For the first time in months, Alex Lin didn't sleep easy. At 3:07 a.m., he woke from a half-remembered dream where the city's lamplights flickered in Morse code, and his own mask whispered riddles in the voice of someone he'd almost—but not quite—been, once.
"Gramps?" he muttered into the dark.
But the old voice was quiet, and the city beyond his window shimmered with an odd expectancy.
Alex rolled out of bed, padded to his window, and let the cool air brush his face. The block looked normal: silent shops, the angular clock tower silhouetted against a star-cluttered sky, and a lone night pigeon walking with the solemn gravity of imminent genius.
Yet as Alex gazed, lights winked on in the Department of Impossible Things down the street, and a thin, persistent knock began at his door—not on the wood, but inside his very dreams.
He dressed quietly, feeling the sense of adventure rising. When he opened the door, there was no one in the hall, but a pale blue envelope floated, shimmering, just above the floorboards.
Beneath his breath: "Here we go again."
The Letter from the World of Lost Dreams
The envelope curled away from his fingers, unfolding itself like origami into a message that glowed, words bubbling and shifting before settling:
Dear Department of Impossible Things,
We're missing. We, the lost dreams, the unsung wishes, the hopes that were left behind, abandoned, or accidentally misplaced. Tonight we need you: our doors are opening, our boundaries are blurring, and if someone doesn't intervene, dreams might leave their sleeping hosts for good—this time, for reality.
Please come to the Hall of Sleepers at sunrise, and bring all the courage you once wished you had.
— The Collective of Lost Dreams, c/o The Dreamcatcher-in-Chief
Alex read it twice, laughter tickling at the edge of nerves. The only thing stranger than an invitation from art was a formal complaint from a population that was supposed to be imaginary.
He texted the team—Sam, Mina, Marcus, Logan, and Oliver—summoning them to the dream.
One by one, their replies lit up:
Sam: "Do dreams pay taxes?"
Mina: "I never left mine behind. But I'm still coming."
Marcus: "Curious. Will bring coffee. (Dream-roast blend?)"
Logan: "Statistically impossible, therefore exciting."
Oliver: "I have some unfinished business with my own."
Sunrise at the Hall of Sleepers
The Hall of Sleepers sat at the edge of Crescent Park—a place that, by daylight, was just a thin alley between two dull brick warehouses. But at sunrise, the walls rippled, and a wide marble staircase descended to a vast hall bathed in soft moonlight, filled with hundreds of gently snoring sleepers atop plush velvet sofas.
Above each dreamer, a hovering bubble displayed a swirling vision: childhood ambitions, landscapes of flying machines, rivers of music, mountains made of laughter, cities built of hope.
The team entered together, the echo of their footsteps muffled by the hush of dreaming souls.
Standing at the far end was a person—or what passed for one—dressed in layered coats sewn from patchwork memories. Their eyes flickered through a rainbow of expressions, and they wore a badge: "Dreamcatcher-in-Chief (Interim)."
"Welcome," said the Dreamcatcher, voice echoing like rain on rooftops. "Thank you for coming. You're our last hope."
Alex approached. "We got your message. What seems to be the problem?"
The Dreamcatcher gestured to the ceiling, where several dream-bubbles floated higher than the others, throbbing with color but slowly drifting toward cracks in the air itself.
"Dreamers are losing their dreams. Not just forgetting them—losing them. The dreams are leaving, determined to live on their own. Unless we find the cause, the city will wake up hope-blind, and the dreams will try to make themselves real out there."
Sam eyed the drifting bubbles. "What happens if they succeed?"
"Imagine a thousand hopes—good, bad, impossible—suddenly let loose. Love stories that rewrite true memories, ambitions that walk into offices refusing to be ignored, nightmares that don't wait for nightfall. The world's rules will blur."
Mina was watching the bubbles closely. "Some of these look familiar."
The Dreamcatcher nodded. "Your dreams are particularly conscious."
Marcus looked around, concern growing. "How do we start? Can we just… tell the dreams to return?"
The Dreamcatcher shook their head. "Dreams don't answer to logic. They answer to longing—the thing their dreamers most wanted and abandoned."
Logan's logic circuits whirred. "So we need to reconnect people to their lost wishes… to convince the dreams they're still wanted?"
Oliver's eyes shone. "Or help them integrate—to become inspiration, not regret."
Alex looked at the team, feeling something rise—a determined, communal Foolishness.
