It began late one night, in Chicago I believe, or an imaginary city much like it, with Errthum and I, out on the town after some heavy alcohol consumption. Errthum was all tipsy and hyper and giggly. We were in a large square room, beige and neutral-looking, a private room of some kind though we weren't at either of our homes. Errthum was recalling something he'd seen during his sojourn in Europe, and attempted to dance and recreate some show he'd seen overseas. All righty, I told him, you've had a few too many. It's time to get you home. Ensuring that he was properly dressed, I took him to the train and accompanied him out to another region of the far-flung city to his apartment. Now it was quite late; he said I could sleep there for the night, since the trains had just stopped running (at 2am, he specified). No no, I said, you need not worry. I'll make arrangements. I went outside, into a rather nightly black urban streetscape, full of high, wet red brick walls, occasional puddles--it had been raining, I suspect--unlit lampposts, pavement. But no cars or other pedestrians. I walked into my trusty time machine--a TARDIS, the console room that seen from 'The Five Doctors' onwards in Doctor Who--and dematerialised off homewards, with lots of wheezing, groaning sounds, thrusting time rotors full of twinkling light, and so forth. Here is where the true joy of this dream became apparent: sound! My golly goshums, I don't think I've ever had a dream in which certain sounds hit me with such vitality. It was even better than hearing CD-quality sound in real life, I think, completely stereophonic, surround-soundtastic, resonant, harmonic, all sorts of adjectives I don't know used to describe sound quality. Total assplosion of soundstacy. I parked my TARDIS back downtown, to try and get some studying done. I found my mother in what seemed to be a cathedral tower, tall, square, of rather cheap-looking beige stone, a tower turned sideways, horizontal rather than vertical, but at the same time above ground level. I sat with her and started some Latin; then the little balcony we were in started shooting forwards down the tower, hit the end, and inched its way back up to do it again and again, a bit like those 'Tower of Terror' rides at amusement parks. It was most distracting. I asked Mum about it; apparently, my sister was working the controls, and there was little chance I could get her to stop. Dammit. So I packed up my Latin and left the horizontal tower, going down to the lower level, which was a bar. I sat on a padded, semicircular ledge by one of the front windows, since nobody else seemed to be about, and studied there, in a large, inky chamber with red carpet. Then the bar patrons arrived, looking rather menacing, with leather jackets, chains, polyester, domestic beer. They were planning to get funky, in the dancetastic sense of the word, and chased me off. I felt quite menaced, and decided to hurry home, down nightscaped alleys between looming concrete blocks, across rain-dampened concrete, over the shingled roof of an inconvenient church--I didn't feel like going around it, so I leapt up and scurried across the rather pleasant striated brown slablets; I do love wood--past some people who stared, at last onto a residential street lined with vague, indistinct dwellings exhaling a faint red glow over the scene, past equally indistinct people on porches, and at last to my own house. The really fun part came next. Errthum and I went out again, you see, the next night, or some nights later perhaps. We were on a strip of bardom downtown. There was a gay bar next to a straight bar, and we were going to the straight bar, because I don't much like gay ones. It was a hopping night inside, lots of people in light colours, spotlights and suchlike in various colours sweeping over them, moving to funky beats and such. Errthum and I did stop briefly at the gay joint next door, where a competition of sorts was going on, one of those things bars occasionally have, involving fancy dress and miming along to pop music for the title of Mr Filthy Bar Whore 2001 or somesuch thing. It was a small room, walls and floors faintly green, like a faded pool table. There was a stage in the middle-ish, which was being set up, and a dozen or so well-dressed homosexuals lounging around waiting for their turns. Some were wearing zoot suits. Errthum encouraged me to go out, flirt, work my magic, and seduce one of the fine gents, if any caught my eye, and as it happens one did, a tall, ethereal blond chap off to one side with red, red lips, looking a bit, though not overly so, like Billy's roommate Hans, or