FEATURED STORY
RECENT STORIES
STORIES BY TOPIC
NEWS
TRANSPORTER
Take me to a...
SEARCH
Enter any portion of the author name or story title:
For more options, try our:
SUBSCRIBE
Sign up for free daily sci-fi!
your email will be kept private
TIDBITS
Get a copy of Not Just Rockets and Robots: Daily Science Fiction Year One. 260 adventures into new worlds, fantastical and science fictional. Rocket Dragons Ignite: the anthology for year two, is also available!
SUBMIT
Publish your stories or art on Daily Science Fiction:
If you've already submitted a story, you may check its:
DAILY SCI-FI
Not just rockets & robots...
"Science Fiction" means—to us—everything found in the science fiction section of a bookstore, or at a science fiction convention, or amongst the winners of the Hugo awards given by the World Science Fiction Society. This includes the genres of science fiction (or sci-fi), fantasy, slipstream, alternative history, and even stories with lighter speculative elements. We hope you enjoy the broad range that SF has to offer.






The Converse

I wrote this story after a night of vivid dreams while on holiday in Nantes, France. Is the professor dead or dying, or is the woman just trying to keep him in the dream? And either way, how long can he stay where he is?

"What do you think happens to people in a dream when the dreamer wakes up?" she asked.
He thought about the question, and looked at her. She was pale and slender, with long black hair, dark eyes, and an accent he could not quite place. They were sitting in a favorite cafe of his, sipping coffee.
"Well..." he said, thinking it through. "There are no 'people' as such. It's all just in the dreamer's imagination. So there's no them for anything to happen to, if you follow."
"An interesting view," she said, neutrally. "And what do you do for the living?"
"For a living," he said, and regretted correcting the minor error. "I'm a professor. Mathematics--logic, and probability."
"A logician? How wonderful. So, if when you die in your dream then you die in your sleep, then if you die in your sleep, do you die in your dream?" she asked, rhythmically, as if it were a poem.
He was distracted by the rhythm, but he untangled the sentence and said "No. No, that doesn't follow. It's A implies B versus B implies A. The converse, not the same as the original proposition."
"Converse, like in conversation?" she asked.
"Not quite," he said, but he wondered if they had the same root. Maybe he could look it up. He started to reach for his phone, but she touched his arm lightly and asked, in her slightly-off accent, "And where was it you taught?"
He thought, but could not quite remember. And come to that, where exactly were they? And who was she? He felt some alarm, and started to move to get up.
"So, professor," she said, and put just a little downward pressure on him. "Here we are, in the converse-ing. Suppose you think you are dreaming, and you try to wake up. Are you sure you will like what you find? Could someone die in his sleep, but live on in his dream? What would you bet?" And she pushed the cafetiere over to him, and smiled.
He paused for a couple of moments to think. "It seems foolish to risk it," he said to her at last, and poured himself some more coffee.
The End
This story was first published on Tuesday, June 25th, 2019


Author Comments

Philip Apps is a data scientist who lives in California with his wife and daughter. This is his second published story.

- Philip Apps
Become a Member!

We hope you're enjoying The Converse by Philip Apps.

Please support Daily Science Fiction by becoming a member.

Daily Science Fiction is not accepting memberships or donations at this time.

Rate This Story
Please click to rate this story from 1 (ho-hum) to 7 (excellent!):

Please don't read too much into these ratings. For many reasons, a superior story may not get a superior score.

4.6 Rocket Dragons Average
Share This Story
Join Mailing list
Please join our mailing list and receive free daily sci-fi (your email address will be kept 100% private):