Wake up. Late. Hurry. Fail. Wake up. Relief.

Wake up. Late. Hurry. Fail. Wake up. Relief.

Wake up. Late. Hurry. Fail. Wake up. Still late. Hurry again. Fail again. Fail worse. Wake up. Relief.

I could do this all night. In fact, I often do, starting around four with a good solid nightmare and spending the rest of the night slipping in and out of that one miserable dream, nudging the clock forwards ten or twenty minutes at a time until I am neither early not late and I can swing myself, gratefully, out of bed.

There’s a special kind of feeling to a morning like that. You can barely walk in a line, your head is pounding, your sentences lose their way around the middle so that even you’re not sure of what you’re saying by the end. But the whole world outside you feels spectacular. The cool morning air, the smell of coffee and other people’s cigarettes, the music that pops into your head: these little details were all missing from the dreams. The dreams are sterile and obvious:there is you, there is the clock, there is the corridor or train station or school you end up lost in, and that is it. No time for anything unless it contributes to the misery. It would give them away in an instant if you were only able to pay attention: the real world is full of distractions, and however late or lost you are you can find something to enjoy.

He promised me he’d put me out one day.

Not much of a promise, that: he promised the clarinet he’d start practicing again when he had the time, and he promised Bleak House and Android Development in Thirty Days and Weight Training for Dummies that he’d read them instead of the latest Andy McNab. (The last of these was also a promise to the case of dumbells he left perched on my midsection.) Compared to all that, unfurling a rug once he moves somewhere with the floorspace seems pretty tame. Although I’m all too aware that I need a good hoovering, and Adam can’t even keep a promise to his vacuum cleaner.

I’ve had a good look at his bedroom floor – because even a door isn’t simple enough for him not to disappoint – and I’m pretty confident I could fit there. Two inches tucked under the bed, one under the desk and a couple of dents from his chair, but I’d fit. He could rustle his toes through me first thing in the morning and last thing at night. He could lie down and sink into me when he needs somewhere to think. But apparently I’m “too special” for that.

He shimmered into view in a shower of blue sparks, and suddenly the world was not the same place. He showed me a dozen wonders, any one of which could have transformed civilization: a device that transmitted voices through the air; a box that cooked dishes in minutes; an engine that performed the most complex calculation in moments.

When he went to the bunk I had made up for him – so much plainer, I’m sure, than he was used to – he thanked me, and he set on the nightstand a graphite-grey oblong with a paler window set into its face.

“What is that?” I said.

“Oh, this?” he replied. “It’s my book. It’s a thousand books, all stored on a single tiny plate. In an instant I can call up any page of any one of them. And in my own time, I can send a command to our global network and have any text in history transmitted to me in an instant.”

I looked it over and curled my lip. “Hmm…” I said. “I just… I feel like I’d miss the smell of books, you know?”