The car hit me at 8 PM on a rainy Thursday, and I remember the sound of glass shattering, the feeling of being lifted off my feet, and then nothing but darkness.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital bed and a doctor was telling me it was 1967.

But the hospital was wrong. The walls were too white, the lights too bright, and the people wearing white coats had eyes that didn't match their faces. I asked what year it was, and they told me 1967, but the calendar on the wall read 2024.

I was confused. Had I fallen forward? Backward? Somewhere in between?

Dr. Stone came to see me the next day. He was a tall man with gray hair and steady hands, and he spoke in a voice that was calm and measured and completely artificial.

Daniel, he said, sitting down in the chair beside my bed, we're going to help you. But you have to be honest with us.

I wanted to be honest. I wanted to tell him that I didn't know what year it was, that I didn't know if I was in 1967 or 2024 or somewhere else entirely. But something stopped me—something deep inside that told me honesty wouldn't help.

The seven women came to see me over the next few weeks. They called themselves my aunts, but they didn't look like aunts. They looked like fragments of a memory I couldn't quite remember—each one beautiful and broken and hiding something dark beneath the surface.

You're going to marry Eleanor, said the oldest of them, Lady Catherine, her voice soft and sad. It's what's best for you.

I didn't know who Eleanor was. I didn't know who any of them were. But I knew that something was very wrong.

I began pruning plants in the hospital garden every morning. It was a small place, enclosed by high walls and filled with roses and jasmine and herbs I couldn't name. As I tended to the plants, I thought about what I knew—or rather, what I didn't know.

I knew that I had been a psychologist before the accident. I knew that I had specialized in dissociative disorders, in the way the mind fragments under trauma. I knew that I had written papers on the subject, that I was considered an expert.

But I didn't know if any of it was real.

Dr. Stone wanted me to marry Eleanor. Eleanor Price was twenty-six, beautiful in a cold, distant way, and she had eyes that never quite focused on anything. She was also, I learned, Dr. Stone's daughter—or his patient, or both, depending on who you asked.

Marry my daughter, Dr. Stone said over dinner in the hospital cafeteria. She'll take care of you. She understands what you're going through.

I looked at Eleanor and saw something in her eyes that I recognized—fear. Not of me, but of the world. A fear so deep it had become part of her DNA.

What do you want? I asked her later, when we were alone in the garden.

She smiled, and it was the saddest thing I had ever seen. I want to be real.

I began to suspect that the seven aunts were not real. That they were projections of my own mind, fragments of memories I had buried so deep I had forgotten they existed. Each one represented a different aspect of my life before the accident—my career, my relationships, my fears, my desires.

But how could I know? How could I tell the difference between reality and hallucination, between memory and invention?

The confrontation with Dr. Stone came in March 1968, when I discovered his office and found files on patients who had disappeared—patients who had been committed against their will, patients who had been subjected to experimental treatments, patients who had never been seen again.

You're not a doctor, I said, holding one of the files in my shaking hands. You're a predator.

Dr. Stone smiled. I'm a man who believes in order, Daniel. In control. In making the world a safer place by removing the dangerous elements.

Like me? I asked.

Like anyone who doesn't fit, he said. Anyone who questions. Anyone who sees too much.

I left the hospital that night. I didn't pack a bag. I didn't say goodbye to the seven aunts or to Eleanor or to Dr. Stone. I just walked out the back door and into the rain, and I kept walking until I couldn't feel my feet.

When I opened my eyes again, I was standing on a street corner in what looked like Manhattan, and the year was 2024, and my phone was ringing, and I knew—with absolute certainty—that I had finally woken up.

Or had I?

I looked at my phone. The date read May 12, 2024. I called a number I didn't remember knowing and waited for someone to answer.

Daniel? a voice said. Thank God. We've been looking for you.

I looked around at the city—bright, loud, alive—and wondered if this was real or another layer of the dream.

It doesn't matter, I said. I'm coming home.

And I walked toward the sound of the city, wondering if home was a place or a state of mind, and whether the two were really different.