Elias Vance was a man who believed only in measurable constants: gravity, light speed, and the precise timing of his morning coffee. Now, in the dark silence of 3:00 AM, the last constant – his body – had betrayed him.
The dream was the usual violent thing: the dizzying sense of slipping off a cliff, the stomach rising into his throat, the soundless air rushing past, and the sickening final certainty of impact. Then, the jolt.
Elias woke, gasping, sweat chilling his silk pajamas. His heart hammered a frantic, irregular rhythm against his ribs. He sat up, relieved. Just a hypnagogic spasm. I caught myself.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The room was identical: the faint green glow of the digital clock, the familiar, slightly acrid smell of ozone from the air purifier, the shadow of the tall bookshelf.
He needed water. Elias walked the familiar ten steps to the front door, reaching for the hook where he always hung his keys. He retrieved the brass key – the heavy, ridged primary key for his high-rise apartment lock – and headed toward the kitchen, intending to go out into the hall to fetch the morning paper later.
He unlocked the lower deadbolt easily. But when he inserted the primary key into the upper tumbler, it didn’t seat. It didn’t grate or resist. It simply didn’t belong. The key was brass, the grooves were right, but it was barely wider, or the lock was minutely narrower. It was an alien piece of metal attempting to access a native mechanism.
He tried again, twisting gently, then harder. The key refused.
Elias frowned, pulling the key out. He looked at the door, then at the key in his hand. Impossible. I used this key seven hours ago. He checked the number etched into the key head: 34A. His apartment.
He walked to the window. Thirty-four stories below, Chicago slept under sodium light. The street was the same. The neon sign of the corner diner was the same.
He walked back to the door and tried the key one last time. Still alien.
A cold dread began to pool in his stomach, far colder than the fear of the fall. He hadn’t caught himself before hitting the ground. He had just woken up in a reality where the geometry of his own front door had shifted by a molecular hair.
Elias turned from the door. The sound of the key dropping onto the hardwood floor was deafening in the silence. He was locked inside. Or perhaps, the rest of the world was locked outside.
He looked at the precise, orderly bookshelf. He looked at the precise, green-glowing clock. He looked at the precise, still-present shadow of the room.
And he knew, with chilling certainty, that he hadn’t escaped the dream. He was simply existing after the inevitable impact.