After New Year's, Frank organized another gathering.
This time, he brought someone new.
The meeting wasn't at a bar, but at a quiet café in the Upper West Side. Rain had just stopped, leaving the streets glistening. Streetlights stretched long reflections across the wet pavement.
Frank introduced the newcomer. "This is David," he said. "A college friend of mine. He's working in neuroscience."
David looked young, wore thin-framed glasses, and spoke in a calm, measured tone—almost like delivering an academic presentation.
"Frank told me about your experiences," he began. "The flight, the recurring dreams, the patterns you discovered in the seating arrangements."
He set a small notebook on the table and gently flipped it open.
"If it were just one person," he said, "it could be a response to stress or trauma. But if multiple people have structurally similar dreams, that's worth studying."
Sabrina listened quietly.
David continued: "The human brain reorganizes memories during sleep. Usually, dreams are just a recombination of past experiences."
He paused briefly.
"But there's another theory—"
Everyone at the table looked up in unison.
David spoke slowly:
"Dreams might also be the brain's predictive model for the future."
Someone chuckled. "Predict the future? Sounds like science fiction."
David didn't waver.
"Prediction isn't mysterious," he said. "Your brain does it all the time. Catching a ball? You're predicting its trajectory."
He paused again.
"But what if the time scale of that prediction were extended?"
The café grew suddenly quiet.
Frank's eyes sharpened.
David continued:
"If, in extreme cases, the brain receives information not from the past but from the future, then dreams could become temporal echoes."
A frown appeared at the table.
Some looked skeptical.
Sabrina recalled Story of Your Life—the alien language that allowed one to perceive past and future simultaneously, making time a loop rather than a straight line.
David seemed to sense the doubt.
He closed his notebook gently. "But recently, I've been thinking about something stranger."
All eyes turned to him.
He looked at his coffee cup, as if arranging his words.
"What if the future in dreams isn't something yet to happen—"
He lifted his gaze.
"But rather, another timeline that has already occurred?"
For a moment, the room was so silent, even breathing felt loud.
Someone immediately objected. "Isn't that just a parallel universe?"
David nodded. "That's one way to interpret it."
Frank's expression grew complex.
Mary's death resurfaced sharply in his mind.
If that was another timeline—
Could it mean that the child she saw in her dream actually existed?
Just—
Not in this world.
Outside, the wet streets reflected the lights.
No one spoke.
Each person silently repeated the phrase in their mind:
Another timeline that has already occurred.
The conversation in the café gradually dissolved.
Some whispered softly, while others clearly didn't want to continue. The post-rain air carried a slight chill as people filtered out.
Streetlights flickered on, one by one.
Frank and David lingered by the door. Sabrina had already reached the corner. When she glanced back, they were still talking.
David remained calm, analyzing, as if reviewing experimental data.
"If you really want to understand this," he said, "the key isn't guessing. It's recording."
Frank asked, "Recording what?"
"Dreams," David answered simply.
He explained that memories of dreams fade quickly after waking, and if not recorded immediately, important details vanish.
"If these dreams are carrying temporal information," he said, "the details are crucial."
Frank nodded.
David added one final thought:
"And one more thing. If dreams involve different timelines, then the details in the dream could gradually appear in reality."
He paused.
"That's when it really becomes significant."
A gust of wind stirred the trees at the street corner, droplets shaking from the leaves.
Frank suddenly realized—
The office building in Hong Kong might be one of those "details."
For the first time, he sensed the matter could be far more complex than they imagined.
That night, Sabrina returned home late.
William was already asleep.
A small lamp glowed softly in the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of warm water and sat at the table, her mind still lingering on the café conversation.
Another timeline that has already occurred.
The thought fell like a stone into the depths of her consciousness.
She remembered the office Frank had found in Hong Kong.
If dreams could truly connect different times—
Then what they saw—was it the future, or some past that already existed?
She decided not to think further.
Night was deep.
Sabrina turned off the light and went to bed.
⸻
In the early hours, she suddenly woke.
Her heart raced.
She sat up, the room in total darkness.
The dream lingered, vivid—not fragmented, but a complete, coherent scene.
She was standing in a vast airport terminal.
Announcements played, crowds moved past her. She looked up at the flight information screen. Familiar city names flashed—
Beijing.
Before she could make sense of it, the scene shifted.
She saw a woman.
Standing on a train platform, winter mist curling in the air.
A green train slowly approached in the distance.
The woman lifted her head.
And in that instant, Sabrina recognized her face.
—Li Hua.
The dream shattered there.
Sabrina jerked awake.
Outside, New York night remained unchanged.
In the dream, Li Hua's life was no longer overshadowed by the clouds of the past. The pain caused by Haotao's infidelity, the cracks between them, the fear during the SARS outbreak—all seemed slowly softened by time, leaving only faint traces. Days flowed like a sunlit river, calm yet warm.
Haotao remained busy at the hospital, tending to patients and managing daily operations, but he always returned home at night carrying a quiet steadiness. The house regained its usual rhythm, and the children gradually grew into their own.
Tingting was preparing for her entrance exams. As she navigated the early stirrings of adolescence and first crushes, her parents offered gentle guidance rather than strict intervention. The family slowly rediscovered order and warmth amidst the small, mundane details of everyday life.
In the dream, Sabrina experienced all this through Li Hua's eyes: sunlight spilling across the kitchen table in the morning, Li Hua preparing breakfast for the children while watching Haotao organize his hospital files; a gentle afternoon breeze drifting through the window as the children hunched over their homework, occasionally glancing up with a smile; the soft glow of the living room at night, the quiet, comforting rhythm of a family at peace.
Life was subtly shifting: Haotao learned to balance his busy work with home, while Li Hua learned to navigate past traumas alongside present tenderness. Small conflicts and unforeseen events still arose, but they rippled like gentle waves across a calm surface, smoothed over by the quiet warmth of daily life.
Time passed gradually, and the future remained unpredictable: Tingting would face challenges in both academics and emotions, and the parents would guide rather than control at critical moments; Li Hua and Haotao would build understanding and tacit harmony over time, and the family would continue steadily forward.
In the dream, time flowed intertwined with reality, and Sabrina realized that this was not only her way of experiencing Li Hua's life but also a mirror of her own inner world. Every breath, every emotion, seemed to whisper that the line between dream and reality was subtle—perhaps, in the future, her intersection with this world would be even more tangible, even more complex, than what she experienced in the dream.
The dream gradually became warm, like sunlight filtering through thin mist into a courtyard. Life's details were magnified, each moment allowing Sabrina to feel growth, release, and hope. She understood that some wounds might never completely vanish, yet the future was quietly unfolding, carrying the promise of possibility.
At that moment, Sabrina thought of Louise from the book—time was no longer a straight arrow from past to present to future; it was a whole, in which beginnings and endings coexisted. She could "remember" the future just as naturally as she remembered the past.
The connection between reality and dream reflected this non-linear conception of time. Every breath, every emotion, was simultaneously past and future, echoing the rhythm Louise described—a continuum in which memory and anticipation merged seamlessly.