Your city apartment

First thing first, we should probably get home, you think to yourself. Let's take this one step at a time. Your apartment is in the middle of downtown; it won't be hard to find people if this strange man is telling the truth, and if he isn't its probably about time we woke up back at home.

Mind clear with the image of your bedroom ready, you look to Charles with a nod.

"Got a place in mind, have you?" Charles asks. "Alright then. I'll open the door now. The light's gonna be a bit blinding at first, but just will yourself and walk on through, understand?"

Giving him another affirmative nod, he clasps the metal of the silver handle and pulls backwards, slowly swinging the massive door open. It creaks as a powerful light escapes from its depths, engulfing the area and cutting your vision off entirely.

"Remember, lad," you hear Charles speak up as you close your eyes in the shower of light. "Don't overthink things. It's that simple, you hear?"

Unable to see anything around you or confirm your surroundings, you take a step forward and begin walking towards the light...

...

...

Sitting up with a jolt, you take a deep breath as you open your eyes. Looking around, you see the familiar whites and blacks of the interior of your apartment. Placing your hands down, you feel the familiarity of the bed which you've spent so much time sleeping in on.

Without a doubt, this is home, and you're certainly glad to be here.

Was it all a dream? If it was, then why you are clothed? You certainly wouldn't sleep in a pair of jeans and shoes. Furthermore, why don't remember how you fell asleep? In fact, there's a gaping hole in your memory—you can't remember what went on at all throughout the entirety of yesterday.

"A **** that made me forget everything, maybe...?" you mutter aloud to yourself in open thought as you hop off your bed. "Alright, alright...no clue what that was about, but whatever. Maybe I went out with some friends and got just a bit too trashed." More words come as you continue to conversate with yourself while making your way to your kitchen, opening drawers and grabbing materials to prepare breakfast. "So, that's all I've gotta do. Get to work, so I can pay for things things like that and further my career in baboon arseolo—"

You pause your sentence, realizing what you're about to say. Even if it was a dream, you certainly seem to remember that part well enough. With a deep sigh, you roll your eyes and continue assorting your breakfast, and get ready to go to work. At least that part doesn't seem to be true, damn baboons....

...

You arrive at work just in time for your daily 9am start-of-the-day meeting. You find a seat while everyone assembles themselves, and Jen starts up the powerpoint.

After a few minutes, Jen clears her throat, and everyone looks towards the front of the room.

"Good morning everyone", Jen starts.

But you can't manage to pay her any attention. In the bottom corner of her powerpoint, where normally you would see the orange and black company logo, you instead see the bright red behind of a cartoon monkey staring right back at you.

You sit there trying not to look agape, and completely confused. Could it really be? Charles was real? This isn't a dream?

You sit nervously, as Jen starts into her morning ritual speech. Sure enough, soon she is rambling off sales numbers, client interests, the month's expected quotas, and a hundred other things that you could recite from memory if you had to.

But you can't focus on all of that. You can only focus on that red bottom'ed monkey in the corner of the presentation.

Clearly, what we need to do, is find an innocuous way of testing out last night's dream. Surely this can't be a coincidence?

This shouldn't be too hard. You look at Jen. She's the company's hardass c-level exec. Hard nosed, hard working, and high enough up the company ladder that everyone has to jump when she speaks. She likes it, and runs her camp with a military zeal, despite not following any of her own guidelines herself.

But she's definitely under 40. So this should be easy, just ask some question that would normally get you slapped for interrupting the meeting, and see what happens. Worst case scenario, we just have to play nice for an extra day or two, right?

"Sorry Jen, could you repeat those last numbers? I didn't quite manage to hear them"

"No problem John, I was just saying..."

You sit there in stunned silence, again. Any other day of the week, interrupting her like that would have gotten you on Jen's shit list. You revel for a brief moment of freedom from the daily corporate grind, and then get back to thinking.

Okay, this might actually be happening. We should keep testing.

"I'm sorry Jen, this just really isn't coming through this morning. You're saying we are only supposed to meet 110% of our quarterly sales numbers this month? Shouldn't that be higher?"

"Well, anything over 110% seemed quite aggressive to me John, but if you want to aim higher, I surely won't stop you. Let's take John's suggestion, and have everyone aim for 120 or more".

You take a look at Jen, and she's waiting for you to speak, smiling. This is almost too weird to handle.

You consider asking Jen to hop on one foot or whatnot, but, thankfully the meeting is scheduled to end.

To anyone else in that conversation, nothing of note just happened. But that's it, you know its true now. Charles was real. Its hard to imagine any other explanation.

Should you go back to your desk, and find someone interesting to talk to? Or do you need a breath of fresh air?