Commish - Neverending Dream.

A gentle breeze whistled along the sidewalk as Sarah wandered to nowhere in particular. She was as average-looking as a single person could be: brown hair, brown eyes, just a little over five feet, all wrapped up in a simple outfit of navy blue garments.

At first glance, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that peaceful scene. The sky was light blue. Birds chirped. The streets were clean and the lawns well-trimmed.  Then, the more one thought about it, the more there was something just slightly off.

Sarah stopped. She looked around. She had seen this place before.

Oh, no,  Sarah thought. It's that dream again, isn't it?

Sarah knew very well what was wrong with that world: It was fake. Every inch of it was as still and bland as plastic. The breeze felt as real as waves in a wave pool. Even her outfit, from her jacket to her skirt, was perfectly folded as if by a machine. There was no imagination nor change to this world, no matter how many times she visited it.

Then she saw the cat again.

The cat was a fairly average cat until one noticed how perfect his markings were. Just so, he had little white mittens on each of his four paws. Just so, a diamond of white made his nose a rosy pink. Just so, his emerald eyes stood out from the black fur on his face. He was an uncanny cat.

The cat was always there, watching and waiting.

"Umm...hello," Sarah said.

"Hello," the cat said back.

Sarah jumped. She had not expected this cat to talk. His mouth was moving better than that of any CGI cat. It looked almost too realistic.

"How can you talk?" she asked. The cat closed his eyes in a kitty smile, then opened them again.

"A fine question, young lady," the cat said, "and one that I have asked myself from time to time." He jumped atop a fence that separated the nearest house's backyard from the sidewalk. "All I know is that I am here."

"Where is 'here,' anyways?" Sarah asked. She looked around. It reminded her of something out of a sitcom, or perhaps even a doll set. The more she looked at how perfectly trimmed everybody's front lawn was, the more fake it seemed.

"You see before you a utopia," the cat said. "Nothing ever changes. Even death stops in this area."

"Wow," Sarah said. That certainly explained the absence of roadkill, dead leaves, and other such decaying things.

"The problem is," the cat continued, "it's not supposed to exist."

Sarah blinked. "Then...why is it here?"

"Because that's what this place is for," the cat said. "This little slice of life is the sole area in which things that have concepts, but not realization, are truly real and tangible."

The cat looked to the nearby house's front yard. Reaching just slightly over the fence was a tree laden with perfectly red, shiny apples. "Go ahead; try and eat some of that fruit off that overhanging tree."

Sarah reached over the fence. With the gentleness of selecting a fragile glass sculpture from a shelf, she plucked and apple off of that tree. She took a bite. It tasted better than the pesticide-pumped ones at the grocery store.

"Now look again," the cat said.

In the exact same spot as her apple had been, another, perfectly identical apple had suddenly grown. Sarah looked at the apple on the tree, then at the one on her hand, then back at the tree. They were identical down to the little specks that were as unique to individual apples as freckles were to people.

"That's impossible..." Sarah said. Just to be sure, she plucked the apple off again. And again. And again. Ten apples rested at the roots of the tree, all perfectly identical, before Sarah finally realized that the supply would not end.

The cat looked to her. "Is it?"

BEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP!!!

Sarah slammed her hand down on the snooze button. That button was the only thing keeping her from ever finishing that strange dream. Yes, she would occasionally dream of other things -once, she had a dream that killer hamsters had successfully infiltrated the world's political system - but that dream in the impossible world kept coming up. She would never remember exactly what went on from dream to dream while she was awake, but whenever she found that spot again, she would go through the motions as if she had been there before, then slowly recall the place as if by deja vu.

As usual, Sarah found herself thinking about the dream as she drove to work. She worked at an office building about thirty minutes away from her house. Her job was to help make budding businesses more visible on the internet. So far, she had done small pages for a sandwich place, a marketing firm, a salon, and several other small businesses. Her job also consisted of following related businesses on Twitter and Facebook and pushing "Like" on posts that praised the budding businesses.

The rest of the day proceeded without incident. She drove back home and took a shower to wash off the day's staleness. She had dinner, brushed her teeth, and went to bed.

Then she dreamt again.

Without knowing what she was doing or where she was going, Sarah's body began walking. She was dressed in a blue outfit as usual. Eventually, she knew, she would encounter that cat.

Sure enough, he sat on the sidewalk before her, just waiting to say hello again.

"Hello," Sarah said.

