The dome lightened as the room shifted and the disembodied voice grunted, sneezed and sighed. The first clear image was of an alarm clock. The time said Six thirty in tall orange letters, and the small letters ‘am’ were next to the bottom right of the zero. A slim hand appeared from the bottom of the view and slapped the alarm, then the light dimmed as it all went back to the dim grey. “What the hell was that?!” ‘That was the boss. She’s the one we work for’ the wall spelled out helpfully. “You have got to be kidding me.” ‘I am not kidding. This is not a dream. This is your new life, Jiminy.’ the sign printed in tight, blocky lettering. It felt like it had finally run out of patience. Travis knew he’d run out of patience with this stupid dream. He wanted to wake up! “Get me out of here! I got a real job waitin’! I got to be on time or I’m gonna get fired! Let me wake up!”

The images from before smashed through his mind like a runaway freight train. He saw them repeat endlessly, his falling, the emergency rescue squad, his being put in the back of the ambulance. Then new images flashed into his mind. He saw a back room with three bodies on metal gurneys. A man cam in with a white coat, a full mask, and latex gloves. He moved the first body on its gurney over to a machine that looked like an industrial-sized upright vacuum. The man slid the body in place, then locked the gurney wheels. He picked up a razor-knife from a small side-tray and pushed the man’s legs open. A couple of deft slashes and the man then grabbed two hoses with what looked like meat injectors on the tips and pushed them into the open wounds.

He turned on the machine which rumbled to life. He flipped a switch and blackish semi-coagulated stuff started plopping into the metal vacuum. The man’s body seemed to shrink a little as the stuff was sucked out of him. A second flip of the switch started a metal column labeled ‘Formaldehyde’. Travis watched the liquid in the column drop as the body was refilled.