"Well," I hedged, "it's the most humane we've found yet. I suppose living through a--uh--movie with full sensory participation for year after year can get boring." "I should think so," Coleman said emphatically. "Warden, don't you sometimes feel the old system where the prisoners had the diversions of riots, solitary confinement, television, and jailbreaks may have made time easier to serve? Do these men ever think they are _actually_ living these vicarious adventures?" That was a question that made all of us in the Dreamland service uneasy. "No, Councilman, they don't. They know they aren't really Alexander of Macedonia, Tarzan, Casanova, or Buffalo Bill. They are conscious of all the time that is being spent out of their real lives; they know they have relatives and friends outside the dream. They know, unless--" Coleman lifted a dark eyebrow above a black iris. "Unless?" I cleared my throat. "Unless they go mad and really believe the dream they are living. But as you know, sir, the rate of madness among Dreamland inmates is only slightly above the norm for the population as a whole." "How do prisoners like that adjust to reality?" Was he deliberately trying to ask tough questions? "They don't. They think they are having some kind of delusion. Many of them become schizoid and pretend to go along with reality while secretly 'knowing' it to be a lie." Coleman removed a pocket secretary and broke it open. "About these new free-choice models--do you think they genuinely are an improvement over the old fixed-image machines?" "Yes, sir," I replied. "By letting the prisoner project his own imagination onto the sense tapes and giving him a limited amount of alternatives to a situation, we can observe whether he is conforming to society to a larger extent." "I'm glad you said that, Walker," Councilman Coleman told me warmly. "As I said, I've been following your career closely, and if you get through the next twenty-four-hour period as you have through the foregoing part of your Dream, you will be awakened at this time tomorrow. Congratulations!" I sat there and took it. He was telling _me_, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't deny it. * * * * * If it _were_ true, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was mad. _It couldn't be true._ Yet-- Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and transferred from my personnel job at the plant? Whenever I had come upon two people talking, and it seemed as if I had come upon those same two people talking the same talk before, hadn't I wondered for an instant if it couldn't be a Dream, not reality at all?