"Hello," the cat responded. Sarah still jumped a little, but quickly readjusted to being in the presence of a talking animal.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure." The cat's tail twitched. "Anything you would like to know, I shall tell."

Sarah suddenly realized that she did not like how this cat was talking. He was not going to give her the whole truth - only what she asked about. That meant she had to choose her words carefully.

"Why am I here?" she asked. "You said that this place should not exist, so how am I able to get here? Why does it 'exist' here and nowhere else?"

The cat scratched his right ear. Then he looked up at Sarah and said, "This is a little  blind spot on the world's radar. It is sort of like a bug in a computer system. You and I are glitches, which is why we can access it like this."

Sarah blinked. "'Glitches?'"

The cat nodded with his eyes as cats do. "Yes. Glitches. We aren't supposed to exist, but we do anyways. I'm not even supposed to be alive, let alone talking."

"Huh?"

"Do not worry about it," the cat said. "The world put us here for safe keeping, as it were. We do not disturb anything here, as you noticed last time."

That was true. This place was locked forever. Nothing would ever change, but that was not the way things were supposed to be.

"Wait a minute," Sarah said. "Why do I exist in the real world, then?" She hesitated to use the term "real world;" the current world she was in was just as tangible as the world she woke up to. She only realized it was fake after focusing on the little things that felt off about it.

"Like I said, we are glitches," the cat responded. "Of course...the world does have virus protection."

"Wha-"

BEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP!!!  

Sarah hit the snooze button again. That meant that it was time to get herself out of dream land and into the world of the flesh. She dragged herself out of bed and began to wash her face as usual.

"Ugh...why can't I live in that world with the infinite apples?" she asked her reflection.

Work was just as monotonous as ever. If a restaurant they were working with got a new menu item, she would add whatever they wanted. She would still check Facebook posts, and occasionally add some quotes as testimonials on the page. The way of the future was not big, flashy webpages; it was things like Facebook that gave instant updates of where everyone was and what they were doing instead of being updated only once a week.

On her way back home, her car suddenly screeched to a halt. A cat with perfectly-trimmed 'mittens' and a perfect white diamond on his nose had just crossed her path. It quickly scampered off. Sarah noticed its green eyes looking at her from across the street. The light turned green, but the image did not leave her mind.

Sarah knew what she had to do: she had to go to sleep.

Sarah ran into her house as quickly as she could. She ate a very quick microwavable dinner, brushed her teeth, had a glass of water, then tried to sleep. It was harder than she thought it would be; she was going to bed about an hour earlier than usual.

It took about thirty minutes for her to get to sleep. For the rest of that time, she was staring at the dark ceiling. If she squinted, she thought she could see colors in the darkness. She did not know when she drifted off; all she knew was that she suddenly found herself in that other world.

The world played itself out before her: Houses. Sidewalk. Blue outfit. Sarah knew exactly where she was going. All she had to do was keep walking until the cat with perfect spots of white showed up. She broke into a run in an attempt to get to that point.

It did not work. The horizon never changed. Alongside her were the same houses, the same trees, and the same flawless yards and sidewalks. She was going nowhere fast.

"Oh? In a hurry, are we?" the cat asked. Sarah continued running, but it was as if she had been stuck on a treadmill. She was not approaching the cat any faster than if she had been walking the whole time.

"All you will do is exhaust yourself, my dear," the cat said. He cleaned his face with a paw before continuing. "This world knows when you should meet me. Trying to speed our encounter up will get you nowhere."

Sarah stopped running. "Thank you," she said. She was breathing hard. She hoped, at least, that she could squeeze out her questions to the cat. If there was a time limit, she would have to ask him quickly.

"I wonder what made you hurry in the first place?" the cat asked. He turned to Sarah with what she could have sworn was a sly look. "Did something happen?"

Sarah caught her breath. "Yeah! I saw you in the real world!"

"Ooohhhh? And what then?" the cat asked.

"Then I realized that I shouldn't be in the real world," Sarah said. Things were coming out in a horribly messy stream, but she hoped the cat would understand.

"I see," the cat responded.

"And the world is like a giant computer, right?" Sarah asked.

"Yes, it is."

"So...is there a way I could move myself from that world to this world?"

"Of course," the cat said. "Just use this."

