"By logic. Take you, for instance."

"What about me?"

"You're a knockout.""I try to keep myself in shape," she replied noncommittally. A compliment was always good for a woman's ego, even when delivered by a dweeb like Morris.

"Would someone like you ever come and sit with someone like me in a bar?"

She shrugged. "All the other tables were occupied. Besides, if I had taken a table by myself, I would have spent the night fending off men trying to hit on me. I just came in here for a quiet drink."

He shook his head. "No, you just think you did. You came in here because I imagined you would.

The other tables were full because that is the way I set the situation up. You sat down here because I wanted you to. Cognito, ergo sum. 'I think, therefore, I am.'"

"What about me?"

"The principle doesn't apply to figments of my imagination."

"Is that your proof?" Paula asked with a laugh. "You know you imagined this world because I happened to sit down at your table?"

"Want more? Why didn't I pay for my beer?"

"You have a tab here."

"Sorry. I've never been in this place before tonight." He took a sip of beer and laughed. She did not like the tone. "Of course, neither has anyone else, because I didn't imagine this scene until about an hour ago."

"What if I call Kerri over here and ask her?"

"Then she'll say I'm an old customer who has been coming here for years. She'll even show you my bar tab."

"You said you don't have a bar tab."

"I don't. But to be self-consistent, I would have one in this world I've imagined."

"Circular reasoning, Morris. If you want to convince me, you'll have to do better than that."

"If you insist. Do you ever read science fiction?"

She shook her head. "Frankly, I don't have time to read anything these days. My brother reads a little."

"Did you ever hear of a writer named Robert Heinlein?"

"Everyone's heard of Heinlein," she replied. "Died a couple of years ago, didn't he?"

Morris nodded. "In my imagination, he did. Now, of course, he is at the height of his powers and soaking up entirely too much money the rest of us could use. His...o...b..e Star inAstounding last spring blew me away ... as you people say in my future idiom. If his newDoor Into Summer serial is as good, I'm going to be depressed for months."

"Sorry, I'm not familiar with those stories. What about Heinlein?"

"He has a technique he uses, one the rest of us wish we'd invented. He convinces readers that astory is set in the future by peppering it with outlandish newspaper headlines."

"So?"

"Tell me, Paula. Can you even think of a headline that is more bizarre than the ones you see daily in the newspapers of your world?"

"Not a fair test, since I'm not an aficionado of sci-fi."

"Ess eff."

"Huh?"

"We call it 'SF,' like the city of San Francisco. 'Sci-fi' is a term I imagine people who don't know anything about the field will be using in another forty years."

"Look, I like to play games as well as the next person, but games have to have rules. So far, you have told me things that cannot be checked. Surely there is some way to prove that this world I'm living in is fict.i.tious."

"Just look around you," he replied. "Open your eyes and see! Can you honestly tell me that the modern world is logical?"

"Life's not logical."

"Of course it is. Real life is eminently logical. This life isn't, because I dreamed it all up."

She sighed in exasperation and mentally kicked herself for trying to find reason in the ravings of a drunk. Still, she had to admit that the man was entertaining.

"We're not getting anywhere."

"All right. What about astrology?" Morris asked.

"What about it?"

"In the real world of 1956, only nuts believe in astrology. In your world of 1996, it has become respectable. Christ, you can call up on a telephone and talk to an astrologer for five dollars a minute."

"I read somewhere that the rise of astrology is a measure of people's alienation with their lives,"

Paula replied. "People don't understand the world around them, so they put their trust in something greater than themselves."

"Rubbish. Astrology is my own 'weird newspaper headline' technique. It's my way of convincing the reader that the story is really taking place in the future." He looked into his beer and then up at her.

There was a silly grin on his face. "I do like my invention of the 900 telephone number, though. It lends verisimilitude to the plot. Which reminds me, what about the Phone Company?"

"What about it?"

"What more proof do you need that I imagined this world? In your world, I have broken the Phone Company's monopoly and split it into a dozen little companies. In the real-world, that will never happen."

"There are good reasons why Ma Bell broke up.""You're d.a.m.ned right there are," Morris replied with a flash of anger. "Those snotty b.a.s.t.a.r.ds overcharged me on my last telephone bill. I'll teach them to mess with Morris Cramer."

"Anything else?" she asked.

"Everything else?" he mocked. "Do you own a computer?"

"Not personally. I am on the road too much, although the boss has been talking about getting us all notebooks in which to keep our sales records. Why?"

"What do you think of my naming convention? Microprocessor, coprocessor, ROM, RAM, 8088, 80286, 80386, WYSIWYG? Doesn't it just sound like there's an entire industry building cheap little computers that cost just a few thousand bucks each?"

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's silly! Everyone knows that IBM sells computers for millions of dollars a pop. You don't really think you could squeeze one of those monsters down into a little box you can carry around under your arm, do you?"

"I wouldn't know about IBM's. The boss is looking at Apple portables."

