Story

There is a time I worked for a company that made video games.

During my stay in that company, I have a co-worker named Mr. A. We seldom greeted each other, and I didn't know what his job was. From time to time, I saw him rushing by, but never had a chance to start a conversation with him. I didn't even know where his cubical was.

One day, very sudden, the company fired him. I supposed it must be something serious, since the company also got a security guard to prevent him from coming back. It became a topic of gossip for several weeks. After the gossip died down, nobody ever talked about him anymore, just like that he never been here.

However, at this very day, I started to dream a particular form of dream.

I dreamed that I went to office to work. What happened in my dream, down to the last details, was exactly identical to my daytime job. What I meant is, I was not only dreaming of being in my daytime office, but also doing the exact same task I performed in daytime. The one and only difference is, in my dream, Mr. A still worked with me. In my dream, we didn't have further conversation. Sometimes we passed each other by, exchanged unnoticeable greeting, then headed to separate paths and struggled on our escalating priority lists.

This dream lasted for two months. Very soon, I was exhausted by this dream mentally and physically. After ten-hour daytime work, at night in my dream, I had to do the exact same task again. The distinction between dream and reality also collapsed rapidly. I couldn't remember which was the case: Did I redo in my dream what I had finished in reality; Or I thought I had finished my task in my dream, but in reality I never started it.

I could not escape this mind-numbing and repetitious dream. There was no way out of this dream. However, finally I found a solution and Mr. A became a crucial indication between my dreamtime and real life. Every time, as soon as I had a glimpse of Mr. A, I put down my work, walked out of office, started my car, drove home, turned off engine, went to bed and started sleeping.

Many years have passed. I changed my job and moved several times. However, occasionally I still bump into Mr. A. I didn't care to go into it seriously. Maybe my dream had developed complex iterations: I might dream that I fall into sleep, and in this dream sleep I dreamed about Mr. A. Or, maybe I never wake up from the first dream about Mr. A many years ago. Perhaps in real life, Mr. A actually moved to my neighborhood. However, I stopped considering these possibilities. I developed my way of living between dream and reality: AS SOON AS I SAW MR. A, GO TO BED.