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If you’ve not dreamed, you’ve never truly slept. Dreams are the place where you can be yourself; do anything, be anything. The mind set free.

I don’t care one way or the other if the big A is using you to scratch an itch, but think very carefully of actions, Wonky. They have a dismaying tendency to be followed by consequences, and sometimes quite bad ones.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not,” he said, “it’s what everyone believes that’s important.”

“I always really admired you growing up. Always smiling through your unhappiness. A real inspiration.”

“I wasn’t unhappy.”

“You looked unhappy.”

“Looks can be deceptive.”

“All too true,” she said, “but I meant what I said: inspirational in a sort of tragic way, like you were the failure in the family, but always looked on the bright side of everything.”

“You’re very kind,” I said, long used to Megan’s ways, “but it could have been much worse: I could have been born without tact or empathy, and be shallow, self-absorbed and hideously patronizing.”

“Agree?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t like subordinates always agreeing,” she said. “Sycophants have no place in my department. You’re to speak your mind when the opportunity calls for it.”

“How will I know when that is?”

“I shall inform you.”

To a text-based life-form, unpredictable syntax and poor grammar is a source of huge discomfort. Ill-fitting grammar are like ill-fitting shoes. You can get used to it for a bit, but then one day your toes fall off and you can’t walk to the bathroom. Poor syntax is even worse. Change word order and a sentence useless for anyone Yoda except you have.

Having to mix with dimwits is hideously boring. Great-Uncle Mycroft put it best when he said that for a genius this planet is excruciatingly dull, only made briefly more illuminating when another genius happens along.

Friday nodded and took a deep breath. “Has anyone noticed how short attention spans seem to have cast a certain latitude across the nation?”

“Do I ever,” I replied, rolling my eyes and thinking of the endlessly downward clicking of the Read-O-Meter. “No one’s reading books anymore. They seem to prefer the mind numbing spectacle of easily digested trash TV and celebrity tittle-tattle.”

“Exactly,” said Friday. “The long view has been eroded. We can’t see beyond six months, if that, and short-termism will spell our end.”

The Commonsense Party’s first major policy reversal of perceived current wisdom was with the scrapping of performance targets, league standings and the attempt to make subtle human problems into figures on a graph that could be solved quickly and easily through “initiatives.” Arguing that important bodies such as the Health Service should have the emphasis on care and not on administration, the Commonsense party forced through legislation that essentially argued, “If it takes us ten years to get into the shit, it will take us twenty years to get out—and that journey starts now.”

About ten degrees upslope of Fiction, I could see our nearest neighbor: Artistic Criticism. It was an exceptionally beautiful island, yet deeply troubled, confused and suffused with a blanketing layer of almost impenetrable bullshit.

Sadly, a lifetime in law enforcement tends not to create a bunch of grateful villains happy that you have shown them the error of their ways, but rather a lot of disgruntled ne’er-do-wells eager for payback.

I don’t think God has any more idea than you or I about what’s going on.