Then I had a kind of nightmare. I dreamt of a world which only noticed you when you were in its way, and it pushed you along. The people of this world were only allowed to bond over trivialities, like what color car they drove and what they thought the best animal was. The only things which connected them, which they celebrated, were odd, curious things like how many buttons they could tear off their shirts, what visuals made their bodies vibrate, and how many eyeballs they could collect. And when, after all which was necessary to manifest something into the world had been done, after all the tears and sweat had fallen; it did not manifest. Nothing ever came into reality. A carpenter would plan a house and build the structure, only to return to it in the morning and find it gone, nothing but the bare land before him. A woman would write a masterful symphony, spending night after sleepless night, her eyes aching, her ears and fingers working at the piano, only to find the notes on the page whiting themselves out before her eyes, and before she knew it she was tearing it up and throwing it in the fire. All endeavors were like dangling carrots, always vanishing before anyone could bite. In this world I dreamt of, visions were invested in carelessly and half consciously, then terminated before completion. Potentials were crafted, then aborted, unwanted. And this was done over and over again until the people of that world began to say “why bother?” and “what’s the point?” and “nothing matters anyway.” And it was all being done in the name of the Highest. And they knew not what they did. The only thing some people knew was that for some reason they could not wait for the day to end, and to go to sleep. Milky Way Joe showed up at my door on a Wednesday. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox jacket and combing his hair back like Elvis, and his faded blue jeans had a massive hole in one of the knees. We were the same age, tumbleweeds of twenty-five, but something about him made you think he was immortal, a time traveler, preserved in ice but still moving. “Are you ready to go or ain’t ya?” He said this right at my doorstep with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Not really, no. I didn’t know when you were getting in. How’d you get here from the airport?” “I hitched. Look, we don’t have much time, we need to get to it now. We need to fly.” It was noon and the air was heating up. Joe came inside and ducked his head under the kitchen sink, slurping up the cold running water. Then he quickly went over to the couch, unfolded his body down, and fell asleep. He was out like a light. I went over to Blondie’s and got a cup of coffee. I had stopped showing up for work there a couple weeks prior, when Joe called. Eli gave me a free cup. “So what happened to you, big dog?” “I fell in love,” I said. I don’t know why I said it. “Well, that’ll do it.” “How’s Selene?” I asked. “Selene quit. She told me to go do something with my own body and then let the air out of one of my tires. Why are you laughing?” “Because I think she aimed to get all four, but the first one took too long.” “She is an impatient one, isn’t she?” “We all are,” I said. I had a seat over by the big window in the front and leaned my face into the sunlight. I closed my eyes and breathed in the daytime through my forehead and my temples. I didn’t feel too good. I felt like crap. I wanted to take big slugs of the coffee but it was scorching hot. Then a man and a woman, both of about thirty-five years of age, sat down at my table across from me. They were dressed like young parents, jeans, t-shirts, odd-colored sunglasses, and good haircuts. They smelled really good too, like lavender and oak tree and lemon combined. The woman had dirty blond hair, as straight as a doll’s that was cut short right at her jaw line, and she wore a thick coat of lipgloss. The man’s face was deathly pale, almost like he was sick, but his hands were tanned and one would think he modeled watches. “How’s it going?” I asked. They weren’t Blondie regulars I recognized, but I thought they might be customers who knew me. The woman reached for my coffee and started to raise it to her mouth. “Oh wait, that’s really hot,” I warned. “Is it?” She paused the cup just before her lips. “Yeah, that’ll burn your situation up real fast.” She put it down on the table and then looked at her companion. He was giving her a disparaging look through his sunglasses. “I thought it would have been cool if I took a sip of his coffee,” she said. “Why?” “Yeah why?” I echoed. They both looked at me. “Because,” she said, “it’s like we’re in charge.” “He’s about to know that we’re in charge, once we start talking to him and explain the situation.” “I already sense that you two are in charge of something,” I said. They both looked at me again. “But maybe we should just leave the coffee out of it. Or we could get some cream, I used to work here.” “Shut up,” the man said to me quite casually. “I’ll just shut it for now though and listen.” “Good.” The man motioned to the woman with his arm and a strange warping of the side of his face. “What the heck was that?” she asked. “Oh for the love of, just start, come on, tell him what we’re doing here.” “All right, I mean, you looked like you were having a seizure. Listen kid, the way we understand things, you may know something that we would like to know too. That make sense?” “Sure, I guess so.” “What do you know about Gettysburg?” A small shot of dread poured itself over in my stomach and I immediately reached for the coffee. “Wait I thought,” the woman continued, but it was too late. The liquid fell onto my upper lip, burned that, went past my tongue, burned that, then fell down my throat and burned that as well. I put the cup down on the table. “That was very painful,” I said. “What do you know about Gettysburg, kid?” the man said. “Well,” I swallowed, “it’s probably the most famous civil war battle. Lincoln, right? Gettysburg address? I actually know some of it.” “Not that Gettysburg, kid.” The woman put a hand on the man’s arm and his body jolted a little. "What?" she said. "Nothing, just your nails, they're kind of claw-like." "They are not claw-like. What the heck kind of thing is that to say?" She rolled her eyes, then continued speaking to me in a calm, instructional voice. “We know, that you know, that Gettysburg is the name of a person. Okay? We know you’ve been in contact with a Mr…” Her shoulder popped up high as she reached into her pant pocket. She brought out a small piece of paper and consulted it. “...Milky Way Joe. That’s actually his real name.” “I don’t know anyone…” I began, but she interrupted me. “We intercepted a letter he wrote you. A very strange letter.” And I thought that odd, for I had gotten Joe’s letter. There hadn’t been any signs of it being re-sealed. “This letter mentions a certain Gettysburg character that you two will track down. The mentioning of this is brief. The rest of the letter, which is a long one, is an in-depth account of a dream this Milky Way Joe had, of you and a purple alien woman. And I mean it is very in-depth, it is borderline smut, this letter.” It must have been another letter Joe sent after the first one. “We’ll be real frank with you, kid,” the man cut in. “You’ve found yourself involved with some bad company, sketchy people who will eventually get you in a lot of trouble. Do you have any idea where this Milky Way Joe is?” “No,” I said. “No idea.” “You’re absolutely sure?” The man leaned in and his eyes peered into mine, peaking out of his sunglasses. The woman leaned in also, and she put a hand on my arm. “Oh wow!” I exclaimed “What?” “Nothing, sorry, I just, your nails, they surprised me. They’re just very, they’re long.” They both leaned back into their seats. “If you hear anything, you contact this number.” And the man took out a white business card with just a phone number on it and nothing else. He put it on the table. And then they left me.