back exactly as it was.
- Think fast.
Now it was up to her neck and Zee closed her eyes, grabbing at memory with her teeth. But, as it reached her nose she panicked and tried to swim. Her arms had no water to push against, her feet never left the ground.
I can breathe, she thought, amazed. Then, but of course, this is the world flowing back in. A fear hissed at the back of her throat. She kept her eyes closed, listening to the gurgle above her head, until it was quiet at last. Now, she thought. But something didn't feel right.
How could it not feel right, this had to be home. Sweet, lovely home, and the reality of existence. I missed you! How lonely I was! There was nobody there.
She thought she heard insanity calling, thought she heard insanity crowding around the outside of her eyelids. But no, it must be only a warm wind blowing through her room. World, world, I must tell you the dream I had. And she opened her eyes.
