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Still, the people who feared 'The Thing' tried to defeat it. They tried to turn the world back to the way it was before 'The Thing' emerged on the horizon. Since they couldn't capture 'The Thing' itself, they bulldozed down some of the houses that had become wonderfully spacious and beautiful in its presence. They did their attacks secretly at first, in the night, right with the people sleeping in their houses, the very people who had benefited the most from the influence of 'The Thing'. As far I could tell from the dream nothing happened that changed anything in the world. No one protested. No one interfered. The sun kept on shining. Still, something did change.
Something struck me as odd one day a long time later. It was something that didn't seem to be linked to 'The Thing' at all in any particular manner. I found it strange, because I hadn't noticed it before. I recalled that I needed new running shoes at the time and had mentioned the fact to my dad in passing. He nodded and said something about "accounts" and within moments a list of financial portfolios and their value flashed onto the TV screen in white letters. Seconds later the figures vanished and dad replied to me sadly that the shoes would have to wait for a week. So I didn't think much more about it, and in a week the new shoes were provided.
Another thing also struck me as odd some time later. It seemed to me that the images of 'The Thing' that were always time-sliced between TV ads appeared less frequent than they had before, and were also less seen everywhere else. I also suddenly realized that this trend had actually begun before the incidence with the running shoes. I had dismissed the new trend at first as insignificant, until it became glaringly obvious one day that the images were no longer appearing as frequently as we had become accustomed to seeing them. I mentioned the fact to my dad who simply laughed and said that this was a good sign, adding that we wouldn't be bothered with "this nuisance" anymore.
Nevertheless it seemed odd that something that I had grown fond of had gradually disappeared until it could no longer be seen, except on rare occasions. All of my nagging concerns about this trend came to the foreground one day when our TV stopped functioning. The incidence of the failing TV had sorely upset my dad. He had lost access to his portfolio. In a rage of his temper that had become more intense and always seemed linked to his portfolio he pounded his fist on the TV as if to jolt it back to life. Instead of coming back to life however, the whole thing simply disintegrated.
We rushed out immediately to buy a new one, an even bigger one than we had before. We were fortunate that we did, because when we returned the entire huge building in which we had lived had collapsed and crumbled into dust. Nor were we the only ones so affected. As we beheld the catastrophe and cried over it, we looked into the valley blow us, and there too, even while we looked down onto the city where we had just come from to purchase the new TV, as if an Earthquake had struck the whole world, the entire city in the valley disintegrated before our very eyes into a pile of rubble and dust. We suddenly found ourselves without a place to go to, forced to be living in dust and shambles, scrambling to find things to eat in the forest and to cover ourselves with leaves as shelter from the cold.
I awoke in tears from this dream. I cried for our tragedy, but mostly because 'The Thing' that had made everything beautiful could no longer be seen anywhere. Its images seemed to have been erased throughout the universe as if they had never existed.
"What do you make of this?" I asked everyone.
"You may have seen our future as it might be," answered Sylvia.
"But what was this thing? 'The Thing' was a profound presence that had no name, that no one could touch. It had been everywhere and had made our world bright. Then it diminished and was no more to be seen. What was it that we called, 'The Thing?'" I asked. "Is there such a thing?"
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