He phoned in sick, having woken up vibrating. They had to pull him out from under a big pile of sweat.
On the news, reports of a national reality shortage. Also they read out a list of recently deceased dogs (they don’t normally do that). He had been reading a book that convinced him it might be possible for him, a human, to fly – that wasn’t what the book was about, but reading between the lines, he understood how it might be possible.
All day he suffered from moments in which perspective seemed to zoom out and he became aware of his nonsensical position in the world, in the universe, in time – and not just his, but that of everyone and everything else. In those frequent moments, he felt like he was going to fall and never stop falling, so he carefully made his way down to the ground and hugged it. He came to believe he could feel the earth’s bones moving, shifting to respond to his touch.
Late afternoon, they sent out an engineer to try and set him right.
“Get serious,” the engineer told him.
He wrote this on a piece of paper and stuck it to the wall so he might remember how serious he ought to be.