absence

"And when I was asleep I had one of my favorite dreams. Sometimes I have it during the day, but then it's a daydream. But I often have it at night as well.

        And in the dream nearly everyone on the earth is dead, because they have caugh a virus. But it's not like a normal virus. It's like a computer virus. And people catch it because of the meaning of something an infected person says and the meaning of what they do with their faces when they say it, which means that people can get it from watching an infected person on television, which means that it spreads around the world really quickly.

      And when people get the virus they just sit on the sofa and do nothing and they don't eat or drink and so they die. But sometimes I have different versions of the dream, like when you can see two versions of a film, the ordinary one and the Director's Cut, like Blade Runner. And in some versions of the dream the virus makes them crash their cars or walk into the sea and drown, or jump into rivers, and I think that this version is better because then there aren't bodies of dead people everywhere.

[...]

      And I can go anywhere in the world and I know that no one is going to talk to me or touch me or ask me a question. But if I don't want to go anywhere I don't have to, and I can stay at home and eat broccoli and oranges and liquorice laces all the time, or I can play computer games for a whole week, or I can just sit in the corner of the room and rub a pound coin backwards and forwards over the ripple shapes on the surface of the radiator. And I don't have to go to France

[...]

      And then the dream is finished and I am happy."

Extrait de The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, de  Mark Haddon, ed. Vintage