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.

I dreamt of possible solutions. A hill somewhere. Carrying things up a hill.

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.

I was living in a house with others and there was a hard rain. We were watching it stream off the roof, wondering if terrible leaks would form. Someone lifted and tilted the house, so all the water flowed off the side. I was afraid it would fall over but it was propped by something, maybe a tree or wall. 

There was some trouble with the parent company. Those who’d been charged with turning deals returned with bad news. They presented at a major meeting of bigwigs and for some reason I was there too. Would there be layoffs? This question hung in the air but the mood in the large room was strangely buoyant, even whimsical. The topic turned to Minnesota Vikings players from the old days. Someone called me out for not contributing, though I had earlier. I cited a quarterback named Tony Podnous.

I was going to the Super Bowl, and it was at the Link. I was late but someone held up three fingers to the crowd coming in. I understood that to mean the Eagles were up by a field goal. When I got to my seat I saw that the score was actually 4-2. I went to get a beer. The vendor was way high up in the stands. A woman was serving and a few fans milled around. I was wearing my Harold Carmichael jersey and a jacket. The jacket was kind of falling off my shoulders. The woman looked at me and said I should put my jacket more on. “Did she just call me a moron?” I asked the people around me. They sort of laughed. When I returned to my seat we were losing 12-4. We had the ball near the goal line but we fumbled. We kept trying to pick it up but player after player let it slip through his hands or out from under his body. M. R. and C. W. were at the game. I saw them in a section below me. I could hear them talking about how they needed to place a bet for their rich friend. I tried to text M. I kept trying to press the correct keys on my phone but it was impossible.

I hung out with Jerry Garcia at some house with people I knew milling around, a kind of communal place of the type we all used to live in. He made a reference to the Kinks at one point and I tried to engage him about them, saying they really were great, weren’t they? He responded distractedly, and I felt foolish. I was afraid I was boring him. I wondered whether he might like to play some tunes on guitars, wondered in fact whether that’s the only thing he might want to do. I never did get around to asking him.