all the time in the world
Counterpoint punches me in the arm and I'm back on the air, somewhere, stuck in traffic, slumped low in my bucket seat, and there's static on the radio. A signal is trying to get through, but all I get is partial syllables of someone speaking.
Counterpoint punches me again. "Do it right," he says.
"Fine, okay," Matthew says. "Stop hitting."
Matthew's awake, groggily aware of his surroundings. His eyes are crusty with weeks' worth of buildup. He checks his body for remoras. What is he thinking? What has he been thinking?
"What dreams did you have today?" asks Counterpoint.
Matthew had the following dreams: 1. He is sitting in a park and autumn happens suddenly around him. Leaves change color and fall en masse. 2. He is playing paintball with his friends, but their guns have accidentally been loaded with real bullets. Matthew is the only one who realizes. Everyone is in camouflage except Matthew, who wears red. 3. He is reading the newspaper but the ink gets on his hands. It burns like acid and eats away his hands and arms up to the elbow.
Traffic inches forward, and Matthew’s car drags its antenna through wispy signal streams. The radio garbles and burps out vowels.
"Why do you ask?"
Since he has been turning his brain off to better integrate with society, Matthew has been in tune with the global consciousness. "I've been monitoring your dreams for keywords and mapping them against results from the Web Bot Project, looking for patterns in linguistic shift." Counterpoint makes notes. Autumn, change, guns, accident, newspaper. "I think I can use you to tap into time-reverse experience. If I can interpret these results, maybe we can predict the future."
"So, what do my dreams tell you?"
"This election's going to be a big fuckin’ mess," says Counterpoint.
"Hm," says Matthew. "I guess I ought start looking forward to 2012, then."
Counterpoint twists the radio’s knob and the static fades away. "You don’t want to know what the global consciousness has to say about 2012."