"Aha!" Morris yelled, slamming his flat palm down on the table. Despite the shotgun-like sound, only a few people glanced in their direction.

"What?"

"Apple Computer! Do you really think a big corporation would come up with such a silly name?

Not in a thousand years. It's called that because I have a whimsical nature. And what about nuclear power?"

"What about it?" Paula asked with resignation. Obviously, the nebbish was the sort who warmed to his topic once he started rolling.

"You people all hate nuclear power, don't you?"

"They haven't solved the waste problem yet."

"d.a.m.n right, they haven't! If they do, I don't have a story to tell."

"Nuclear's bad for the environment."

"What environment? That is another plot twist of mine. Here you have an ecosystem -- cute name, huh? -- that has been stable for four billion years and suddenly; the puny human race has upset the balance. The icing on the cake is the ozone layer, which does not really exist, by the way. It has a hole in it due to pollution. Neat idea, isn't it?"

"The neatest. I suppose you have an answer for everything."

"Of course. I'd be a pretty poor creator of worlds if I didn't." He looked at her and frowned. "I can see that you still don't believe me."

She reached beneath the table to put her shoes back on, then straightened up in preparation for standing. "I must say, Morris, that you have an active imagination. Of course, I guess that's an a.s.set in your profession.""Wait, don't go!"

"Sorry, but I must. I've got some early sales calls."

His look was suddenly pitiful. All of the arrogance was gone. "Look, I don't know why it is so important that you believe me, but it is. Stay for another couple of minutes and I'll think of some way to convince you."

She glanced at her Lady Timex. It was still a few minutes short of ten o'clock. "Very well. I will give you five more minutes. Make it good."

"Ronald Reagan," he said with an air of finality.

"What about him?"

"He was president for eight years, d.a.m.n it! Can you imagine anyone more unlikely to become president?"

Paula shrugged. "I didn't vote for him."

"Would you have expected the two biggest stars in Hollywood to be Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger?"

She laughed. "You've got me there, Morris. I suppose that is your whimsical nature showing through again?"

He beamed, mistaking her jest for a breakthrough. "You see! Then there is the demise of the Soviet Union. Pure wish fulfillment on my part. Look, I am no fan of Joe McCarthy, but I also do not want the commies to win. So I swept them away in my dream world, even though they are on the verge of taking over the real one."

"It must be a good feeling being an author and able to rearrange the map to fit your own prejudices,"

Paula said.

"The greatest. That is why I have the Israelis acting like a bunch of brown shirts toward the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Only, I am going to have to take that part out. My editor is Jewish, you know."

"No, I didn't know."

He sighed. The manic need for her approval seemed to have pa.s.sed. He slouched in his chair like a man who had taken all the responsibilities of the world onto his shoulders. Of course, she reminded herself, that was precisely what his delusion commanded him to do.

"Look, I can't say that it hasn't been entertaining. I do have to be leaving now, however. May I give you some advice? A little unreality is probably a good thing in a science-fiction writer, but I think you have taken it too far. One of these days, you are going to launch off on one of these imaginary trips and not come back. Go see a doctor. He can help you."

"I'll think about it."

"Good. Now, if you will excuse me, Morris. She stood, retrieved her coat off the back of the chair, and hung it around her shoulders. She threaded her way through the tables that had magically become uncrowded while they had been talking. At the corridor, she halted and glanced toward the farcorner of the back room. The little man was slumped down in his seat, gazing at the few flecks of foam that remained in his gla.s.s. He looked even more like a nebbish than when she'd first come in.

"Oh, well,"she thought,"We've all got our problems."

She turned and made her way to the side door through which she had entered the bar. Just inside, she paused to fish for the Hertz keys in her purse. As she did so the door swung open and something gray with tentacles waddled in. She stood respectfully aside, and then made it outside before the hydraulic mechanism closed the door.

The night was lit by the green neon shamrock over the door and two feeble street lamps. The skysc.r.a.pers at the city center showed above the low buildings around her. Halfway to her car, she halted in midstride.

"Funny, I don't remember them announcing that they'd discovered intelligent life on Mars."

After a moment, she shrugged. "Oh, well, maybe I missed the news that day."

Five minutes later she was seat belted into her car, making her way back to her hotel. Tomorrow she would try to peddle that obsolete face cream to the Jovian Emba.s.sy over on the Thoroughfare of the Planets. The boss thought the beetles might use the stuff to polish their sh.e.l.ls. She had her doubts.

Author's notes onDream World :

I was sitting around the bar one day when it struck me how much modern life resembled a bad 1950's science fiction story ... Actually, since I don't drink, I never sit around bars.

However, I remember holding forth at a science fiction convention on the fact that no one can use Robert Heinlein's "weird newspaper headline" technique any more because none of us can think up a headline any weirder than the one we saw this morning. Then I began to mull over all the other things in life that I find incongruous - How can a people who went to the moon possibly believe in astrology? - And it struck me. Life does resemble a bad science fiction story!

Can you prove it isn't one?

THE VOID.