Once I had experienced a Dream for five or ten minutes. I was driving a ground car down a spidery road made into a dismal tunnel by weeping trees, a dank, lavender maze. I had known at the time it was a Dream, but still, as the moments passed, I became more intent on the difficult road before me, my blocky hands on the steering wheel, thick fingers typing out the pattern of motion on the drive buttons. I could remember that. Maybe I couldn't remember being shoved into the prison vault for so many years for such and such a crime. I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test--as I was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic majesty. "I've always thought," I said, "that it would be a good idea to show a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself." "Yes, indeed," Coleman concurred. Just that and no more. I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. "I've thought that projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere observation." "I should say so," Coleman remarked, and got up. I _had_ to get more out of him, some proof, some clue beyond the preposterous announcement he had made. "I'll see you tomorrow at this time then, Walker." The councilman nodded curtly and turned to leave my office. I held onto the sides of my desk to keep from diving over and teaching him to change his concept of humor. The day was starting. If I got through it, giving a good show, I would be released from my Dream, he had said smugly. But if this was a dream, did I want probation to reality? * * * * * Horbit was a twitchy little man whose business tunic was the same rodent color as his hair. He had a pronounced tic in his left cheek. "I have to get back," he told me with compelling earnestness. "Mr. Horbit--Eddie--" I said, glancing at his file projected on my desk pad, "I can't put you back into a Dream. You served your full time for your crime. The maximum." "But I haven't adjusted to society!" "Eddie, I can shorten sentences, but I can't expand them beyond the limit set by the courts." A tear of frustration spilled out of his left eye with the next twitch. "But Warden, sir, my psychiatrist said that I was unable to cope with reality. Come on now, Warden, you don't want a guy who can't cope with reality running around loose." He paused, puzzled. "Hell, I don't know why I can't express myself like I used to."