Thanks in advance to anyone who has a clue - I've been trying to work
this one out for a while. I think I read it in an anthology in the first
half of the Eighties, but the general conclusion from those I've spoken
to is that it was probably ten or more years old even then.
As I remember it, it runs roughly like this:
A man has the impression of something being peeled off his face, and then
wakes in an alley next to a large windowless building. He hears the sound
of a vocal (and probably aggressive) crowd approaching from one end, so
he heads the other way. He realises they're catching up, but is rescued
by a friendly character (possibly a clown - I'm not sure) who lets him
inside and says something to the effect "You've come from the house with
no windows. You'll go back there - nearly everyone who comes out does."
The town he's in is surreal in a way reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland,
but far more dangerous (murderous, even - that friend may be the only
friendly character he meets). Eventually he asks his friend how he can
return to his world, and he's told to go back to where he woke up and
knock on the nearby door. A robot answers it and says he's been expecting
him.
He's taken through this large building, past hundreds of people asleep on
rack of beds, each with indiarubber spectacles over their eyes. After a
while they reach an empty pallet, which the robot says had been his. He
lies down and the robot moves to put a pair of the rubber spectacles over
his eyes. Finally he asks if the gl***** will take him back to the real
world, and the robot replies that they will give him logical dreams.
I did start to wonder after a while if I'd dreamed it up, but I found
someone else asking about it on Harlan Ellison's site:
http://harlanellison.com/heboard/archive/bull0106.htm
His version's a bit different, and obviously I've no idea whose is more
accurate. He says:
"Our protagonist wakes to find he's standing, like thousands of others,
in a cubicle wearing red rubber spectacles. He's taken on a short trip
and introduced to some Alice-in-Wonderlandesque characters before being
put back to sleep (or reality). His host puts him under with a quote
something like 'Purpose ? What could you possibly know about purpose ?'"
Ellison replied "You thought it might be a story of mine. I think not. It
sounds not at all familiar. Sorry."
I may, of course, have confabulated many of the details by now, so I'd be
grateful for even vague resemblances.
Cheers,
Graham.
--
"As we all know, the English like nothing better than to be pegged out on
a croquet lawn by a dirty foreign girl in a riot skirt and bondage boots"
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