"Would anyone like anything?" Abby asked, indicating the table in the dining area of the living room. "I put out a little something. Not much. I'm sorry. I didn't begin the day expecting guests."​

     Skip didn't bother with a paper plate. He just went over to the table to grab crackers and cheese to shove into his mouth.

     "I need something to settle my stomach," he said.

     Cathy made a finger sandwich out of crackers and cheese slices.

​     Alison looked at the food but didn't touch anything.

     Malika got up from the love seat long enough to grab a bottle of water for her and Niki. As far as the crackers and that other stuff went, though...

     "We just ate," she said.

     "There was a war in my dream," Skip said. "There was a war, and I was watching it."

     "Nothing like that in my dream," Niki said.

​     "Yeah. I was on a different planet or in another dimension, I don't know, but there weren't a lot of humans there, only aliens, but there were a lot of different kinds of aliens, and I didn't feel that weird being there at all." 

     "Were they attacking you?" Niki asked.

     "No, nothing like that. We were all there to watch this war on this three-dimensional screen that took up an entire amphitheater, the walls, the ceiling, everywhere but the floor. A billion starships came one way, a billion starships came the other way, and, when they hit, WHAM! WHAM!"

     "Because the aliens in my dream did nothing but attack me," Niki said.

     No one who'd had the dream would look in Niki's direction.

     "Getting a little tired of this," Niki said. "I didn't make it, did I? I mean, we're all talking about battles, about warfare, and people always go down when there's a war. Did I go down?"

​     "It was just a dream," Trevor said.

     "Alternate reality," Gramps said. "That's what I believe."

CONTINUE