We were watching Mark Mothersbaugh play a solo gig at a very small venue upstate, maybe the dining room of a bed and breakfast. His name wasn’t his actual name in the dream, it was Phil I think, but it was that guy from Devo. He and his band played a set of four songs, each one long and distinctive and represented in a row abstract visual panels, maybe projected on the wall or maybe in my mind. When the set was over he declared he’d play them again in reverse order, and the panels were reversed. He did something else to them too, played them slower, or played them country, or something. S., J. and I were in an adjoining room but we could still hear. I went out into the main space to see. The crowd was mostly kids, as at a birthday party, and they were dancing in circles as kids might do. A few parents ringed the space. When the set was over everybody cleared out except the band taking down their gear. I looked for Phil. He approached me. I felt awkward to be prone in bed, in my bathrobe, as I was in real life. But he sat beside me, apparently not noticing. I was proud that here he was, talking to me. He addressed me with some familiarity, as though he’d seen me before and expected me to be there. He spoke sadly of a woman who’d just died, a musician. He assumed I knew who she was but I’d never heard her name, and felt foolish. I nodded solemnly. I wanted to tell Phil I’d seen him do that weird show at the New Music University—it was actually NYU, a few years ago—but I forgot his name was Phil. Was it Phil? It wouldn’t seem right to tell this anecdote without addressing him by name. We walked in silence through the room and I left to rejoin my family.

In my dream it was finally over. Microsoft called me and Jim in for a meeting in which they revealed that the last remaining chatbot was to go offline. It took place on a different floor of the building we worked in, though we were an independent company. Nothing had been said clearly or directly. Jim had to follow the senior person in attendance out into the hallway and mill around with her and others to glean the truth. As we walked away he told me and I said, “So this is it, no more platform, no more protocol,” almost excitedly. There was a thrill in encountering the brutal end of it all. Any trace of our technology evaporated by the man. I lost Jim on the way to the elevator bank. When I got in I went to the wrong floor and it opened to a restaurant. Someone called my name, as though my table was ready, but I knew it was for someone else. I flew into an internal dialog with familiar voices about how weird it is to hear your name and know it isn’t you.

My friend who went to rehab and I just saw for the first time in years in real life was the coach of a major international soccer team. They’d won a place in the Euro finals, but their top two players were injured, or unavailable for some other reason. I sat with him to talk. He asked me if I spoke German. “Nur ein bisschen,” I replied. And we exchanged a few words in German and that was the end.