The cat pulled out a small, black piece of plastic out of thin air. Without wondering exactly where it had come from, Sarah examined the item. The thing was only 5 centimeters long,and comprised entirely of black plastic. It was decorated with a marble that shone blue at one angle and red-purple at another.  Whatever this device was, Sarah recalled seeing it somewhere before, but could not place where or in what context.

She pushed a button on one side of the device. Out popped a silver bit that fit into a USB port.

"Is this a flash drive?" Sarah asked. The cat nodded.

"It contains the programming for this world. Be careful with it," the animal said.

BEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP!!!

As always, Sarah hit the snooze button on her alarm clock. She wished she could have gotten an alarm clock that played whatever CD or MP3 player was attached to it. That beep was getting annoying.

Click!

As Sarah got out of bed, something rattled about in the covers. There was a great wrinkling of sheets as she felt around inside her bedspread. After feeling around in the creases and folds, Sarah finally pulled out the

It was the USB drive, complete with the dangling, iridescent marble.

"No way..."  Sarah uttered. She had only seen that drive in a dream. What was it doing here, in the real world? Dreams could not yield actual items. The idea that one could hack the world just like a computer was absurd as well.

Yet there it was. The only way to find out whether the cat was telling the truth or not was to put the drive into a computer and find out.

She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and went to work as usual. While "Liking" any post that mentioned Big Nero's Pizza, she plugged the USB drive into the tower of her computer. The computer acknowledged that it had received a new device; Sarah told it to open the drive.

Instantly, her screen went crazy. Three black windows popped up, each scrolling quickly with gray-white programming text. As coding went by, Sarah wondered if Windows 7 was ready to handle messing with the universe, or if the software used to create the world ran on a completely different processor. Maybe it would not work on Macs. Sarah waited for the computer to finish whatever it was doing, if it could.

Much to her surprise, a blue window popped up on the screen. It had a logo saying "Worldcom" with a happy blue globe. Half of the globe was a green grid. There was no install button; all Sarah had to do was click "View Files" to look at the areas within the world.

There were more zones than she thought. Besides Earth, other planets had their own folders. Some that she had not heard of had files for intelligent life, whose names read as boxes and scribbles on her screen. She was tempted to copy and paste herself to Mars, just to see what would happen.

Sarah shook her head. No, she had to find Earth, and she had to find that strange place that was not quite on the world's radar. That was it.

Earth was easy enough to find. There were folders within folders for continents, countries, cities, and districts. By clicking into enough folders, she was able to find her exact office building, her cubicle, and, finally, a file labelled "Sarah" with her last name.

Finding the place of non-existence was harder. She tried searching under things like "utopia" and "dreamland," but wound up with no relevant results. There were some folders, yes, but she could tell from one glance at their contents that they were not the places she was looking for.

Sarah tried a different tactic: After a computer deletes things, there are usually 'ghost files' that can still be accessed. With a few punches of her keyboard, Sarah found them. They were shown as faded images of regular folders.

There she found several folders. She clicked through all of them. The one that matched her dream the most, based on its contents, was labeled "americandream0001."

Now came the tricky part:  Sarah went back to the folder that had her location at that very moment. She right-clicked her file and selected "Copy."

Instantly, Sarah felt her head begin to throb. Her vision became blurred and watery. She was seeing two of every file as she pasted herself into the ghostly dream world.

The throbbing got worse. Sarah had one palm on her face as she went back to her location on Earth. Seeing blurry doubles was bad enough; seeing into another world whenever she blinked was a whole different ball game. One second, she would be in the office, crouched over a computer screen; the next, she would be in the other world, wearing her machine-pressed outfit.

Just one more thing, Sarah reminded herself.

She clicked on the her file in Earth's folder. Then she pressed "delete."

Instantly, she was transported to that strange world she had seen in her dreams. She began walking, as usual, looking for that strange cat with perfect white markings. She took her time and came upon him at the usual moment before she woke up.

"So you figured it out," the cat said. "Good."

After their encounter, the dream did not end. It kept going. There was no alarm clock to wake Sarah up. She was forever walking in a non-existent dream land.

Nobody on Earth knows what happened to Sarah. Those that do remember her do so only vaguely, as if she was somebody they chanced to meet on the street and never saw again. They never remembered what color her hair was, what she wore when she met them, or what she was like as a person. All they knew was that she could have been any Sarah.

The only signs that she might still exist came in the form of strange, lucid dreams.  People would report seeing a girl walking down the street and talking to a cat, but otherwise going nowhere.

"It's weird," they would say, "but I felt like I had met her before."