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to deliberately lose track of time; unfortunately, there was no way to tell whether or not it was working. He tried losing himself in thought, using his experiences in the Nusquam ’s ballroom as fodder for the imagination. If he’d learned anything there, it was that the spectrum of realities was so vast and imposing that he’d never run out of things to imagine that might be possible somewhere.
    That line of thought naturally lead right back to Summerhill himself. Supposing that he didn’t come from the World of the Pale Gray Sky originally, where else could he have come from? Someplace that had dogs, apparently. That didn’t really narrow it down, though, as quite a few of the other guests he’d spoken to knew what dogs were, which implied that dogs were pretty common across a variety of universes.
    Actually, that in itself was pretty telling with regards to the nature of different realities and their commonalities and how they worked, but it left open the question as to how or why they should be like that. Being an interdimensional traveler was evidently quite headache-inducing.
    Summerhill’s imagination had nothing to rein it in, so he tried to focus on what shreds of information he did have in order to keep his mind from wandering too far. There were the dreams he’d been having, ones where he’d seen worlds and cities and people. Had he just invented them in his sleep? Or were there shades of memory still lurking somewhere in his mind? Try as he might, he was unable to conjure up anything from before the World of the Pale Gray Sky. 
    Perhaps he was going about this all wrong. Maybe it had all started there, and the things in his head had always just—
    “Mr. Summerhill. I’ve brought your food.”
    Summerhill sat up with a jolt. Standing outside the buzzing force field, carrying a covered platter of silver and gold, was Katherine. She was still dressed in her hostess’ outfit, looking as proper as ever.
    “Do they usually send hostesses to bring prisoners their food?” Summerhill asked as he leaned forward and swung his legs off the edge of the bed.
    Katherine huffed, the curls of hair over her forehead jostling from that puff of air. She pressed her finger against the device in her ear, and the energy field in front of the cell deactivated. “I volunteered, if you must know,” she said as she stepped inside. “My shift is ending anyway, and I thought I’d see how you were doing.”
    “Well, I’m still in a cell,” Summerhill replied. “You know, where you helped put me.”
    Taking a few more steps forward, Katherine set the fancy platter on Summerhill’s bed. “And what would you have had me do?” she asked. “Let you wander around the ship despite the fact that you don’t belong here and I have no idea who or what you are?”
    “I told you all that.” The dog tried to suppress the growling in his throat. “My name is Summerhill, and I was told I needed your help. Though I’m beginning to think that was all a ploy to make sure I landed in here.”
    Katherine paced over to the wall and leaned against it. “You seem really earnest, Mr. Summerhill, and if your story is true, then I sympathize with you, I really do.” She sighed. “But I can’t just take what you say at face value. Surely you must understand that.”
    “So why are you here, then?” Summerhill was ignoring the food that he’d been brought, perhaps a bit too pointedly. “Did you come to actually hear me out this time? Or just to gloat about getting me stuck in here?”
    Katherine growled with frustration under her breath. For several seconds she eyed Summerhill in silence, then she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You said that you were on the run. What did you mean by that?”
    “What did I mean?” Summerhill thought again about his escape from the World of the Pale Gray Sky—it had been escape, hadn’t it? “I don’t know. I mean, like I said, I left the place I came from and I was told to find you.