OK. So I had to prove that I was awake now and that everything that came before, all this stuff about stuff not being real, all this idea stuff, all this THINKING stuff, all this understanding stuff, all this, in short, imaginary stuff had, in fact, just been a dream, and that things weren't in fact not real, and that everything was NOT, in fact, just a dream, and so to prove this I ran outside into the street.

When I got there, in the snow, I looked around -- but by the time I realized I wasn't wearing any clothes, it was already too late. People were arriving at the church on the rocks across the street. Or was it a university?

Whatever it was, the cops came down the path from it, heading in my direction, and I darted back into the apartment building. A moment ago, I hadn't done anything wrong, but now I could be arrested just for running from the police. So from here on I could disregard all law because I was already heading for the electric chair or gas chamber if caught.

To get away, I thought I'd go up to the roof and then dash from rooftop to rooftop as I'd seen done in the movies, but there were already helicopters up there waiting, so I ran down a few flights, broke into an apartment, and crawled out onto its clothesline and pulled myself, hand over hand, across the narrow courtyard far below to the next building and into the window of another apartment.

This time someone was waiting and had watched me come across.

"The police," I called out to him. "Isn't it time they stopped picking on us criminals!!"

I don't know if that moved him towards not turning me in, but inside his apartment I could hear rich people in the next room arguing: "yeah, but MYYYY philanthropic acts are so much MORE philanthropic than YOURRRR philanthropic acts."

Fortunately this building was much closer to the next building up the street and his next door neighbor's window faced it and once we broke into his place, all we had to do was lay a board across to the open window on the other side of the narrow space between buildings.

He helped me do this because he believed that the constitution should be declared unconstitutional and I agreed to get on the Supreme Court and actively lobby for his cause as soon as I got away from the police.

Everyone knew the unconstitutionality of the constitution would send civilization into an infinite recursive loop from which there is no return, only nonexistence. But also, no one gave a fuck, and I actually believed I would keep up my end of the deal. After all, my many Nobel Prizes and Academy Awards make me a virtual shoe-in for any executive, legislative, or judicial slot virtually anywhere. The only reason I hadn't been offered the Supreme Court before was because everyone thought I'd turn it down, or else that I'd keep bringing proceedings to a halt by hocking up huge wads of mucus all the time.

I crawled in through the window of the next apartment building and the apartment was empty, so I thought I'd make myself at home and rest here for a while.

The person who lived here was obviously rigging a persona for World Gossip -- in the hopes that he or she would be picked up and carried to vast wealth as the world's focus of alternating pity and hatred for many months and years to come and, if lucky, for eternity, carried aloft by history herself.

At first, when the world realized it had used up all its celebrities and didn't know who to gossip about any more, in desperation, its agents began scanning all local neighborhood/workplace gossip everywhere, giving the most salacious a shot at the vacant world stage.

In turn, people rose to the occasion, turning their tchotchka lives into ebay pages of the eternal hope of becoming the object of worshipful derision.

But gossip left to the mob, gossip by and about the masses, does not perform its true societal role of keeping people in line, establishing societal norms, and creating a perverse kind of social cohesion.

Suddenly, the unknown person whose unknown life had sparked these adrenalin-fuelled sociological musings came home, and rather than see the unfortunate fleshing out of what I already knew to be the case, I shimmied out onto the apartment's clothesline attached to the next building up the street. All the way across, though, I could feel this sinking in my stomach. When I got to the other side, the window -- as I'd noted beforehand but didn't mention till now, not wishing to worry the reader unnecessarily or for any longer than necessary -- the window was closed, and I had to smash it with my bare fist to get in.

Somebody was home but they fainted when they saw my bloody hand so I was able to grab a towel and head out the window on the opposite side of the apartment -- but when I got there, there was no building facing. I'd reached the corner of 2nd Ave. and 10th St. I had to climb out on the ledge and try to move down 10th street jumping from ledge to ledge.

When I looked down -- into an abyss of smoke and emptiness -- I realized the world had been collapsing behind me as I ran.

My life flashed before me.

1957: "Stop complaining. when I was your age we had to walk 5 miles through the snow to school everyday."

2020: "Stop complaining. When I was your age we all thought we'd have to die some day."

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