a gent I had seen at Panchero's the night before. But I'd never have a chance with him, I sighed. I'm just not glamourous enough to win a potential Mr Filthy Bar Whore. Aha! The lightbulb of genius clicked on over Eric's head, figuratively, blinding me with its six million watts of utter cleverness. If he's out of my league, then all we have to do to get him into it...is to make sure I win the Mr Filthy Bar Whore competition. That's crazy talk, I said, but he took me next door back to the grooving dance bar and in the space of five minutes had assembled a complete motion picture production team, had me kitted out in a really swell green suit, and had turned me into a David Bowie impersonator. I didn't quite have Bowie's face, but close, sort of a cross between his and mine, if you can picture that, which is unlikely. And I was definitely blond. Then, the moment of truth! We strode in to the competition, I took to the stage, grabbed that microphone and rocked out. I opened my mouth, and out came David Bowie's 'Changes' in glorious, bowel-shaking, full frontal sextasy, sound just like mom used to make, as it were, sound wanging every square inch of one's body with its longitudinal pulsation, in perfect Bowie-voice, sound almost more tactile than touch, with the full band backing me up, I might add. The crowd went wild, out of nowhere a film credit appeared: 'Produced by (some strange name starting with M, which was I think Eric's name in this dream).' But, alas, before I could get my schwerve on with the ethereal one, I had to accept my prize, which included a large chunk of money, and a tiara, and a bouquet of roses, out on a balcony--by now morning had broken--overlooking a grey, damp parking lot filled with cheering masses. I gave my cash prize to Errthum's mother, who looked like she should look like a famous film starlet, since she'd funded the massively expensive rush job to make me a star, and thence I embarked on a whirlwind career in business, buying up things and, with Eric still with me, amassing a monstrous business empire the likes of which the town had seldom before seen. I think I bought a hotel, one with light tan walls and umber carpet, featureless white doors, wait staff rolling carts topped with silver covers. We were going for a near-monopoly on steak, buying up every steak restaurant we could find, to harness the awesome power of meat. There was one we wouldn't touch, though, the one owned by the Mob and used by them as a meeting-place for plotting their dirty deeds. It was on the second floor of a building, with a railed (in wrought iron) walk exposed to the air leading to its door across the roof of the first storey; all the structures on that upper level were narrow and tall and pointy up top, boasting eccentric stone frontings, balconies, more railings, bright lights, great big illuminated letters over their doors announcing the establishments' names. The Mob's looked a bit like a watered-down castle. Eric was off somewhere else when I was called by the Mob for a meeting. They were led by a short, round- and red-faced Italian-American of little girth, who accused me of attempting to violate their territory while his goons in navy blue suits closed in. Not at all, I assured him, a bit concerned. I've never tried to buy your restaurant, nor do I even plan to do any such thing, cross my heart, Scout's honour. But he didn't believe me. O, why didn't he believe me? Eric showed up, shocked and horrified, just as they were making their move. The boss pulled out a tombstone about a foot high, fluted and scrolled at the ends, engraved with a silly name starting with T (my own, presumably), and '1955'. What's all this? Eric asked. Why, 'tis my death! And the goons grabbed me, and hurled me from the walkway, to fall, fall, fall and smash to the pavement far below, broken and dying. Though I didn't feel any of that, fortunately; as soon as I began to fall, I felt a warm, sort of fuzzy tingling through my body, like a cocoon of some sort, and though I'd been greviously injured I wasn't worried, for, since I had a TARDIS at my disposal, why shouldn't I be able to regenerate just like my favourite television hero, Doctor Who? Bless the BBC for such a swell idea! There was strange and eerie light; all the crowd gathered 'round gasped. Something strange and mysterious happened. I returned to life, my body fully restored, and I leapt up in joy, for I had regenerated into David Bowie! Suddenly, music poured from nowhere, and I once again launched into 'Changes' in that same glorious totally-immersing orgasmophonic way, which I thought was rather appropriate.