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to reach her today, and for what purpose? She scrolled slowly
through the call log and couldn’t believe her eyes. They were all from the same
phone number, marked “Undisclosed.” Her nerves began naggingly buzzing at her, and she felt instantly worried. She pulled a pill out of her
purse and gulped it down, sitting still on her couch.
    Okay,
she thought, maybe this is nothing. It could have been a wrong number, it
happens. But unfortunately, nothing unexpected ever happened anymore. Within
the big screen, it was highly possible to control it all—at least for most
people. Misha suddenly remembered how neurotic she
had been two years ago before she had started taking the pills. Her mind
crossed over terrains of worst case scenarios regarding the phone calls, and
then considered scenarios that were even worse than those. Her stomach did a
full turn and her hands itched to reach out and fix the problem, whatever it
was. She got back up and walked over to the big screen, which today resembled a
curse. She wanted to smash it in with a bat and watch it cry out or exhibit
some emotion. Real people were in that screen, why didn’t it feel anything?
    --------------------------
    Misha tossed and turned in her sleep, waking up throughout the night to find
her T-shirt drenched in sweat. Her dreams had been too vivid and real.
    She had
seen a laboratory. Stadium seating surrounded the steel floor and was filled
with spectators holding remote controls. A chair stood in the middle of the
room, an exact replica of the one in front of Lydia’s desk. Misha scanned the lab and found there were no exit doors. A man with silver hair
grabbed her wrist and flung her into the chair. The chair had straps and a
screen stood a foot away from it. Classical music filled the room and she could
not hear anything else. She cried out with all her strength and felt a painful
buzz rise in her throat, threatening to suffocate her. The silver-haired man’s
countenance morphed from one face into another rapidly, without any expression
to hold on to.  Misha tried frantically to
communicate with him but could never tell who he really was. His face crept
closer and closer to hers, mouthing words like ammunition that were all deaf to
her ears as the classical music became louder. Suddenly, only one large eyeball
was visible to her and in it, she saw the cruelest form of laughter and
ridicule she had ever seen.  
      Misha’s heart lurched her upright in bed with its pounding
and she searched the room for the silver-haired man and the steel floor. With
great hesitance, she began to realize she was in her own bedroom with Poof
curled around her feet. Poof snored softly as if nothing alarming had happened
and slowly Misha began to believe it too. Her guard
was not yet fully lowered, however. She had never advertised the fact, but some
of her past dreams had held uncanny resemblance to real life. Her college
roommate, who had gotten to know her well, used to call her “Dream Child.” It
was funny at the time, as Misha’s dreams held small
levels of predictability. These occurrences had become stronger and more
frequent over time and Misha found it less funny now.
    Misha traveled uncertainly to the bathroom and threw some cold water on her
feverish cheeks. She stared up into the mirror as if for help, and caught an
eye twitch grab both of her eyelids. She gripped the edge of the sink. What was
happening?
    --------------------------
    It was
raining the next morning as Misha got ready to meet
Tsai. Misha was starting not to care about this
meeting, an apathy that had been borne of disappointing encounters with friends
in the past. Tsai was probably hitting a slump in her own life and craved
seeing a friend worse off and more depressed than her. The other possibility
was that Tsai needed something. In this world of big screens and gadget
bundling, there were few people left to turn to for a simple favor. Everyone
was absorbed by screen pixels and dispersed into