As for the West, it is a land of sleep; darkness weighs on the place where the dead dwell.
—Taimhotep, funerary stela, ca. 45 B.C.

Un homme qui dort tient en cercle autour de lui le fil des heures, l’ordre des années et des mondes.
—Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu

Last night, I awoke in a feverish state. Looking around, I was quickly put right. The books on my nightstand were as I had left them; the armoire hadn’t moved. But for however long I had slept, I was visited by what I now realize are horrors of a sort unimaginable by the waking mind. What was so gruesome, in hindsight, was how real it all seemed. The world was not populated by aliens or demons. Instead, my mind served me a buffet most recognizable, but simultaneously off.

Let me provide a taste. In my dream, an atlas informed me that I hailed from a country called Rus, not England, and in my pocket calendar a flight by plane to the United States had become a balloon trip to a place named Biru. Only after careful investigation did I determine I was living in the present day and not some other, since that calendar was dated not anno Domini but according to the “Coptic Era” (for which the abbreviations were “C.E.” and “B.C.E.”; it was a happy coincidence that both calendars