That was the first night. The second night, I dreamed of a bridge collapsing in a city I’d never visited. The third night, a woman’s voice gave me the winning lottery numbers for a drawing that wouldn’t happen for another eight months. The fourth night, I dreamed of my own funeral. The casket was closed. No one cried. Someone had placed a single bruised plum on the lid.
The line went dead.
Not a light. A warmth . Like an egg remembering the hen. ovo 1.3.2
I dreamed I was standing in a field of glass flowers. Each one rang at a different pitch when the wind passed through. In the center of the field was a door. Behind the door was a hallway. At the end of the hallway, a child sat on the floor, drawing a picture of me.
The rain started three minutes before the auctioneer’s gavel came down. Ovo 1.3.2—the last prototype—sat on a velvet turntable, its shell the color of a bruised plum, humming a frequency only children and dogs could hear. That was the first night
I put my hand on its shell.
She looked up. “You’re late,” she said. “The accident happened yesterday.” The fourth night, I dreamed of my own funeral
I called the number etched into its base. A recording picked up: “You have reached the Department of Temporal Artefacts. If you are hearing this message, you have already opened it. Please do not close your eyes.”