Travis scooted to the edge of the bed, then stopped. Where do I find some clothes around here? He felt very uncomfortable realizing he was naked as a jaybird in a huge fancy, empty room, in a huge bed with blood red satin sheets, and not a towel or bathrobe to be seen. Another thought intruded. Where the hell do I get a beer around here? For the last sixteen years, he’d always started out with three beers with breakfast. It got him through the morning at that rotten job setting the housing around the air conditioning compressor. That was all he did for twelve hours a day, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, shroud air-conditioning compressors.

The floor manager, or ‘FM’, was always down his neck, telling him he ought to be moving faster, and the beer buzz was just enough to keep him from dropping the shroud on the miserable floor and riveting him in it. Lunchtime would roll around and it’d be six beers in his truck out in the parking lot to keep the buzz going for the rest of the shift until it was time to hit the bar and really unload. He really wasn’t a drunk, he just drank to take the edge off his problems. ‘You were a drunk’, the sign flashed. “No I’m not!” ‘Yes, you were.’

“Where do I get some clothes!”, Travis yelled at the sign, since it was the only thing communicating with him. ‘Just ask for them’, the sign prompted. “Huh?” Ask? Does it mean someone delivers clothes? The thought had him going neck deep in the luxurious feeling satin sheets once more. “How do I do that?” He was getting used to this dream. It was weird, but at least it isn’t a nightmare. ‘Oh, this is not a nightmare.’, the sign prompted once more. It seemed to Travis that the sign seemed to flash with a smug ‘I know something you don’t ‘ attitude.Travis decided he didn’t like the attitude the sign was scrolling with. He decided to give some back. “So what is this, Mr. Know-it-all?”