I was under the desk at home, lighting matches and throwing them down. If the papers I was trying to light caught fire, I put it out quickly. It flared once, so I had to tell my dad, then I thought about getting a blanket.

I was in a very narrow pool in what could have been an industrial setting, swimming toward a woman who could have been a coach or a friend. I sensed that I was training for something big, even the Olympics, but the setting was all wrong — more like something from a Batman movie or a book than real life. I wanted to avoid the woman.

I had to go to the bathroom, but the toilets were lined up along the pool, and they were too high for me to reach, as though they had been built for giants, or I was very small.

Outside my elementary school auditorium, where I was waiting for a symposium to begin, I saw a man I recognized from HR, and he saw me. When he came over, I noticed that he carried a suitcase emblazoned with reach.com and realized I’d met him at another event.

I marveled at the idea that I was networking.

Inside the auditorium, the stage disappeared, and we could see Lake Erie as though through a window. The water was rising in impossibly shaped columns and in a cataclysmic tumult. The audience seemed frozen in terror, but I had to do something. The end seemed near.

At the administrative office, I found the staff going about business as usual. Through their windows I could see an idyllic sunny summer day. I ran to a door to the outside, opened it, and saw more sun. I recalled the horror in the auditorium and wondered which universe was real.