        Of course, he could still be imagining it.  He could be imagining the trip to the mall, he could be imagining that the hair was affecting radio transmissions, he could be imagining the letters in the sand, but if he was, it was a damned good hallucination.  The persistence and the repeatability were powerful arguments for it being real, as unlikely as it seemed.  He’d had a few vivid dreams before: once, when he’d fallen asleep in front of the TV he had a dream where all his friends were playing football.  Their conversation—which had seemed completely natural at the time—was completely incomprehensible, involving words that he barely recognized, although in his dreaming state, made perfect sense.  Upon awakening, he discovered that the show on TV was about innovations in AIDS treatment, and concluded that that was where his mental dialogue had been coming from.  After all, Interferon wasn’t a drug he spent much time thinking about.