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When it said the name a second time, he decided to answer.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI’ve been waiting for you, Everett. Where have you been? I couldn’t find you for so long.”
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œHave you forgotten? My name is Everett too. You put me to work on some problems, Everett, a long time ago. I’ve been working on them, and I think I’ve got some of the answers. But first you should tell me what you remember.”
    â€œThis is my house,” he said. “My name is Everett.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œI’m not sure yet. I’ll work on that one next. I think maybe you’re dreaming. Or else you took an overdose and this is a hallucination. Or perhaps a flashback. Just a memory of something. Not important. Or else the problem lies with me: did you turn me off? Or pass a magnet over my wiring? Is this some sort of test, Everett? I can’t know exactly what went wrong, but it’s been a long time . . .”
    He walked away from the computer and out of the house, to his car. The car was solar powered, and it had been out in the sun long enough now; it was charged. He thought he would go for a drive. He pressed his hand against the lock, which read his fingerprints; the car door opened, and the engine began quietly warming. He got in, and found that there was someone on the seat beside him. A little girl, in tattered jeans and a tee shirt, with fine brown hair all over her body and much of her face.
    â€œHello,” she said. “Are you going for a ride?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œCan I come?”
    â€œI guess so,” he said. “But what about your parents?”
    The girl shrugged, and at that moment Chaos woke up. She was beside him, just as in the dream, but they were still in the desert, in Kellogg’s car. The sun was coining up behind them, filling the car with light. Chaos felt desperately thirsty. He found the bottle of water on the seat between them and drank.
    â€œHello,” said the girl. Melinda, he remembered. Melinda Self.
    â€œHow long have you been awake?”
    â€œNot too long. You can sleep more. I don’t care.”
    â€œNo. I want to get going.”
    â€œCan I get some more food?”
    He gave her the car keys, and she went around and opened the trunk. Chaos rubbed at his eyes and squinted at the highway behind them. He was confident now that the Little Americans hadn’t followed them. He wondered what they’d made of Kellogg lying with his head bleeding beside the reservoir, and wondered too what Kellogg had told them about it.
    Melinda came back with an armload of cans. She dumped them on the seat, then picked one and opened it.
    â€œI was dreaming,” he said. “Not Kellogg’s dream. My own, the first one of my own.”
    â€œUh huh.”
    â€œIt was different,” he said. “Like I was someone else. Everything was different. There was a computer you could talk to, and a car with solar panels . . .”
    â€œI dreamed about a car.”
    â€œThis was different,” he said again. “It was made of plastic, I think, and it didn’t have keys like this. I don’t know, it was more like a golf cart.”
    â€œUh huh. I dreamed about it too. The car wasn’t driving, though. There was water and trees everywhere. You came out of the house—”
    Chaos sat quietly, absorbing this fact. The girl’s dream overlapped with his. The Kellogg effect, without any Kellogg.
    But maybe it was normal for the girl; she’d never had her own dreams. So it was her fault. With Kellogg gone, she’d simply latched onto whoever was nearest.
    He remembered Kellogg saying that the dream effect was nothing, that Chaos could do it himself if he tried. But that was just one of a million things Kellogg had said, contradicting himself at every turn.
    Kellogg was right about one thing, anyway: there was a lot Chaos