Entering the Dreamscape
One by one, the team donned soft silk sashes woven from dreamthread, provided by the Dreamcatcher. As they slipped into the slumbering chairs, Mina explained, "These will bind us to our own dreams, but let us move among others. Like lucid dreaming with a safety net."
They each lay back, the Dreamcatcher whispering at their head.
"Find your lost dream. See what it needs. Decide if it's ready to return, or if it needs to change."
The world spun, and Alex tumbled into darkness painted with a thousand motes of starlight.
Inside the City of Lost Dreams
Alex found himself standing on a street that looked eerily like the City of Shadows but was painted in the pastels of longing: doors everywhere, each labeled with a name, a hope, a nearly-forgotten song.
He saw Sam talking fervently with a dream-version of himself—a detective who solved not crimes, but every problem before it occurred. Sam's lost dream was simple: absolute foresight, a life free of surprises.
"How do you feel?" Alex called.
Sam shook his head. "Safe. But bored out of my mind. There's no adventure in perfection. I get it now—my dream left because I stopped needing certainty." The bubble above Sam's head winked out and zipped to join its slumbering self.
Mina, in another alley, met her dream—a world traveler who could speak with clouds and jump from century to century. "I always wanted greatness without loneliness," Mina told it. "But if I never rested and grew roots, all my stories would blur." Her dream bowed, turned, and melted back into her sleep.
Marcus found his younger self—ambitious, reckless, desperate to change the world overnight. "I gave up on you because I thought you were impossible," Marcus confessed to his dream, who grinned. "Maybe impossible is just the first step to new beginnings."
Logan was locked in debate with a triangle-shaped logic puzzle that insisted it could one day become the Theory of Everything. "I wish I'd finished you," Logan sighed. "But if you ever did, you'd stop being fun." The triangle happily folded itself into a paper crane and flew home.
Oliver bent over a tiny boy reading stories under a blanket. "All I ever wanted was to help and be wise. I forgot the joy of learning as I grew older." The boy smiled, took Oliver's hand, and together they walked back through the dream-gate, hand-in-hand.
Alex himself faced two doors.
One read: The Fool Who Saved the World Alone.
The other: The Friend Who Failed but Laughed Anyway.
He hesitated. The first door pulsed with power and glory; the second with warmth and a bittersweet harmony.
He grinned and pushed both open at once.
A torrent of color, laughter, and wild possibility swept him off his feet. "Both!" he shouted. "And neither. I choose we!"
His dream winked, nodded, and soared up above.
Waking to a Better World
The team awoke in the Hall of Sleepers as the city's first rays crept through stained glass. Around them, the dream-bubbles had all returned—hovering lower, brighter, full of new colors.
Chloe, their previous client, sat up from a doze, cheeks flushed with morning glow. "I dreamed I could ride a giraffe across an endless ocean," she told Alex, who smiled. "Hold on to that. Or better yet, try writing it down."
People all around woke slowly, stretching with the satisfaction of having finally caught up to parts of themselves they'd let slip away.
The Dreamcatcher stood at the foot of the hall, beaming. "You did it. Not every wish came home unchanged, but each found where it belonged."
The Aftermath: A World That Dares to Dream
Back at the Department, Ms. Paperworth made tea strong enough to ground even the wildest dreamers.
"Report," she said, her tone equal parts amusement and awe.
"Impossible wish retrieval mission: success," Sam said, "with only minor lingering side effects."
"What kind of side effects?" Ms. Paperworth asked.
Outside the window, a woman in a business suit was chatting with a street vendor—in flawless whale-song. On a rooftop, a man strummed an invisible guitar, conjuring unseasonable snowflake-chords.
Mina looked around at her friends. "This city always was full of dreams-on-the-loose. Now people are starting to notice—and use them wisely."
Alex lifted his mug. "Every dream risks becoming a nightmare or a miracle. Our job is to keep both in check. And maybe chase a few more lost wishes home."
The sun broke fully over the city, golden light blurring the boundary between what was real and what was dared.
Epilogue—A Knock at the Door, Again
That night, as Alex lay down to sleep, a tiny voice tapped at the edge of his mind.
"Hey, Fool?" It was Gramps—back at last, wise and teasing.
"Gramps?"
"You did good today. Next time, though, try not to invite so many dreams to breakfast."
"I make no promises."
That night, Alex dreamed, and for the first time in years, nothing ran away.