Another desperate demented doom-laden day had dawned and I had no choice but to simply go along with it and see where it led. See how things would go. See how things would pan out. Take my chances. That kind of thing. Looking out through the reinforced triple-layer lead silicate window of my shelter at the devastation and desolation that surrounded me, I couldn’t help thinking that the way things were going to pan out today was probably not going to be particularly great, all things considered…

Reality itself was in the process of breaking down, as far as I could tell. Reality was entering its decay phase. This was the only explanation that made sense to me – there was a generalized reality failure going on, a persistent glitch in the reality supply. The reality code had somehow become corrupted, even though it had long been supposed – by those people who like to pretend they knew about such things – to be incorruptible.  For some unaccountable reason this thought struck me as being very funny. I found myself laughing out loud, the first time I had done so for many years. Tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t contain myself. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. I laughed so much it started to worry me. I started to think that was going to do myself an injury – all of a sudden the laughter that was wracking my body became sinister, the laughter just wasn’t funny anymore. I found it frightening in fact and wished very much that it would stop. The laughter was the enemy. The laughter was tearing me apart. It was ripping me apart at the seams. The enemy had gotten inside me and it was destroying me. I had to do something. “Get out of me you enemy!” I roared, standing up far too quickly and sending everything on the table flying – coffee cup, saucer, notebook, my phone. Everything went everywhere. People turning around and staring at me with open mouths, gawping, wondering what in the name of God I was doing. What I was playing at. Then slowly turning back to whatever it was that they had been doing beforehand. Not wanting to be too obvious about staring at me. Going back to talking or eating or drinking their coffee or whatever they were doing and leaving standing there me in the midst of my confusion.

Only it wasn’t really confusion – it was just another spontaneous fantasy episode, that’s all. One of many that I had been having recently. This time I had imagined that I was back on Earth, in one of those generic coffee shop places that were everywhere. Costa or Starbucks or somewhere like that. That kind of thing. Imagining that I was enjoying a normal life, having a normal day. Just another spontaneous fantasy episode. That’s all. More evidence, to my mind, of the total break-down of reality that was enveloping everything…